I really have to get off my butt and get my novel revision done and get the thing sent out again. No less than two people I know who are about my age have got books coming out or are just out. There's my friend Jennifer's two books: Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales from the Annals of Physics; A history of physics for armchair scientists and other curious readers coming in October 2005 from Penguin, and the book she's working on now, The Physics of the Buffyverse, due in 2006 also from Penguin. Then, while beating the heat in Sheds and Commoner tonight, I ran across A Memoir, Piano Girl: Lessons in Life, Music, and the Perfect Blue Hawaiian from Robin Meloy Goldsby. At this point, Robin is more of a lost acquaintance than a friend, but we went to school together at Chatham College, though she graduated before I did. She was also a friend of my friend Adrienne, whom I also met at Chatham, and the daughter of a woman who lived next door to my Aunt Betty in Pittsburgh, who introduced us. When I went up to Chatham for a recruitment weekend, Robin looked me up to say hello, so I have a soft spot in my heart for her. She was always a very warm person, and very talented.
It's a little weird running into books by someone you know. Several years ago, I ran across a book by Lev Raphael, who'd been in the graduate program at Michigan State while I'd been there. And a couple of years before that, another friend from MSU sent me Gordon Henry's book, The Light People (which is a beautiful novel; I always loved Gordon's writing when we were in Diane Wakoski's poetry workshops together). I wasn't exactly jealous, because I knew I really didn't have a story to tell yet as much as I knew I would eventually, but it was disturbing somehow, as well as exciting to see someone I knew get themselves into print. Anway, I'm looking forward to reading Robin's book now.
And finishing my own. Nothing like a little competition to light the fire.
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