Larry Karp sent me an email in which he used the word oleaginous. I was not familiar with oleaginous, so I looked it up. In case you are as uninformed as I was, Google’s source defines oleaginous as, “Buttery: unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech.” What a great word! Larry had used it to describe a telemarketer, and I now have an instant mental image of this person. I also like the connection between ole and buttery. Who but a writer would casually drop oleaginous into a sentence? And who but another writer would get excited by that?
Two good friends have new books out this week. Congratulations to the above-mentioned Larry Karp, who is not an oleaginous person, on the April 1 release of The Ragtime Fool, the third in his fine ragtime trilogy. And congratulations to David Patenaude on the publication of his YA novel, Epitaph Road.