Antho'd

I'm going to bail on you guys today to catch up on mom and writer stuff, so no Friday 20 this week.

I mentioned a while back that I accepted an offer to reprint my Strange Fruit post in a how-to writing anthology. The editor promised me a copy of the final edition along with my check, but to be honest, I pretty much forgot about it. I'm not a snob or anything, but it's a small press, and they asked me to be a contributor. Not like they were going to have National Book Award winners in it.

Well, the anthology arrived in the mail today, and I opened the package and took out this nice-looking trade paperback. The rather lengthy title is The New Writer's Handbook 2007: A Practical Anthology of Best Advice for Your Craft and Career, edited by Philip Martin, published by Scarletta Press. Preface by Erica Jong.

I had to read that part three times. Erica Jong? The Erica Jong? What the hell?

I opened the book and checked out the table of contents to see just who contributed to this antho. I'm the fourth writer listed (under Creativity, Motivation and Discipline, page 14.) Right next to writers like Jonathan Carroll, Neil Gaiman, Rosina Lippi and Richard Powers.

Yes, that would be Richard the winner of the 2006 National Book Award Powers.

As soon as my chest pains subsided, I checked out the rest of the contributors and spotted a few more familiar names -- Jenna Glatzer, Steve Weber and Bookseller Chick -- and felt a little better. I might be the only vampire fiction writer in the bunch, but at least there were some other bloggers and onliners. So it's cool, and now I think I'll go hide under the bed for a couple of years.

And all this came from that one chance meeting with an old man and his mutant citrus at the pack-n-ship in town. If this isn't the strangest fruit of all, I don't know what is.