“Oh God, Steve. You’re in trouble!”

“Oh God, Steve. You’re in trouble!”
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When I met Tananarive, I went through several different phases. The first was to think her a fun, energetic and enthusiastic young writer. The second was to think her brilliant, and that I’d found a little sister I could teach everything I knew about publishing and Hollywood, to protect her vision: she CLEARLY had the magic.

But the third was listening to her story about getting Stephen King to blurb her second novel, MY SOUL TO KEEP. She demonstrated clarity, courage, and a deep faith in her own abilities, as well as the ability to play 3-D career chess, using THIS skill to leverage herself into THAT position.

You see, she was the relationship columnist for the Miami Herald. Dave Berry was the HUMOR columnist, and he played in “The Rock Bottom Remainders”, a garage band made up of best-selling authors, including…Stephen King. They played rock and roll at literary festivals, with several pro musicians backing up their own play, living out their fantasies of being Rock Gods. Well, a few weeks before the Miami Book Fair she told Berry she already had a book out (The Between) and wondered if she could play with them — she is an accomplished piano player.

Berry, who had previously turned down her attempt to connect with King through him, said “well, our keyboard player will be singing `Jailhouse Rock.’ Can you play that?”