Jim Hodgson's Blog, page 10

Outrage Fetishism is Ruining Everything

When I opened submissions for my satirical newspaper, The Atlanta Banana, in 2011, I was overjoyed to get a query within 24 hours. But when I read it, I realized that it was basically a slam piece against a blogger written by someone who had recently parted ways romantically with that blogger.

I explained to the submitter that it isn’t really the point of satire to make fun of people, but to describe an undesirable facet of human behavior — usually in general, rarely in specific — in an oblique way. That, and I don’t really want to get into other people’s relationship problems.

The submitter was surprised I didn’t want the slam piece. Wasn’t it my purpose to get clicks, gain site traffic, sell advertisements and thereby make money?

PHOTO: Greg Westfall
The Entertaining News

When the internet happened we told each other that giving everyone in the world a voice could only be a good thing. The common man would rise above the corporate overlords! And, to be fair, he seemed to. But with everyone talking, people whose livelihoods depend upon being heard had to find a way to keep being heard.

Quickly, they discovered clickbait.

I don’t mean to suggest that clickbait is new. The phrase “film at eleven,” is pretty clickbaity. Carnival barkers are sort of like human clickbait: step inside this canvas tent and see just how bearded this woman really is.

Lately I’ve seen a lot of tweets railing against the media for clickbaity journalism. It bothers me too. But yelling at the media for running with clickable content is like yelling at MTV for being full of reality shows. They’re only giving us what we responded to.

The only answer is to change ourselves. We don’t have to click, after all, but then again, if we had the impulse control to avoid that which is entertaining even though it shouldn’t be, MTV would never have given us the Jersey Shore, we’d never have met Nicole Polizzi, and the world would have been denied another New York Times bestselling fiction author.

The 3 Responses I Got When I Asked Literary Agents to Query Me

It’s my belief that if I do good, honest work, that someday an audience will find me. But in order to do good, honest work, I have to admit things to myself, about myself, that I don’t really want to highlight: fears, mistakes, moments when I acted selfishly.

It’s worth it to have books I’m proud of. And it’s cathartic. As you know if you’ve read my bio, I started writing seriously to help me cope with loss.

I don’t want to be doing anything besides writing, but it would be nice to feel like this train was going somewhere. Toot toot!

The Process

Not now, Clippy!

Once a book of mine is written, it goes to an editor who toils to make my work as readable as it can be. That costs money, but worse than the money is the necessary use of Microsoft Word.

Next, I rely on artists to help design covers that will make my work attractive to readers. I don’t expect these people to work for free. I want to support them. But speaking purely fiscally, I may never recoup those costs.

Lastly, I take all the many hours of work, all the emotions and struggles, the changes, improvements, necessary cuts, package them up and send the package to literary agents. Usually they don’t even respond. Silence, they say, is the new “no.”

Flip the Script

Recently, I had some meetings with agents. I left those meetings feeling dissatisfied and ineffectual, so I did what I usually do when I’m feeling bad: I tried to make those crap feelings into something interesting.

I asked literary agents to query me. Submission guidelines here.

Submission guidelines are written in a voice that makes it 100% clear who is more important than whom, so I wrote mine in a similar clinical dont-waste-my-time tone. Then I went to the Association of Author’s Representatives web site which — perhaps foolishly — lists literary agents contact information.

I searched for agents who claim to represent humor, and who are open to unsolicited emails from authors. Then I sent them a variation on the below email, edited to make it obvious, should any agents I contacted compare notes, that I hadn’t just copy/pasted the whole thing.

Good morning, [person or agency et. al.]. I obtained your email from your AAR listing, which includes Comedy, Humor [sic].

I’m emailing to let you know that I am accepting queries to be my literary agent.

My submission guidelines are here: http://www.jimhodgson.com/literary-ag...

Please ensure they are followed to the letter should you choose to submit.

Thank you and good day.

I sent about fifteen of those, including one by paper mail which I typed.

So far I have received three responses. I will protect identities as a matter of courtesy.

Response Number One

Within just a few minutes I heard back from an agent I’ll call Speedy. Her message was a single line.

Might be a good idea to describe your book

Speedy was engaged enough to respond, but she’s not really playing along. There’s not a book. I’m not querying you.

I thought for a few minutes about my reply, then sent it.

With respect, that would be me querying you.

I hoped that might elicit a response along the lines of “Oh, haha, okay well [playing along],” but no. She responded quickly again.

Querying me about what?

I let the conversation drop there. It was obvious Speedy didn’t want to join in any reindeer games.

Response Number Two

My second response, from an agent I’ll call Fussy, made me laugh.

We don’t query authors

Sent from my iPhone

I think it makes me laugh because I sense that Fussy desperately wanted to add the words “you IDIOT” to his message, but didn’t, probably because he’s a gentleman. Or because he got tired of typing on his iPhone.

Reponse Three

A few days later, I got yet a third response from someone I’ll call Kindly. It read like this:

OK, you got me. This is the BEST query letter/pitch we’ve received.

Tell me what you’re pitching. And, thanks for the laugh!

All best wishes,

[Kindly]

Now we’re talking. Perhaps there is a literary agent out there who is interested in the art of writing more than finding yet another dystopian YA to sell. After chatting with Kindly over a few emails, she asked for my full manuscript.

There’s just one problem with sending her my full manuscript. I don’t have a full manuscript. I’m not querying!

A Social Faux Partial

Querying agents as a fiction author when you only have a partial novel is a no-no. There are a lot of unpublished novels as there are out there, but there are certainly exponential numbers thereof of unfinished novels. What if the agent likes your pitch, then you never finish your book? Then they’ve wasted their time, and there’s nothing agents hate more, apparently, than wasted time.

I don’t get the marriage between books and pitching agents. Seems to me we’re not really talking about a specific book. We’re talking about a partnership. It makes sense in a world where a person expects to write one book their whole lives then live off the royalties thereof, but I want to write books until I do a potato sack tumble out of my chair. Ah, well.

I came clean with Kindly.

Haha! Holy moly. This is just the best. I never in a million years thought I’d get a request for full from this.

I wrote my submission guidelines as a joke for myself and my writer friends. Figured I’d send it out to some agents, write a blog post, have a few laughs. I was trying to make myself feel better after some fairly disastrous query critiques.

I have four chapters of my current work in progress. I’ve been focusing on my serial project Ten Thousand Gods.

Anyway, I’m full time and I can have it done by the first of the year, but attached are the first four.

If nothing else, I can’t tell you how pleased I am that someone isn’t telling me I’m insane to even think of writing something like this.

I haven’t heard a word since. Probably, either Kindly is mad at me for sending her a partial, or she read my partial and it bored her into a coma.

Anyway, it’s back to the writing board for me. Trying to do good, honest work. Waiting for an audience to find me. How will I know I’ve succeeded? Easy.

Agents will come knocking.

Top Ten Ways I’m Not That Interested In Telling You How to Write

There’s not a list in this post. I know, everyone loves lists. Lists do better on social media. If you want people to read your fiction, you write a list … about anything. Just write a list, damn your hide!

Horse balls.

Fact to Fiction

My twitter feed is slammed full of my colleagues all posting writing tips to one another. More power to them, by the way. My work certainly needs all the help it can get.

But I don’t believe that a person who clicked on “Top Ten Ways To Make Sure Your Main Character Isn’t a Douche” is going to click on an image of your book in your sidebar and then buy it.

Imagine you have a dentist’s appointment. You go there to get your teeth scraped and have a hygienist speak his family news into your open mouth. As you’re paying your bill, you notice the dentist’s dystopian YA novel on the front desk.

Are you thinking, “I’m gonna give this guy’s fiction a chance?”

Little Johnny can’t wait to read Melissa’s paranormal romance.

What if it Works?

Listen. I like Chuck Wendig’s fiction. Sure, I was sort of an ass to him in person, but it ended up working out.

I was at a scifi con recently, chatting with a fellow panelist, and Mr. Wendig’s name came up. My fellow panelist said she loved reading Chuck’s books.

“Me too,” I said. “I like the Mookie Pearl series a bunch, and I’ve read all the Hyperion Trilogy.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’ve only ever read his books on writing.”

It makes me think: Why am I doing this? Is it because I like the craft and have some ideas I’m dying to work on, or is it because I want readers, of any kind, at all costs?

Finally, some advice

You might or might not know I used to weigh 325 pounds. I doubt I’ll ever have visible abs, barring a serious attack upon my midsection by someone wielding a katana, but I have lost over 100 pounds.

Writing is a lot like losing weight. There’s a lot of advice out there, but the advice that works is simple. You don’t need ten bullet points, or even five, or two.

I’m not interested in pretending I have writing all figured out. One of the things I love about it is I can learn about it every day for the rest of my life and never finish.

Short story belabored, I’m not coming up with top ten lists for writers. I still believe that an audience will find me, lists or no lists, if I can do good, honest work. As for how to do good, honest work, well, I work on it every day, ask for honest critique, and then either incorporate that advice or ignore it.

I’m Asking Literary Agents to Query Me

I felt like a real chump last weekend. I spent over a hundred dollars for two ten minute meetings with literary agents to tell them about my next book.

The latent hope there was that one of them would recognize some spark of talent in my work and represent me to big publishing houses.

Long story short, they didn’t and they won’t.

But it’s cool because I’m flipping the script on them. I’m asking literary agents to query me. You might be thinking, “Is that going to work?”

Nope.

The meetings

In my first meeting, the agent warned me not to use words or concepts with which readers aren’t familiar, because it makes my book less attractive. After that meeting I went down to the hotel bar and had two vodka sodas in hopes of processing that advice without making choking noises.

What kind of insufferable assneck would I be had I never learned anything from a book? At a guess? Prodigious.

In my second meeting, the gentleman said he could sell my book if I had sales to back it up. Okay. But if I have sales, then why do I need an agent?

I’m lucky because I like meeting people. I enjoy stuff like sales, marketing, and public speaking which most authors are loathe to do.

But I’m in a crap loop right now. I can’t go to bookstores, libraries, or festivals to sell my work because my work isn’t distributed traditionally. As such, I don’t have very good sales. To get that distribution, I’m told I need an agent, and an agent’s first question is, “What are your sales like?”

I can sell online all I want, but the internet is a gabbling cacophony of people shouting about their unedited self-published erotic fan-fiction novellas. No disrespect meant. I enjoy a ribald Pokemon novella as much as the next man.

Upshot: The traditional wisdom is if you want a career you get an agent. To land one, your choices are slush piles or writer’s conferences like the one I attended. And yes, people really do use words like “land” when talking about getting an agent, the same words Steve Harvey uses on daytime TV.

I don’t believe in slush piles

I’ve sent a lot of queries to slush piles about my previous novels and gotten nowhere. In most cases I never even got a response. Once I contacted an agent with a publishing contract in hand. He said he couldn’t represent me, and then asked if the premise of the book was essential.

Well, you know, it’s a little important to me, I guess, yeah.

Another time I heard from a junior agent when I followed up five weeks after my original submission. She said, “If you don’t hear with us within six weeks, you can assume we’re not interested.”

I responded, “Great! I’ll talk to you next week then.” Silence.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZB4hPyPR2M

I used to play in rock bands for a living. I have seen slush piles in person. They are literal piles of manila folders containing letters, some form of media (e.g. CD, cassette, manuscript), plus hopes and dreams. The piles I’ve seen come in by mail so fast the intended recipients can’t keep up with throwing them out. I’ve heard a record company employee say he hates CDs because at least when applicants sent tapes the tapes could be recorded over and reused.

Now imagine how big an email slush pile is. Applicants don’t even have to go out and get a hard copy of their work or a manila folder. They just shit ’em out like the Great Crapping Albatross of Zanzibar, and you know how that sumbitch can shit.

Look out below!

This feels like bad dating

I have felt frustrated like this before, when I could not get a girlfriend. I could get dates, but not the kind of serious partnership I wanted to have. I looked long and hard at myself, and I realized — mind you, this was obvious to the rest of the universe — that the problem was me being too needy.

Maybe it was because I’d just lost my Mom to cancer, or because I had some lingering feeling of self doubt, but for whatever reason I was chasing women away by trying too hard to get them into my life. Nobody is interested in being idolized.

Many years and a fair few relationships later I have met the woman for me. More than that, though, I was ready to meet her when she came along. So what does that tell me?

I don’t think anyone is going to be interested in the kind of work I do if I am going around begging them to check it out, be it via email or in person. Part of that is because I want to write weird stuff, but part of it is also because people are just naturally averse to neediness, and authors (apparently) are desert-ass thirsty for agents.

I’m not doing that anymore. I’m going to focus on writing the work I want to write and trust that an audience will find me if I can manage to be honest with myself and work hard. If they don’t, the problem is most likely me. But that’s cool. I can improve me. Done it before.

In the meantime, I don’t see anything wrong with having a little fun with literary agents by asking that they query me. I do ask that they follow my submission guidelines to the letter, and if I don’t get back to them within six weeks, well, I guess I wasn’t interested.

Literary Agent Submission Guidelines

Literary Agent Submission Guidelines

I’m interested to review credentials for the possibility of representing me and my work to big five publishers, as well as film and TV.

I’ll consider representation by anyone, but it is very important that interested agents follow these submission guidelines to the letter.

Due to the volume of submissions I receive, I simply cannot reply to every submission. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.

How You’ll Know You’ve Failed

If you haven’t heard back from me within six weeks, you can assume that I reviewed your application, found it lacking in some way, and then forgot about it. I might also have forgotten about you as a human being, but it’s more likely that I considered your application a nuisance without ever considering that a human’s hopes, dreams, or hard work went into it.

In the unlikely event that I let you know that I have rejected your application, I will make sure that the rejection provides you no information on how to improve your subsequent applications to other authors.

It is generally considered bad form to reply to a rejection letter, even if it contains factual inaccuracies about the submission I supposedly reviewed or tasteful nudes depicting a plus-sized author.

What I’m looking For

I am looking for a big five publishing contract that will give me and my books the legitimacy I need to put my sales and marketing skills to work. I want to be in every book store, library, and festival that I can feasibly attend, and I want to shake every hand and kiss every baby therein, even ugly hands holding filthy babies.

I do not care about money. I am an artist. It is your job to make sure there will be enough money so that I can continue to not care about it.

What to Include

A proposed sales plan for my work, detailing strategies for each of the big five plus film and TV if you have any contacts there. Knowledge of exactly when the Big Five will become the Big Four a plus.
A glossy 8×10 head shot. I need to know that you look as good as my work reads, and you know how shit-hot my work is or you wouldn’t be submitting.
A list of books you have placed in the past, their sales figures, and the current state of their author’s finances.
Your favorite movies, books, plays, and music groups. I need to know that you are cool.

I will not respond to submissions that do not include all of the above, that do not put spaces around em dashes in accordance with AP style, or that omit the Oxford comma.

I prefer that your email does not include specialty typefaces. Particularly abhorrent are Papyrus and Arial. If you can’t think of a third typeface that I do not want to see, you are not right for this position.

Using the abominations “irregardless,” “could of,” or “intensive purposes,” are right out.

How to Submit

The most successful candidate will offer to buy me dinner and drinks somewhere that has a significant list of right-bank Bordeaux wines and fine Scotch whiskies. I’ll also consider CDPs, Malbecs, Australian Shiraz, and Bourbons.

You may send your offer by email to jim@jimhodgson.com.

How to Remove all Track Changes from Word for Kindle or Smashwords

This is a pain-in-the-ass process that I have had to wrestle with on more than one occasion. I think I’ve finally figured it out.

You have to make sure to click the triangle next to “Accept” and then “Accept all changes in Document,” even if you have already accepted and/or deleted all changes in the document.

I know. I know. It doesn’t make any sense. You already accepted and/or deleted all the changes. You tried saving as DOC or HTML or RTF, but the track changes crap is still putting underlines and weird spaces into your ebook preview.

Here’s where you can find that pane if it’s not immediately obvious.

As you can see above, there’s a change in the right hand margin, showing that the author of this sentence has changed the word “douchebag” to “cur.” If you go through your edits as they come back from your editor and accept/delete them one by one, you might think they’re all gone when they’ve all been deleted or accepted. No.

I know, Spock. It blows my mind too. But here we are.

You have to click the triangle. The triangle reveals the magical button that will do the thing that you would absolutely teeth-grittingly, desk-poundingly swear you have already done …because you absolutely have already done it, except you haven’t because Word.

It might seem obvious that this is the answer, but I never clicked that because I already deleted or accepted all the stupid things, why should I have to click a button to do it again? I don’t pretend to know. But, like I told Spock, here we are.

I hope this saves you a few minutes of the rage I experienced. Live long and publish.

Ten Thousand Gods Episode One is Here!

I’m pleased to announce that the first episode of my serial novel, Ten Thousand Gods, is finally here.

It’s a free download from major retailers, so there’s no reason not to give it a try. Do that here:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The cover was designed by the inimitable and amazing Bear Robers, and the text benefits from precise and insightful editing by Garrett Marco.

Here’s the premise:

The gods and goddesses of scripture return to Earth during an event known as the Parousia, but not just the gods of any one religion; gods of every religion. More than that, though, the Parousia doesn’t limit itself just to religions, but to things people do religiously. There’s a god of football, of soccer, and of bowling. There’s a god of money, and, much to everyone’s surprise, a god of Atheism. Even Jesus walks the Earth.

Phineas Sealby is a deity beat reporter for the Atlanta Record, keeping tabs on the doings of all these ten thousand (or so) gods, who settle into a niche more or less like celebrities.

There’s just one problem: a god is missing. Some call him Lucifer, some call him the Lord of Lies, but he has never surfaced. Events in Phineas’s life send him on a quest through Hell itself to find and obtain an interview from the missing god Satan.

Will Phineas succeed? Will he be chucked into a lake of fire like so much metal slag? We’re going to find out in Ten Thousand Gods.

Sounds great, right? Right!

Click here to get you some from these fine bookmongers fo’ free:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Ten Thousand Gods

The gods and goddesses of scripture return to Earth during an event known as the Parousia, but not just the gods of any one religion; gods of every religion. More than that, though, the Parousia doesn’t limit itself just to religions, but to things people do religiously. There’s a god of football, of soccer, and of bowling. There’s a god of money, and, much to everyone’s surprise, a god of Atheism. Even Jesus walks the Earth.

Phineas Sealby is a deity beat reporter for the Atlanta Record, keeping tabs on the doings of all these ten thousand (or so) gods, who settle into a niche more or less like celebrities.

There’s just one problem: a god is missing. Some call him Lucifer, some call him the Lord of Lies, but he has never surfaced. Events in Phineas’s life send him on a quest through Hell itself to find and obtain an interview from the missing god Satan.

Will Phineas succeed? Will he be chucked into a lake of fire like so much metal slag? We’re going to find out in Ten Thousand Gods.

Episodes

Ten Thousand Gods is a serial novel in six parts. The first one’s free, so dive in.

Episode 1

In which Phineas has some trouble at work, but gets on well with Barry the God of Atheism. In a fit of pique, Phineas vows to find the god no one has yet spotted: Satan. But can he actually do it. If he can, should he?

Free download at these fine bookmongers:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

 

Episode II

In which Phineas has telephony problems, but also some unexpected successes.

To be released in November 2015

 

Episode III

In which Phineas must undertake an arduous journey, but not without some help.

To be released in December 2015

 

Episode IV

In which Phineas makes an unexpected contact in a dark place.

To be released in January 2016

 

Episode V

In which Phineas finds himself unexpectedly flush and supported, but also tempted.

To be released in February 2016

 

Episode VI

In which some of our sins can be forgiven, and others not.

To be released in March 2016

My Fallout Shelter is a Radioactive Food Desert and Corpse Storage Facility

I’m not trying to be bad at this game. I think part of the problem is I don’t play it longer than a minute or two per day.

If I concentrate on it longer, I’m able to get the shelter’s power up to an acceptable level, but never once have my dwellers benefitted from adequate food or water. I keep building diners and water processing plants, but those facilities need workers to run them. More workers need more food and water, which means my needs go up, so I never have enough.

Here’s the current layout of misery.

The entire shelter is liberally decorated with the motionless forms of departed dwellers. That’s because I tried to concentrate on playing the game continuously on a plane ride recently, and during that time there was a rad roach attack on my shelter that wiped out nearly the entire population.

Lots of my people had guns and armor but it didn’t matter. The roaches still murdered them all.

Now my dwellers are getting salty about having to work next to dead bodies. Hey, jackass, maybe if you worked a little harder and made more resources than you consumed, there wouldn’t be so many dead people strewn about.

Is it really that bad to work next to a dead body? I mean, all they do is lay there and stink. It’s like working next to a very lazy person with extreme B.O..

Oh, yeah, I guess they are kind of unsightly, aren’t they. Well, look, Snarky Samantha, there’s a whole wasteland out there for you if you don’t like my shelter. Don’t let the gigantic vault door hit you in your ungrateful ass parts on the way out.

Admittedly, morale is in a bit of a slump. Almost everyone has severe radiation sickness. We see a bump in morale when a baby is born because babies come with 50% happiness rating. Their positive outlook is less resilient than the mighty rad roach, however, and will crumble in time.

Oh great, now I’ve got a luchador in a power station talking shit. I give up.

You can’t please these people.

Contraflow 5 / DeepSouthCon 53 Wrapup: Getting Literary in the Big Easy

I’ve been to New Orleans. I have taken in Jackson Square’s beauty, gyrated to the loose horns on Frenchman Street, and sniffed at Borboun Street’s pee-barf-and-bleach bouquet. But until now, I had not had the pleasure of visiting the Airport Hilton in Kenner, LA.

Well, it’s not so much your location, in life, as it is with whom you find yourself. I found myself with a colorful, friendly, and altogether enjoyable bunch of SciFi fans, artists, and writers. And I also found a Starbucks and a bar in the lobby. Score and score.

I Mustache You a Question

Upon arrival, I checked in to the hotel, checked into the conference, and then checked in at the bar to review the materials about the weekend. There I found an image of the esteemed Scalzi. I took a bit of artistic license with it.

Proud of my work, I tweeted it to Mr. Scalzi.

I then realized that my first panel, “Writing Funny,” would be at 9:00PM. Not a problem, but at the exact same time as my panel there was also listed a “Cocktail Party.” Dang. I want to go to a cocktail party, but I can’t skip the panel. What would Scalzi do in this situation, I wonder?

He responded to my earlier tweet, but provided no advice on my cocktail party quandary.

In the end, I just took my drink to the panel, a one-man mobile cocktail party, if you will. The crowd didn’t seem to mind.

Nor, it should be said, did “The” Rob Cerio or Gail Martin, my fellow panelists, seem to mind. We had a great chat and I learned a lot. Mostly, I learned that I like Rob Cerio and Gail Martin.

Mr. Cerio’s friends and admirers love him so much that if you speak his name without adding the definite article “the” before his name to make it “The Rob Cerio,” they will correct you.

After the panel, I attended a drink making panel. I believe the security officer pictured is asking everyone to remain calm. Or he’s preparing to do the Watusi.

After that panel, I met some folks who were wheeling a beer keg around in a trash can strapped to a hand truck, and I stuck pretty close to them until bedtime, which didn’t come nearly as early as it should have.

Day Deux

In the morning, I headed into town for a bike ride. New Orleans doesn’t have any hills, so pedaling around down is pretty easy business. I rented this bike from a gentleman in Bayou St. John via a web site called Spinlister.

Along the way, New Orleans attempted to confuse me by telling me that a bicycle is a bus. I didn’t appreciate it. My head hurt bad enough without trying to work this sign out.

Then I rode about 15 feet and decided it was time for coffee, lots of water, and some food, so I pulled into Willa Jean bakery and ate this work of art.

Rejuvinated and rejavanated, I pedaled nearly the length of Magazine to Audobon Park, then back up to Bayou St. John to return the bike. I had to get back to Kenner to do panel with Dawn Chartier.

Technically I am a romance novelist, but Dawn’s got three romance books to my one, so I think it’s safe to say she knows a lot more about it than I do. Also, I gather her books are a lot steamier than mine is, so you get more romance per page with her too.

And her covers are cool as well.

The romance panel was great fun, as evidenced by the enraptured faces of our attendees.

After the panel, I set up shop at a signing table. My usual book selling/signing policy remains in affect: I’ll sign any book, any name.

At the table, I learned from Mr Boudreau, guest coordinator, that the Friday night Writing Funny panel was moved opposite the cocktail party in order to accommodate my travel schedule. Well, that explains that!

And then this walked up, but, sadly, did not buy a book.

Later that evening I joined Scott J. Carroll‘s improv panel. I got a few laughs, but not nearly as many as Scott himself.

Parting is such sweet sorreaux

Sunday came, and with it a certain sadness. Yes, I would have to leave Contraflow. I called the front desk of the hotel to make sure. To assuage my longing to return to a conference I hadn’t technically left yet, I drank enough espresso to give a dead man the shakes.

Then I did panel with Gail Martin again, as well as Leo King. I didn’t catch the third lady’s name.

I’d been admiring Leo King’s outfit all weekend. As you can see, he’s got on a long sleeved sweater over some sort of poet’s blouse with frilly sleeves. I was dressed like I’d just stopped off at a department store with only one department: boring.

I tried not to let my jealously show.

Soon, the time came to head back across the street to the airport, and from there back home. As I say, I was sad to go, but glad to get home to Sweetie and familiar environs.

Thanks a bunch to Contraflow for having me, and I hope you’ll have me back next year!