Finding The Lost Symbol at Walmart

So! Big display as you turn the corner with your cart after entering the Walpole Walmart today. Dan Brown's book for $16.88! Such a deal. Looked like some of the copies had already been plucked off the display.

Be glad that at least one book is selling like hotcakes. It's good for the book store owners and they have been dropping like flies. Let's see if I can round up a few more cliches. Speaking of hotcakes, what are they and where are they sold? Is it a pancake? Swear I don't know, but the phrase is persistent.

We never shopped at Walmart until we retired, but of course there aren't any Walmarts in the vicinity of Wellesley or Swellesley as it is sometimes known locally.

Walmart isn't bad. They have great cat litter, and there is none cheaper. We buy Fancy Feast there, too, and it's like getting the sale price every week. Familiary has led to buying vitamins, cleaning supplies, charcoal and we are branching into groceries, too.

Once I bought a Walmart brand "Faded Glory" tee shirt to wear as pajama tops. $5.00, what a buy! Guess what? I liked it so much I took it out of the PJ drawer and put it into the tee shirt drawer.

When the recession is over, I'll probably hang onto some of my newly frugal spending habits. I've found a shampoo I really like, not the $ 12.00 bottle from the hairdresser. I've let my hair grow to eliminate so many hair cuts. We ate our own vegetables this summer. Tomatoes are still ripening. Yum! Picked a few more green beans today.

The bag 'o impatiens is still blooming mightily. Hummingbirds headed south. I worry about my sweet birds having to fly so far. It's always such a relief to see them again in the spring.

The slough turns fall colors and the temperature in the house was 66 degrees this morning. Fall is here and winter is coming.

We have a cord of firewood, so bring it on!

Wanna Be Need Not Apply

Ugh! I've started down the "Looking for an Agent" path for Festival Madness. I have compiled a new list. As always, it seems promising, but while compiling, I once again ran into the situation where some agents forbid queries by the unrecommended, unpublished writer. No self-published or POD writers, either. POD is a technology and it is hard to see why there is a taint to a technology, but so be it.

I am vindictive enough to hope that all of these so snooty, exclusive agents miss the next Dan Brown, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich and Joseph Conrad.

Anyway, there is now a list and "how to contact" advice and all those good things, so just do it, as the commercial advices.

Email contacts, while quick , seem fraught with danger. They don't friggin' answer if they don't feel like it. Did the agent even receive the email? Off into cyberspace. It ain't fun. It ain't easy. It definitely ain't for the fragile ego or the faint of heart.

Onward.

The world I must live in always seems to encompass an exclusivity beyond me. As a kid, I lived places where you were shit unless you were born in that town. In college, I came from the wrong state, wrong high school, belonged to the wrong literary society. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

When I was a young suburban mom, for a few years, things were O.K. Right house, right neighborhood, right everything. Not exclusive, but welcoming.

Moved to Boston. Right suburb, wrong precinct. Not a native. Not a Brahmin. Not ethnic. Not Catholic, not much of anything. Most of my friends (not quite all) are from somewhere else. Boston is not a friendly town.

As a computer programmer, I wrote in COBOL, the least respected language, old mainframe technology. The sneering never stopped. Of course, the paychecks didn't either.

Became a writer. A genre writer. Oh shit, now it's worse than junior high. Not published properly, not young and skinny, not ethnic, nor foreign, not literary, not visible. There is the story oft told at writer's conferences that one day a published writer will ask to see your work, offer some pithy comments and will recommend you to his/her agent or publisher or whatever. Folks, this is bull. Everybody is running scared and well, it's like the convoy driving down a dangerous neighborhood in Baghdad and you are in Arab dress and thumbing a ride. Will the convoy stop?

So, gloom and doom. I must be the world's biggest masochist, because after four books, I'm en route to promote the 5th. Why? Why? Why?

Dunno. Just gotta do it. Must have succumbed to Festival Madness. (!)

Grapeshot