TMP: It Never Gets Old

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The first time I held one of my published books in my hand, I kept putting it on the shelf and saying: “Look, it looks just like a real book!” That memory is very vivid, very clear. Yet I am less sure of what I felt when subsequent books arrived. I do remember the thrill of seeing the cover for The Sugar House, my first hardcover. And I remember the dismay I felt at seeing a prototype cover for one book, which my editor was kind enough to send back to the drawing board. But, in general, key book-related memories are lost to me. First time I saw my book on sale, in a library, in a stranger’s hands? I couldn’t begin to tell you. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a stranger reading one of my books, although I’ve seen many people reading my friends’ books.

So it’s reasonable to assume that I will very soon forget the enormous pleasure I had on Friday, when I opened a box of galleys for NO GOOD DEEDS. I am one of the lucky ones; my galleys (aka AREs or ARCs) are glamorous affairs, shiny and embossed, with cover art and marketing plans. But I don’t think it’s the cover that made me rip into the box with such enthusiasm that I ended up with a long and somewhat painful cardboard cut on my left forearm. The pleasure of seeing the typeset pages in bound form simply never grows old. It is the equivalent of that: “Look, it looks like a real book” moment, which is what I feel every time. A year ago, literally, these pages were mostly in my head, with no more than nine or ten chapters in the roughest of rough drafts. The chapters that did exist weren’t even in the right order.

The arrival of the ARCs followed one of those rare moments when someone recognized my name. I was involved in a business transaction, signing some paperwork, when the heretofore no-nonsense woman screamed out: “OH NO YOU’RE NOT.” I thought I had made a grievous error in the paperwork, but it turned out she was a fan. This does not happen to me often, although it does seem to have an uncanny knack for happening when I’m wearing my bright blue Colts Corral windbreaker, with “Jimmy” stencilled on it. Yet, despite the relative rarity of this, I can’t remember the first time it happened. Right now, I can’t remember the penultimate time it happened. Meanwhile, I can’t forget the cheerful young clerk in a local bookstore who took my credit card and said: “Lippman — like Elaine’s boss on Seinfeld!”

It’s funnier when you know that I was standing two feet from a huge stack of my own books, and that I sell rather well in this particular store.

Today’s topic is memories of first times, memories of first times that you can’t but should remember, memories of first times that you’re lucky enough to experience over and over again.

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32 thoughts on “TMP: It Never Gets Old”

  1. First time I was recognized after I got involved with acting in community theater: I was at the vet’s office with my dog, and this woman sitting in the reception area said to me “Did I see you at the night of January 16th?” My mind started to scroll back trying to remember the last time I had Atticus there for a visit. I shook my head and said “I honestly can’t recall the last time I had him here. Sorry!” And she smiled and said “No not like that – the PLAY! The one called “The Night of January 16th”!! I played the judge in that one. I was so embarrassed, and then delighted, because she was very complimentary in her words. I felt like a dolt!

  2. Since I’ve only had one book published, it’s easy to remember the first time I opened that box of galleys and saw it looking like a real book. When I finally got the hardcover, it was a great feeling, but not as thrilling as that first look at the ARC. I’m wondering how it’s going to feel the second time around…

    As for other firsts, I will never forget the first time I held my daughter in Changsha, China; she screamed until she passed out, gripping two crackers in her hands as if they were her life buoy. My husband and I were strangers to her, but she smiled at us for the first time two days later as we fed her rice with chopsticks in Yueyang while waiting for her passport.

    I should remember the first time she said “mommy” but I can’t, I think her first word was “bird,” but I can’t be sure, it might have been “cat,” and she did start walking at some point but I don’t remember when. My own mother thinks DCF will come after me for this, the woman who wrote everything down the instant it happened.

  3. There’s a story about an English author – sadly, can’t remember which one – who was on a train when, for the first time, he saw someone reading a copy of his book. He built up the courage and said to the young woman, “Excuse me, that’s my book you’re reading.” She looked apologetic, handing it back as she said, “I’m sorry, it was on the seat – I just thought someone had left it there”!

  4. I love how open-ended this topic is–with more time, I’m sure we could all write a dozen entertaining firsts. For me, the first–and last–time I was almost trampled to death by a herd of Cape Buffalo comes to mind.

    But I doubt even being trampled will make me feel any more excited than when I open the box and see BALTIMORE NOIR (or one of the other anthologies I’ve written for, if they get to me first), and hold in my hand my first-ever work of published fiction, after twenty-five years and twenty nonfiction books. That one will be a big thrill.

  5. I think my first realization that I was really a soon-to-be published writer was when I saw my first book in final edit form. There it was-two to a page and just as it would be appearing! I must have stared at it for a good half hour before I did the fine tooth comb. And then the joy when my box of books arrived! I was real.

    And no-it never gets old!

  6. It was a huge thrill to get page proofs for DUBLIN NOIR (then BALTIMORE) and when the finished copies for DUBLIN showed up not long ago, I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. I hope I never get jaded.

  8. I’ll never forget the first time I saw San Francisco. It was about 2:00 am, and we’d driven a thousand miles from Idaho for a vacation. As we came over the Bay Bridge, I got my first look at this lovely, sparkling, little jewel of a city, and though “Oz. I’ve found Oz”. I resolved in that moment that I had, absolutely had, to find a way to live here, and I did. I’ve been a happy Bay Area resident for many years now.

  9. The first time I saw the Grand Canyon I almost passed out it was so breathtaking.

    Seeing the Eiffel Tower brought tears to my eyes.

    Winning my first hand of poker in a casino was very exciting. I ended up winning $100 but I acted like it was a million.

  10. I’ll never forget….

    The first time I laid eyes on what would become my pets….

    …seeing the Washington Monument for the first time…

    …the Vietnam Vets memorial….extremely moving….

    …the first (and probably only) time I met Laura Lippman and David Simon (in New Orleans before Katrina)…also that was the first time I laid eyes on New Orleans…

    …the first time I met the guy I’ve been married to for 15 years…

    …and like Vickie…I won $30 the first time I’ve ever played a slot machine in Vegas (also my first time there)….in the airport before collecting baggage no less.

  13. Sometimes the second time is pretty good, too. I was reheating lamb tangine (a recipe from this month’s Real Simple, which tastes much better on the second night, as the spices seem to gain power and the olives assert more) when it occurred to me to check the mail. “The Crack Cocaine Diet” has been selected for Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Mystery Stories 2006. That’s my second time and it’s just as thrilling as the first. Plus, it’s such a nasty story. It will completely change my rep.

  14. Laura, congratulations on the film contract and Best American Mystery Stories!!

    I had a very nice first today–first review in PW. They liked it. And the editor reports that I got a starred review in Kirkus but she hasn’t seen the copy, yet.

    WOO HOO!!!!!!!!!!

  15. The first time I saw New York City was in 1995, my senior year of high school. It was in a weird phase between the post 80′s seedy grit and the new millenium’s Disney sheen. We were coming up through the tunnel on a charter bus and we actually passed a speeding ambulance with its flashers on and its siren blaring. That’s when I knew NYC was going to be everything I ever dreamed it would be.

    Another major first, and probably the most important in my life so far, was finishing my first novel. I finished it at school where I was working in the writing center and immediatley printed it off and ran around campus screaming with the manuscript over my head.

  17. I am always dismayed when I announce the sale of a short story because the person I tell invariably asks what the story is about. Given the time between writing and acceptance, and considering how much I’ve written since then, I rarely remember the story at all. Perhaps I should reread before breaking the news.

  19. Here’s Cornelia’s PW review; I’ll unearth the Kirkus one eventually:

    Read’s impressive debut stars the unusual Madeline
    Dare, a jumble of contradictions who comes from an
    old-money Long Island family but is married to Dean, a
    railroad worker, in Syracuse, N.Y., which our heroine
    likens in a moment of exasperation to “some mental
    dust bowl.” . . .
    the fine supporting cast-notably husband Dean and
    flaky, flamboyant friend Ellis-consistently delights.
    The author’s sharp social commentary on everything
    from the idle rich to the environment adds to the
    pleasure.

    As — full disclosure — one of Cornelia’s blurbers, I’d like to add that the book is stunningly well-written.

    (I’ve waited my whole life to be a Jewish mother. Why not start here?)

  21. I make excellent latkes, using The Gourmet Cookbook. (Really, I can’t say enough good things about this book, which I bought at Costco, so it was almost 40 percent off. Don’t be put off by its pedigree; it’s very easy to use. Granted, I gravitate toward the easy recipes, but I haven’t had a dud yet.)

    And here are seven words that could change your life: Banana bread with coconut and macademian nuts. Especially if you toast the banana bread and add a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

  22. Seven words that HAVE changed my life, just reading them. Plus, if you wanted to be REALLY decadent, you could add two more: hard sauce.

    Because there is nothing like butter, sugar, and booze all mashed together as a complement to any dessert-esque thingie. Trust me on this.

    Well, okay, except for bourbon whip as a topping/adjunct, which is just bourbon whipped with heavy cream–no sugar. THAT’S some good eatin’.

  24. Here’s a book memory for ya, starring one of your very own books. I may have told you it before, but if not consider it a promise now kept.

    Coming back from the Washington Bouchercon in 2001 (I was still living in the Great White North then), I was stopped at Canadian customs and asked to step into a small room and open my bags. It was 5 or so in the morning, and the sun was definitely not shining. The short heavy-set black woman custom guard looked almost as beat-down exhausted as I was. She had a face about as friendly as a snowplow, and moved heavily, like she’d had sore feet all her life.

    She opened my gym bag and sighed, probably dismayed (or just ticked off) at the number of books I was carrying. A lot of them were used paperbacks, and there were a few treasured hardcovers I’d bought. After a few books, she gave up looking at them closely, and began to paw through them quickly — no doubt searching for illegal fruit, pornography, drugs or WMDs (this was only a few months past 9/11), all the while reciting the standard how long/where/why/bringbackanything/havereceipts? border routine, to which I inserted all the proper (I hoped) answers. We both just wanted to get it over with and get back — me to the bus and her to her coffee which was cooling on the table behind her.

    Suddenly she stopped and pulled out one hardcover and turned to face me. Clutched in her bureaucratic hand was my copy of STRANGE CITY.

    “She has a new one out?”

    “Uh… yeah” was my snappy repartee.

    She grunted, began to flip through it, then stopped, eyed me suspiciously.

    “Someone wrote in it.”

    “Uh, yeah, the author did.”

    “You know Laura Lippman?”

    “Yeah, well, sorta. I met her.”

    “Really?”

    I nodded.

    She answered with a non-committed grunt, then she eyeballed the inscription more closely. “You’re a detective? She calls you a thrilling detective here. What’s that mean?”

    I started to explain, to ramble on about the web site, rattling off the URL and her eyes actually lit up, at least for a few seconds, before they began to glaze over as I droned on and on — as only the truly exhausted can.

    She zipped up my bag, no doubt wishing it were my mouth. “That’s nice,” she said, the way you tell a two-year old when they show you a drawing of a horse. “You see Ms. Lippman, you tell her I read all her books. And tell her I think she does Baltimore right, okay?”

    “I can go?”

    Her turn to nod. “Yes, sir. Have a good day and welcome home.”

    But she said it with a smile.

    (Oh, and I’ll bet that banana bread would be really good if it were made with maple syrup)

  26. It’s always fun, seeing those first proof copies.

    I always find seeing them on the shelves for the first time is less fun – too much worry and paranoia about sales and such to really enjoy them. But an ARC is unsullied by such concerns.

  30. I don’t have a writing first, but I’m about to have a photography one. In April I’ll be showing about 15 of my photos in a NYC restaurant. The owner contacted me and asked if I’d be interested. This will be the first time I’ll see my work in large format, framed, and displayed in public. And I’m a nervous wreck.

  31. One of the great firsts for me was the night a girl named Holly and I lost our virginity together.

    Excuse the frankness, but we had decided – no doubt from the fear of breeding we were both consumed by – that she should on top, less chance of conception or some horse-pucky. So, there we are, just before beginning the act, and we’re both shaking from nerves, and trying to ease the incredible tension by discussing all the “known ways” to keep from getting pregnant. (No, I had no condom at the time, yes I was an idiot).

    We’re getting closer and closer to backing out, or off, as they case may be. Though I was barely legal, part of my personality was formed straight out of the womb, and so I give this big, mocking, exasperated exhale and say, “Oh, Holly, if you’d just put in your diaphram, everything would be fine” knowing, of course, she had no such thing.

    Well, she looks down at me – to this day I can still see those eyes staring down with so much trust and love – and then she glances at her abdomen and inhales – thus sucking in her <i>diaphram</i> – and she says, “Will that really help?”

    It was a moment of such unbelievable innocence and beauty, it still resonates with me nearly 25 years later. Two kids, trying to be so grown up, but so completely and undeniably young.

    I start laughing, then she got it, and she starts laughing, and suddenly all the tension is gone as we hold each other, laughing and laughing, and then it happens, all on its own, so sweetly and tenderly and safely….

    Like all young love, months later we apart, and within a year or so, she had moved and I never saw her again. I’d always felt like I helped make her first time sweet and wonderful – something we all know is rare – and it’s such a great memory for me, but I’ve always wondered if she remembered it the same.

    Then, about seven or eight years ago – probably 15 years after that night – an old friend of mine – one who knew she and I had dated back in the day – called me up to say they had been in a jazz club the night before, and the singer was Holly. My friend told me that Holly, by way of introducing her next number, told the audience a story about her first time. She spoke about how lucky she was – how the boy that night was so gentle and kind, and there was so much love there, and how she hopes her daughter’s first time is as beautiful as hers was.

    That was a good first.

  32. In an interview with Sandra Rutten you said, ” I hope to make an announcement soon about EVERY SECRET THING, but nothing’s been signed.” I shall say no more :-)

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