Friday, July 2: Bandersnatches
SOLEMN VOWS?
by Steven Steinbock
Elaine Viets revealed a new side of herself to me this week. Anyone who knows Elaine knows that she’s wonderfully nuts. Her “Dead-End Jobs” series is a good indication of it. In order to do the research for every dead-end job her heroine Helen Hawthorn has taken, Elaine has tried her hand at selling septic-tank cleaner as a telemarketer, selling bustiers to bimbos, selling wedding dresses to spoiled daughters, and cleaning up Chihuahua pee at a doggie boutique.
Now Elaine has topped it off. And not even as research. Last May I sat down with Elaine and author Sally Goldenbaum, Elaine pointed out that Sally was once a nun, and that I was a graduate of a seminary. Elaine then admitted that she was an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church. I don’t know how many box-tops Elaine had to mail in to get that ordination, but it’s legal. She has the authority to perform marriages in all fifty states. So to celebrate the marriage of her fictional sleuth Helen to her PI boyfriend, Elaine posted a contest on her website, the prize being that she would perform the marriage ceremony for the winners.
Read it in Elaine’s own words:
This spring, I started the Happily Ever After contest to promote my new Dead-End Job mystery, “Half-Price Homicide.” I joked about murder and marriage going hand in hand.
Until Carl and Lia won. They were seriously in love. I was going to marry them – seriously. I flew from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore Saturday morning.
That afternoon, Carl and Lia stood before me in a Maryland garden. Lia wore her mother’s wedding dress. Carl had a dark tux.
You can read the whole story in Elaine’s column at The Lipstick Chronicles, a blog which she shares with thirteen other self-proclaimed Book Tarts. Elaine, I salute you. Or in this case, would a blessing be more apropos?
Steve, I see myself as slightly twisted rather than “wonderfully nuts.” I was ordained by the ULC in 1976 when I did a newspaper story about ordinations by mail. They are legal. I put the $1 ordination fee on my expense account. I tried to get the paper to spring for a $25 bishop ordination, but my editor refused. Guess she didn’t want me outranking her.
The first—and only—time I ran for national office in MWA, we had our only contested election, and my particular opponent was Elaine Viets.
She won, and has never forgiven me.
But I still love you, Elaine!!!
Leigh, I may forgive you some day for letting me win that election. But I still haven’t forgotten those three-hour telephone board meetings. Worse, I had to learn “Robert’s Rules of Order.”
Uh, my name is Jim. Leigh is another of our stalwarts here at CB and actually lives in your neck of the woods. But it’s OK to blame him. I do it all the time.
Jim, I prefer a fresh, juicy local blame to the larger, duller nationwide blame.
Quite.