Good evening, 919 Gang.
JOHN MUNCIE writes:
My newspaper career began in 1970 when I got hired by the Riverside Press-Enterprise. One of the staffers was a rookie sportswriter from Penn State named Ron Kolb. Kolb and I quickly became pals and ever since, like all newspaper buddies, we’ve talked about writing a book together.
Well, we finally did it. It’s called “The Royals” — named after the manual typewriters we started on at the P-E. You can find it on Amazon in eBook and paperback versions.
Why am I introducing “The Royals” specifically to the 919 Gang? Because it’s about people just like us. Here’s how Paul Levine, bestselling author of those Jake Lassiter legal thrillers, blurbed our book:
“A quintet of septuagenarians – all ink-stained, retired newspaper reporters – dust off their manual typewriters, flex their arthritic joints, and dig into the mystery of why a star high school quarterback committed suicide on a picturesque island off Seattle. Two of them even find the time and energy to fall in love again. An impressive debut, ‘The Royals’ is geezer fiction at its best, laced with sly observations, wry humor, and wise meditations on aging and the meaning of life. I hope John Muncie and Ron Kolb have plenty of typewriter ribbons for their team’s next outing.”
OK, Levine’s a pal of Kolb’s. But friendship aside, it’s an accurate summary. Most of the characters are based on Kolb and me and our Press-Enterprise colleagues. But we didn’t ignore my Union-Tribune days. For example, to honor the U-T’s photogs (always the paper’s most talented group), I named two characters, in a vivid flashback scene, Jim Skovmand and Jerry Rife. Skov’s a reporter in the scene, Jerry’s a photog. (Take a look at Chapter 26.)
If “The Royals” interests you -- and how could an ink-stained journalist pass it up? — click on the link below to our Amazon page. If you like the book, Kolb and I would be so grateful if you wrote a review. If you don’t like the book, it’s entitled “The Remingtons,” by John Munkle and Ron Club.
REBER: Carl Larsen, are you still keeping a list of books by our members? I would almost promise to run the list, but let’s see how long it is. A powerful lot of authors in this group.
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SUZANNE MACK-LOEBER writes:
I guess it's the time of year for looking back over holiday memories. Bill and I were at Jerome's purchasing a sofa for the living room. I got to thinking about the first sofa I bought at a supposedly reputable furniture store on University Ave. It was white Herculon, and boy, did the salesman see me coming! He told me I could zip off the covers and send them to be cleaned. They couldn't because the fiber filling was practically adhered to the inside of the covers. When Thanksgiving rolled around, we invited Ron Hutcherson's family to join us. My first time cooking an entire Thanksgiving dinner. The dinner turned out almost prefect, even though I did forget to remove the neck from the bird. Ron had asked if they could bring a friend who had no place to go on that day. Said extra guest poked fun at me about the turkey neck issue and then proceeded to burn a whole in my 6-month-old sofa with his cigarette! Memorable day. This year my son-in-law Tom, took the entire family of 10 to Thanksgiving dinner at Ruth Chris in Del Mar.
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REBER: I hate corrections, especially when they apply to my work. The honest truth is that my calendar sprang a leak. I just got it back from the shop today. So, I’m catching up.
Happy Birthday, Nov. 28, to Bob Dietrich
Happy Birthday, Nov. 29, to Gerry Braun
Happy Birthday, Nov. 30, to Joe Gandelman and John McCutchen.
