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My first tour stop in 2008 will be the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, where I'll be a part of the fifth-annual CityLit Project. The event is free to both the public and exhibitors, which is not typical for most book-related events. It's pretty annoying to go to some events where either you have to give up a large percentage of your sales or you have to pay an upfront fee.
For Christmas, I received one of those Page-A-Day calendars to keep on your office desk. Normally, when I have one of those, I pull off about two months' worth at the same time because I completely forget about it. And I still do that for the newest one I own, but this one is a little different. This calendar is full of odd and wacky websites, which of course, is great research for my columns. I'll highlight some of my favorites here, and try to give a little bit of info when necessary.
As a huge fan of baseball, I enjoy reliving the past seasons, teams and players that I may have seen, read or heard at some point in time. Rob Neyer cleverly combines the best and worst of every Major League Baseball team in his "Big Book of Baseball Lineups".
It helps tremendously to have the chance to work with an actual editor with any writing project ... especially a full-length novel. Patrick Coyle provided a lot of great feedback with "Polos to Ties," which is probably one of the main reasons I've received decent feedback so far from literary agencies. I'm still looking for a reasonable deal, though, as finding the right agent isn't always the easiest thing to do.
In the near future, I plan to post the first five chapters of the book, but I'm also waiting a response from a second editor as well.
You'll notice that I haven't been writing much, for a few good reasons. At work, we've been pretty busy, and we just moved into a different office. In my spare time, I've been devoting most of my time sending out book queries and proposals and also working on my girlfriend's school's website.
But let's face it: The important thing happening right now is men's college basketball. Who will win their conference tournaments? Which teams will make it to the Big Dance? What team will win it all?
There are two important links you need at this stage:
Even though it might be after Dec. 25 by the time you read this, it is still not too late to make that last shopping run. This year, especially if you live in the Midwest, your excuse will work even better:
"I ordered your present online, and it hasn't arrived yet."
That simple sentence should give you at least an additional week to make purchases. And with the 236 inches of snow some areas have received, there's no telling when a present, even ordered after Lincoln's birthday, will appear.
Today, I'm continuing to help clean out my dad's house. It is interesting to see all of the board games and random items I used to have 15 years ago, but in reality, there are a fair amount of things that I don't need anymore. On top of that, there objects that I'm not even positive I'll ever have a need for again, other than to take up space in my basement. And besides books and dust, I really don't like to collect things at my house.
There's nothing worse than people complaining about a product because it works too well.
For instance, there's glue. Try using that stuff that holds elephants from a trapeze by their teeth. If you accidentally glue the elephant's ear to the swing, the immobile animal will be stuck forever.
Another example is plastic wrap. You try to wrap something in it, but the stuff just clings together. Being persistent, you try to unwrap it. But the static forces that bind the universe won't allow a simple tug to do the trick.
I'm not absolutely certain about this, but I think I have a similar basic understanding of Leonardo Da Vinci as your typical educated U.S. citizen. I know he was a brilliant artist during the Renaissance and dabbled a bit in science and engineering endeavors.
If you have managed to ignore all talk so far about the upcoming presidential election, I commend you from a particular standpoint. How on earth can you tune out something as important as that? Do you have the new Bose BodyPhone, which enables a person to completely shut off the real world entirely? I thought the BodyPhone was only in prototype?