Four-Day Author Extravaganza!

Thursday, 13 September 2012

This evening, my wife and I ventured downtown for the 2013 St. Paul Alamanac’s release party. As you may recall, I submitted two short pieces to the almanac with the hopes that they’d accept at least one of them. To my delight, they accepted both.

The event was held in a swanky, hipster building with lousy parking. The party actually spilled into three businesses: A cafe, in which they were passing out delicious congratulatory cake to the attendees; an art gallery, in which the original photos and paintings – reproductions of which appear in the book – were on display; and a Buddhist center, in which a few authors were slated to read their work.

The highlight for me was receiving my complimentary copy of the book and a check for $100 (authors received $50 for each accepted work). Here I am gloating:

Money in my left hand and a book in my right. It just doesn’t get much better than this.

If you want to read my short stories, the book is going up for sale around the Twin Cities this weekend. It will soon be available at the Ramsey and Hennepin County Libraries, too. Also, there are several author readings planned in coffee shops around St. Paul over the next few months. I will be reading at the October 1st and November 19th events.

Friday, 14 September 2012

As I noted back on August 9th, I won a short story contest sponsored by Hamline University and Homewood Studios. The short story had to be about malaria, of all things, and I am sure I won due to my extensive experience with malaria. (NOTE: Here I am using the word “extensive” to mean “none at all.”)

A few weeks ago, one of the contest coordinators emailed me to tell me I won an opportunity to meet with a professor and talk about how to polish up my short story.

I wrote back and told her that was basically bullshit because, for one thing, the contest flyer said the winner would receive a gift card. For another thing, I told her, I am currently enrolled as an English Major, so if I need to talk to a professor about my writing, I have ample opportunity already. Thirdly, I told her I didn’t care to work on the short story I submitted. I said that the point of the short story was to win the contest, which it did. So as far as I’m concerned, it’s done. I don’t care if a professor feels it needs work.

So then I got a response from the head of the contest explaining that the other lady didn’t communicate very well. He said that what I won was a chance to work with a Masters-level professor on any of my writing, so if I have anything else I’m writing, she’ll be happy to help me with that. He said she normally teaches these $200-300 classes, and I’d basically get that for free: I could email her any writing I’m currently working on, tell her what I need work on, she’ll read it, then we can meet in person to hammer it out. He added that if I preferred the gift card, he would mail me out a $10 Barnes and Noble card.

The Barnes and Noble offer sounded tempting, but today I decided to write to that professor and ask her for some help with areas of my book that my editor says need to be fixed.

Saturday, 15 September 2012

Do you remember when I posted this…

An extremely condensed version of my book has been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of FREE INQUIRY. I was given the option of submitted either an excerpt or a condensed version and, though I would have preferred an excerpt, I really couldn’t find a ~2,000 word chunk of the book that was capable of standing on its own, so I gave them a condensed version.

…? No? That’s probably because I posted it back on June 29th of last year. And, today, the good folks at the Council for Secular Humanism finally got around to publishing it.

Yeah, it’s true. First it was slated to be published last September, but then they emailed me saying it was delayed until December. Then, in November, they emailed saying it would be delayed until now. I even wrote back, essentially asking WTF?, and the editor-in-chief wrote me back saying it was pushed out due to more timely events requiring space. He said not to worry, ’cause they almost never push things out twice. I wrote back and said, “Um, you already did push this out twice.” Then he wrote back saying: “Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that. Well, unless Mitt Romney decides to leave the Mormon Church and give us an exclusive interview, I personally guarantee your piece will be in the October/November issue.”

And so it is.

Sunday, 16 September 2012

As I mentioned back on the 7th, today I was part of an authors’ panel during the Minnesota Atheists’ monthly meeting.

I was a tad concerned that the meeting would consist of just people reading excerpts from their essays. Sixteen people each reading for three to five minutes would, I thought, take a loooong time. I was even happy when one of the authors had to cancel, bringing the total down to fifteen.

In fact, it worked out fine. Most of the authors chose appropriate portions of their essays, and about ten of them only read for about three minutes. One author decided to read his whole essay, but his time-grabbing was compensated for by the author who read for merely 20 seconds.

After the meeting, I sat in a row with the other authors – not just the other 14 people who read, but also some of the authors who attended but did not read (this included my wife) – to sign copies of the book that attendees were purchasing.

Then we went out to eat at a buffet, where we all got a discount. I ate too much, but since I had a headache all day, I was more than happy to swap out my headache for a bloated belly.

Lastly, I want to thank my friends and family who attended to support me today. I appreciated it.