Clever, babe. I wouldn't have guessed you had it in you to be so pointed...not that you could pick a more deserving target in a hundred years.

Too long, but here it is:

J.C. Penny Catalogs

End of May to August. Every day I walked up that platform in 100 degree heat to squat and lift stacks of pages and feed them into the machine. I could stop and lean on a half-empty pallet for a few seconds and watch the pages run up the line. But if my pages ran out, the machine would grind to a halt and the foreman would scream at you over the deafening machinery. Or if you fed the wrong pages into the wrong bin. Or if you fed too much scrap (ripped, folded pages). Or if you didn't fluff enough air into the signatures and the pages stuck together causing a paper jam.

A rude, exhausting awakening for an 18 year old girl. As my muscles screamed in agony every day when I got off work and I downed 800 mg. of Ibuprofen, I tried to ignore the smell of the Ben-gay I'd become addicted to. I winced when getting dressed--the pages left tiny paper cuts all along the inside of my forearms.

It was a means to an end. I only had to serve a 90 day sentence and got $9 an hour. My father started work in the very same bindery in 1965. He was paid $1.62 an hour and worked in that department for six years.

Six years.

I've suddenly remembered this

Daddy was an upholsterer, a damned good one. Every summer he got the contract for reupholstering the school bus seats that needed it. The key to every small businessman's competitive labor rates was his own children's indenturement.

It wasn't that bad, a way to make some extra money--a whole quarter for each seat and back whose covers we loosened, until inflation raised the price to fifty cents each. Plus a chance to be in Daddy's world without anybody else around. People would wander in to chat, and I realized Daddy had an existence I'd had no idea of. And I could wander in from the back garage where I'd been pulling staples out of bus seats and watch him reassemble people's couches and chairs and recliners. He hated recliners. I miss him.

That's a nice one, connie. Reminds me of my grandfather; his first job after high school was as a "tack spitter." I'm not sure when or how, but he ended up being a probation officer in Detroit during Prohibition. I was fascinated by both jobs and always tried to get him to tell stories about them.

My copy edits for Cruel Sister have arrived.

Same copy editor I had last time. Mr. Anal-Retentive Worshipper of the OED Shortened. He of the four thousand post-it notes.

I want a gun.

Erm. So I'm about to do my first formal submittal to a paying market. Got my SASE, got my manuscript formatted, all that.

... er, what do I put in the cover letter other than, Dear So-and-So, attached please find my story "When Pigs Fly." Please let me know if you like it. Signed, me.

Any other publications or special knowledge that you have that has bearing. Otherwise, I think that's about the size of it.

deb, you could always do what my authors do with me: completely ignore my notes and send the proofs back with notes of their own!

Have I mentioned how I'm sick of being an editor?

Consuela, is it nonfiction? Tell them why they need to publish this, and why you're exactly the right person to write about it.

Nope, fiction. Basically I'm just saying, "here it is," and giving them a one-sentence descriptor of my background. I'm particularly appropriate for this one, but who knows whether they'll agree once they read the story.

'suela, straightforward cover letters, no frills. They're far more interested in what you're attaching, and if it's properly presented, than they are in the hi-there bit.

deb, you could always do what my authors do with me: completely ignore my notes and send the proofs back with notes of their own!

I never do that. Everything gets answered.

Guess what? There are six pages - crucial pages - missing from the MS they sent me. Pages 139-145, missing.

Betting that's my editor's fuckup. But right now, I'm in fullblown MS exacerbation, nonfunctional legs and jaw. There's a deadline of 7 April on this damned thing. I don't need this.

I'm competent. I may bitch like a raging river, but I'm ALWAYS competent. Why in hell can't they be?