I am embarrassed, friends, to report that I committed a rather large  
error a few weeks ago that I now feel (not entirely)comfortable  
sharing with the group: Noticing a recent sale on Publisher's Lunch,  
my editor asked me if I would be interested in doing a Cover Q & A  
with a high profile writer (whose will remain nameless for obvious  
and organic reasons). Naturally I said I would and got on the  
Internets, utilizing the search engine Google and many of the other  
tools a fantastic investigative journalist like myself keeps at his  
disposal. After a cursory search, I located the email address of her  
agent and publicist from her first work, and sent them (in my  
opinion!) a well crafted, polite-but-like-pretty-excited, professional  
query. Understanding the snail's pace at which the publishing world  
works, I promptly fell back into my thesis and forgot about it until  
my editor sent me a message with the subject head: ???, asking if I'd  
heard anything.

I had not, and it had been a decent amount of time and time, friends,  
is money. Write that down. Anyway, I went back to the InterWeb to  
investigate the (cold?) case and found that said author had actually  
left her old agent/publisher for new ones, meaning my gushing  
congratulatory email praising her book sale to her old scorned agent  
probably wasn't the best thing said agent woke up to that morning. I  
considered apologizing but thought I should just let the sleeping  
dog lie, even if it wasn't sleeping and was kind of bitter. Anyway,  
if there is a moral to be learned from this story, it probably  
involves counting chickens, hatching, and being more thorough in  
getting up-to-date information re: subjects you are about to contact.

As for the thesis insanity: I am now officially back on my grind  
after having taken a hiatus to jump up and all over a Boston Mag  
feature and--while my writing is rusty and my use of metaphors  
cheesy--it feels hella (shout out to Norcal!) chill to get back to  
writing about the aftermath of alleged fictional sexual assaults.

The section I'm re-writing now involves the coast of the state of  
Maine and--while I've been there almost infinity times-- I'm having  
my own personal mission impossible picturing what I'm writing about,  
and my Google image search is being both stubborn and ambivalent to  
my needs, probably due to troubles with women. I keep imagining a  
time in the not-so-far future when my thesis is done and sent off and  
the weather isn't close to zero Celsius in April, and I'm wearing my  
standard summer outfit of cut-off jean shorts and jean jacket (no  
shirt!) sipping on a cool (virgin!) Daiquiri listening to the gentle  
rhythms of Buffalo Tom. This--and several bowls of Honey Bunches of  
Oats-- are the only things propelling me through this week.

If you can't already tell, I'm a little bit manic this morning.  
Please enlighten me to your own writing needs for the week, the  
attire you might rock to a 1994 themed party, and anything else you  
feel the urge to share in the Show N Tell portion of the Comments. In  
the meantime, we're still dropping hits from 1988.

The Loco,
Motion

Kylie Minogue