Litopians, This One's For You!

Litopia fans! If you're seeing this because of the Pop-Up Submissions video/podcast we just recorded - welcome, welcome, welcome! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did - and if you need manuscript development help, I am HERE FOR YOU.

If you would like a whole-manuscript review of your work in progress, please let me know! I regularly offer this service for Writing Workshops Dallas and on LitReactor - and I would be happy to bring it to you. I will:

• plug your entire manuscript into my Kindle (complete, partial, or just an outline - whatever you have)
• binge-read it just like your most excited future readers will - all in one or two sittings (and almost always within a week of receiving it)
• call you up for a real-time conversation about your work, your goals, and your next steps for getting there. Think of it like a real-time collaborative developmental edit!

Normally I charge $100 per 10,000 words (or per hour) - but for you, I will knock that down to $50 per 10,000 words, or per hour. If that sounds good to you, or if you have questions about what we can do together, email me - tex at thetexfiles.com - and we'll make magic happen!

Going Against the Granola

Happy December and a pre-emptive Merryween, y’all! I suspect this will be my last message for the year, so buckle in – there is more than my usual one-paragraph parable here this time.

Actually, what I have for you today looks an awful lot like a box of granola bars. Exhibit A:

This box box of granola goodness was gifted to me at Bouchercon at the beginning of November. And you know, you just can’t keep a thing like that all to yourself.

So I brought the box with me to Steampunk November, where it provided excellent snacks for the ticket booth volunteers.

But there were lots left over, so then I brought the box to my guest-lecture at Collin College the week after.

And to the corporate training seminar after that.

And to the Dallas Makerspace class after that.

I even brought it with me to the Fort Worth Writers meeting before Thanksgiving, but they had an ENORMOUS cornucopia of goodies already there, so my little snack-box was entirely superfluous to requirement. (Seriously, y’all. The FWW is for REAL.)

Now it is almost empty, and I could not be more delighted. It’s such a good feeling to know that my little snack-box has been so many places and fed so many people.

The thing about a box of enthusiasm like this (and you knew those shelf-stable carbs were going to be a metaphor for something, right?) is that it’s meant for sharing. And when your enthuse-o-box gets low, that’s a good signal that it’s time to leave off giving for awhile, so you can rest and replenish yourself. I always look forward to resting at this time of year. Winter is when all the conferences and conventions are over, the publishing world is shut down, and I get to enjoy a whole lot of house time.

But a funny thing happened earlier this year. I got another box in the mail, with ENTIRELY different goodies.

There are tweezers and pins and plastic baggies aplenty in there, screws and cams and plugs galore. These new treats are mechanical, analytical, procedural – nothing at all like the creative story-shaping stuff I’ve been dealing in for so long now. And I have more of them than I know what to do with.

Y’all, it is so strange to be typing this, but I seem to be turning into a little baby forensic locksmith. I got my AFL (ALOA Fundamental Locksmith) certification earlier this year. Joined the IAIL (International Association of Investigative Locksmiths). Signed up for forensic science classes at the local college. And I am now several weeks in to my new job as a bench tech at the local lock shop.

You may refer to me as "The Keymaster" :)

I found out recently that there are 49 Certified Forensic Locksmiths in the world. And I am just passionately, hell-bendingly keen on becoming CFL #50.

I’ll be the first to admit that this does not fit the narrative of my life at ALL. In every locksmithing course and conference I’ve taken this year, it has been STUNNING to find myself the only squishy little lady-wordess in a room full of top-tier tradesmen, my ignorance as pure and deep as the driven snow next to these fellas with 20 or 40 years of experience in the industry. (They have all been tremendously kind and welcoming, by the way.)

I have struggled mightily to justify any of this to myself. It has been humbling and refreshing to enter a world so demographically different from the creative-writing community in which I’ve spent my whole adult life. It is also hard not to feel like the very silliest of no-hope impostors in this new company. Almost everyone in this business seems to have come from a police, military, or family-locksmith background, and my two semesters of Latin feels mighty out of place here. It’s been an eye-opener into how some folks must feel when they dip a toe into our creative-writing world, for one thing. Whenever you consistently find yourself the only (X) in the room, it’s awfully hard not to wonder if you’re in the wrong room.

One of these things is not like the others...

I tell you what, though, y’all – and this is the part that I hope will be most relevant to you. I’ve noticed something really interesting happening here of late. When I am among writers, I am the only locksmith present. When I am among locksmiths, I am the only writer. And that has made a POWERFUL difference. I’ve already made friends in high places by transcribing and reformatting the IAIL training manual – because they didn’t have anyone who could do that. I’ve already been invited to give a hands-on lockpicking workshop at a writers' conference that's turned me down three years running – because they didn’t have anyone for that either. I have stood out and been noticed more in the last six months than I have in the past six years. And I think you can too.

Posse, the bigger and more anonymous our world gets, and the more we feel like helpless specks competing against millions of other author-hustlers for that coveted buy, click, like, share, or follow, the more I am convinced of this truth: if you want to be the best, be the bridge.

It feels truer the more I think about it. Mister Rogers was the bridge between the exciting new television medium and the timeless care and patience needed to nurture young children. Julia Child was the bridge between classical French cooking and everyday American households. My friend Bud was the bridge between me, a writer, and Shane Richmond, a master-class swordsman and outdoor events impresario – and now we have Writers in the Field. And so many of our favorite genres - urban fantasy, romantic suspense, and alternate history, just to name a few - are a fusion of others.

Or tequila suckers, which are a fusion of candy and regret.

Bridging is not an easy thing to do, I'm discovering. Sometimes your blending results in a masterfully delicious beefy cheesy chili-mac - but just as often, you are left with a quivering pile of meat jello. It takes courage to scrape the bowl out and start over - and over, and over, and over.

In the meantime, have no fear: my granola-box is not empty, and I have no plans to discontinue my regular brand of literary ruckus-raising. I’ll be travelling less in 2020 while I work on building up the far side of my bridge. But I’m really looking forward to keeping up with you and your own building projects – and if I can be helpful with those, I hope you’ll let me know. (My plotting and developmental-editing brain is ever at your service!)

Anyway - I hope you’re proud of your year, y’all, whether your win was total domination or just getting through it. And I hope you have something already set up to look forward to on other side of the holidays. Regardless: rest up, write on, and don’t give away the last of your snacks – you will need them for the road ahead!

A Key Takeaway

This gnarly yellow safety cabinet is not much to look at, I realize. But y’all, BLOOD AND THUNDER IS COURSING THROUGH MY VEINS.

The cabinet belongs to the jewelry and small metals division at the Dallas Makerspace (where I office most days of the week) and they needed a key made for it. Your favorite red-hatted junior locksmith took up the challenge, but I quickly realized that I was out of my depth (didn’t have the right key blank, didn’t want to order a box of 50), and dutifully took the lever handle over to the local locksmith’s shop, where they promised me they could make a new key within the next day or so.

Which became a week.

Which became a real imposition.

Which became me going over there to hear how the lock must have a broken wafer, cuz they’d ruined five keys and still couldn’t do it.

So I said, “all right, I’ll take just the blanks then.” (Which apparently were free, because I ceased to exist for the employees as soon as said blanks were on the counter.)

And I worked at it for an hour this afternoon – blackening the key blade, grinding it back and forth in the lock, looking under the pocket-microscope for tiny telltale wafer-notches, filing those down, blackening again, grinding again, microscoping again, wash rinse repeat, telling myself all the while that there was NO way this was going to work, because the actual real pro guys had tried and couldn’t do it.

I was so het up I forgot to take a picture of the actual key impressioning process. But here's the gear from the forensic locksmithing class I ran last night, so this post will still look all technical and impressive.

And it didn’t work, all right… until about the 400th blister-inducing attempt, when suddenly it did.

The key turned. The lever turned. This nasty old rusty cabinet, which probably dates from the Watergate break-in, does NOT now need 60 days and $60 for a manufacturer replacement, because my happy ass just rectified that shit with a divinely ignorant fierceness.

And yes, I’m bragging online, because that’s what we do. But I am also here to tell you, just in case you needed to hear it, that it is the easiest thing in the entire world to talk yourself out of trying something.

But what would happen if you did?

What would you feel like if you actually popped the hood, cracked the cover, picked up a pencil, asked somebody out, applied for an unbelievably fabulous new gig… and it WORKED?

Current research indicates that it feels like power-washing a slaughterhouse while screaming F-14s seed-bomb the rainforests back to life and the Statue of Liberty lap-dances on the Lincoln Memorial, but more data is needed. So try a brazen and outrageous thing today and see what ‘unlocks’ for you!

Willamette Writers, Assemble!

Howdy y'all! If you are here at the Willamette Writers Conference this weekend, this post is for you!

Three Useful Things:

1. If you are attending the Conquering the Freshman Fifteen intensive on Sunday afternoon (and you should!), make sure to download, print, and read through both of these first chapters: The Nightingale (first 15) and The Martian (first 15). Please bring them both with you on Sunday!

2. If you would like the slide decks from my weekend presentations (No Mustard on Your Shirt: Spill-Proofing Your Grammar and Style, or Juice Box Hero: Squeezing Plot From Character), sign up here by Sunday and I will send them to you!

 

3. If you would like a whole-manuscript review of your work in progress, please let me know! You can email me - tex at thetexfiles.com - by Friday, August 9th. (You can send your actual manuscript later on, but I need to save your place before my calendar fills up completely!)

Good? Great! See you conference-side, and remember: this weekend, it's kickass-thirty, and the big hand is on you!

The Bold and the Bucketful

Oh my goodness gracious.

Y'all, it's been a trip. As a matter of fact, it's been several. In the past two weeks I have driven a thousand miles, visited with more wonderful writers than I can count, and read-and-critiqued 678,000 words. That is no imposition - I LOVE reading stories and getting a chance to visit with their authors - but like... you know how you have three platefuls at Thanksgiving, and when you belch afterwards, you can kind of taste everything at once?

Well, let me tell you: I have shotgunned everything from inspirational homestead romance to body horror to middle-grade fantasy... and shoveling all that down like Garfield at a pan of lasagna makes for some really peculiar dreams. Is Ambien basically just Pepto Bismol for your subconscious? Asking for a friend.
 

Also, I saw this car while I was out in California earlier this month. Yes, that is a for-real fully-recessed license plate.

Kind of makes you think about how much extra effort it is to craft an intricate, deliberate departure from the norm... and how much more fascinated we are with the result.

Also kinda makes you want to lean out the window and holler "TAKE A BATH, HIPPIE!"

...not that you would, of course.

And speaking of going the extra mile to depart from the norm -

You see this little snapshot here? I took it at The Last Cowboy's Court in Canadian (the BEST hidden gem of the Texas Panhandle!) - and it is my new everything.

They've freshly renovated absolutely everything, so it's a wonderful place to stay - but do you see how they've done up the bathroom here? That is a bona-fide old feed bucket they've used for the bathroom sink. The shower in the mirror behind it is made from corrugated steel barn siding. The wood plank towel rack probably came from the same building. There is an old family photo above the sink, and feathers in the dip jar - and the part that really gets me is that everything in this photo is so deeply rooted in its place. New or used - everything you see there came from THERE, right down to the soap.

I think as writers we worry a lot about making sure our work has all the industry-standard fixtures. You know, the literary equivalent of a Holiday Inn suite. Often times, the only alternatives we ever see are kitschy, over-the-top novelty themes firehosed all over the walls of a tourist-trap motel by a corporate decorator on a business trip.

But y'all... powerful, intentional, authentic divergence is a thing of beauty. The best stories I've ever read (published or otherwise) remind me of this photo here. Whether it's a setting, a mood, a character, a conflict - the author has used second-hand pieces of themselves to construct something new and breathtakingly special.
It takes huge confidence to do something like that. You cannot pick up easy-to-follow instructions for building a galvanized bucket-sink from IKEA or Home Depot. It is tremendously hard to build something original AND functional, out of nothing but the plan in your head.

But I'm so, so grateful that you are up for the challenge. And I hope you know you don't have to do it alone. No barn-raising is a solitary enterprise - no matter what kind of critters you mean to hose down in those stalls!

Confessions of a Serial Socializer

Confessions of a serial socializer:

Lately I find myself enjoying someone a whole heck of a lot, before realizing what a mission they have undertaken to make that possible. Whether it's saving up spoons, medicating, meditating, clawing out a precious pocket of free time from the hurricane-scribble of other obligations, or just working inch by painstaking inch to zip yourself into the too-tight "fine, thanks" human-suit you are expected to wear in public... y'all, thank you *so much* for doing that.

And if I can say something to folks like you, on behalf of folks like me... you know, sometimes we're not very smart or sensitive. Hanging out with you is so easy and so fun for us that we forget that not everyone gets that same rush. But we enjoy you SO MUCH, even when you don't feel capital-A amazing. Please don't ever hesitate to ask for what you need, whether it's extra time, extra space, a corner seat, a quieter room, a ride home from the party, or a guilt-free rain-check. You are so worth it. And nothing makes our extrovert hearts happier than returning a tenth of the joy that we get from being with you. Remember: 'amigo' does not mean 'alike'!

What's In Your Box-Trolley?

Okay, so guys. You know that one friend you have? The one whose life would be five million percent better if they would just listen to you and [dump that worthless mofo / see a therapist / try the diet or program that changed your life / etc]?

Let me be that friend for a moment. And let me confess: I don't mean to be obstinate or ungrateful. It's just that even if your advice or solution is absolutely correct, I can't make the leap from where I am to where you want me to go. The gap is too big, and I can't see the other side from here.

So if you really, really, super-actually want to help me (your hapless hypothetical friend), here is what you can do: create a space where I can get completely outside this mess of mine, even if only for a day or two - a place where I can rest, catch my breath, and clear my mind. You see my problem so clearly, because you're *outside* it. If you love me, please help me get outside of it too - and then listen to me when I tell you what's really going on in there.

Kathryn McClatchy did exactly that for me this weekend, and it has remade me. I have known for YEARS that I needed help - delegation skills, an assistant, etc. - but have never made any meaningful progress in getting things off my plate. So finally, in a breakdown moment of frustration and despair, I booked her for a two-day intervention at a little cabin in Granbury... and oh my gouda.

She let me dump my entire to-do list in her lap, and then patiently sorted through it with me. She didn't tell me that I had to use a certain program or hire a certain person. She didn't arrive with a pre-fab holy-grail solution in mind. She just asked every good question in the book, and helped me build a system around the brain and workstyle and habits I already have. And I have never felt so helped or so overwhelmingly *heard*.

This here is a photo I took while I was walking the neighborhood around the cabin, and I hope it will serve as a helpful reminder: y'all, build your system to accommodate your nature, and not the other way around.

And if you could use some help with that, holler. I know just the lady you need to talk to.

The Biggest Kind of Little

You know, I have never felt smaller than I did when I was trying to be a big name. Now I am a small name, and I have never felt bigger. HUGE love to Nancy Golden and the entire Carrollton League of Writers, and big congrats to Jennifer Rabey Crippen, Lauren Bass, and all the winners. It is an honor to be adjacent to your greatness!

Rapping on the A-Train

So while I was in San Francisco, I took the subway to go visit my friends. It was the end of rush hour, so not very crowded once we got into the city proper. Then a guy got on, carrying a little portable speaker and a microphone, and arranged his gear in one corner.

And then he started rapping.

The song was something about peace and harmony - it wasn't very loud, and I couldn't quite make it out. Of course, my first thought was "God, what a jackass. Doesn't he know nobody wants to hear that?"

When he was done, he walked up and down the aisle, soliciting donations with his white-papered can. Everyone ignored him. And my second thought was, "How pitiful. This is like, the saddest and most awkward thing I've ever seen."

He got off at the same stop I did, but before I headed up the stairs, I waited - and watched him get on another train heading back the way we had just come. His microphone fell and dragged on the ground as he boarded, and my last glimpse was him gathering it up and turning on his speaker as the train doors closed behind him. And my third thought was, "Oh God. That is me. That is what I do. That is what my author-friends do. We are all just hapless schmucks belting our hearts out to a crowd of indifferent strangers and trying to get paid for it."

So today's thought is: let's do what we can to be kind to each other. Some of us are more skillful or subtle about it than others - but at the end of the day, most of us are just rapping on the A-train.

The Seminal Seniors of SMOFcon

On the bus back to San Francisco after a fantastic too-short weekend at SMOFcon (The SMOFs, of course, are the Secret Masters of Fandom). It's a "convention runner's convention", where the programming and presentations are all about hotel negotiations, crisis management, codes of conduct, and so on. But it's also a fraternity of sorts, with traditions both hallowed and deeply silly.

I tell you what, though: for me, the coolest thing was to sit down at a workshop about social media, or software migration, and see that both the presenters and a good majority of attendees are people my parents' age. They did not grow up with any of this stuff. They might not ever use Twitter or Instagram for personal enjoyment. But they are passionately dedicated to mastering it and sharing that knowledge, because that is what their event and their fan community needs them to do. And I am so grateful that they are willing to keep carrying that torch forward, especially when so many people of my generation don't yet have the financial security or free time that you absolutely have to have before you can consider taking up the reins on an all-volunteer nonprofit event that's going to involve a thousand people, a quarter-million dollars, and over a year's worth of planning. 

Now I leave much gratified and more than a little lonely. My commitments to my own little community mean that I don't have the bandwidth to even attend, much less help out with, the fantastic conventions they're building out for next year and the ones after. But friendly friends - if you are ever tempted to doubt or despair, go listen to Ray Stevens' "Shriners Convention" and know that our reverend elders are doing tireless good work that is almost entirely invisible to the outside world... in between running late-night "statistics and probability seminars" with a nickel buy-in :)

A Well-Earned Campaign Tribute

My friend Michelle O'Neal said it better than I could have:

"I can't wait to vote for Allison Campolo again.

FWST Bud Kennedy said of Beverly Powell... 'Her strongest opponent turned into her strongest ally. Euless Democrat Allison Campolo, a young progressive half her age, ran a tough primary race and then instead of going home, helped organize the county get-out-the-vote campaign.'"

That's how we do it, y'all. You fight for your wins, learn from your losses, and keep your eye on the prize. At the end of the day, it's not about whether you can do the thing - it's about whether the thing gets done. I have NEVER been more proud of my big, beautiful, red-and-blue state... or more thankful that I stopped knocking my sister's teeth out before she started doing kung fu.

Making Space

I don't act on it often enough - but I believe to my bones in making space for the people who are making space for people.

Here's one of them right here. Her name is Shayla Lee Raquel, and for the last three years, she has moved heaven and red Oklahoma earth to raise up a first-class writing community in her backyard. She runs the Yukon Writers' Society, which just hosted the FABULOUS Writers Olympics. She travels down to DFW on the regular, donating her time and expertise to make events like WORDfest possible. She has been the fiercest pro-bono advocate an indie author could ever have (including nailing a VERY pointed set of theses to the Oklahoma Book Festival's double-standard front door). And anyone who has ever taken a turn with the organizer's hat knows how completely a good cause will tornado its way through your own personal life and projects. 

But today at last, it is Shayla's turn for the spotlight. Cinderella finally gets to go to the ball - not because a fairy godmother waved a wand and apparated a Pumpkin Miata for the occasion, but because she hitched up her homespun dress, laced up her trainers and walked her own self to the party.

It is terribly important to me to make sure that people like Shayla get more than a warm, fuzzy feeling for their efforts - that they are materially and powerfully thanked for the hundreds of hours they've given to making space for the rest of us. And if you would like to sign your name to that effort, this is where you can go to give her your congratulations, read up on her work, and gift a copy to the person in your life that her words were meant for.

A Sultry 'Bootoir' Moment

Everybody has been telling me for the better part of two years now that I should start wearing boots.
The WORD squad, knowing too well what happens to *any* task I am entrusted with, took matters into their own insufferably wonderful hands.

So here is my first-ever 'bootoir' photo, captioned thusly: if you are lucky enough to know Marsha Hubbell, Kathryn McClatchy, Daniel Wells, David Douglas, Sarah Hamilton, Amanda Arista, or god help you, William Humble, then you know one-seventh of the joy, passion, generosity, patience, hard work, and unrelenting refusal to quit that knocks me acock on a near-daily basis. I expect working with these folks for the past two years has been perfect practice for donning a pair of Ropers, actually - cuz they have seen me through ten thousand miles, in every kind of weather, and they just won't quit.

Thank you for everything, posse. They fit like a dream.

Sock-Sacks and Happiness

Okay, so after Writers in The Field, I have a new thesis statement: we have too many huge, giant, apocalyptic nigh-unsolvable problems in this country, and not enough small ones.

On Saturday, for example, my main problem was not dropping the cookies (that LB Clark and Erin McGowan brought all the way up from Galveston!) while a hundred of us were running through the mud to escape the tornado warning.

On Sunday, my main problem was not owning a second pair of shoes. (As it turns out, grocery sacks make fair-to-middling sock-condoms.)

Today, my main problem is that I can't quite figure out how to get up off this couch.
And all of these are small, satisfying, and completely surmountable challenges.

I didn't have to worry about getting Kathryn McClatchy up off the floor of the ticket booth during the tornading, because Marsha Hubbell is a PTA Green Beret. Didn't have to figure out how to feed everyone after the food truck fell in a ditch, cuz Alex and Allison Campolo delivered pizza through flooded roads like Evel Knievel jumping the Snake River Canyon (in a Lexus, no less). Didn't have to know how to get the food truck *out* of the ditch, because as far as I can tell, Shane Richmond just Force-lifted it up like an X-wing from the Dagobah swamp. Didn't have to stop and thumb-type every late-breaking announcement, because Kathryn and Sarah and Amanda blew up the hashtags harder than a questionably-colored dress. Hell, I didn't even have time to wonder about getting the margarita machines in during the storm, because Brandon Burgess is the all-weather swashbuckling Jimmy Buffett this country needs.

My point is: all of these very short, specific, twenty-minute micro-crises are now 100% handled. Mostly because we had exactly the right people on point to handle them.

But also - you know, in a world where everything we need magically appears on a shelf or in a box at our front door (even as we wither in constant, paralyzing, existential fear), it was so good to remember what small, short, tangible challenges feel like. And now that I'm back home, clean and dry in my climate-controlled condo-box, I am jonesing for my next fix. Can these shoes go the dryer after I hose them off? I don't know, but I can't wait to find out!

Tilting at Tomorrow

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe. I get so wrapped up in making flyers, planning activities, visiting and traveling and trying to keep up with myself - and after a long, happy day of hard work and hobbit-wrangling, it's a shock to log on and read about a profoundly broken world.

I worry sometimes that I'm too fortunate and insulated - that all of what I'm doing basically amounts to building castles in the sky while Rome burns. I hope that's not true. More than anything, I want what I'm doing to matter. I expect we all do.

But here's what I know for a certain fact: there is going to be a tomorrow in which the all-consuming crises of today don't feature. Our current problems will pass away, just as surely as the Cold War and the 1918 flu did before them, and new ones will grow in their place.

And when tomorrow gets here, I want to make sure that we still remember how to co-exist. I want to make sure that clickbaiting and fearmongering and runaway intellectual inbreeding don't deprive us of our friends and neighbors. We're in the middle of a hard and essential fight right now, but there's something completely unlike it already waiting in the wings... and whatever that is, we absolutely can't afford to meet it at half-strength.

I hope you registered to vote today, if you weren't already signed up. I hope you have been using every good means at your disposal to weigh in on the big decisions, and take ownership of the small ones.

But I also hope we remember the last vital stranger who helped us - on the side of the road, in the hospital, a thousand miles from home - and how little their political views mattered when we really, desperately needed them. And I am going to join my fellow big-hearted eventroverts in continuing to raise up little tentpole-spaces for good people to meet face-first and practice helping each other out... because that's the best way I know to ensure we still have a common ground left to come back to after today's fight is finished.

And because I just god damn love wearing a fancy name tag and buying tax-deductible donuts.

Failing and Flailing

Real question: is computer ADHD a thing? Because I feel like a really pretty almost-together person in real life, and then as soon as I open up my laptop to do some work, everything turns into a giant digital shitblizzard.

What was I supposed to be doing? Which of these emails do I answer first? (Which of these inboxes do I even look at first?) Oh damn it, that interview was due a week ago... and there are all these texts... and I forgot to reply to that nice message because Facebook Messenger already marked it as read (I HATE that). And maybe I should just make like I never even got those last ten emails, because they're a month old already and I feel so guilty.

I hate it, y'all. I hate doing bad. I hate feeling bad. Somebody please tell me how to stop failing at pixels. Or at least tell me I'm not the only one.

Because Blood Is Thicker than Hilton Water

Question of the day: who here already knew that David Douglas was a miracle-working shoemaker-elf, and what are you leaving out for him at night?

Seriously, y'all. He is singlehandedly holding up half a dozen different writers organizations over here, and I am just so bowled over and thankful for him on the daily. And for Shane Richmond and William Humble and Kathryn McClatchy and Sarah Hamilton and ALL of the WORD crew, who have been BUSTING IT for weeks now to help us get Writers in the Field off the ground.

And for you guys. Man, I can't think you enough for all that good love you gave us yesterday, right when we really needed it. We blew our ticket sales target *totally* out of the water, and for the first time since, like, May, I am waking up with a cut in my strut and a glide in my stride, cuz I don't just have to believe we are doing good work - I can SEE it.

Big, big love, y'all, and endless gratitude from all sides. I know what we're doing isn't the most important thing in the world, but you sure are lighting up our little corner of it. Thank you for being our ice-cold cucumber-jalapeño water of life: we don't have to know how or why you happened to us to be strangely proud that you did.

Why's That Dog In Here?

You know, I have been incredibly fortunate to belong to a number of volunteer programs over the past few years. One of the things we don't talk about too much is where our society's volunteer base comes from.

Sometimes volunteers come from fortunate circumstances: active retirees, students on summer break, and stay-at-home parents whose kids are in school.

But sometimes a salaried working person becomes a volunteer when their life-plan is drastically, permanently altered. That's Kathryn McClatchy to a T. She is an absolute champion for us at WORD (I was literally crying on the phone to her yesterday as she patiently scooped things off my agenda-plate until I could function again.) And we probably wouldn't have her if she were still working twelve-hour days as a teacher - if a series of strokes hadn't forced her to completely re-learn how to read, and walk, and bang out her life plan all over again.

But she's out there every day, working like the dickens to contribute wherever and however she can - to her church, to the Writers Guild of Texas, to WORD, and I don't even know what-all else. Her latest contribution is a book called "Why's That Dog In Here?", all about the wild, hilarious, infuriating and unforgettable reality of life with a service dog. She is determined to put it out into the world the right way, so that everyone can benefit from the rocky road she's travelled - and for that, she needs some extra backing.

So. If you've enjoyed anything I've done, please know that it is only possible because of people like Kathryn. And if you can lay down a few extra dollars to help her passion and positivity ripple even farther out into the world, you will be doing a powerful service to a person who serves powerfully. The volunteers of the world don't get paid, by definition - but they deserve all of the enthusiastic support and appreciation we can give them. Are you in?

America the Bountiful

Y'all, I'm sorry I've been so neglectful with replies and comments and all. I'm averaging seventy/eighty hours a week so far this year, and feel like a fat pile of tired lying beached on a heap of broken promises.

I tell you what, though. I wouldn't be half this knackered if I hadn't gotten so dang addicted to going and doing in every random corner of the country. We have so many wonderful places and people here, from the homemade truck nuts of Texas to the gluten-free toasters of Oregon to the ukulele-enhanced worship services of Ohio and the feral beach-chickens of Hawaii. 

It probably shouldn't be surprising that we have such trouble feeling like one united nation sometimes. And silly as it sounds, I really feel like we would treat each other so much more kindly, if only everyone had the luxury of visiting their thousand-mile neighbors on the regular.

But don't despair, guys. I'm gonna make those mega-millions any day now, and when I do, I'm handing everyone a fat check so that you can quit all that awful day-jobbing business and come romance the open road too. And we will love this country whole again, from sea to shining sea.

Writers in the Field, Weigh In!

Man, y'all. I've been Oregone for two weeks, Idahoed with the best of the best, and got myself a sweet summer Montan to boot. Now I am home again, and there is no place like couch. Thanks, y'all, for putting me up and holding the fort!

If I can ask one more favor: Texish writer-buddies, will you weigh in and tell us what you want to see at Writers in the Field: Chapter Two this year? We need to know which Hogwarts professors to invite and what carnival marvels you want to see.

Survey is here!