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Latest Update: March 1 , 2001 by Ben Marcus

SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2001. 11:32 AM, THE LAPTOP STATION AT KINKOS IN SAUSALITO

I used this Kinkos a lot before leaving on the Alaska adventure while I was living in Tiburon, and I'm using it again, now that I'm skulking around Marin County again. There is a laptop station which allows me to plug in and use the internet for free, so I do.

This morning I have been driving around Tiburon and Belvedere, soaking up inspiration for Virginia Small's morning run in the first chapter of Strangers on the Internet. Tiburon isn't quite as good today because it's a weekend and there are people around and the perfect, blue, spring weather from yesterday is hazed over by an incoming storm.

After Kinko's I'm going to go up to the Marin Headlands or to Ocean Beach and write some more. Tonight I'm going to come back to Tiburon and see Hannibal at the Tiburon Theater. I saw it once at the Drive In in Santa Cruz, but I want to see it again.

Last night I had dinner with Bruce and Kathy Vogen at Guaymas in Tiburon. Bruce worked at SURFER when I first started there and now he works for Quad Graphics out of a Sausalito office. He just happens to live right above Woody Brown's son, just by chance, and I'd be curious to meet that guy some day to see if he has any of his dad in him.

We had a good dinner last night and I pitched my murder mystery idea and another secret project I'm working on. It was clear and cold last night and San Francisco was all lit up and it was a perfect Marin County moment.

Bruce and Kathy liked the murder mystery idea. I came up with another plot point yesterday, based on my own experience. Virginia Small wants to kill her husband not just because she wants to live in Belvedere, but because her husband is threatening to move to Concord, where they can get an affordable house. There is no way Virginia is leaving, and her husband's insistence signs his death warrant.

After dinner with Kathy and Bruce, I drove around Tiburon/Belvedere some more and then had a late-night coffee at Servinos, an Italian place on Main Street. Tiburon. There was a waitress there who was as spectacular as the Virginia Small character in my murder mystery. Man oh man she was a gorgeous girl, and I tried to guess her nationality. She was dark and perfect with very fine features and chocolate hair and I thought Mexican or Spanish or Italian.

She was from Sweden. What?

Slept in front of my old apartment last night. I slept with the radio on and when I woke up the battery was dead. I walked from Mar East Street to the Bidou place, which was good because I traced the path Virginia takes on her morning run. Tiburon is best when it is quiet and there is no one around. This is what Virginia Small wants for herself: privacy, peace and quiet. No crowds. Nothing common. She's a prole who wants to be a snob. In the end, it kills her.

After the jump start from the AAA guys I drove around Tiburon and Belvedere and up in the hills and wrote when inspiration hit me. I came to Kinkos this morning and logged into some of the real estate company websites I saw while driving around Belvedere. House prices here are outrageous. They start at $4 million and climb to Valhalla. Crazy. But you do get a view.

So now I'm going to drive out to San Francisco and bang around and come back to Tiburon tonight.

Hope this murder mystery leads somewhere. It's going to be fun to write.

My main concern today is finding a woman named Michelle Lindsay, who wants me to write some big-wave surfing scripts for ESPN. Matt Warshaw gave her my cell phone number which no longer works. If anyone knows this gal, please let me know. I need the work, for now.

Oh, and I got a haircut yesterday, in Tiburon. Needed it.

 



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