I’d like to give a quick kudo to my friend Diane Olson, who I mentioned in passing during last week’s lengthy pity-party about my gout.
Diane is a copywriter at the ad agency where I work, but before that, she was a journalist and a staff writer for Catalyst magazine, a Salt Lake alternative monthly. She had quite a run there, stirring the muck, sticking it to The Man, earning a number of awards, and even having a creepy Silkwood moment or two while investigating what really goes on at Utah’s infamous Dugway Proving Ground. (Trivia note: Stephen King was inspired to write The Stand after he heard about some of the scary crap that happens out there.)
These days, Diane’s only work for Catalyst is a regular column called the Urban Almanac, a monthly compilation of timely factoids about what’s happening in the natural world right outside our patio doors, as well as tips for how readers can improve their gardens, their diets, and their connection to something more authentic than the suburbs. I know Diane gets a lot of satisfaction from her column, but she’s often said she’d hoped to do more with her writing (a familiar lament among us word-slinging types).
Just last week, quite out of the blue, as they say, she got a message from her editor at Catalyst; it seemed that someone from a local publishing house was trying to track her down. They want to turn Diane’s Urban Almanac into a full-blown book, an illustrated hardcover, no less. Whereas the Catalyst version is region-specific for SLC, the proposed book will be more global (or at least national) in scope… and they want it by October.
Diane is understandably over the moon about this, especially the way it just fell into her lap during something of a low moment, and I’m very happy for her myself. (Also a little jealous, but we won’t tell her that.) I’m already on the list for an autographed copy. And who knows… depending on when the finished volume hits the stands, it may make my Christmas shopping much easier this year!