Thank you. We're here through Saturday. Enjoy the veal.

She supposes it could still happen. Sometimes. Other times she just counts up how low her murder risk would be. But she still wants it. Some days, it makes her silly how much, until she is planning on saying how she’d never have met her children’s dad if she had known her way around a computer at all...she makes up shit full-time after all, making up a movie about herself and Tech Support is not much of a stretch.
Gratitude can make you swoon like love, sometimes, and sometimes she does fight the urge to fling her arms around this young geek’s neck, from just the relief of the thing....not having to be Thag praying to the Fire Gods to light her campfire any more. She can leave it to somebody who knows.
But that only means love to Sandra Bullock and she hasn’t been mistaken for Sandra Bullock lately...on a good day, maybe, Garafolo, although more from vibe than actual resemblance. On a bad day, maybe Jennifer Jason Leigh, for a bit of both, neither woman being exactly shy about being fucked-up when they feel like it. She’s only...this close to her birthday she has to pause and figure out what hard-won year she’s on...thirty-two. Plenty of great women are single at this age...and a negative voice in her head says “Mary Magdalene”, but that seemed like a career necessity. Writing on disability is not quite as involving as “public relations”.

Rejection is making my stomach hurt. My agent sent me a reassuring email, waiting to get notes from a NAL editor (i dunno what that means) and says the battle isn't half over. Man. Gotta get the thicker skin. It's eating me.

Allyson, do you have other projects you want to do, or is the book your agent has it for now?

I'm planning my next book, which is all about working in retail through high school and college. I started working on an essay about men who use retail establishments as phone sex lines, since it's mostly young teenaged girls who have to answer the phone, using their names, and are bludgeoned into being kind to the unkind.

When I worked in a record store, we had The Pantyhose Man, who would just call and say, "Hi Allyson (or whomever answered), I'm wearing pantyhose."

He was so harmless, that we all sort of liked the perv caller. When one of the girls I worked with quit and went to a different store, I told him that Sue was now at Sam Goody, and today was her birthday.

So he called Sam Goody, asked for Sue, and said, "Happy Birthday, Sue, I'm wearing pantyhose."

Sue called me right away, totally stoked.

But sometimes it was scary, especially when it was someone who saw me working and then called to describe me while asking me how I shaved it. When you're 19, working alone at the mall record store, and have to walk out to your car at night, it's scary.

So there's that. And some Blockbuster stories, and CVS Pharmacy, and two different shoe stores.

People who work retail can gain more insight into human nature than anyone should have to know.

That's good, Allyson (and sounds like an intriguing project, too). Having something else in the pipeline is supposed to be the best antidote for submission/rejection angst. I just wasn't sure what your goals were--whether you were a writer whose first project happened to be essays on fandom, or someone who'd just gotten so intrigued by one particular topic that you couldn't help writing about it. If that makes sense.

In mememe news, I got another set of contest results back from one I entered this summer. Looks like I was a near-miss for finaling. I had one perfect score, with comments like, "I can't remember when I've read through a contest entry so well done! Thanks for a great read." That's gratifying to the ego, I must say.

My low-scoring judge still scored me fairly high and had mostly positive things to say. She was, however, confused by what English soldiers were doing in Spain. Since I entered this contest, I've changed my dateline atop Chapter One from "Spain, June 1811" to "With Wellington's army in Spain, June 1811." Hopefully that's clarification enough, because if judges/editors/agents don't know who Wellington was, I wash my hands of them.

Allyson, that sounds like the greatest book ever. The mall I worked at for 5 years had a pantyhose man, too. My friend worked at a sock store and he often came in and told the girls there about how he was wearing pantyhose and would stock up on his new pairs.

At Brookstone, it was all about the "massagers." Oh, and people wanting to know about how sex is on a Tempurpedic bed.

Oh, and people wanting to know about how sex is on a Tempurpedic bed.

(grinning) Well, we like ours....

Allyson, breathe. It sounds patronising, but honestly, it's not - breathe breathe, remember to breathe. I'm doing the same thing you are. But goodgoodgood on the second book. I watched Sarah Vowell's bit on the DVD of "The Incredibles" and thought, yep, she reminds me a bit of Allyson, phrasing and whatnot. Slightly dryer snark, but your agent is a wise wise woman.

I'm distracted. I started London calling Saturday afternoon. It's now 61 pages and 12,325 words, and an interesting marital subtheme is beginning to manifest itself.

This sucker is going faster than the first two. And I finished the first two in nine weeks total.

This is totally fucking freaky.

People who work retail can gain more insight into human nature than anyone should have to know.

Which is why my recurring stress nightmare is about having to work retain again.

I didn't deal with phone pervs, but there were an awful lot of guys who would walk up to me, some bit of trashy lingerie clutched to their chest, and say "You look like you're the same size as my girlfriend/wife, could you please try this on so I can make sure it'd ...look right on her?"