Linkage: "Confessions…"
Via Jade Park: “The confessions of a semi-successful mid-list author“
If you don’t want to hear about the noir underside of publishing — if you’re a writer longing for a literary career, or a reader who’s happier not knowing that producing and marketing a book these days involves about as much moral purity as producing and marketing a pair of Nikes — I suggest you stop reading now.
The above linked article is not a cheerful read. I’ve had a long rant coming on the publishing industry, the death of reading, and the stigma of self-publishing. I’ll see if I can’t get that up in the next week or so.
My Meme
It’s been an absolutely crazy week and it will likely get crazier still. Of course, the best way to deal with a to-do list that is miles long is to . . . blog. Right? Last week, Deborah of the Rhythm of Write blog tagged me for a meme.
You’ve probably heard this song before, it goes a little something like this:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.
So here they are, six “interesting” things about me:
1. I stepped over a rattlesnake when I was nine. I almost stepped on the rattlesnake but at the last moment I felt like something was “off” about the perfectly coiled rock and skipped over it. Only when I turned and looked back did I realize the rock was a rattler.
2. I’ve been bitten by a tiger cub and hugged by a chimpanzee in a dress.
3. When I was young, I participated in roller skating competitions, complete with the sparkley costumes. I still have my “professional” skates sitting around.
4. My new favorite easy breakfast is a cup of vanilla light yogurt mixed with some Kashi Go Lean! Crunch cereal. That’s not really interesting, is it? Ah well, try it and we’ll call it even.
5. I am very distantly related to the following people: William Penn, Jim White (discoverer of New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns), John Henry Tunstall (the shooting of whom started the Lincoln County War, he was also the employer of Billy the Kid), and Reba McEntire.
6. I’ve never had the chicken pox (knock wood). My mother used to arrange chicken pox play dates because she wanted me to get it when I was young. Never took. I was vaccinated against it when I was a teenager.
Deborah challenged her taggees to tag people that they had never met. I’m shy and honestly, this week is so busy I’m not sure I’m going to have time to blogstalk and force you all to complete your memeage. So I’d totally copping out on rule number four. But hey, if you want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged. Leave a comment here with the link to your meme and I’ll even go back and edit this entry to make it look like I tagged you.
Hmph
To add some cheer after yesterday’s doom and gloom, I uploaded a new blogger template. . . and promptly managed to erase all my comments. 
I suppose I should have expected that.
The good news is, *I* still have access to them through HaloScan. The bad news is, no one else does. And there were a lot of good comments. Needless to stay, I will not be reinstalling HaloScan, so from now on commentary should survive a template change.
Well, It’s Something…
Two more rejection letters rolled in this week and the latest leaves me wondering, does a rejection count as “personal” when the editor addresses you by name and signs his own? Even if that’s all he does?
*shrug*
I’ll take what I can get.
Things
I’m playing catch up today. Please bear with me.
First:
If you’re in Austin, please note that Michael Chabon will be at BookPeople on Wednesday, May 7 at 7:00 p.m. I will be the giggling fan girl in the front row. Please come and save me from myself.
Second:
I finally have a first-ish draft of a story. I say first-ish, because I’ve written a couple of different stories that reside only within the pages of my notebook. This one not only made it to the computer, but managed some editing as well. This would be the farthest any story has gotten outside of the MFA program. Not exactly something be proud of, but I’m taking what I can get. Finishing this story made me realize that I’m tired of writing stories. I’ve moved back to my novel. More on that later.
Third:
Later this month this blog with be taking a long hiatus. I’m also sick of the green and will be revamping.
Fourth and finally:
I’m reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. If you haven’t seen the lecture, you should. Then you should buy and read the book. Then you should pass it on to someone you care about. One of the Pauschisms that is resonating most with me:
“Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things.”
