So this morning I woke up and saw the Georgia bride who disappeared while jogging was safe and sound in New Mexico. Here were my first thoughts:

1) Is Saturday Night Live in reruns, or will they be handling this tonight? I think of SNL a lot when things like this happen.

2) I can see Leno, Letterman and everyone else on late night getting some mileage on this. Maybe this is why she waited til Saturday AM to show up. Maybe something more newsworthy can happen by Monday and they will forget about her! As she was running did she ever think...I am a future joke on Leno and Letterman?

3) Can you see the battle now about WHO gets her on a morning talk show first? There is some producer on his or her way to Georgia to pull that one off. Or dialing her up on speed dial.

4) Can you see her bridesmaids being asked to talk on camera and give their opinions on this? Note to self: I can NEVER do anything wrong. I know there are a list of people who would love this moment to show up and talk about me on Larry King or Oprah.

5) I think she should pay back the guy who gave the free coffee to the rescue volunteers. Seriously.

6) Was she the only one who missed the TV footage while she was gone of her mom crying on TV? For that matter, I guess she never checked her AOL mail since if she did she would have seen her face on the welcome screen. Seriously if I saw everyone was looking for me I might have kept going instead of coming back.

7) Too bad there already was a movie with Julia Roberts. If not...

8) Did she read mystery books to learn how to disappear without a trace. I have to admit, this was pretty well done. What did she have cash stashed in the jogging pants?

9) The Vegas detour was an interesting one. Maybe she was outside the Chapel of Love envisioning the wedding she always wanted. I also realize I would not have 600 people to invite to a wedding.

10) Who signed up the book? I am sure SOMEONE thinks this should be a book.

The Mystery Writers of America held its 60th Anniversary this week, which culminated in the Edgar Awards ceremony last night. I think the best way to share this event is to write it like a travel diary. Sooo here we go.

The celebration kicked off Tuesday night with the Agents and Editors Cruise from midtown to the Statue of Liberty. The seas were a tad rough (i.e., whitecaps) and the wind was whipping around. It was a night for flat shoes and windblown hair. At one point glasses were flying on the upper deck, which prompted M.J. Rose to say it was a perfect element for a mystery cruise as there were murderous elements everywhere. As she said this I saw authors churning those details and could picture their fingers flying across the keys telling that story. When you are in the presence of this many writers, you know everything that happens is story fodder.

The evening gave me time to catch up with authors who had been panelists with me in past years like Chris Mooney, Carol Goodman and Con Lehane. I also got to see Sandy Balzo, who is one of the most fashionable women at these events. Parties like this are fun as you read nametags and realize that you finally are face to face with a name you have heard so much about. For me this encounter was with Carolyn Marino, the HarperCollins editor who has worked with so many authors I know including the afore-mentioned Andrews, Lisa Scottoline, William Lashner and oh so many others. Talking titles with someone like this gives the writing new meaning. Carolyn was honored for her work in the genre with the Ellery Queen Award on Thursday night.

Mary Kay Andrews lifted a glass as we passed the Statue of Liberty and held her hand aloft just like Lady Liberty clutching the torch. Mary Higgins Clark, who truly is the Queen of Suspense, and one of the classiest women in publishing, stood at the stern with nary a hair out of place. May I be this poised when I grow up.

Wednesday there was a full-day symposium with some of the best author panels that I have been privvy to. My day kicked off with a panel moderated by Mary Higgins Clark who hosted two powerful literary agents --- Donald Maass and Maria Carvainis. Their mission: to let would-be authors know how to get serious about getting published. The next panel had Ridley Pearson, Suzanne O'Malley and Paul Levine talking about books being made into movies. O'Malley and I have exchanged emails over the years and I had the opportunity to interview her when her Edgar-nominated book came out, ARE YOU ALONE THERE?: The Unspeakable Crimes of Andrea Yates. It was nice to finally meet. I am reading Levine's SOLOMON VS LORD, which will be in stores in October. It has some of the best-paced prose and dialogue that I have read in a while. Think "Moonlighting" or "Adam's Rib." You will hear more about this one.

Lunch was a reading at the Borders 57th Street store. Had a chance to hear authors read and share some commentary about their books. Among them was Marcia Muller, who was the Grandmaster of this event (a Grandmaster being one who is honored for his or her battery of work. She has more than 28 books to her name; 22 in her Sharon McCone series.). She read from THE DANGEROUS HOUR. I also heard Richard Aleas read the opener from LITTLE GIRL LOST and immediately emailed the office asking Tom to get me a copy. It's published by a newish publisher, Hard Case Crime, who is getting a lot of nice press. Also at this event, I got caught up with Michele Martinez, whose debut novel MOST WANTED is one of my favorites this year. She was in the audience and we caught up for the first time since her book came out. I was very happy to hear how well it is doing!

Post lunch Katherine Neville, author of THE EIGHT brilliantly hosted a panel of some of the mystery genres' well-known editors --- Keith Kahla, Jonathan Karp, Barbara Peters and Mark Tavani --- talking about the writers they love. Three names were prominently mentioned --- Joseph Finder, Rupert Holmes and Steve Berry. Hearing the stories of how each author was discovered and nurtured by his editor showed me the passion these editors feel for their craft. I subtitled this panel, "The Care and Feeding of Authors." There was something very special about it being hosted by someone as enthusiatic as Neville.

Next up was a panel hosted by Twist Phelan where Philip Margolin, Jacqueline Winspear and P.J. Parrish talked about how to bring readers into a mystery with clues. There was a lot of conversation about pacing and plotting and outlining. And yes, there was a great line from Twist about how there can never be enough twists in a plot.

Wrapping up the symposium, S.J. Rozan interviewed Marcia Muller and covered a range of topics including the info about how Muller has kept McCone's character fresh after all this time --- and how they both have evolved over the years. BTW, at some point during the day I learned S.J.'s real name is Shira. Well, there is a mystery solved.

Okay, you can groan.

Wednesday evening there was a birthday party for the organization at the New York Yacht Club. No photos allowed inside, but let me share that this is one incredible location. Lots of good hors d'oeurves, but as this was my second night of finger food, I started to long for a meal requiring utensils! At one point just before I left there was a group standing together with Michael Connelly, Harlan Coben, Laura Lippman, Jonathan King and Chris Mooney. Talk about collective star power.

Thursday morning a pair of children's mystery authors took a detour to New Jersey and spent time in my younger son's classroom. Daniel J. Hale and his nephew Matt LaBrot write the Zeke Armstrong Mysteries. Cory became enamored with these books; I think he pulled his first "close to all-nighter" reading one of them. Dan and Matt were kind enough to spend an hour answering my son's class' questions and shared stories about their writing. They gave the class quite a special memory!

Last night at the Edgar Awards the ceremony was very snappy. Usually nights like this drag on and on and on. Instead Jane Dentinger, who is Senior Editor at the Mystery Guild, was Master of Ceremonies and she punctuated the evening with smart banter and great segues of film clips. By the end of the night I was ready to give HER an award. I was seated with a number of judges in the Best Novel category, all of whom had read an astonishing 500 books. And I thought I read a lot in the past year!

A list of the award winners follows, but the list of presenters included such names a Lawrence Block, Rozan, Scottoline and Lippman. At the start of the evening we were given a program where the attendees were listed table by table. Reading through this you could see the wealth of author, agent and publishing talent that collectively was present in the room. I felt like I could go table to table and find someone who had had a hand in so many of the books that I loved at each.

A very energizing three days has left me exhausted tonight. But I will share that my personal reading list grew this week --- and that is what celebrations like this are all about.

EDGAR AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED 4/28/05


Best Novel:
CALIFORNIA GIRL by T. Jefferson Parker (William Morrow)

Best First Novel:
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN by Don Lee (W.W. Norton & Co)

Best Paperback Original:
THE CONFESSION by Domenic Stansberry (Hard Case Crime)

Best Short Story: "Something About a Scar" - Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You by Laurie Lynn Drummond (HarperCollins)

Best Fact Crime: Conviction: Solving the Moxley Murder: A Reporter and a Detective's Twenty-Year Search for Justice by Leonard Levitt (Regan Books)

Best Critical/Biographical: THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES: The Complete Short Stories edited by Leslie S. Klinger (W.W. Norton)

Best Young Adult: IN DARKNESS, DEATH by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler (Philomel Books)

Best Juvenile: CHASING VERMEER by Blue Balliett (Scholastic Press)

Best Play: Spatter Pattern (Or, How I Got Away With It) by Neal Bell (Playwrights Horizons)

Best TV Episode Teleplay: Law & Order: Criminal Intent - "Want", Teleplay by Elizabeth Benjamin. Story by René Balcer & Elizabeth Benjamin

Best TV Feature or Miniseries Teleplay: State of Play by Paul Abbott (BBC America)

Best Motion Picture Screenplay: A Very Long Engagement - Screenplay by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, based on the Novel by Sébastien Japrisot (2003 Productions)

And earlier, the announcement was made that the Mary Higgins Clark Award went to GRAVE ENDINGS by Rochelle Krich.

There are weeks when very public moments of sadness occur at the same time as personal ones. While the world was watching the worldwide coverage of the funeral of Pope John Paul II, a number of us in New York were hearing of the untimely death of a former colleague, Elizabeth Crow, who we had worked with at Mademoiselle magazine when she was Editor-in-Chief.

I spent 17 years at the magazine and some of my most treasured friendships were forged with my work colleagues there. Many people in publishing all over New York at one time worked at Mademoiselle --- and many of us can still grab our address books and make a quick chain of contacting each other --- thus IMs, emails and phone calls flew this week as we learned of Elizabeth's death. Julie Lewit-Nirenberg, who was publisher at Mademoiselle when I was there, and who has continued to be a good friend to me, had a fabulous friendship with Elizabeth. Her phone call reminded me of how special Elizabeth was.

Memories abounded of Elizabeth leadership, her passion and her complete love of her readers and what they thought. She had a respect for her readers that was as resolved as her respect for her colleagues. She also was just a really nice person who saw a lot of good in people in a business where snarky is innate.

When I left the magazine few people were as supportive and encouraging as Elizabeth. So many folks felt that leaving Conde Nast was akin to professional suicide. I remember sitting in Elizabeth's office where she just heaped good thoughts on me. The right words at the right time.

Over the last few years we had lunch on a few occasions. I always would meet her with a stack of books and I loved watching how she would open each one and peruse it with complete enthusiasm. A few times when she was between career moves I tried to coerce her to write for us. Her passion for the written word was something I would have loved to share with our readers. She often would agree to do 2-3 titles, but we laughed that once she agreed the inevitable phone call for yet another "great job" would come along and there went that idea.

We had not seen each other in about a year, which is something I regret. Our schedules did not mesh, we made some lunch dates, broke them all as things came up and then they never happened.

This week Kathy Weissman, who worked with me at Mlle and now reviews for us (you can see her review of Alice Hoffman's THE ICE QUEEN this week),and I emailed about Elizabeth. We then set up the sushi lunch date we have been promising ourselves for a while now. We both were thinking the same thing. Seize the moment and run with it!

It made me wonder about all the people in the Vatican who knew John Paul II personally and were saying farewell to a friend, as well as the Pope this week. Their personal grief was intertwined with the public one. The quiet stories that are not heard the same way as the big well-known ones, but they too tell the story of the man.

The Pope's death...Schiavo's death...Elizabeth's death. Moments like these in the past two weeks inspire me to just do the things I want to do. No postponing the moment. Read those books on my shelf. Make the phone calls I keep putting off. You get the picture. Do one thing today that you vowed to make happen.

For the last few seasons a show has been running on NBC called American Dreams. It ran on Sunday nights at 8 till a few weeks ago when it was moved to Wednesdays in the same time slot. It was one of the few shows regularly watched by me and my two sons. For those of you not familiar with it, it was set in the '60s and chronicled a family's world during these turbulent times. The show looked at Kennedy (both John and Bobby), Vietnam, the Pill, racial strife, psychedelic drugs and just about every other "issue" of the time. I enjoyed the show as a look back at a time that I lived through. The boys had endless questions as they watched it, which inspired some pretty interesting family discussions. They truly did not understand the racial issues, which made me realize how far we have come.

And yeah, the show had a nice soundtrack unscoring it. One storyline revolved around one of the characters being a regular on American Bandstand and the music brought back a wave of memories.

This week the final episode may have aired, with the show the casualty of poor ratings. I will miss watching with the boys. We already had been sorry to see it leave Sunday nights as it had become a "tradition" with us to close out the weekend watching it. Watching was something like a "Mayberry Moment" to the boys; the way they describe times that to them signify pure Americana.

Watching cable news this week, I pondered what version of their own "American Dreams" my sons will watch as a chronicle of their growing up. Let's see --- we had the Terry Schiavo story and the media/political circus attached to that. We had Michael Jackson's life splayed before us like some torrid video. We had the death of Johnny Cochran bringing back memories of the OJ Trial, as well as his stellar deeds beyond this. We monitored the pope's health and what this will mean to the Church. Jennifer divorced Brad. Another earthquake rocked Indonesia. The news seemed dark and sad. We had everyone everywhere voicing their opinions on everything.

And okay, acting my age, I confess to thinking the music out today is pretty bad, which makes me wonder if I am just getting old. I just do not think the soundtrack of their lives will be as nice as the one that I remember from mine. Of course, I am sure that my parents, who were a part of The Greatest Generation, felt the same way as they lived through, watched and listened to American Dreams.

What we live through forms the backdrop of our lives. It's influences will spawn books that either appear in a nanosecond or will be long looks back at the past written in later years. As an example of both ends of this spectrum, this week on Bookreporter.com we have a book about the Scott Peterson trial by Catherine Crier running alongside one about John F. Kennedy.

Watching American Dreams made me recall that the long look --- and distance from the past --- sometimes is a lot better than what it actually was like to live the moment. The broad sweep can be better than the intimate details. But that said, I do wonder how the filter and the lens will portray the days my sons will remember. Let's see if time plays it out better than it looked in the original running. I know I wish right now that the original film was a lot better than it is.