February 5, 2010
I stole this blog title from my friend Dale Neal from Asheville, whose novel "Cow Across America" recently was published by Novello Festival Press. It's a phrase he used to describe the weird waiting period between an author's signing a publishing contract, reviewing galleys and so on, and the actual appearance of (and reaction to) the book. Authorial black humor, I guess. We're finishing up artwork and design for "Houdini Pie," and I have one wonderful back blurb already courtesy A. Manette Ansay, who was one of my advisers at Warren Wilson. Still anticipating an April 1 release to coincide not (so much) with Fools' Day as with the beginning of baseball season. Only a couple of weeks now--less--until pitchers and catchers report. Are there four sweeter words in the language? ("Buy you a beer?" Okay, close runner-up.)
Publication and baseball anticipation are somewhat mollified by the appearance this month of my story "Not the King of Prussia" in Issue 47 of Glimmer Train . It's always a kick to see one's work in print, and no prouder kick than in that fine journal. I read it in an advance copy yesterday with the usual trepidation. Two boo-boos, both my fault not theirs. And I received a request from another journal yesterday for a submission--a first for me, and rather the psychic opposite of the rejection I once received from a publication (Ploughshares, I think) to which I had not submitted anything. Preemptive? Cautionary? I inquired of course, but they had no explanation. At least they didn't reject my inquiry.
Finally (for today), speaking of firsts, or near firsts anyway, I enjoyed the current alumni magazine edition from Kenyon, my undergrad alma mater. It featured a story on the Great Ohio Blizzard of 1978, which occurred during my junior year--a week long, sub-zero white-out in the Middle of Nowhere, Ohio. I was working food service at the time, and was awakened by a fellow morning-shifter at 2:30 am, via emergency air horn in my dorm room. (One of those fellows who owns such things, and who knows the weather at 2:30 am. You've met them.) He informed me of the storm on the way and that no "townies" would be able to make it even the few miles from neighboring Mt. Vernon to Gambier, so we would be doing the cooking for the north end of the campus. A bunch of us rallied and rushed over to the dining hall. Even the natives among us were impressed by the cold--I recall my lips chapping and bleeding within a few steps out the door. We started making coffee and hot chocolate, procured a keg of beer from the cooler and rolled it through the snow back to our dorm room (the local market would sell out before be could get there, we knew) and returned to begin assessing the stocked provisions and planning menus. Classes were canceled, so that's mostly what I remember about the week--cooking, and cooking, and cleaning up, and cooking some more. And appropriating a backhoe to bury my rich roommate's Audi under a ton or so of snow. Long after the storm had passed his car was still a white mountain in the lot, as he refused to dig it out. Anyway, the magazine brought it all back. It's 50 degrees (again) in Seattle today. I can't recall the last time it snowed here. And now it's time to go to work.
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