Big Daddy, Thrillseeker

People say to me "Big Daddy, why aren't their more pictures of you on kurttrue.com? I mean, there's like a million pictures of Jeffrey and hardly any pictures of you."

Well, I think it's because my lifestyle is just not something that really lends itself to visual media. I mean, I just don't do that much.

I do read a lot, though. I've always been a big reader. In high school, they used to make us read our books during class time. So, for instance, once in class, we had to read Ten Little Indians, the Agatha Christie book. Well, have you seen Ten Little Indians? It's very thin. I mean, wonderful book, but it's about as thick as a fig newton. It took me maybe a couple of class periods to finish it.

Problem was, we had like eight class periods to read the darn thing. That was all of high school for me. I always had to bring extra stuff to read because otherwise I'd be staring at the walls.

I guess these days, I would have been put in a school for gifted children, which would have been a disaster because I'm terrible at math. Honestly. Terrible. I can never remember what six times eight is, for instance. I always have to say "OK, three times eight is twenty-four, and twenty-four and twenty-four is...forty-eight? Is that right? That doesn't seem right." And then I do it in Excel.

But anyway, I'm always reading. In fact, I read so much that sometimes I have these bizarre reading convergence experiences. Like, for instance, this weekend, I was reading the story "Wolves in Winter," by Steve Hockensmith in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and it's this wonderul story with two of Steve's recurring characters, a couple of down and out cowboys, and in this story the two cowboys are having some financial difficulties precipitated by the Great Panic of 1893.

Now, here's the strangely convergent part. Right after I finished the story, I picked up my bedtime book, which just happened to be Devil in the White City, all about the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

And the chapter in the book that I'm reading starts out mentioning the Great Panic of 1893, which had a disastrous effect on attendance at the Columbian Exposition when it first opened, and everybody in Chicago thought the Exposition was going to be a big flop!

So anyway, then I mention this remarkable coincidence on a the Mysteryplace bulletin board, and I said I thought it would be great if Steve Hockensmith's down and out cowboy characters made a trip to the Columbian Exposition, and Steve Hockensmith himself checked in and said, well, he, like Big Daddy, used to live in Chicago, and that a trip to the Windy City may indeed be in the cards for these sleuthing cowboy characters of his.

For the record, the characters are Otto "Big Red" and Gustav "Old Red" Amlingmeyer, and they're featured in Steve's new book, Holmes on the Range.

OK, more about Devil and my impressions of it later. Meanwhile, feast your eyes on this action packed Big Daddy photo montage.

Kurt "big daddy" True
13 february 2006