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September 26, 2005

In Which I Am Exiled To A Very Sketchy Internet "Cafe"

From Megan, September's Guest Literary Chick!

I planned to write a very exciting blog today, as my finale here at the Literary Chicks. I thought about what to write all week-- and I was leaning toward a blog extolling the virtues of Santa Barbara, California, where I just spent a delightful weekend at the Santa Barbara Book & Author Festival. Santa Barbara may be one of the nicest places I've ever visited, and I would move there tomorrow. (Except I can't afford to so much as stay in a hotel there, which makes me slightly concerned that I would be unable to purchase, say, the gorgeous L-shaped estate I saw this morning. Right on the beach and everything! Or even a more modest place nowhere near the beach.)

But I can't talk about any of that, because my computer died (in a spectacular fashion, I have to say--it's almost impressive, or would be if I did not now have to cough up the money for a new computer) and so I am writing this blog while seated in an a sketchy sort of internet "cafe" on Sunset Boulevard.

Not the nice part of Sunset Boulevard, let me hasten to add. Not the Boulevard you might know from song and Hollywood lore, but the infinitely less pretty section. Here, there is only singing to the beat of one's own drummer, accompanied by the voices in one's head.

There are shenanigans going on all around me, which I am attempting to ignore. Actually, what I am attempting to do is transmit a sort of authorial glow, the way all the turtle-necked poets do in coffee houses. So far, this has attracted no less than three people to my little table. They wanted, in order: access to the computer I am clearly already using, access to the space behind my computer for murky reasons muttered into a shirtsleeve, and an explanation of life as we know it on this mortal coil. (I'm just guessing on the last one; that guy was speaking in tongues, and maybe also in iambic pentameter.)

Time is running out. I mean that literally--there's a bright red counter just above my left hand, and what it is telling me is that I type v e r y s l o w l y.

It's amazing how quickly I can be inspired to write when there is a clock monitoring me. I may have to incorporate this knowledge into the writing of my next draft.

But before I get booted off this computer station (the shirtsleeve guy really wants to get between me and this wall, and as Jennifer Aniston said on Oprah, what you resist persists-- which in this case I'm taking to mean Shirtsleeves can have the freakin' computer) let me announce the winners of my giveaway! Two signed copies of Everyone Else's Girl (which isn't even out yet, but which they had at the Santa Barbara Book and Author Festival this weekend-- I made a scene and took pictures when I saw them, I'm not embarrassed to admit) and two signed copies of English as a Second Language. (I don't actually have any copies of Everyone Else's Girl yet, so there'll be a little bit of a lag, but I'm expecting them any day now!)

The lucky winners are:

Marci Laskin
Kim Westgaard
Suzanne Evans
and Julia Blanco

Congratulations! And thanks so much for entering! Email me (megan@megancrane.com) and give me your snail mail addresses! You can give me a preference (if you have one) for the books, too, although if there's too much demand for one over the other, I may have to resort to a scientific rendering of eenie-meenie-miney-moe.

It's been so much fun to be here at the Literary Chicks. A million thanks to my generous hostesses, and let me leave you with this parting advice: back up your hard disk.

Posted by at 6:30 AM | Comments (1)

Comments

Posted by: Michelle C at September 28, 2005 10:40 AM