Odds and Ends

I've just finished writing the bulk of my first feature story for Publishers Weekly (minus one interview still to do Monday morning), so here's a few random items before I turn in:

• Nearly two months ago, I heard Gavin Grant read a new story called "Heads Down, Thumbs Up." Well, now it's been published online by SciFi.com, the official website of the SciFi Channel: read it for yourself.

• Jonathan Coe really likes Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes--and who can blame him? His Guardian essay also describes his obsession with tracking down a recording of Miklos Rozsa's violin concerto (which the composer adapted for the film's score). "When the film is next shown on television, I have a brilliant idea: I connect my tape deck to the earphone socket on the television, and record the complete soundtrack. I lie awake at night, listening to the dialogue on my Walkman in the dark, until I know every line, every intonation off by heart."

• Speaking of the Guardian, Helen Falconer puts in a good word for chick lit as literature, but before you let her descriptions of the four novels she reviews get you too enthused, be warned: only Kathleen Tessaro's Innocence seems to be readily available in the U.S.--and not until June, at that.