BESTSELLERS & BEST FRIENDS
My book publishing blog, with murder mysteries woven through it.
If this is your first visit, be sure to start with “1. Let’s do it!”
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I entered the University of Pittsburgh (aka Pitt) as an industrial engineering major because in high school I got good grades in math and physics, and lousy grades in English. Also, the engineers I knew took family vacations to the Maryland shore, had two cars, and a paneled room with a pool table in their basement. I could not imagine a more perfect life.
During freshman year, six of us lived in a three-bedroom suite. My roommate, Ray, looked like James Taylor. He was a philosophy major, smoked a lot of pot, and slept with many beautiful women. While I slept on the floor in our tiny common room.
Rich Wilson and Matt Gibson shared the second room. And Ace Valentine and David Freeman had the third room. (Freeman always went by his last name.)
Rich, Matt, and Freeman were journalism majors. Ace was pre-dental.
Second semester I met a pretty girl who liked poetry. So, I switched from industrial engineering to creative writing. Note the mature consideration I put into that life-changing decision.
See how Ace is now the obvious outlier? Not a writer, but pre-dental. And that name — Ace. You gotta be cool to pull off a name like Ace, and he wasn’t. Ace was overweight, couldn’t hold his beer, name-dropped, exaggerated, bragged, well, you know the type.
Ace told us his girlfriend from high school was going to visit. He needed his room to himself. It was Freeman’s turn to sleep on the floor.
Ace bought condoms. We laughed. No way that loser would be having sex. Matt then got way too drunk and when Ace wasn’t around, Matt poked a pin through the condoms.
When Ace’s girlfriend, Kathy, showed up, she was pretty and adored Ace. What the heck?
Anyway, she got pregnant that weekend. They quickly married.
113 Chesterfield Road, Pittsburgh, PA
The next year, we four writers—Rich, Matt, Freeman, and I—rented a house near Pitt at 113 Chesterfield Road. I went on to become a book publisher. Among my bestsellers were books by both Rich and Matt. And Freeman became Pittsburgh’s best ever investigative journalist.
Ace, Kathy, and their son had an apartment. We swung by. It was awful. They were just two kids with a kid. They looked bewildered and sad. Was it all because of the pin Matt stuck in that condom package? Did the two of them somehow mess up otherwise? Stuff happens. We’d never know for sure.
Tomorrow: So many writers!