Crime Writer’s Goal Was No Mystery

Authors often receive requests from their brethren for book-jacket endorsements. But seldom are the notes as heavy-handed as one received by Long Beach mystery writer Wendy Hornsby (“A Hard Light”).

The sender, a professor in the South, said he realized Hornsby was busy and might not have time to actually read his first book, a crime novel.

So he sent along three pages of potential blurbs for Hornsby to choose from. All she had to do was check the appropriate box, as in a multiple choice test. “They [the blurbs] sounded as though they had been ripped off every other book jacket,” Hornsby said. “There was, ‘Roller coaster of a novel,’ and ‘Rock ‘em, sock ‘em,’ and ‘Scott Turow Meets Stephen King,’ among others.”

Hornsby didn’t bother to reply. A couple of months later, she received an apologetic letter from the professor. He said that while authors of articles in his circle do provide blurbs to reviewers, he had learned that such was not the case in the mystery book biz.

The professor’s field? Legal ethics.

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LATEST Y2K SCARE? Paula Van Gelder sent along an eerie shot but assured me it was a sign at a store’s liquidation sale, not a sign of things to come (see photo).

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ON THE ROAD: In Canada, Tilda De Wolfe of Monterey Park found an unlikely name for a mattress shop (see photo).

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MR. KABC VS. MR. TRAFFIC: Sure, some people don’t believe in Santa. But not believing in SigAlerts? Radio station KABC disdains the term, which was named in honor of former radio executive Loyd Sigmon, and can’t understand why other stations use it.

“There are stations all across Southern California that choose to thumb their noses at listeners with some arcane salute to a former radio traffic reporter,” said the radio host who calls himself Mr. KABC. “At KABC we call it what listeners will best understand: a KABC traffic alert.”

Well, you can imagine what a Santa Ana of controversy Mr. K. kicked up.

KRLA’s Mr. Traffic, as Kenny Morse calls himself, educated Mr. KABC about Sigmon on the laradio.com Web site.

Morse pointed out that Sigmon “had the great idea to help the CHP find a way to alert all the radio stations in L.A. when there is an incident. Previously, they had to dial every station by telephone. His system of a radio alert to all stations at one time was so successful and time-saving for the CHP” that the SigAlert was coined.

Radio buff Alan Oda added, “Isn’t KABC thumbing its nose at listeners by . . . taking credit for declaring that a traffic incident is a major event based on KABC’s discretion, when the CHP is the actual source of these designations?”

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THIS JUST IN: As Mr. Traffic explained, a SigAlert is “any unscheduled tie-up of 30 minutes or more on a freeway.”

miscelLAny:

Bestowing more recognition on Southern California, the nationally syndicated column “News of the Weird” cited a July article by The Times’ David Reyes about a lifeguard shortage in Huntington Beach. “Weird” author Chuck Shepherd was particularly amused that, among the would-be lifeguards who flunked one tryout in Surf City, six had to be rescued during a half-mile swim.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.