There Are Few Things Cooler

than scoring a big interview for someone, or when you are the person to call someone and say, "Hey, guess who called to interview you?"

I've gotten to tell authors that they're going to be in the Guardian and the New York Times, or that they've gotten a starred review in Publishers Weekly. I've gotten to tell authors that they're going to be on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Hardball with Chris Matthews (I even got to escort one slightly-overwhelmed Frances Moore Lappe across Manhattan for a live appearance on Hardball--thankfully I had an emergency box of raisins and a kids' Clif bar...), and I got to call Naomi Wolf to tell her that the producer for the Colbert Report returned my call to book her.

All of that is cool. Wicked cool. But there is nothing cooler than telling an 11-year-old boy that a local TV station wants to interview him because of an academic scholarship he won, and that he has two minutes to talk about absolutely anything he wants to talk about, AND, they'll give him a tour of the studio. That is pure joy and I got to do it yesterday. You shoulda seen the look on that kid's face. He nearly burst.

Valentine's Day Magic

Yesterday we had a Valentine's Day party (a little early) for about 100 of our kids. A group of volunteers came out to help and we all had so much fun. Two little girls came to the party crying. Another girl had been calling them names and told them to "shut up." The poor things--their eyes were red from crying. I got the sugar cookies and frosting, and their own tub of jimmies. The tears dried, and they soon moved on to making Valentines and making pipe cleaner flowers.

Then they met Dave, one of the volunteers. They were completely taken by him, and make him several cookies, plus flowers to take home. He was smitten, too. The three of them had so much fun playing in glue and glitter. I hope Dave didn't get any on his tie!

One young boy, about 8, came up to me and said, "My name is from Shakespeare. Do you know what it is?" I guessed Horatio and Othello, but I was wrong. He finally told me that his name is Romeo. I told him I thought that was a great name and a very special one, and he agreed with me, and then showed me his cookie covered in jimmies and red hots--and then crammed it into his mouth.

My "cheeky boys" still won't let me take their pictures. Don't tell them I managed to sneak a few while they were playing bingo with conversation hearts.

Moses couldn't believe I didn't have a Valentine for Nigel so he colored one for me and his 13 year old sister helped him write his name on the back, so Nigel would know who colored it.

No matter how bad my day goes, all I have to do is walk into a room filled with these amazing children and it is all transformed. Unreal.

My New Job

rocks.

My day yesterday:

• Futz around putting together a CD of photos for a designer.
• Go to a meeting with a TV station. Would we like to be the recipient for their holiday toy/clothing drive?
• Stop by to visit some of our kids who are rehearsing Grease songs for an audition. Watch them sing and dance to 'Summer Loving.' Swoon.
• Get back to the office and take a phone call from someone who wants to know if we would like to be the recipient of a fundraising gala with one of our pro sports team and some local athletes.

My favorite part was watching the audition rehearsal, natch. Life is good.

Breaking News

The post formerly known as "You Take the Good..." has been removed. Its author pleads the 5th. Thank you for all of the very helpful comments; I've actually saved them to a Word doc for future reference.

A Post About Nothing

So, I just got home from a trip to a city I cannot mention, where I dined with a friend whose name I cannot mention. We had a wonderful, wonderful time, reconnecting after having not seen each other for about a year. We laughed. We cried. We ate seitan.

Friday night, an author whose name I cannot mention (formerly an "A Lister" and soon to be again, I hope) was on a prime-time national television show I cannot mention (but I can tell you that we spent $40 on a cab to go ten blocks because we were desperate and late because the car the studio was supposed to send never arrived), and then we went to a party in the home of a man whose name I cannot mention, in honor of another author whose name I cannot mention. This one is definitely A List and the editor at her former A List publisher--the person who passed on this new book--is probably going to lose her job after passing on this one because of all the media attention we're getting. (Or, at least that's the rumor going around the trade show whose name I cannot mention.) She was there, too, and she wasn't very nice to any of us.

The host's kids were in attendance, too, and they spent the evening doing skits for people in their bedroom about the Iraqi insurgency. I also met a very cool A List musician but I didn't realize it was him because I coulda sworn he introduced himself to me as a reporter from the biggest television network in Qatar. Yes, because a reporter from that television station, who I don't want to name (hi NSA!), was there. Weird.

Then, we went out for a fabulous dinner with some people whose names I cannot mention, and we had a lot of fun talking about 80s music. On Sunday, I got to hang out with the author that Friday's party was for and it was really cool and everyone was excited to see her and I'm really glad I get to work with her, but sadly, that's about all I can say because of the various Google Alerts setup throughout my company.

I had a pretty exciting weekend, as you can tell.

Well, Hello There (for A.)

My, but it's been a long, long time.

Life is pretty crazy. I'm still not entirely used to a set schedule and routinely long hours. It's exhausting both mentally and physically when you're out of the habit. Yeah, I know the rest of the world does it--I'd gotten extremely spoiled with so much flexibility in my last job. While the hours could be long, when they happened was down to me, mostly.

Alas, I think the new job is going well. It's been a bit of a roller coaster ride, with the lows very low but the highs very high. One day I think "I can't do this. Get me out of here" and the next, "Hey, this is great." I'm having more and more days that fall in between (but closer to the "Hey, this is great" part) so I'm taking that as an encouraging sign.

I was hoping to use this blog to talk through a lot of the topics we work with at my new company but everyone (myself included) as loads of Google Alerts set, so the last thing I need is one of my colleagues seeing me blather on about work-related topics, or worse yet, company-related topics. And I'm not keen about seeing my own blog turn up in my inbox somehow.

So, life is good overall but a lot of work. The weekends fly by in a blink of an eye, but yesterday I got a lot of gardening in and that always makes me happy. The herb garden is overgrown to the point where the sage is actually blooming, but I got it mostly under control yesterday. We've had so much rain that everything is bright green and in bloom. It's gorgeous, and I stop to take it all in every morning as I leave the house.

The honey bees are plentiful and that makes me happy--I only hope they can find their way back to their hives. Nigel planted an onion yesterday and next weekend we've decided to go buy more vegetables for the backyard. Neither of us has time to maintain a full vegetable garden, but having a few treats back there will make the summer so much nicer.

I hope to get back here more. Perhaps as the summer progresses, I can. Don't give up on me yet, dear reader. Gobstruck's not dead yet.

Real Cool World

In fewer than 24 hours, I went from this:


to this:


It is positively gorgeous in Denver right now and my few hours in the garden yesterday were just what I needed.

Life is pretty amazing. I believe that you make your own course--the good, the bad--you're in charge of a whole lot of it. Yeah, sometimes the Universe comes crashing in. It's usually when you least expect it and there is often little you can do about it but strap on your seatbelt and get through it, but overall, we're in the driver's seat.

I keep thinking back, wondering how I got to this amazing place. I have a job that people would kill for, in a company people would kill to join. My colleagues are astounding, including my immediate boss.

Funny, he really surprised me this week. I've always liked him fine, but this week I saw first-hand how hardworking and organized he is, plus in the biggest surprise of all, I learned how much he knows about the book industry. He's only technically been in it less than two years, and his knowledge base is much more impressive than I ever gave him credit for. Surely, we are going to have our challenges down the road (we have in the past) but I have a new-found respect for him.

Additionally, we are publishing incredible books on important topics. One book is more amazing than the next. When you're in publishing you don't often have the luxury of working for a house whose list aligns with your interests and philosophies, unless you start one yourself. I've worked on and sold fly-fishing books, legal topics (probate, yay!), and other things that I have zero interest in. This time, I have found the almost-perfect match. If they threw in a few books about trash TV and movies, a few more cooking books, and a book about monkeys, maybe, but otherwise this is a nearly perfect list for me.

And I'm back in the book industry. I've been in it, sort of, really more on the periphery working more in the non-profit world the last five years. I am touching books again. We are conceptualizing titles, developing them, and creating their sales and marketing plans. I didn't realize how much I missed that world.

How did I get here? Hard work and a lot of networking, I suppose, but also I just followed my gut. Each career move for me (and there have been plenty) has been a step up to a better place. My last job was pretty incredible, yet now being gone for ten days, I see how worn out and worn down I was. It was time to go. My gut told me so and thankfully I listened instead of fighting it, as I was inclined to do until this prospect came along.

So, today is sort of like Groundhog day. I'm off for my first day of work (this time in my office in Colorado) all over again and I can't wait.

Screw You Guys, I'm Outta Here

Okay, so I don't mean it quite like Eric Cartman would, but I'm outta here.

Wednesday was my last day at Old Job and tomorrow is my first day of New Job. Okay, tomorrow is travel day but it's with my new boss, so between the three hour flight and the two hour drive, I'm guessing we'll be talking about, uh, work.

I won't be around at all this week, I think that's a safe bet, so I will leave you with entertaining reading from Our Friend Becca over at Magic Jewball, who once again, explains a Jewish holiday in a way that makes it sound fun! Okay, okay, Purim *is* fun. She makes it sound hip.

So grab a cup of tea and a Hamentashen and go read Becca's blog and I'll send up a flair if I need to be rescued.

Lights, Camera, Gulp

Last night (yes, on the erev Rosh Hashanah.... don't ask), I participated in a really cool event at a local university. It was part of their continuing ed opportunities and part of a whole weekend on writing and publishing.

I was asked to moderate a "conversation" about contemporary and independent publishing and begged off several times. Finally, I relented, though I didn't feel I was the right person to do it. Knowing this school's writing program and my co-panelists' backgrounds as literary publishers, I just didn't feel I was the person they ultimately needed, but I agreed. I have to admit--I was a bit flattered and star-struck. Not only do I think public speaking is generally a cool thing to do, and this is a pretty prestigious program (and something that will look great on a resume....), but we also had dinner at Anne Waldman's house.

Anne Waldman was one of the original beat poets, friends with Jack Kerouac and others, including Allen Ginsberg, with whom she founded the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics (at said--Naropa--university.) Okay, how could I say no?

It was a great evening, starting off with the much-anticipated dinner at Anne's house. In addition to meeting Anne, I met Colorado's poet laureate Mary Crow. Yeah, I'm the kind of geek that diiiiigs this kind of celebrity. There were interesting conversations filled with talk of people I've never even heard of and loads of inside jokes, but fortunately I was able to keep up enough that I didn't have to resort to bringing up last night's "Survivor".

We arrived at the auditorium and I realized that yeah, this was a real and professional event. There were about 200 seats, most of which filled! There were three chairs on the stage, a low coffee table, microphones, and bright lights. There were cameras in the back of the room. Wait a minute. No one told me we were being filmed. I should have anticipated that, but alas did not.

After a few moments of heart-racing panic, I calmed, and off we went. I was anticipating the crowd to be completely different than it was. I imagined lots of writers just starting off, but many were already published, either in journals or books or both. I also anticipated that they would be writers of poetry and fiction, but just as many said they wrote non-fiction (we didn't get more specific than that) and several actually want to pursue careers in publishing!

There were a few awkward moments as one of my panelists had his own agenda, but I learned long ago that poets are impossible to rein in. Thankfully, things stayed primarily on track, the four page history of censorship in the United States aside. We talked about whether or not this is a good time to be in publishing (overwhelmingly, yes, but....), some of our peculiar industry conventions (publishers are currently working on Fall 2007 books), and the changing landscape due primarily to emerging tools such as blogs, RSS, and podcasts.

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't feel initially that I was the right person for the job. My background is in trade (bookstore) nonfiction publishing and my co-panelists both come from the poetry and literary fiction worlds. I wondered where, and really if, our worlds would intersect. Sure enough, they did--a lot, and those differences in our different parts of the world made for some fasinating conversation and differing perspectives.

Afterwards we got loads of questions and it felt really good to have been a part of it all. I hope we were able to help educate and spark some writers into pursuing their dreams, and encourage those who were interested in publishing careers to give it a try.

I woke up this morning having a dream about giving a presentation as part of a competition. There were two of us competing (for what, I don't know.) The last round had been a dramatic reading lasting seven minutes, and for this round, we had to look at a written work and give an extemporaneous interpretation of it. The woman I was competing against was named Meredith and she'd gone before me. It turned out that the piece we were using for this competition was actually something she had written and I was only a little freaked out, knowing that there was no way I could succeed in this task, as I was behind the proverbial 8-ball, with a huge disadvantage. Thankfully I woke up before I had to go on stage. I think this was a bit of residual stress left over from last night! So, while I'm glad I did it, I'm really glad it's over.

It's Trade Show Season

A sure sign of autumn is the first "fall regional" trade show. This year, my first and only show (yay!) is here in Denver this weekend. In publishing, this is the absolute busiest time of the year because there are so many shows and people are trying to wrap their holiday buying/selling. I think at last count there were nine different shows throughout the country. A lot of the reps I know cover at least three of those shows, and sometimes as many as five or six. It's grueling.

These are a lot smaller and more low key than BookExpo America, but a lot of work just the same. It's a great opportunity to meet with indie booksellers from around your region and sell them your latest and greatest. Most of the sales reps have already sold their fall lists--the books coming out between now and the end of the year. This is their first opportunity to sell their spring lists (January - June books), get additional orders for their fall lists, show the books that they actually now have in-hand because they didn't have finished books (or ARCs--Advanced Readers' Editions) when they were traveling during the summer. It's also a good opportunity to meet with the owners and buyers (often the same person) from stores far enough off the beaten path that they don't see sales reps.

It's also a good opportunity to drink on others' expense accounts and score free books.

I've been in the biz for 20 years next year, so I know many of the reps and it is so fun to catch up with everyone. There are always loads of laughs and some great reading recommendations. I'll be sure to pass along any books with good early buzz. So, I'm off to moderate a panel of booksellers and publishers talking about how to work better together (yippee) and to see a lot of old friends. Enjoy your weekend.

Just Start

A colleague of mine, when trying to get me to write something I was really struggling with, said very simply, "Just start." We were on the telephone and I was doodling as we spoke. I wrote down those words and when we hung up, I pinned it to my bulletin board. Today is going to be one of those days where I look at that piece of paper a lot.

My job is pretty pain-free. I'm heading in to a busy time of the year (autumn is killer in the publishing industry), but even that is a lot more manageable now that I've been doing this job for five years. But today is going to be One of Those Days. And at 5:46am I already have my To Do list written on both sides of a Walgreens refrigerator notepad. And it's filled with things that a) I don't want to do b) I've been avoiding and c) other people have avoided and they're now in my lap (that's a big part of my job, it seems.)

It's filled with things that have been bothering me all weekend. Things that I fell asleep thinking about. They were bothering me so much that I actually sat down yesterday and updated my database and responded to some emails, just to make today a little less painful.

So today, instead of crawling back into bed, working on time-waster projects, surfing the Internet for breaking news about Floyd Landis or great new recipes, I will Just Start. I will dig through boxes until I find Maralee's address, I will call her, and I will get her package in today's mail. I will call Lisa with my regrets. I will call the presenters for the last conference session I'm responsible for building. I will get presenter agreements in the mail. I will respond to Kathy's email, even though the answer I have isn't the one she wants to hear. I will mark all of these pesky projects off my To Do list today, and by noon if possible.

There, I said it for all the world to see. No procrastination today. Just start.

Hola

I am home. I was hoping to return with some great words of wisdom or insight, maybe some funny stories, but alas I returned home with only aching feet. Granted, there were some funny stories but most of them don't seem as funny now out of context and my best one--about my husband and Thai prostitutes--is really best told over drinks. Though I suppose I'll post it here at some point.

It was a great show--it almost always is. I got lots of good business done (it's not all just parties and bars, you know) and caught up with so many people. One of the greatest pleasures for me is the one-on-one dinners and I got two of those. It's lovely to spend a few uninterrupted hours with old friends, catching up on life.

Oh, for good measure there were a few parties in there as well and a whole lot of gin. I think the gin makes you forget your feet don't hurt, or they ease the pain temporarily, until you detox. Holy cow, my feet.

I saw nothing of Washington except for a lot of Metro stations (they're very nice and clean and don't smell of stale urine!) and I could see the Capitol building twice a day as I walked to and from my hotel. Oh, and their lovely convention center, too. I saw a fair amount of that.

The highlight of the trip was a visit to National Public Radio where Jessica and I got to watch them do Weekend Edition Saturday live. That was a cool experience. Sarah Beyer Kelly is one of their producers and directors and someone I've worked with a lot in the last year. She invited us, and we actually got to sit in the control room while they did the show live.

It's incredible to see how it all comes together--a lot is pre-recorded (some of it three minutes before air) and it was interesting to see that the musical "buttons" are sometimes selected while a story is being done live. We didn't get to meet Scott Simon, as he was on assignment in New Orleans, so Linda Wortheimer hosted. Watching them do the show is like watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, with the laughing and smart comments that go on behind-the-scenes. It was so cool to see them pull the show together--with one story they didn't think would happen until just moments before it was to air--and how much they all seem to love their jobs.

This is the show we heard live.

This weekend is always a reminder of how much I love my job and how lucky I am to be in the book industry with so many creative, smart, and wonderful people. Now if only one of them would rub my feet.

(Oh, and for those of you wondering--they did work the word "monkey" into the show. I like to think they did it for me....)