Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to the first symphony of Elsa Barraine – very interesting composer, French, whose style emerged from her predecessors, Darius Milhoud and Le Group de Six, Ravel, Debussy, and her teacher, Paul Dukas. Her style is very much her own and I like her very much. She was quite popular with the populace back in the day, but is pretty much forgotten now, as happens with so many worthwhile composers. Always enjoy discovering new/old musical voices, don’t you? Anyway, whilst discovering new musical voices from past times, maybe it’s time to reveal the new book cover and title without revealing the plot, of course. That will come a bit later. And so, presenting my latest novel, Person Unknown.

I really love the cover Doug Haverty came up with. He sent me twenty completely different covers, of which three spoke to me. This was always my number one. Then I sent all twenty to Muse Margaret. She liked the same three I did and this was her number one also. The only thing I asked for was to see this cover with a couple of other fonts for the title from the other versions. Doug did five of those, but the second Muse Margaret and I saw them, we knew they didn’t work at all and that Doug’s original font was actually perfect if you thought about it in the right way. Then we could see it no other way. I’d asked to see one other thing, which I won’t mention, but that, too, was just wrong.

Yesterday was certainly Monday. I don’t really know how much sleep I got. I know I went to bed at one-thirty and was up like clockwork every forty-five minutes after that to eep in the ool. I didn’t even have that much to drink, Diet Soda and water-wise so where all that eep was coming from is anyone’s guess. Add to that the horrible hand and foot cramping, well, no fun. I was up for an hour at four-thirty. I finally got out of bed around eleven. I answered e-mails, I’d pre-ordered a pastrami from Daughter’s Deli and that sandwich arrived around noon and boy was it good – perfect, really. No fat anywhere. My chosen side was a little thing of cucumber salad. After that, I dressed and moseyed on over to the mail place to ship a package. There was nothing there to pick up. After that, I came right home, did a few things on the computer, the tech folks plugged another leak in rhe Notes part of the site – once they find the remaining holes/leaks and plug them, then the hackers are basically out of luck. At some point, I dozed off for ninety minutes, an Amazon Fresh order arrived, and it was from Amazon and it was fresh, for my evening snack I had to small slices of pizza. And, of course, Monday is the biggest of the pill days. Oh, and the promised mystery photo and the solving of it. Here is the photo I was sent – well, two photos – the first being Peter Noone of Hermit’s Hermits, the second being Hermits band member, Barry Whitwam.

So, all she knew was it was February of 1967 and they were here to film a TV special called GO! She was sure it was a hotel – modern for the times – and thought it might be the newly-opened Century Plaza hotel, because it did not resemble the Beverly Hilton. It looked familiar to me and frankly my first thought WAS the Beverly Hilton, so I looked there first. Most of the photos online are all the same angle of the main drive-up entrance – I’ve been there many times because the DGA used to hold strike meetings there. No photos I found were of any help and she was right – nothing really matched up – especially the Barry Whitwam photo, because he couldn’t be too far away from where Noone was. So, on to the Century Plaza. Unfortunately, there was nothing that really matched. I then went through every other major hotel in the city – all the Sunset Boulevard ones, all the Beverly Hills hotels, all the Hollywood hotels, even the bit hotel near LAX airport. The latter was kind of the closest but in the end it just didn’t match up. Then I had a crazy idea that it might be The Shores apartment building, where I lived in the 90s. The balconies kind of matched, but there was nothing else that really did. Baffling.

Then I just made the decision that if it was a hotel that it had to be the Beverly Hilton. So, used street view on Google View and used that to get to the main entrance – nope, nothing there matched, even though a couple of the windows to the west kind of looked similar. BUT – there were three other sides to the Hilton, so I went back to “images” and began looking again. I found the pool area but that was a new addition and didn’t look right at all. I was about to give up and go back to searching out other hotels again – maybe Glendale and/or Pasadena. And suddenly there was a small photo I hadn’t noticed before. I opened it – it was just a small corner of part of the hotel you couldn’t see from the main entrance. Here’s what I wrote my gal: “Forget the colors in the photo below, which I think are colorized. Now, the thing in back of the left side of his head, the concrete awning with the pole. It’s exactly the same as in the photo. Now look over his left shoulder where the palm tree is, then look at your photo below and you’ll see that exact palm tree and the gate behind it. The balconies match perfectly, too. Looking over the top of his left shoulder, note the windows, which are exactly the same. I think the other guy is standing either to the left or right of this angle, where there are windows and a gate that match in another photo I found but cannot seem to find again.” And another mystery solved.

Today, I’ll be up by ten at the latest, then I have a noon o’clock lunch meeting, then I’ll come home and do whatever needs doing and then I’ll definitely watch a motion picture.

The rest of the week is book stuff – getting the galley and giving it a final once-over, getting any fixes in, should there be any, and then sending everything to the publisher.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by ten at the latest, have a noon lunch meeting, come home, do whatever needs doing, then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What’s your favorite flop musical score? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have revealed the new book and its cover.