The Writing Life (do I have one?)

First, my short story Picarón was accepted to appear in the second San Miguel anthology.  The first one was called Solamente en San Miguel, and nobody can tell me how many copies sold.  Nonetheless I a happy to be a part of the second.  Editors asked that I translate all words in Spanish, and that was all.  Publish date...to be announced. 

Next, an essay I wrote about my 15-year old daughter being psychic will be published on the Huffington Post some time soon.  It will appear in Rebecca Walker´s blog.  I, along with all other contributors to Rebecca´s anthology, One Big Happy Family, was invited to guest blog about anything having to do with our families.  My essay in the anthology is about being part of a bicultural family.  My essay on her blog talks about how Carla can see auras and feel dead people.  It´s called My Indigo Girl. 

Third, I got a rejection letter for my memoir today from some agent who obviously does too much crack.

Then, I met with my retired Simon and Schuster editor pal, Fred when he was here in February with his lovely and talented-writer wife, Kathy.  I worked up the nerve to ask him to read the entire manuscript and he read it in 24 hours and met me at Starbucks the next morning.  "I could see this being a movie," he said.  "It´s fine.  All you have to do is cut the first 65 pages."  

So I did.  I cut the section that talked about my early life with my basketball coach dad.  My precious words!  Slash.  It did make the memoir much better.  I dropped in a little bit of the info, mostly in the first chapter, and the memoir did not suffer at all the loss of my early life.

Finally, I uploaded my new version onto Authonomy, a Harper Collins site for unpublished books.  It´s been there for about two weeks, and it´s pretty exhausting to keep up.  You have to read and back other people´s books and hope they back yours.  There´s about 5000 books on the site, and the sorry thing takes over your life!  Yet, it´s mesmerizing to get coments and see your book rise through the ranks.  Right now I´m at about 1000 and hoping for three digits!!  It´s a sick addiction.  I think I need a help group.