Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

storms, projects

Just when I was ready to go into full bitch mode about the hot weather, it stormed like a motherfucker, and now it’s pretty decent. Yesterday, I printed out all of the current project, got a red pen, and headed out to scavenge some air conditioning at the Neptune Diner and then on the subways for a while. On the walk to the Neptune, I saw a huge wall of black in the sky, rolling in from the West. By the time I got a seat and ordered lunch, it exploded with rain and thunder outside. It felt like the temperature dropped thirty degrees. It was still hot in my apartment, of course, and it took a day of full fans and all windows open to cool off to a reasonable level.

I’ve been working on a new project, which is a book about Las Vegas. More specifically, it’s all of the trip reports I’ve posted to my site, along with some shorter, new essays about the city that fit between those chapters. It’s intended for lulu.com, although I think I will buy a UPC symbol and the distributing option to get it on Amazon and others. I’ve run through the trip reports on a quick edit, and they need more punching up, but I think they are cool. A couple of the short bits are done, I have ideas for a couple more. Doing the layout in Framemaker is work, but it’s not much of a chore. I don’t have a cover photo yet, although I have a gazillion photos of Vegas. And no title yet. I need to think about that. One idea is something like “A Walk in the Meadows” (seeing as Las Vegas = The Meadows in espanish.) And another is some obscure gambling jargon, like “Breakfast at Harrah’s” (a nine-high, no pair hand in Pai-Gow Poker.) The byline will be something like “Essays and whatever about the New Las Vegas” or whatever. Anyway, suggestions welcome.