Day in the Life of an Idiot

 A little context: a month or so ago, I decided to check in on my ancient, but still functional, Hotmail account. I would get rid of it entirely, but back in the Late Jurassic I printed my email in the author's bio portion in Archangel Protocol (and all of the subsequent AngeLINK books.) Every so often, I still get fan mail to that address.

It turns out that my webpage (until a month ago!) also directed people to that old address. (Yes, it has now been fixed to send inquiries to my gmail account.)  I found this out, of course, because buried under all the spam was a email from a former teen student of mine, asking if I might be interested in coming to speak to Beloit College's writers' club. They meet on Saturday evenings at 5 pm Central and I could come in person or via Zoom... and there would be a stipend.

A rather generous stipend.

As has been discussed.

I knew this student was in my teen class, because she mentioned it by name. "More Than the Zombie Apocalypse." I only ever use that title for my teen classes. I've never changed the title either, because I've discovered something YA authors have long known: teens talk to each other and recommend things to each other. So, that was kind of a little ego boost, particularly after the disaster which shall not be named over the summer. SOME of my teen students still remember me years later. Ha! Loft! SEE!

At any rate, there was the usual back and forth and it was decided that I would speak via Zoom on May 22, last Saturday. Despite my panicking, the potential funeral, and the rest, it went great. I did take people's advice and put together an actual PowerPoint Presentation. I feel a little silly about this, but later, when I finally saw the contract (more on that in a second) I'm glad I did. The contract stipulated a "workshop" and there's something about a PowerPoint Presentation that feels more workshop-like than me babbling incoherently for an hour and a half. 

I showed up ten minutes early, like you do, and chatted with the half dozen workshop members who'd already arrived. I thought, "Oh, this is a nice small group, maybe I can ditch the presentation and..." but, at the clock hit 5 pm, window after window after window started popping up and I was like, "Oh. Oh, DAMN." 

Not, mind you, in a bad way, but more of a "Wow, okay, they did some publicity. I'm actually going to have to PERFORM."

And so I did.

I mean, I still always feel like I am a dancing monkey, babbling like an idiot, and/or punch drunk while doing these things, but people seemed genuinely appreciative and asked good follow-up questions. So, it seems as though all is well. In fact, I heard from one the of attendees a few days later because I offered that I could answer further questions via email and it seems as though I was generally a hit. 

SO YAY.

So about that generous payment I'd been all worried about. Well, I had literally heard nothing from their finance office despite one email from someone saying "I'm connecting you with ____." Well, ____ never said boo after that. In fact, by Friday (the day before) I was kind of starting to get worried that they'd baulked at the amount they'd agreed to pay me. I did one subtle, "So... is there anything you NEED from me before my workshop tomorrow?" query that seemed to not have the desired affect, so I went with the less subtle on Sunday, the day after the event, which was, "Say, I haven't heard a peep from your financial department, should I have??" 

Forms were belatedly sent, one of which I actually have MAIL back, but whatever. The payment is being processed, your check is in the mail, yada yada.

Oh, and about the funeral that we chose not to attend.... Shawn's brother said it was the best decision we have ever made. He and his wife considered bailing in the middle of the funeral service because it was so fire and brimstone and sin, sin, SIN in a way that made his fairly centrist to lightly conservative head explode. Shawn has two brothers. One old leftie and one kind of very middle of America (which is decently to the right, as you all know). This was the middle one? And, so if he was having conniption fits, the service was BAD. 

I can only imagine it would have been worse if ACTUAL sinning lesbians had been in the family pews.