Authors Last A Long Time, But....

[YoungWillz 21,054]

Charlie Carlson Jr, Florida's "Man In Black" or "Master of the Weird", Fortean, author, journalist and paranormal specialist, 71. http://www.cryptozoonews.com/carlson-obit/?utm_content=buffer1068c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[gcreptile 10,978]

German children's book author Max Kruse dies at 93:

 

http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/literatur/urmel-autor-max-kruse-ist-tot-mit-93-jahren-gestorben-a-1051786.html(link in german)

 

His most famous work was "Urmel aus dem Eis", which was later turned into a puppet play which is basically on every former West German child's mind born before 1990.

[gcreptile 10,978]

New interview with Michel Houellebecq:

 

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/06/michel-houellebecq-submission-am-i-islamophobic-probably-yes

 

Looking better now?

 

[Whitehouse 872]

Total shock to me!!!

 

Dutch author Joost Zwagerman committed suicide....

[gcreptile 10,978]

German interview with Henning Mankell:

 

http://www.stern.de/kultur/buecher/henning-mankell-ueber-den-krebs---ich-werde-an-dieser-krankheit-sterben--6440798.html

 

He says he knows he'll die of cancer, but it's unclear when. He has no pain currently, and the treatment worked in so far as that he has regained some strength. His new book "Quicksand" is also a bit of an autobiography.

[gcreptile 10,978]

The writer of 'Black Rage', William H. Grier died last week:

 

http://fusion.net/story/197318/black-rage-writer-william-h-grier-passes-away/

 

The book discusses the roots of 'Black Rage' and the racism faced by the black community. It was rather controversial at release. There's a probably paywalled New York Times obit as well.

[DevonDeathTrip 2,358]

Comprehensive health update from Jenny Diski. Her tweets are getting a bit bleak as well.

 

About four months after finishing the radiotherapy, it turned out it had not finished with me, and I found my mild breathlessness becoming much more urgent. Quite suddenly I couldn’t climb a flight of stairs without stopping to catch my breath, I couldn’t walk from my bedroom to the adjoining bathroom two steps down without finding myself in a coughing fit; and then I had my first panic attack. The more I coughed the more I gasped for air, the more I gasped for air, the faster and more shallow my breathing became. I could feel the ‘floor’ of my lungs rise higher until there was no more room for any air to be taken in. Without doubt, I was dying of suffocation. It wasn’t a metaphor, it was an inability to breathe, to take in air; and I knew that I wouldn’t survive this attack.

I did survive, of course. It took some minutes, though probably not as many minutes as it felt like. Gradually, the coughing died down, and the floor of my lungs dropped so that I could take in more air, until I realised I was still breathing and not about to die. I waited for ten minutes or so to allow my shocked body to calm down. This happened three times when I was on my own, and once when my daughter was here. I described it to the Poet, but I knew that he would understand it as a ‘panic attack’, a great but not life-threatening discomfort. An episode of distress, where dying and suffocation were just dramatic words that I co-opted to convey the horribleness of my experience. What I learned from speaking to Grace, who came from the local hospice to see me, was that the radiotherapy had inflamed my lungs, already scarred from the original pulmonary fibrosis. That was a known risk, but as it was later explained to me, the degree of the scarring and inflammation was much greater than had been expected.

A couple of days later I fell down the two steps into the bathroom and ended up in A&E at five in the morning with a broken wrist. Even I could see the comedy, two terminal illnesses and now a broken wrist. And I had my travelling bottle of morphine to save the duty doctor the trouble of writing up a prescription. The following day, Grace gave me information, comfort and a plan of action at least for the panic attacks. A swig of morphine (a measure that was between a sip and a slug) before I started to move, a hand-held battery-operated fan to blow air into my face (this has no medical basis but has been found to lessen the feeling of suffocation in many people, and it did in me) and a couple of reminders to tell myself: to let my shoulders drop and raise my head, and to remember that this had happened before and I hadn’t died. The panic attack had so frightened me that I would have recited The Very Hungry Caterpillar backwards if it had been shown to help fend them off. A later fall left me with three broken ribs as well.

The Poet and I, love each other though we do, needed some respite; he from worrying about my falling and breaking something every time he goes out, me from feeling a hopeless, helpless invalid, incapable of doing anything for myself. I was given a week at the wonderful palliative care home nearby, better known as a hospice – a word that causes a shimmer of death to run up and down the spine. I got lots of work done in spite of people popping in to introduce themselves and offer resources and massage, and the Poet got a rest from free-floating angst for a few days. The hospice people help with everything, co-ordinating the activities of the suited doctors and specialists who seem to have very little idea of what anyone else is doing. Within days of my ‘key worker’ palliative nurse being on the scene, all sorts of things were arranged and achieved. Railings for the stairs, classes in breathing technique, medication reviews that discovered the dose of nortryptyline I was taking for depression was too high and could be causing the postural hypotension that makes me lurch all over the place and lose my footing so that, in spite of the railings, I’d managed the broken wrist and the three broken ribs. So now (start counting) I’ve got pulmonary fibrosis, lung cancer, postural hypotension, pain with any kind of movement – like breathing – from the three broken ribs, and difficulty typing or lifting anything heavier than a small pillow. Next stage down, the steroids I’m taking to prevent inflammation have turned my face ‘cushionoid’ (new bit of technical learning here), which means rounder and fatter at the bottom, a shape my usually long face has never known, and my limbs weak. I’m like one of those young secondary characters in a Victorian novel who aren’t long for this world and have to spend the day resting on a chaise-longue taking deep breaths from time to time.

Though I’m not young, I am not all that long for this world, it seems, but it’s hard to pinpoint how or when. The full lifetime’s worth of radiotherapy I was blasted with inflamed the fibrosis far more than was expected, but the chemotherapy, a horrible experience in itself, seems to have stopped the development of the tumour. Now I’m more likely to die from fibrosis than cancer, which might have gone into remission, but as deaths go, they’re much of a muchness (or as my over-emotional GP said, ‘They’re both such terrible ways to die’). As it stands, I will be fighting for breath with both of them, although the wonderful palliative care nurse calmed my fears by explaining the steps they take to calm my body, so that I fall into a sleep and then a coma and die unconscious and in some comfort with the aid of intravenous doses, regularly increased, of fentanyl and morphine, drugs I take now in other forms for pain in my neck, the bust ribs and the broken wrist. Dying of lung cancer can be treated the same way, so the terror of death has been soothed to the fear of blank nothingness into eternity. A nonsensical fear as soon as you stop to think about it. Though think about it I certainly do.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n13/jenny-diski/spray-it-silver

[CaptainChorizo 1,983]

It's about the time of the year when people who have her on their DDP team are hoping her bleak outlook means a hit is coming and those who didn't pick her are hoping she can survive to Jan 1.

[Bibliogryphon 9,586]

It's about the time of the year when people who have her on their DDP team are hoping her bleak outlook means a hit is coming and those who didn't pick her are hoping she can survive to Jan 1.

 

I have awarded her Brian Close's vacated spot on my long list.

[msc 18,476]

 

It's about the time of the year when people who have her on their DDP team are hoping her bleak outlook means a hit is coming and those who didn't pick her are hoping she can survive to Jan 1.

 

I have awarded her Brian Close's vacated spot on my long list.

 

 

She's on my list, for now. She originally had a 3 year outlook so even with setbacks, I think she should hang on January 1st.

 

Famous last words.

[gcreptile 10,978]

Interesting. I had her as a lock for 2016, now I'm not so sure, with the cancer possibly in remission. And she's not THAT old, so her lungs might not fail that quickly. As for her bleakness, I guess that's what you become under harsh treatment.

[adrian0719 224]

Jackie Collins dead at 77.

[Cat O'Falk 3,290]

Jackie Collins dead at 77.

Why did you have to drop dead beautiful; you're not on the DDP unlike you sister Joan?

[RadGuy 1,614]

Jackie Collins dead at 77.

I don't know much about her. Was she as big of a bitch as her sis Joan?

[Sir Creep 7,070]

Jackie Collins dead at 77.

Romancing the Headstone.

[themaninblack 2,112]

 

Jackie Collins dead at 77.

 

I don't know much abou[/size]t her. Was she as big of a bi[/size]tch as her sis Joan?[/size]

She wrote the book on it...

 

I could have swore I saw her on telly the other day and she seemed OK.

[Guest Guest]

I am socked by this news. I saw her on tv just a week ago being interviewed and there was no word on her illness.

[Spade_Cooley 9,534]

Sewell and Collins in 24 hours? Jeremy Corbyn's class war is off to a good start.

[gcreptile 10,978]

A curious parallel to the last day that had a truly significant death, which, in my opinion was the 30th of August with Oliver Sacks and Wes Craven: Both Oliver Sacks and Brian Sewell were gay intellectuals probably on many deathpoolers' shortlists - and both Jackie Collins and Wes Craven kept their cancer a secret.

[YoungWillz 21,054]

Author Phyllis Tickle, who has written many books on religion and spirituality, diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/05/22/popular-author-phyllis-tickle-faces-lung-cancer-dying-is-my-next-career/

 

And is now DEAD. http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/obituaries/Author-religious-scholar-Phyllis-Tickle-dies-at-age-81-328730261.html

 

Unknown Man gets a hit on Shaun's deadpool, when there's a QO.

[Sir Creep 7,070]

 

Author Phyllis Tickle, who has written many books on religion and spirituality, diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/05/22/popular-author-phyllis-tickle-faces-lung-cancer-dying-is-my-next-career/

 

And is now DEAD. http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/obituaries/Author-religious-scholar-Phyllis-Tickle-dies-at-age-81-328730261.html

 

Unknown Man gets a hit on Shaun's deadpool, when there's a QO.

I forgot who listed her but I recall seeing her name and groaning cuz I had forgotten her. I knew she was a goner. Well done whoever it was.

SC

[gcreptile 10,978]

 

 

Author Phyllis Tickle, who has written many books on religion and spirituality, diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/05/22/popular-author-phyllis-tickle-faces-lung-cancer-dying-is-my-next-career/

And is now DEAD. http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/obituaries/Author-religious-scholar-Phyllis-Tickle-dies-at-age-81-328730261.html

 

Unknown Man gets a hit on Shaun's deadpool, when there's a QO.

I forgot who listed her but I recall seeing her name and groaning cuz I had forgotten her. I knew she was a goner. Well done whoever it was.

SC

 

Frustrating. My shortlist is getting shorter. And she's probably not the last one of them to die. I had prepared to field a "B-Team", a second main theme with slightly more extraordinary choices. The chances for that one dim. On the other hand, that would make room for a "Game of Thrones" theme team (called Game of Bones).

[Toast 16,142]

 

 

 

Author Phyllis Tickle, who has written many books on religion and spirituality, diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/05/22/popular-author-phyllis-tickle-faces-lung-cancer-dying-is-my-next-career/

And is now DEAD. http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/obituaries/Author-religious-scholar-Phyllis-Tickle-dies-at-age-81-328730261.html

 

Unknown Man gets a hit on Shaun's deadpool, when there's a QO.

I forgot who listed her but I recall seeing her name and groaning cuz I had forgotten her. I knew she was a goner. Well done whoever it was.

SC

 

Frustrating. My shortlist is getting shorter. And she's probably not the last one of them to die. I had prepared to field a "B-Team", a second main theme with slightly more extraordinary choices. The chances for that one dim. On the other hand, that would make room for a "Game of Thrones" theme team (called Game of Bones).

 

 

Valar morghulis.

[gcreptile 10,978]

 

 

 

 

Author Phyllis Tickle, who has written many books on religion and spirituality, diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/05/22/popular-author-phyllis-tickle-faces-lung-cancer-dying-is-my-next-career/

And is now DEAD. http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/obituaries/Author-religious-scholar-Phyllis-Tickle-dies-at-age-81-328730261.html

 

Unknown Man gets a hit on Shaun's deadpool, when there's a QO.

I forgot who listed her but I recall seeing her name and groaning cuz I had forgotten her. I knew she was a goner. Well done whoever it was.

SC

 

Frustrating. My shortlist is getting shorter. And she's probably not the last one of them to die. I had prepared to field a "B-Team", a second main theme with slightly more extraordinary choices. The chances for that one dim. On the other hand, that would make room for a "Game of Thrones" theme team (called Game of Bones).

 

 

Valar morghulis.

 

Indeed, and there already is a team with that name in the DDP but it's not a GoT theme team!

[gcreptile 10,978]

Carmen Balcells, literary agent behind the Latin America boom in the 70s and 80s, with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa or Pablo Neruda, has died at 85:

 

http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/09/150921_muere_carmen_balcells_agente_literaria_ac(link in Spanish)