WHAAATT??!

Saturday 4/3/21

Nice offense you have there, Red Sox. Geesh.

This is my niece with the Easter card I sent her. I am not sure what was funny about it, but apparently it was a humorous hit. I sent cards, of course, to her sister and brother, with a special personalized note for each of them, but this is the only photo I have.

This is an op-ed in today's Chicago Tribune on Chekhov and Easter. One of the few places I had yet to be in, actually.

Another editor told me that was terrible. Also, that I know nothing about human nature and people, and nothing about the Beatles as well.

That's about the best of what I deal with, which says a lot. I had to thank this person for their input--which always takes the form of saying whatever they damn well please to me, no matter how off base, irrational, condescending, nasty--because I need the money and they'll play ball, though that form of ball sucks.

A writer/editor who watches me go through what I am going through, read "Girls of the Nimbus," a story at the level of "Fitty," and texted me this in the middle of the night, as they sat up reading it for the fourth time in a row:

"That's insane. Nimbus wow god damn. Fucking amazing. Unreal."

It's so beyond upsetting that I beg people--I actually beg--for them to look at that story.

This past week I wrote three short stories--"And the Life," "Boy, Reversed," and "Banshee Friends." I wrote three op-eds: one on the baseline of morality, another on the best ever Easter film, and another on the greatest of all holiday candies. None were used. All for nothing. File them away for later. Another time, when this has turned for me, when it's time for it all to go into a book of these kinds of writings, a combo. Whatever it may be. I talked on the radio about like ten things. I wrote a piece for JazzTimes on Eric Dolphy's solo bass clarinet performance of Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child." I wrote an essay on Babe Ruth. I redid--and am still not done--a personal essay on an aunt of mine. I wrote, obviously, quite a few of these journal entries. I walked fifty miles. I ran many hills and stairs. I started writing the Beatles book. And you know what I did more of, by far, than anything, during this week? I wrote people who hate me. I wrote people who want me dead. Hundreds of letters. I wrote people who despise me because this is what I do every week while they do nothing except discuss their cats on Facebook and ask their publishing cronies if they had to say they were like an animal which animal would that be? This is what they do as I do what I do, and of course they're going to have nothing but enmity for me as a result. I pitched. I begged. I sent material. Including to one person who, get this, has ignored me for twenty-five full years. Think about that. I'm a young man. That means that goes back to college. Twenty-five years. I know about the cronyism. I know how they operate. Of course I do. I know the people they hook up because of nothing to do with the work, a lot of which is absolutely inept and sometimes comical in just how bad it is. Twenty-five bloody years. I can have the best story ever written. And I have. Doesn't matter. I also asked for money I've been owed for months. The American Interest has owed me $250 since August. They just won't pay me. They won't even respond. You know what it's like to write a letter asking, "Are just robbing me?" Then apologize for thinking that, but, well, what can one think at this point?

Sagging Meniscus sent me a nice letter about Musings with Franklin, which will be my second novel. They're doing a series of ten or eleven books I think they said, with fairly nondescript covers, but they want Franklin to be a stand-alone title, with a gala cover where we really do it up. It's an absolutely crazy book. I'm just thinking, "screw it, at this point, go as nuts as you want with this novel." What's it matter right now? I might as well push the envelope further than anyone would dare to.

And of course I got right back up at 3:30 this morning, and began the new story, "The Shape of the Shore," that I mentioned in today's earlier entry on here.

I walked nine miles today, too, working in my head the entire time.