A Celebration of Lines

Everyone cringes at the thought of lines -- bread lines, ticket lines, stretching-out-of-the-parking-garage-when-you're-already-late-for-work lines. But some lines feed your soul. 

Witness the lovely line trailing out of Bruce Wilder's Turn the Page Bookstore in Boonesboro, Md., February 27. Those people queued up for hours to buy books by romance writer Nora Roberts, hard-boiled mystery writer Brad Meltzer, poet and historian Phyllis Hill and our own Senior Gargoyle, Donna Andrews. 

One of the joys of editing a publication like Crescent Blues is working with a really great bunch of contributors. One of the frustrations is you can never give them their due. 

You can't, for example, review their books. It would look too self-serving. Which is a real shame, since Donna Andrews, Lauren Rabb and Patricia White write some of the choicest fiction around. And sometimes, in the press of editing to deadline, you can't even stop to congratulate your staff and contributors on a particularly fine graphic, article or turn of phrase. 

But occasionally, you can take the time to celebrate their achievements. That's why the line trailing out of that clapboard store gave me such a thrill. For once, I wasn't celebrating alone. 

Jean Marie Ward

Contributors this issue: