Outside the Lines
More madness from the left: Despite having hosted a fund-raiser for Elizabeth Warren’s 2012 senate campaign, John Krasinski, one of the ensemble of the sitcom The Office, is being criticized for taking roles that show the military and CIA in a positive light. Even his sleeper horror hit A Quiet Place (2018), which he also directed and co-wrote, is deemed to have conservative undertones by those reading between the lines. To me, the latter is about parents going to great lengths to protect their children. As for the positive portrayal of the military, eleven people in his family were or are currently in the armed forces. Is he supposed to be ashamed of them? What nonsense.
I’ve finished work on the first proof copy of the repackaged Exchanges, Open Outcries. 80% of the changes were paragraphs in need of indentation. 10% were changes in wording, the rest error corrections. I’m really happy with the novel itself. I wasn’t sure how I would view it seven years after its publication. I will submit the update to Amazon either this evening or in the morning, and order a second proof, of which I will probably do only a quick scan. After all, it may never sell another copy, so there’s no sense going crazy. I just want it to be available in print form, just in case.
Man, it was cold during my morning walk at six AM. At 10:30 I bundled up to the max and went to my alternate book selling site, where I basked in the sun. At one point I was tempted to take off my heavy coat. For the first hour-plus it seemed like it would be a repeat of yesterday’s disappointment, then business picked up. My thanks to the gentleman who bought an audio book of John Grisham’s Bleachers, and to the woman who was thrilled to have beautiful pictorials of Broadway’s The Lion King and Aladdin; and to the young man who purchased The Shining by Stephen King and Abaddon’s Gate by James S. A. Corey; and to the gentleman who recently underwent triple bypass, who approached while I was packing up and chose, as usual, three works of non-fiction: The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz, Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris by Graham Robb, and one whose title escapes me; and to the lovely woman who donated an incredible cache of books in Russian that includes classics, mysteries and self help. All that paled compared to a visit from Tatiana, who bought Billionths of a Lifetime about a month ago. She praised its opening story, the first I’d ever written, Rude Awakening, citing its symbolism and philosophical bent. Thank you, madam. Her comments reminded me of a waitress I’d given the story to read in 1980, eight years before it was published by a small press magazine in Georgia, when it was still in old paper manuscript form. She too cited symbolism, which I said was unintended and which she countered by saying it was subliminal. She believed in reincarnation, successive lifetimes. She was hopelessly in love with a black guy who’d dumped her, and believed their current life cycle would be a failure if they remained apart, and that they would have to wait until their next lifetime to make things right. Now that’s romanticism. I occasionally wonder if her beliefs are the same nowadays. Val, if you’re reading this…
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