The new phone book is here!

Another bright idea. Last summer during the Iowa Summer Writing Festival I went to see author Carmela Ciuraru at the Prairie Lights Bookstore. She wrote this great history of pseudonyms: Nom de Plume  Each chapter is a mini-biography of dead authors who used pseudonyms (the one on Patricia Highsmith is reason alone to read this book). Belgian author Georges Simenon, who had an affinity for lots of different pseudonyms (as well as multitudes of sexual partners) kept telephone directories from around the globe to help him name characters. Wow! Great idea! In fact I'd forgotten that I used our tiny rural Wisconsin book to find a character name in DAMAGE. So I've been asking my friends who live and travel afar to send me phone books. They're a disappearing commodity, however, and some countries are no longer printing them. But my awesome friend Regina sent me this one from New Zealand.