It's a bio of Kate Hepburn, which disgusted me at first, because I assumed it was an incredible quickie, thrown together in record time. Very different. She worked very closely on it--large chunks are merely transcripts of her oral narrations--but her stipulation was it would not come out until her death. And shortly after her death, "to correct any inaccuracies about her life printed in other publications," according to AP.

It's written by National Book Award winner A. Scott Berg, who said, "With this book, I think, she imagined there would be at least a foundation of truth -- of what she actually said and thought about things, in many cases things she felt should not be printed until she died," he said."

 Huh. Wonder what she's hiding.

Very odd instinct to me. I always want to throw it all out there, tell everyone everything. Can't imagine sitting on those secrets my whole life. And I really can't get the part about wanting to not be around to hear the reaction. I can see wanting to wait until the other people involved are gone. But myself--if I know I did them . . .

I guess I'm just wired differently than some people. It's hard for me to picture how an actor would be one of those internal people, though. But I've never really clicked with many actors. We seem to be on different wavelengths top to bottom.

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Interesting story (much better than the AP account, of course) in the Times, by David Carr, one of the few good writers I've seen consistently in the Times (other than the great Frank Rich, of course).

More details there on how Putnam kept it a secret for ten years, with the ten who knew about it referring to it only as, "the secret book."

"It had all been written, edited and set in type in 2001, and then we locked it in a drawer," [Putnam President Carole Baron] added. "When we received word of Ms. Hepburn's death, Scott wrote the end and then we pushed the button."

It's #3 on Amazon right now.

I quoted/paraphrased two military law experts in my Slate piece "The Air Force Academy's Show Trial" yesterday. One said the following, and the other concurred: “It is absolutely appropriate for the commander to look at the impact of the decision on the entire unit,” Fidell said. “Particularly with regard to the issue of discipline.”

They stand by that quote, but felt its placement above the next/final paragraph made it seem like they endorsed bringing an innocent man to trial, which they do not. I have spoken to both of them today and we're all on good terms again. I said I would be happy to post their emails, so here they are. Slate also posted them at the top of their discussion area The Fray, so that anyone who reads the story will have them appear immediately below. They will also be featured in a (best of Fray? area--something like that).

I got all excited when I saw that MSNBC.com had picked up my Slate story. I was actually typing up an email to my agent asking if I could add them to my resume when I noticed that most or all of the stories on the MSNBC.com opinion page were Slate stories. I guess Slate IS their opinion page.

I feel like such a goof. Haven't had a good story bring in a lot of readers in awhile. Not like the glory days of Salon. This spring my Academy story generarted maybe half a dozen letters. And I actually thought it was going to be more controversial. I'm just excited to have readers again.

It's nice to have the story labelled "Opinions" there, though. Maybe those readers won't write to me complaining that my news story was highly biased and opinionated, as several of the Slate readers have. (Isn't Slate well known as an opinion journal? At least among Slate readers? Maybe they got wind of it somewhere else or through a search or something, and didn't know what Slate was. But wouldn't reading it make it obvious that it was an opinion piece? If you're (not YOU of course, but those other bad you's) about to scream, "Hey! This if full of opinions!" Maybe you should consider the possibility that it was intended to be full of opinions.

(And here's a request for you more ambitious friends. Click on the MSNBC version of the story and vote for how well you liked it at the very bottom. Just click on a number from 1 to 7. (Please don't vote 1.) At the moment, it would take a 5.94 score to make it to the Readers' Choice page.