Lessons Learned at PNWA 2011
Cherry Weiner will suck your bad book idea through a straw into a blender and come up with something entirely different, but it will be sellable, damn it. Don’t interrupt Cherry’s smoking time with your shitty book concept.
No, my pitch session with Cherry did not go well, but at least I think I realize something: just as I am awful with multiple-choice tests, so will I bomb out on my pitch appointments, whenever I set them up. I’m much more natural and interesting when I’m pitching in a hallway outside the exhibit room, or next to the book signing tables. If it’s part of an organic conversation, I can paint a picture. If it’s speed dating, I crumble into a sticky mass of my own neuroses. Read More…
It seems a mite inappropriate to discuss my wife’s pregnancy using gambling metaphors, but saying we’re in the “home stretch” also strikes me as apt. There is some kind of race to the finish here. Maybe she’s trying to snap the yellow tape in a contest against the end of summer, I’m not sure. But as the doctor appointments increase in frequency—we’re now going to see the Sarah Palin lookalike every week—and now that Susanne’s belly is somewhere around three times the size of Susanne herself, it feels like we’re about to accomplish what we set out to do oh so many moons ago. 
They take starting pitchers off the mound and send them to nurse their elbows in something like the sixth inning of Major League Baseball games. There is no such relief for the intrepid, emerging writer. It’s pitch until you drop at events like the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association conference. And here I am, ostensibly dropped, face down on my hotel bed, typing without looking at my hands and thanking Miss Radice of McCorristin Catholic High School that she taught me to memorize a keyboard so well in 1986. 
At last year’s Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association conference, I was shocked to discover that the coordinators hadn’t opted for wifi during any of the workshops or presentations, or in the lounge off the exhibit floor. Maybe they thought it was a nuisance, that the collective clicking of keys would be too much of a distraction from say, Robert Dugoni talking about suspense. I don’t know, give Robert Dugoni some credit; he’s pretty entertaining. And there I was with my month-old iPad, so excited to twitter away a live feed. I was disappointed. This was one situation that made me question whether I should have forgone the 4G connectivity, but it was too late to question, now wasn’t it? 
Maybe it seems like just a couple of weeks ago we all celebrated Memorial Day, and then there was the end of Glenn Beck’s gig on Fox, and suddenly the entire United States was embroiled in an epic saga of betrayal and urgency, all the media trained on one subject that terrified even the most stoic among us—the Casey Anthony trial. No wait, the debt ceiling.
I’m in over my head on revisions to my young adult, time-traveling novel, and truth be told, that’s exactly where I want to be. Of course, I always want to be done already, because there are at least two more projects that I’d love to get started on and they’re beginning to act impatient, stuck as they are at the back of my mind and in the pages of my notebook. But I’m revising right now, and if I’m going to be revising, then I need to be immersed—all of the plot details, characters’ foibles, themes, and accidental lessons up close and personal for me so that I don’t lose sight of them. And I’m sure they appreciate such deft attention.
Season 9 of Project Runway kicked off last night and as a longtime viewer of the series, I was interested to see who would be taking a stab at fabric design this go around. This interest persisted despite 
I suspect I’ve told too many people these last several months that I have concerns about being able to create a quality swaddle for our baby once it’s been born, because now I have something on the order of a dozen swaddles. If the sage green velcro-fastening fleece doesn’t work, there’s a stretchable muslin swaddler with little bees on it that all of the Who’s Who in LA are using for their little ones. If that one isn’t a good fit for our baby Houdini, then I have a broad blanket I can use, or an inspired-by-NASA breathable swath of material that one friend swears by. The only piece of equipment I seem to be lacking is an auto-swaddler, but I suppose it’s not sitting in our nursery because it doesn’t exist. Maybe I should file for a patent. Patents are all the rage right now. 
It started making its presence known in the wee hours of the morning, a little before the sun would rise, otherwise known as the time when even roosters are silent. I hate waking up when there’s only an hour or so until dawn, because I know, even in my groggy mind, that the next bit of sleep I can scrounge together is going to be wholly lacking in actual rest. It’s a piss-poor way to end the night shift.
Trans/plant/portation 