A Curious Thing
Ducked around to my PO Box earlier today and discovered that my contributor copies of Gods, Memes, and Monsters had arrived. And lo, it is a handsome book, once you see it in the flesh: That’s not the curious bit. This is: I have a bit of a ritual with contributor copies these days, which has developed over the last few years. Basically, they come in, and I make myself a nice cup of tea to calm the nerves before cracking the book open and taking a close look at my story, figuring out how much of it I actually remember writing. The answer, thanks to the exhaustion associated with undiagnosed apnea and the desperate attempts to hit deadlines, is invariably less than I’d like. For Gods, Memes, and Monsters, it was virtually nothing. I could basically remember the idea I pitched and the things that inspired me to tackle that particular topic, and that was about it. Reading the story was kinda
