Wow.
Sometimes I am such a coward. I don't mind admitting it; personality shortfalls are a writer's bread and butter. Kind of like alcohol and feeling sorry for yourself. Ceteris paribus, the higher one's degree of personality afflictions, the greater the literary talent.
I got another batch of chapters from my editor last week. We're supposed to be finished by October first. 2008 is getting closer; my book's coming out then, it's an election year, and lame-duck politicians are scrambling to find romantic hideaways devoid of porcelain fixtures and urine on the floor.
She writes, "Andrew, These chapters are awesome. Wow."
Well, I don't know about that. I just tell stories that I like to tell. And I try to work slowly on my edits, just so I'll have something to do besides going crazy. I think one of the reasons why I've been crazy the last couple of weeks is that, besides my work on Ghost Medicine, I'm working on two other new projects and revising a third completed novel all at the same time.
I know.
Bad advice.
And I also keep getting hosed by the people I work with in my Stalinistic day job that I returned to after a three-month hiatus. They actually expect me to WORK. I can't figure them out at all. Smith never knits. And I think I have post-departum depression, a condition brought on by not hopping on airplanes and going places really far away. OK, I know... there's no such thing.
I used Latin in this post. Yeah, I'm pretty smart. Woo-hoo. I've even been on Jeopardy! But I got beat by Ken Jennings. Not cause he's smarter than me, though. It's cause I'm old and know nothing about Ben Affleck and J-Lo, and Ken's like sixteen and has the fastest ring-in-buzzer thumb twitch from all those lonely years he's spent cloistered away in his dark and quiet bedroom playing Mario Bros.
I suck at video games. When I play video games I look like President Bush trying to dance Hip Hop.
It's an awful and sad thing to watch. The only thing I'm good at is Wii Tiger Woods. I can beat my ten-year-old daughter at it. Oh yeah. And I tell her, "I own you!!! You know WHY I own you? Because you SUCK!!!!!"
Then she cries.
Well... it's what Ken Jennings said to me over lunch at the Jeopardy! set.
Just kidding. She doesn't cry when I say that.
Even if I did cry when Ken said it to me.
And I used Latin because I got invited (Woo hoo!) to a Hollywood party for Autumn Cornwell. Autumn's book, Carpe Diem, just came out and is in the bookstores. I loved that book, and we loaned it out to so many of our friends when we got the ARC for it. Everyone I know loved it, too. It's hilarious. You can read about it on www.autumncornwell.com
Of course, we are published by the same great publisher, and we share the same amazing editor, but I've never met Autumn face-to-face and she promises that she'll sign my copy for me... so it's off to Hollywood for me and the missus.
