Cover Me

It doesn't happen often, but two magazines recently featured me on the covers.  (Thanks, Amy and Adam.)  The idea being that readers would find my essays on goal-setting & self-care, and my science fiction, to be of particular interest in those January issues.  So, I feel honored.

Usually, my writing is under cover, not on the cover.  And believe it or not, it always seems odd to me to see my name in print.  At first blush, I almost always recoil and have a deep desire to walk away.

As 2014 scrolls around, there are also editors who want me to send new author photos, new bios . . . even my travel schedule.  I feel awkward telling them that nothing much has changed in my life since 2013.  I am still married to my first wife.  None of my books have hit the best-seller lists.  I continue to lead the same dull and boring life as before.  And as for travel, most of my mileage is racked up walking back and forth between the house and Dunkin' Donuts.  It's a much shorter distance from the bed to the bathroom, so I don't count these miles in my annual prostate pilgrimages. 

Now and again I have editors who ask, "So, what's new with you?"

I feel embarrassed to tell them that nothing is new with me.  I haven't purchased a car for twenty years; I drive a 1999 Senoma pickup with no heat or air; I still write books on a 1999 Compaq computer and use floppy disks to store my output; and I still have a land line phone and no ability to remember my pass code to check my voice mail messages (my only high-tech comfort). 

I thank these editors for placing a guy like me on their magazine covers.  But feel, somehow, that they must be hard-pressed for publicity.  I am, after all, no poster child for the new brand of writers who compose their novels via twitter.  I just write and submit my material with a postage stamp. 

And believe it or not, I miss licking all that glue.