And I don’t feel so good myself.  That’s one of my all-time favorite book titles, by the humorist and memoirist Lewis Grizzard, but it sort of sums up why I’ve been missing in action for a while.

I was badly injured in a car crash several  years ago and all the travel I had to do this past summer/fall re-inflamed the nerve damage, so I’m having trouble typing–entries to the blog will definitely be spasmodic until that clears up.

I do want to announce a winner for our “V I’s Lover” contest.  We asked “which of her lovers should VI stay with and why?”  My thanks to everyone who took the time to think this through–she’s had at least nine that I can remember and I’ve probably forgotten a few.

Mihael Franich won me over with his romantic/philosophical take on the question:

The answer to VI’s love quest is not who… but what, when and how.  In every life, there is someone willing to go the distance, any distance, for her.  Someone who knows every intimate  hair on her skin, who sees her beyond a morning face, the beat up running shoes, really sees the person she is, understands what she needs, what she is unable to say herself.  Her love is a strong, steady guy, solid, patient, with a long distance vision.  She is in his thoughts each day, always close; he has a clear sense of their life together, the only thing he does not know is the when.  The only things he can do is stay in touch, keep showing, not telling her what love is, long distance, hoping to close that space, that she will notice, let him know it’s ok to move a little closer.”

I’ll post all the other answers in a future notice.  My own feeling is that Conrad Rawlings is the best man for V I, but there’s the unsurmountable mountain to climb of his being a cop and her being a PI.  If he agrees with her take on a crime, he’ll get the boys and girls in blue to take over from her.  If he disagrees they’ll fight, as they did in Tunnel Vision, and V I is a street fighter.   Every now and then, I get hate mail about the affair, because V I is European-American, Conrad African-American.  When the book was first published, Reader’s Digest offered me a high six-figure advance for the condensed version if I’d make Conrad white (or maybe V I black–they didn’t say).  It was a lot of money to walk away from, and maybe if I’d known how much my injury would slow down my writing I’d have thought twice instead of once…

PS My second favorite book title is Joe Namath’s autobiography: I Can’t Wait Until Tomorrow ‘Cause I get Better Looking Every Day.