Book Signing for Vegas Author

By Cathy Scott

One of my favorite things is being around other writers, especially fellow authors. Such was the case on a recent Saturday when I attended my friend Matt O’Brien’s book signing at Barnes & Noble. It was for his latest book, My Week at the Blue Angel.

I got there just a few minutes after the event started, and already two people were buying books.

Then, an author friend of Matt’s–JJ Wylie–showed up, as did local photographer Bill Hughes and prolific author Bill Branon.

I hadn’t seen either Bills in a few years, so it was like a homecoming. Bill Hughes took the photos that are featured in Matt’s latest book, as well as the cover art, and I worked with Bill a few times back when I freelanced for Las Vegas CityLife.

Matt explained that the blue angel pictured on the cover, taken by Bill, is prominently standing at the seedy hotel on East Fremont Street–in Las Vegas’s red-light district–and is a 10-feet high piece of art standing in stark contrast to its environs.

Branon is a fellow author at my first publishing house, Huntington Press. And Branon has left an impressive list of books in his wake, including his first, Let Us Prey, which made The New York Times' 1992 Notable Books of the Year–a large feat, considering, before it was picked up by HarperCollins, he'd self-published it.

 Congrats to Matt on a successful signing, and a good time with old friends.

Photo of Matt courtesy of JJ Wylie.

New True Crime Book Review

Reprinted from True Crime Book Reviews

The Rough Guide to True Crime  is the complete compilation of crime's most notorious villains, heinous acts and shocking misdemeanors. The Rough Guide to True Crime provides an unusually wide coverage of crime's most preposterous occurrences and heinous acts; combining in-depth accounts of the most infamous to the lesser known crimes, from conmen to cybercrime, with "at-a-glance" fact files throughout. From the Moors murders and Harold Shipman, to the murder of 2pac, this guide illuminates the psychology in play behind the most intriguing crimes in history, from the absurd to the appalling.
Written by award-winning journalist and author Cathy Scott, it features include extensive black-and-white still photographs, featuring profile boxes by forensic expert Professor Louis B Schlesinger explaining the psychology of serial killers, hit men, burglars and various types of murderers. Lesser violations provide a lighter touch, including Paris Hilton's traffic transgressions and Winona Ryder's shoplifting fetish. The Rough Guide to True Crime explores the best of the haunting genre of True Crime, thrilling the armchair voyeur and amateur criminologist alike.
The Rough Guide to True Crime (Rough Guide Reference)
Country: US & UK
Format: Softcover
Author: Rough Guides; Cathy Scott
Publisher: Rough Guides Limited
ISBN: 9781858283852
Publication date: August 31, 2009
Pages: 336

Latest True Crime Book

My latest book--The Rough Guide to True Crime--has hit the Internet stands--but not yet the physical book shelves. It always catches my breath for a sec when I see one of my books for the first time ('course, when I hold an actual copy in my hand--the real thing--that's a feeling that's tough to put into words). It's "a complete compilation of crime's most notorious villains, heinous acts and shocking misdemeanors" (to use the publisher's words). Penguin Books did an excellent job on the cover. Thus far, it's the lengthiest book I've written--a whopping 135,000 words--and it took a while to get it done. I write books in my spare time, so I didn't get a lot of sleep toward the end as the deadline hit. But I'm happy with the end product. It will be sold in the U.K. in supermarkets and book stores and in the U.S. at book sellers and also in airports. It's scheduled for release on Aug. 31. It's being presold here on Amazon.com.

Vegas Writer an Award Finalist

Geoff Schumacher, former city editor at the Las Vegas Sun who hired me as a newspaper reporter in 1993, learned earlier this month that his second book, Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue, is a finalist in the biography category of Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Awards. That translates to Schumacher -- or "Shoe" as those of us in the newsroom used to call him -- making the short list in the independently published book contest. Winners will be announced May 29 at BookExpo America in New York City. In a year during uncertain financial times where practically all the news about the publishing industry is layoffs and downsizing, it's nice to see one of Las Vegas's own, a native and longtime local journalist, get kudos for his writing efforts.

A Monthly Arts and Literature Review

I just came across this book review in OPEN LETTERS: A Monthly Arts and Literature Review and wanted to include it here. Review of Pawprints of Katrina by Steve Donoghue When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005, dozens and dozens of city blocks became inundated swamplands of festering sludge, and thousands of people were displaced and evacuated, n most not knowing when – or even if – they’d ever be able to return. The haphazard squalor of their subsequent fates became the shame of a nation, but there were those who suffered even worse – the pets left behind in the drowned ruins of the city. Cathy Scott was embedded with the Best Friends Animal Society, a group that ended up rescuing nearly half the estimated fifteen thousand stray or stranded animals scrounging and starving in the wake of the storm. In this meticulously-reported (albeit ploddingly written) account, she tells the stories of all the desperate animals, and all the heroic volunteers who boarded flatboats and searched through attics and garages to find them (the included photographs by Clay Myers, of formerly pampered cats and dogs reduced to haunted-eyed scavengers skulking in the wreckage, are indelibly wrenching). These are stirring stories, and Scott tells them all – lacking a more poetic touch, this will certainly be the definitive account of Katrina animal rescue. Everything’s here: the owners cruel enough to leave chained and fenced dogs behind; the kittens and puppies born right as Katrina or Rita made landfall, the white-faced older animals who survived against all odds. And, happily, the beginnings of legislation to prevent such ancillary tragedies from happening again:

As a result [of the media attention given to abandoned pets], Hurricane Katrina was a wake-up call with a resounding message: along with people, pets also need to be protected during a disaster. What came out of the televised images, as the world watched in horror, was the vow never to let it be repeated. Katrina proved that people need to be prepared, from individuals putting identifying tags on their pets’ collars or microchipping them to cat owners keeping crates on hand to government officials at all levels mandating provisions for not only humans but their pets.

The essential promise all good, conscientious animal owners make to their charges is rock-bottom simple: I will protect you from harm. If legislation arising from the tragedy of Katrina helps in the keeping of that promise, then some good will have come of those high waters. Photo of first responder Craig Hill in the Lower Ninth Ward by Clay Myers.

Writers' groups

I just discovered a wonderful writers' group in San Diego (to where I'll eventually be moving). It's San Diego Writers, Ink. My lifelong friend Vickie Pynchon, an attorney-mediator, columnist and blogger extraordinaire, is a member of a close-knit writers' group in Los Angeles. Vickie was a part of my first group, Sisters of the Pen, when we were kids. Who knew then how much writing we both would go on to do? (My sister Cordelia, also a former member and now an antiques dealer, is also blogging). I wasn't in another group again until a couple years after I broke into the news business. Fellow journalist and friend Susan Gembrowski, who's now an editor on the metro desk at the San Diego Union-Tribune, once hosted a few writers' meetings in Ocean Beach for local freelancers. The meetings eventually dwindled as we all moved on with our respective journalism careers. The first time I participated (about five years ago) in the Authors of the Flathead conference in Whitefish, Montana, I was envious. The group is chock full of talented, aspiring authors who encourage and constructively critique their respective works. After giving a workshop at their annual conference last month, in early October, I told myself I was going to find a group of my own, even if I had to be the one to organize it. I haven't found a group in Las Vegas, although freelance writer Terrisa Meeks runs one in Vegas where I was once a speaker. When I worked at the Las Vegas Sun in the mid 1990s, a handful of reporters started a writers group there. We'd meet once a month at a local Starbucks and go over each other's lengthier feature pieces we each were working on. With time, those meetings, too, slowly dwindled. Then this week, on the Internet, I stumbled across the San Diego group. Writing is a craft; the more you do it, the better you get. Thus, I'm hoping to not only learn from other writers, but to help others as well. The goal is getting words on the page and getting feedback along the way for works in progress. Fellow writers' feedback is invaluable and a gift when you can get it.

Writer, novelist David Foster Wallace

Not much else for me to add about David Foster Wallace's recent suicide. Just very sad. His accomplishments weren't measured by the awards or accolades he accumulated; his readers to his body of work, instead, are a testament to his success. One of his statements, in an interview with Salon.com, is haunting: There's so much mass commercial entertainment that's so good and so slick, this is something that I don't think any other generation has confronted. That's what it's like to be a writer now. I think it's the best time to be alive ever and it's probably the best time to be a writer. I'm not sure it's the easiest time. ... I get the feeling that a lot of us, privileged Americans, as we enter our early 30s, have to find a way to put away childish things and confront stuff about spirituality and values." In 2005, he gave a speech at Kenyon College. In it, he said: Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master. This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. David Foster Wallace wrote his first novel at age 24. He hanged himself at 46. Very sad indeed. Illustration by Harry Aung

Hurricane Katrina book in the news

Pawprints of Katrina is generating some news. Yesterday, Yahoo! ran the publisher's press release on its business news page. Here's the link. And here's an excerpt: Pawprints of Katrina will leave pawprints on your heart. You probably vividly remember the animal rescues you saw on television in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Veteran reporter and lifelong animal lover Cathy Scott covered the stories straight from the muck, the rubble, and a makeshift shelter. She witnessed dramatic rescues and joyful reunions firsthand. This book shares Cathy's stories and insight, poignant photographs from Clay Meyers, and follow up information about the animals today.