Damn, Aimee. That reads like a classic piece of Americana. Beautiful.

Thanks!

Oh, lordy. An exchange between me and my editor's assistant:

Her: "I have here the copyedits to Cruel Sister. Will you be home to sign for them if Fed Ex delivers them Thursday? They are due back 7 April."

Me: "Yep! Send it along. How extensive is it? Am I looking at major revisions, or is this fairly straightforward? Need to budget the time, since this is also (shudder) tax time."

Her: "Ah, yes, tax time. Well, it's the same copyeditor as last time. There's a lot of Post-Its. But the production editor says they're all very specific questions, about little things. Nothing major, from the looks of it."

Imagine my relief (and yes, that was snark, because the phrase "a lot of post-its" strikes fear into my heart).

Deer lowered, why can't they get you a copy editor with a brain?

Oh, the copy editor has a brain. What s/he doesn't have is commonsense. Also, s/he seems to think this is a literary treatise ort some junk, and it isn't. It's a frickin' NOVEL, yo.

I have the feeling this is the same person who was fretting because "Ms. Grabien is not referencing a single definitive version of the song for the chapter intro verses."

You know. The same one I wrote back that frosty little note, pointing out that the song - the original of which is in frickin late medieval lallans, as opposed to English - is as much in the service to the story as the story is to the song.

Gah. Ah well. Forewarned, forearmed, all that.

Summer Job

All that summer, the newsroom had an electric buzz, a feeling that something, something, something was going to happen. We jumped when the UPI machines chattered out copy, made excuses to see what the machines had typed on the long rolls of soft newsprint. I hung around after hours, asking if there was something I could do. "Watch the wire," they said. I used my steel pica stick to tear off each story and piled them on the city desk. What Did He Know And When Did He Know It? The 18 1/2 Minute Gap. The Smoking Gun. Nixon Resigns.

Cool! Job Undone

It was August in Phoenix(in terms of limitations...think Green Bay in January, without the piled drifts) and steamy as fuck, though not half like the dreams in which you starred.

A nothing weekend, just waiting to be Saturday night officially so I could sing mawkishly along with Sam Cooke songs. You mail me you’ve moved in with her...I send back some stupid quip that I barely think about as I click out the words. The only summer assignment I never finished: Getting over you.

I like this topic. These have all been great so far.

erika broke me. What is it about the wistful, in these?

Feel another one coming on....

This is not a very good drabble, but I was determined to write one this week.

Summers in high school were always the same. I worked at the library, first as a volunteer, and later, when I was old enough, as a paid employee. I liked listening to the younger kids tell me what they thought about the books they had read and giving them paper ice cream scoop for each book, but my favorite part of the job was getting a big cart of books to shelve. I loved get lost in the stacks, often reading more titles than I was shelving. I found hidden treasures in those stacks and day dreamed my summers away.