Carole Douglas - Cat in an Alphabet Soup

Naturally, she does this big story on me, and I end up on a Minnesota farm, doing time with the moo concession. Meanwhile, my partner in crime-to-come is finding journalism confining, since little dolls are not considered promotional material in that racket, where little has changed since The Front Page days.

So this Douglas doll writes these twenty-three novels all by herself. I sneak a peek during a pretend-snooze on her bookshelves and find she writes about history, mystery, fantasy and science fiction, and even romance. That is okay by me. Louie’s I’amours are legendary. (I often get myself into risqué positions. I love danger.)

Happily, those of the feline persuasion make frequent guest appearances in her fiction, like that snaggletoothed Felabba in Six of Swords and her Sword and Circlet trilogy. (A Samoyed dog named Rambeau gets the leading furred role in her new Taliswoman fantasy trilogy: I am all for equal rights and animal rights et cetera, but am glad she is back on track with my solo gig in these here mystery books. It is my exploits on mean streets that will really bring in the Bacos around here, if you ask me.)

As for this author doll, what is to say? She leads a dull life compared to mine. She now hangs out in Fort Worth with the same husband, Sam the "D” (as in Douglas), she’s had since they met acting in some play in St. Paul. He is an artist who makes unique acrylic kaleidoscopes. Ho-hum. If I want to see something colorful running around in a circle, I would prefer a spray-painted punk gerbil. This writing doll also collects dainty vintage clothes, which are not good for anything but running my nails through, at which point she gets hysterical for some reason.

Unhappily, I am not the sole feline in her life; also count two alley bozos, Longfellow and Panache (sixteen and fifteen pounds respectively—no threat to my heavyweight title), and a pair of platinum Persian purebred dolls, Summer and Smoke, who are more than somewhat luscious, but have undergone this awful involuntary operation and pay me no mind at all. Their loss.

But there is only one top cat in Las Vegas and in this Douglas dame’s books. Remember that, and I will refrain from reminding you by initialing your epidermis.

Very Best Fishes,

Midnight Louie, Esq.

If you’d like information about getting Midnight Louie’s free Scratching Post-intelligencer newsletter by mail or email-attached color PDF, contact Carole Nelson Douglas at PO Box 331555, Fort Worth TX 76163-1555. Email cdouglas@catwriter.com, or visit www.carolenelsondouglas.com and wishlistpublishing.com .

Tailpiece

Carole Nelson Douglas Strikes Back

F irst of all, Louie’s description of our relationship should be called a “Tall Tailpiece.” He owes his current fame and good fortune solely to my literary efforts. In fact, Midnight Louie was on the auction block for a dollar bill when I found him in 1973 in the fine print of the classified ads.

This “big, black Tomcat” was obviously a handsome fellow, and just as obviously had been a discipline problem. His current custodians described “a con artist and eighteen pounds of cuddly pussycat, very versatile and equally at home on your new couch or in your neighbor’s old garbage can.” They admitted that he’d been reared on “purloined goldfish” and claimed that he “understood,” but didn’t speak, English.

All they asked was that Louie’s new keepers allow him roaming room and that he remain the ladies’ man he (also obviously) always was. Unsure where a roué like Louie would fit in the Family Life section where I wrote feature stories, I called his foster parents for an interview.

They were frank to a fault. At two a .m .one morning, Louie had attached himself to the wife near the Coke machine at a respectable Palo Alto motel where Louie was copping carp when he wasn’t playing gigolo with the female guests. The motel manager was about to change his place of residence from goldfish pond to city pound. So the infatuated wife air-freighted Louie (in a borrowed puppy transport he much despised) to St. Paul.

Once there, Louie accosted her lawyer husband; tried to molest their altered Siamese female, Pooh; engaged in a rumble with the resident Hoover vacuum; and decided that the litter box was the nearest route to China but no place to commit an act of personal hygiene.

Soon the couple noticed that domestic security had reduced Louie to a mere fifteen pounds, as well as their apartment to rubble. They advertised, at length. Readers were shortly clamoring to adopt the disreputable feline. Louie graduated to an obscure, bucolic existence after I wrote my feature story. My first mistake was letting Louie loose in his own words for most of the piece.

I began writing novels in my off hours within three years, but Midnight Louie didn’t sneak into my mind again until 1984, when I began writing fiction full time. I then persuaded him to relocate to the bright lights of Las Vegas to narrate a quartet of romances with an ongoing mystery that was solved in the last book, published as Crystal Days and Crystal Nights in 1990. Louie took to Vegas like a duck to bottom-dredging. He also took umbrage when the romance editor unilaterally lopped forty percent of his... er, pride and joy—print time—out of the books. Readers clamored for more, not less, just as Louie predicted.

Louie done wrong is not a civil or pretty sight. I had no peace until I agreed to let Louie get his claws into the real thing: Mystery with a capital “M” for murder. (Given his editorial truncation, it’s no coincidence that Louie’s first foray into crime fiction involves the icing of an editor at a booksellers’ convention.) Louie is fond of saying that there are eight million stories under the naked neon of Las Vegas. This has been one of them. He intends to tell them all, at length and in his own words, as long as his “mouthpiece” lasts.

Collaborating with Louie has been exhausting but fascinating, and, what the heck, some soft-hearted dame somewhere is destined to play patsy for the big lug. Oh, lordy, it’s catching....

P. S. If you enjoyed this novel, please consider putting a good review on Amazon.com, Goodreads and other online bookselling sites. :)

Carole and the late Midnight Louie Jr.

ML III appears in the chapter windows

Excerpt from Cat in an Aqua Storm

Book 2 of the Midnight Louie Mysteries

1

The Life That Late He Led

E ven the darkest day begins with a dawn.

This one starts with me lounging on the third-story patio of my pied-à-terre as the sun rises over Muddy Mountain. Clouds shift against the distant peaks like Sally Rand’s famous ostrich fans teasing the notorious, apparently naked foothills of her form.

Fading shades of pink and blue reveal the sun’s naked red eye opening to scorch the already-browned sands. Good old Sol has been up all night, just like the folks on the Las Vegas Strip, only he did his usual disappearing act while smiling on the other side of the world. Smart fellow.