Adventures in Publishing: Blurbs and Lockdowns

This is especially true in publishing.

Hi all! It's been a red-letter day today. I started the morning from a Facebook message from rock star graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang (writer of Boxers/Saints and ABC: American Born Chinese), someone whose books my son Ben and I both love (hey, Boxers/Saints got Ben interested in reading about HISTORY, so you know it's compelling). He had read an advance reader copy of my book  Still Life Las Vegas and was kind enough to give me a great blurb to use on the jacket. Time and time again, I've been amazed at the kindness of strangers, who
will give up their precious time to help a new author out by reading their work and (hopefully) liking it enough to lend their name. Many thanks to Gene, and y'all should read his most excellent work.

Next up, I discovered that a personal essay I submitted to the online magazine The Rumpus is up on their site! It's actually been there for five days, but, hey, I was kinda busy this weekend. The piece is called "Lockdown," and it's about a particularly harrowing time of my life a couple of years ago, right before I found my lit agent. They added great illustrations by Dana Schartz to the piece. It should be up for a little while longer— hope you can all check it out!
http://therumpus.net/2015/04/lockdown/

Now, to go and fix my garbage disposal.

PS. Just so I don't get too cocky or anything, I was in a fender bender this afternoon, pulling into Walgreens. Thanks, Yin & Yang! Way to keep me balanced!