Good friends, a donkey, a catfood miracle, spiced meat
On Friday I got word that my book got a nice review from Kirkus. Isn’t that wonderful? So my question is, who the heck is Kirkus? I know it’s not a city in Indiana, The Kirkus Gazette, but what the heck is it? I think my publicist referred to it as an “industry” review, which seems to suggest there is some kind of heavy equipment going on. Bulldozers and backhoes, you know, to shovel out more books to get them quickly to the stores. But whatever it is, I’ll tell ya when I can show you the Kirkus thing, but for now, revel in the bewilderment I share with the releasing of a first book. (It’s feels perhaps what it must be like to be a young child with a birthday… happy, yes, but perhaps also wondering why the donkey doesn’t have a tail, and won’t pinning one on hurt the thing? Seems so odd…)
I sent out an email to 525 of my closest friends on Friday, which is to say, my bestest friends and also people who’ve kindly signed my mailing list, former students and the like. It was wonderful. Over the weekend I heard back from old friends who I had lost touch with, and it was just so very awesome, it was like the bestest birthday gift ever. Sure, a bunch of the emails bounced, and a good portion were filtered into spamboxes, or so it seems, (because the one I sent to myself did). Which is sad because I like spam, the Hormel canned ham, but don’t consider myself to be a spiced meat. (Okay, actually I don’t love the canned meat, but you have to respect any product to have endured like it has over the decades, against all odds…. also, it’s big in the South Pacific, and who doesn’t love the South Pacific?)
What else is new…. you know how people sometimes see visions of the Virgin Mary in a potato or a pizza? Well, my cat left us a smiley-face emoticon his food bowl on Sunday. There were two eyes, a dot for a nose, and a semi-circle smile around the lower edge. Astonishing. You’re going to have to take my word for it because the cat ate more of the food, demolishing half of the mouth before I could grab my camera and take a picture, which was maybe 5 hours later, because I’m slow with finding a camera or else I just took the occurrence of this emoticon miracle to be followed by another miracle where the cat doesn’t eat every one to two hours….
We had a lovely lovely weekend, and maybe I’ll tell you more about it later, gator. Rhubarb Festival! Fabric Store! Piano-shopping!
junemelby 