DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER is my first mystery, which will be published in 2008. It's about a guy who investigates a murder to keep himself from drinking again after he wakes up in detox on the Bowery on Christmas Day. And that's just the beginning....
When I'm not lost in cyberspace, you can find me running around the Central Park reservoir VERY SLOWLY...swimming or gardening out in the East End of Long Island...or out wearing one of my other hats as a singer/songwriter, poet, knitter of socks, and champion schmoozer.
Anybody who might enjoy or even love DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER. That includes mystery lovers, especially those who can't find enough traditional mysteries that are neither cozy nor hard-boiled but over easy and slightly crispy around the edges...people in recovery from alcoholism, codependency, and other addictions, who I think will find the book a lot of fun...adult children of alcoholics (wow, if all 28 million of 'em would buy my book!) and anyone who's ever loved an alcoholic and needs to know that people do grow and change...anyone who's ever been in therapy...anybody with a sense of humor--and if you think those two categories don't overlap, you're wrong! ;)
My tastes range from Baroque to country, bluegrass to Mozart. I'm a singer/songwriter myself, play acoustic guitar but much prefer good backup (instrumental and harmony vocals), and have learned a lot from teachers/friends Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Bernice Lewis, and Amy Fradon.
Enchanted April, My Cousin Vinnie, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Shakespeare in Love, Strictly Ballroom, Monsoon Wedding, The Wedding Banquet, Calendar Girls, Sense & Sensibility. Peter Jackson's King Kong. The Country Bears.
Favorites (excluding authors I've met personally) include Dorothy L. Sayers, GAUDY NIGHT, Josephine Tey, BRAT FARRAR, Peter Dickinson, KING & JOKER, Janet Neel, DEATH'S BRIGHT ANGEL, Reginald Hill, UNDERWORLD, Lois McMaster Bujold, A CIVIL CAMPAIGN, Diana Gabaldon, OUTLANDER, Sharon Shinn, ARCHANGEL, Ursula LeGuin, THE DISPOSSESSED, John Barth, THE SOTWEED FACTOR, Elinor Lipman, ISABEL'S BED, Sheri S. Tepper, AFTER LONG SILENCE
My mother, Edith J. Lapidus 1902-1999, lawyer and professor who inspired many women, including me, although she never read a mystery or went to therapy. We put the epitaph she wrote for herself on a scrap of paper on her tombstone: "20th century feminist from start to finish."