Sean Desmond went to Jesuit before making his name in book publishing. He’s now the publisher of Twelve, an imprint of Grand Central. He’s also got a new novel out called Sophomores. The dust jacket blurb:

It’s fall 1987 and life as normal is ending for the Malone family. With their sterile Dallas community a far cry from the Irish-American Bronx of their youth, Pat and Anne Malone have reached a breaking point. Pat, faced with a debilitating MS diagnosis, has fallen into his drinking. Anne, his devoutly Catholic wife, is selected as a juror for a highly publicized attempted murder trial, one that raises questions — about God, and about men in power — she has buried her entire life. Together, they try to raise their only son, Daniel, a bright but unmotivated student who is shocked into actual learning by an enigmatic English teacher. For once, Dan is unable to fly under the radar, and is finally asked to consider what he might want to make of his life.

Tonight at 6, Desmond will do a Facebook Live chat with Dallas’ own Harry Hunsicker, whose authorial career Desmond launched when he bought Harry’s debut novel, Still River. Interabang is the host. You can catch the event here. Harry promises there will be lots of course language and tales of cocaine-fueled book publishing debauchery. (I made up that last part. But, still, I bet it’ll be worth your time.)

Last January, Mike Rhyner announced that he was retiring from The Ticket, the station he had helped found, and The Hardline, the show he had hosted for the better part of 26 years. In March, we ran a story I wrote about Rhyner, looking back on his long career, not just with The Ticket but going back to his days with The Zoo and his life before that playing in local bands. I am reminded of the story on the rare occasions when I go back to our office, because it was in the last issue we finished in the same building, so the tiny copies of its pages are still up on the boards in the hallway.

The end of the story was a bit vague because Rhyner himself wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do. We now know at least one thing that is on the books: on February 11, he will begin hosting a weekly videocast called Your Dark Companion. One of the first guests will be new Texas Rangers general manager Chris Young. If you’ve missed The Old Grey Wolf, Your Dark Companion gets going at 5 p.m. at VOKALNow.com (as well as the VOKAL Now app and pretty much all major podcast platforms). Until then, as he would say, stay hard and keep jamming.

Former Dallas Financial Adviser Faces Felony Chargers. Sarah Helen Hancock, who had her license revoked five years ago, was indicted by a Dallas County grand jury last week for theft, misappropriation of fiduciary property, and securities fraud. The 61-year-old is charged with taking money from clients’ accounts and putting it into her own business account where it “would all but evaporate.” One account, with a listed portfolio value of $1.6 million, only contained $24,000. After the Texas State Securities Board revoked Hancock’s license for collecting “money from clients in amounts that far exceeded what those clients were contractually required to pay” from 2007 to 2015, Hancock started an interior design and remodeling company. Meanwhile, back in 2010, her 1,610-square-foot, one-bedroom Highland Park West cottage, which she had recently bought post-divorce, was featured on the Park Cities Historic & Preservation Society’s Historic Home Tour. At the time, she told the Dallas Morning News that she had taken several trips to France with her architect to shop for items for the home. “Being single again,” she said, “I loved buying everything and anything that I liked.”

Dallas County Hits Another COVID-19 Death Milestone. Dallas County reported 1,671 new coronavirus cases yesterday and 40 more deaths, the most reported in a single day. Two of the women were in their twenties, one of whom did not have underlying health conditions. Starting today and running through Saturday, City of Dallas employees plan to inoculate 5,000 people at a drive-through site at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. They will be distributing Moderna vaccines to residents in phase 1A or 1B who previously registered with the county. Here’s what you need to know about getting shots.

The DEA’s Dallas Field Office Reports the Largest Seizure of Meth and Heroin in the Branch’s History. A dog sniffed them out at a traffic stop of a refrigerated tractor-trailer in Denton County on October 8. Special Agent Eduardo A. Chávez said the drugs had been smuggled across the U.S.-Mexican border by traffickers working with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG. Apparently the pandemic has forced smugglers to travel less and carry heavier loads. Here’s what 1,950 pounds and $45 million worth of drugs looks like.

When I reached Ian Derrer on the phone a couple of weeks ago, the Dallas Opera’s Kern Wildenthal General Director and CEO was on the verge of making a difficult decision.

At the beginning of February, the first members of the cast of the upcoming world premiere of the Diving Bell and the Butterfly were set to arrive. The opera is a collaboration between English composer Joby Talbot and American librettist Gene Scheer, the same creative duo that had written the successful Everest for the Dallas Opera in 2015. Over the past few months, Derrer and his team had been making major preparations to ensure the opera premiere could be staged safely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The plans for testing, isolating, and distancing performers and crew sounded a little like the NBA bubble, only for opera

But by early January, the situation had changed dramatically. Cases in Dallas were surging, hospital beds were filling up, and the death toll mounted. In the end, Derrer had to make the difficult — though, ultimately, correct — decision to postpone. Today, the Dallas Opera announced that it has canceled its entire spring subscription season. Opera will return to Dallas in February 2022, though the planned Joyce DiDonato “Viva Diva” “socially distanced” concert will still take place on May 10.

“It is with profound disappointment that TDO has made the decision not to proceed with the 2020/2021 Season performances planned for March and April of this year,” Derrer said in a release. “The ongoing spread of COVID, the level of hospitalizations in our area, and the rate of vaccine rollout is such that we believe we cannot proceed with the modified season we had planned. On the advice of medical experts, and with the full safety of our artists, patrons, and staff of paramount importance, we are moving all our subscribers to the new 2021/2022 Season in the Winspear that will begin February of 2022 with four, full-scale grand opera productions.”

COVID. Dallas County announced 1,858 new cases and 22 new deaths yesterday, and new forecasts suggest hospitalizations could reach 1,600 by Feb. 5. Tarrant County’s COVID deaths include an infant as well as a nine-year-old boy. A Plano fire chief was released after being hospitalized with COVID for 16 days. The president promises to ramp up vaccine delivery, and local epidemiologists are studying the emergence of new strains of the virus.

Burleson Man Arrested for Storming the Capitol. Nicholas DeCarlo, 30, is the seventh North Texan charged in connection to the January 6 riots. There are multiple photos of DeCarlo inside the Capitol building, smoking cigarettes, posing with members of the Proud Boys, and wearing Murder the Media News apparel.

Did a Mountain Lion Kill Hood County Man? According to the Tarrant County medical examiner, Christopher Allen Whiteley was killed in a a rare and vicious animal attack, possibly involving a mountain lion. But Texas Parks and Wildlife officials, as well as other animal experts, disagree. Whiteley’s body was found in the woods in Hood County last December, and law enforcement officials have now closed the case. But if the animal experts are right and Whiteley wasn’t killed by a mountain lion, how did he die?

Rough Week for North Texas Workers. This is the new face of labor in America: Walmart plans to replace warehouse workers with robots, a Cedar Springs Kroger tests ditching check-out clerks altogether, and an Uber Eats driver was killed during a delivery.

The Dallas City Council seems confused. A special meeting called to clarify the city’s role in the deployment of the COVID-19 vaccine ate up the last five hours of Monday night. It was an FAQ come to life, a gumbo of legalese, repeated explanations of state-mandated processes, and a challenge to the mayor’s authority in a time of disaster that went nowhere.

The meeting ended a little after midnight, after which it was abundantly clear that the City Council is having trouble communicating with one another and city staff about what’s being done in terms of outreach for vaccine registrations. Most do seem to approve of the job that Rocky Vaz, the longstanding director of emergency operations, has done in coordinating the city’s response with that of the county. But they all called for more clarity about where to point their constituents for information.

Monday’s meeting had three action items. Council voted to give City Manager T.C. Broadnax unilateral control over doling out city resources like laptops and protective equipment for help in registration drives. The mayor, in his state-appointed position as the city’s emergency management director, had ordered the city manager not to supply council members who wanted to quickly set up physical registration sites to help sign up constituents for vaccine appointments. That is part of why council members Chad West, Paula Blackmon, and Adam Bazaldua called the special meeting. That item passed 10-5.

During a disaster declaration, the state allows the mayor to name an emergency management coordinator. He chose Vaz over Broadnax, in part, he said, because that is always the arrangement. Blackmon contended that this is no ordinary disaster, that it will last longer and affect far more people than emergencies like tornadoes or even Ebola.

She wanted Broadnax in that lead role and supported efforts to “urge” the mayor to reconsider Vaz as his appointed emergency management coordinator. However, that proposed change was withdrawn before it could be put to a vote. That was likely because supporters lacked the votes for approval. A third item to require the mayor to brief the Council regularly about the coronavirus response also failed.

“This is just another silly item,” said North Dallas Councilman Lee Kleinman, who asked the city attorney whether the mayor could simply choose to say there was nothing to report. (He could.)

Monday’s exercise showed the challenge of incorporating local governments into a complicated, fast-moving vaccine rollout, the largest in American history. Disparate communication styles are smashing together, creating frustration among elected officials and blurring public messaging about the response. Some on Council are more aware than others about how things are moving behind the scenes, a contrast that led last night to mind-numbing repetition, as members asked who can get the vaccine and when.

The reality is that demand is far outpacing supply, limiting how creative the city can be when it comes to getting shots into arms—and which arms go first. Vaz said the city is preparing to expand operations to hubs in the south at some point, locations like Paul Quinn College, UNT Dallas, Bahama Beach Waterpark, or the Singing Hills Recreation Center. But the city’s hands are currently tied: putting a hub near a neighborhood wouldn’t change the state’s order of who can get the vaccines. And there aren’t currently enough doses to even get strategic.

“We need more vaccines. We get more vaccine and more supplies, then we’ll open up more hubs,” Vaz said. “We need to start identifying those locations now.”