So, it’s been a year since I did my last blog entry. Clearly, I must not be interested.
But why, I ask myself?
Well, there’s the fact that I’m one of those introverts (aren’t most writers?) who have trouble with small talk. Give me a big theme, and I can write a whole book. But the usual day-to-day yadayadayada I’m no good at. Now, don’t get me wrong – blogs aren’t necessarily yadayadayada. I’ve read some brilliant stuff – Pat Cadigan’s Ceci n’est pas un Blog, for example. Her stuff is funny, brave and brilliant, whatever she writes about – her blog or her justly acclaimed sci-fi books. (Note: She’s my Facebook friend, though Pat doesn’t know me from Adam. Three or four years ago I messaged her on Facebook, trying to get her to read and blurb THE MINDTRAVELER, my next to last book. I figured there was some synchrony between us with the time traveler theme. Now, in order to send the message, I had to “friend” her. But I never got anything back – no confirmation of the message or my request to friend her. I eventually gave up waiting for an answer. But HEY I found that her posts were coming out onto my Facebook wall. Very entertaining, better than any of my stuff. I figured I got the better of the deal even if she didn’t blurb my book. …And then there was the tragic reveal some months after I started reading her posts that she was diagnosed with cancer. Then her debilitating treatments and finally the unsentimental note that she was terminal. I felt throughout that I was an uninvited spectator on her life, though I never stopped looking forward to her posts. BTW, at present, she’s still relatively hale and writing.)
HEY, maybe I CAN do this yadayadayada thing – on paper. I’m still hopeless at dinner parties. One can usually find me silently chewing, stuck in the middle of two guests, each of whom is conversing heartily with the person on the other side.
Real life is definitely harder than fiction. Years ago I worked at The Bon Marche, a now defunct chain store based in Seattle, Washington. I worked my way up from secretary to the Tacoma store manager, to department manager of Budget Floor Women’s Sportswear, to department manager of Main Floor Women’s Sportswear (moving vertically was considered a promotion). At last I ascended to the lofty position of assistant buyer of socks, hosiery and slippers in Seattle, where, sadly, my progress stalled. I wasn’t chummy enough. My buyer hated me. She had dearly loved her merry old assistant – who had moved on to the slightly loftier position of Accessories – and I was but a sad, sad imitation. One year and I was out – laterally – to the claims division in the central distribution center. (Claims, by the way, are returns, and we had a lot of them. Profits suffered accordingly.) What better place, the higher-ups must have speculated, could they send a talented misanthrope to than a huge, drafty warehouse with box upon box but no people? Me. Thus, I was assigned the task of researching and reorganizing the claims department. In fact, I did a good job, saving the company big bucks. I proudly wrote up my analysis and sent it on to my boss, and on up to his boss. Then I was fired unceremoniously. The charge was that I had not been polite enough with one of the higher-ups, though who that was, I was never told. In truth, it was more likely that the job was done, and they had no more use for me….though it could have been that my boss’s boss would call me in from time to time for no actual purpose. At the time I thought I got along with him just fine, but now that I think of it, I didn’t act chummy enough for him, either. Well, anyway, I got them back. I turned them all into fiction in Y and BANANA KISS.