Beethoven, Ludwig van, publishing negotiations, 276-7

As noted on Twitter this morning, The First Four Notes now has an index, which means it is pretty much finished. Beware the Ides of November! Now I just need to plan some book-release-related festivities between now and then. Party, we shall.

I was in Illinois all last week, so I ended up finishing the index in a hotel just outside of Buffalo, after which Critic-at-Large Moe and I had a beef on weck and then drove on through to Massachusetts. I have decided that my next book will be a 1970s-era noir thriller in which all the characters are named after exits on the New York State Thruway:

After his team is ignominiously bounced from the ABA playoffs, the last thing basketball journeyman Waterloo Clyde wants to do is turn his attention back to his off-season job: private investigator. But wealthy widow Auburn Weedsport insists that there's something fishy about her husband's death, and it's up to Clyde and his partner, martial arts expert Akron Corfu, to get to the bottom of it. Not a simple task, not with the likes of the late Mr. Weedsport's exotic, scheming mistress, Solvay Baldwinsville; Vernon Hamilton, Weedsport's ex-partner—and United States Senate hopeful; "Mohawk" Herkimer, Weedsport's old college buddy (or is he?); or even Mrs. Weedsport herself, a former Hollywood glamour queen harboring secrets of her own. And once Clyde and Corfu find themselves in the killer's sights, it becomes clear that this case will be anything but an easy layup.

It'll be called Waterloo Clyde and the Blindside Screen. I should totally Kickstarter this idea.