My Book What I Wrote

First things first: I didn't go to Arizona. Much to my horror and dismay, my weekend was suddenly filled with important things I had to get done and I couldn't spare the day. I didn't let on to Jeff that they invited the wrong person to the party, though, so everyone cross your fingers that they'll accidentally invite me to something else in the near future.

Moving on! So I wrote an essay for a book that came out last week. Coffee at Luke's is a collection of essays about Gilmore Girls, and I was asked to contribute because of those five episodes I recapped for TWoP during Season Five. This is the first time I've ever been published. I have to admit, it's a thrill to hold a real book in my hands and read my name on the back cover. More than I thought it would be.

In all its majesty!!!!

Publisher's Weekly even reviewed it, and my essay was one of the three they mentioned. They said it was "amusing but aimless." I think they really need to up their proofreading standards; even though it was just the Web-Exclusive edition, you'd think they'd have caught such an egregious typo. Clearly, the sentence was supposed to say "amusing literary masterpiece." Don't worry -- I've already written to them about it and I'm sure they'll fix it and issue the necessary correction and apology soon.

A nice woman with incredibly good taste said in her blog that my essay was "one of the most interesting and creative." Suck on THAT, special class for creative students in middle school that wouldn't let me in because I scored four points under the minimum on the creativity test! Even though I won the Connecticut Invention Convention two years in a row!

Speaking of school, I decided to send one of the two copies the publisher sent me to my high school English teacher, Mr. Calise. Since my essay was about the town I grew up in and that we both hated, I thought he'd get a kick out of it. More importantly, he was one of the few teachers who really encouraged me and made me believe that I had ability while many of my other teachers were saying things like "you have talent, but not the right kind of talent," "I want to strangle her," and "we're suing you." It's amazing how many people out there are responsible for shaping and teaching children who clearly hate them and their jobs. I have the utmost admiration, appreciation, and gratitude for the teachers who do care. I really do. I hope both the bad and the good teachers realize the kind of impact they can have on every single one of their students' lives. I'm sure Mr. Calise does already, but I wanted to tell him myself.

Here's Smartpop's website.
Here's the Amazon listing.