Ten days later, news worth mentioning....
My last post was October 9 and I figured I would be back yakking on a regular basis now that I had figured out how to manage the comments on Disqus. But a combination of the flu and one of its little-known symptoms, self-loathing, shut me down. Now, let’s see if we can crank this up again.
Woke up this morning to find out that EVERYTHING HURTS won in the Humor category of the 2009 NATIONAL BEST BOOKS competition sponsored by USA Book News. I was also a finalist in the category of general fiction. There were 140+ categories and over 500 finalists. And, I pray to the god of my understanding, over 500 total entries. Apparently, the self-loathing is still incubating….
Look, I’m thrilled. It’ll make a nice line on the blurb page of the paperback when it comes out in April. And my agent said, “This made my Monday even sunnier.” (Contrast that to my former agent, who when I told her I was a finalist for the 2006 Thurber Prize for American Humor, said something like, “Oh….”)
When I was working as a sportswriter at the Albany Times-Union out of college, Hearst Newspapers had these in-house competitions every quarter between the papers. If you were lucky enough to win in your category, you got $50, which in 1979 was drinking money for three nights. Every three months, me and Buzz Gray, a feature writer and night sports editor who I lived with, would go to the bulletin board in the newsroom and look at the results. I would flip through, and then proclaim, loudly, “Well, fucking Mozart never won anything either….” and fake storm off. Used to get a big laugh. 30 years later, I can no longer say that.
