A new semester starts, and fall would be in the air except these days, around here, the advent of school only ushers in ungodly heat. Drought forces color from the leaves more than does cold, even as other sections of the state flood. Cue Mr. Vonnegut: “So it goes.”
The good news is that the world is beginning to sit up and take note of The Wizard Delivers (and Pinky Stays the Course), one of my two titles with Gitelman & Good. Two new productions have been licensed, justifying my faith in this brand-new play publisher. They’ve got Techies in their catalog, too, and I have no doubt that it will be (re-) discovered soon.
Plus, there’s a workshop scheduled for my new one-act, but I can’t announce that quite yet. As John Prine once said, “We’ll serve no song before its time.” Was the reference to wine, originally? Prine, much missed, remains two steps ahead of me. No doubt he’s welcoming Ms. Parton and Mr. Curry somewhere upstairs, and if he has any sense, he’ll be giving a great big decorous hug to Ms. Steinem, too. The wheel turns, and we lose our share of giants with each reluctant spin. New ones, we trust, are coming up fast behind.
As for novels, I truly thought I’d have a new agent by this point in the year, but alas, it appears that once again, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. Do I have rock-solid faith in the material I’m sending out? Yes. But do I write rom-coms or straight-up commercial fiction, or perhaps romantasy, those categories that are easiest to define, and reassure by virtue of repetition and their clear relationship to what has gone before, rather like the Hallmark Channel? No. The playing field shifts under my feet (as it always has––that’s natural), and I’m left with my uncle’s cheerful advice: “Keep giving ‘em you until you is what they want.”
Sounds oddly like John Prine, come to think of it.
I did just spot two more five-star reviews of Vinyl Wonderland on Goodreads. My favorite (and yes, the reader/reviewer is a total stranger to me): “Utterly delightful! Dark and twisting with a hint of feel good.”
I’ll take that any day.
Onward.