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| Elizabeth Blakesley Lindsay |
January 2000 |
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Browsers are welcomed to this site by a photo of Rita Mae and Sneaky Pie, along with letters to the readers from both of the Browns. These are quite humorous, particularly for those who enjoy Sneaky Pie's advice to other felines. A link for the upcoming tour schedule is provided, as is a link for sending e-mail to the author. Apart from the welcoming materials, the site has four components: the Rita Mae Brown Bookshelf, The Rest of Rita Mae, Professional Information, and Sneaky Pie's Flea Market. The Rita Mae Brown Bookshelf provides information about each of her books, including her novels, mysteries, and nonfiction works. There is an image of the cover and a brief synopsis. Users can click for a longer summary, most of which are publisher blurbs. Links to amazon.com are provided for those in the mood to purchase. The Rest of Rita Mae offers an online scrapbook with beautiful photographs of Virginia and of Rita Mae dressed in her fox hunting gear. Links to several short stories published in Albemarle Magazine are also provided. All three stories currently posted at the site deal with childhood escapades and feature characters from Six of One, Bingo and Loose Lips. Another link of interest here is a list of Rita Mae's Best and Worst Things in Life. The Professional Information area contains Brown's curriculum vita, which is very comprehensive although a bit out of date. One can find great detail of Rita Mae's academic honors, screenwriting activities and other information. Sneaky Pie's Flea Market is the commercial zone of the site. This link takes you to another site, so be aware that you may see security alerts and a second browser window opening on your desktop. Here you can purchase mugs, stickers, shirts, caps, cat toys and other Sneaky Pie paraphernalia. A link is also provided to send e-mail directly to Sneaky Pie. Overall, the site has a clear, streamlined design and is easy to navigate. There are a few minor distractions - occasional typos and coding errors, such as "&emdash" appearing in text and a right border which runs through paragraphs. Anyone needing information about Rita Mae will likely be pleased with the content of the site, particularly the resume and the links to the short stories. It is good that this site offers a lot of information because it is difficult to find other substantive websites about Rita Mae Brown. Searches on Altavista, Hotbot and Northern Light turn up many links to booksellers and fan pages with limited factual information. One exception is Gail Wicker's site, which offers a bit of background data on Rita Mae and has information on all of her books. Along with images of the covers, Wicker mostly provides publisher blurbs. Some books have linked reviews, and there is a nice piece about a book signing that Wicker attended. As for Rita Mae's early poetry volumes, Wicker has offered a couple of poems rather than blurbs, which will be valuable for those interested in this aspect of Rita Mae's writing career. For information about Rita Mae Brown beyond the Web, particularly for those interested in more extensive reviews and analysis of her writings, one useful source is Contemporary Authors. Contemporary Authors is a reference source available from Gale Publishing in print, as an online subscription database, or in both formats at thousands of U.S. libraries. |
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