Other Words Rhyming With Fall Include Stall, Crawl and Maul

I woke up Monday morning, and I said to Scooter (who was the reason I woke up Monday morning at 4:30 AM, 5:30 AM, 6:30 AM and 7:30 AM), "It's Monday morning. I wonder what good news I'll hear this week."

Scooter's idea of good news is, "The human is alive and going to feed me, and I only had to wake it up with my obsessive purring four times."

One of us is never disappointed. I, on the other hand, was forced to acknowledge that I hadn't had a single piece of good news the week before.

Now, by good news, I don't mean things that are actual good news for many, like an uptick in the stock market or the Knicks' 12 game win streak. I don't even mean Scooter forgetting to wake me up at 4:30 AM, although trust me, that's cause for celebration. No, I mean professional good news. Unexpected checks are the best of the best good news, but I'm not fussy. I gladly accept good news in small, medium or large formats.

I'd had a streak of one piece of good news each week for a few glorious and unexpected weeks. There was learning I was going to go to IRA and learning I was going to go to ALA and learning I was going to go to the Decatur Book Festival. There was learning my Chinese publisher was going to publish The Shade Of The Moon. Now that I think about it, those pieces of good news didn't exactly happen one week, then the next, then the next, and then the next. They were spread out, and maybe there were a few weeks without any good news at all, but I had the holidays to blame for that. And the weather. I can always blame the weather. It's almost replaced George Bush as my go to blame station, what with March lasting about 7 and a half weeks around here.

There were no checks in the mail on Monday (no bills either, which was good, since I'd spent many hours on Sunday paying bills and it would have been a tad aggravating if a brand new bill had shown up). I did get my hotly anticipated box of DVDs from my formerly beloved Deep Discount, who I reconciled with when I found its prices were lower than Amazon's for the DVDs I absolutely had to have once I found out they existed*), but a check would have been nice.

But before I had a chance to mourn the lack of checks in the mailbox (a Monday tradition), I found an email from my publisher. A good news email, telling me that Kirkus wanted to phone interview me next week for an article about 12 different writers and was I willing?

Willing? Willing to be interviewed for an article in Kirkus?

Yes, yes, I emailed back. Yes, yes, yes. I might have even thrown in a Yes! in my excitement. Here was my good news for the week, and on a Monday to boot.

But then I thought about it. Why would Kirkus want to interview me? Granted, I'm not the queen of modesty, but fabulous as I might be, I didn't see why Kirkus would be interested in me just now. Or ever, if you want to be technical about it.

So I emailed my publisher and said, Are you sure Kirkus meant me? I figured that was a good way to word it, in case what had happened was Kirkus had said to my publisher, "We want to interview that incredibly famous author ______ ______," and my publisher instead of hearing the incredibly famous author's name, heard mine, or maybe hadn't heard mine, but sent me the email meant to be sent to the incredibly famous author by mistake.

No, no, my publisher emailed me back. It's you they want to interview, along with the other 11 writers, because they're writing an article about the big books for fall.

That's what the email actually said, "big books for fall." Not "big books that fall" or "big books that fail" or even "formerly smaller book writers that bawl because they've gained 6 pounds since the tragic loss of their thyroid."

My good news for the week promptly doubled up. Kirkus wants to interview me and it regards The Shade Of The Moon as one of the big books for fall. And next week is already covered, because being interviewed is exciting and flattering and I'll be off to San Antonio for IRA that Saturday, and the week after is covered because that Sunday I'll be in San Antonio for IRA, and by the time I get home from San Antonio, it'll be royalty check season, and I'll have several weeks of obsessing over the size of the where is it already royalty check to keep me occupied.

Now, if I can only get Scooter to sleep like this at 5:30 AM, life will truly be perfect!

*Naked City 20 Star-Filled Episodes, The Man In The Net, Inferno, and Heaven With A Barbed Wire Fence