A Long, Strange Trip for Jerry Garcia's Toilet

Thief gets away with Grateful Dead leader's toilet
SONOMA, Calif. (AP) — The long, strange trip continues for Jerry Garcia's toilet.
Police say the Grateful Dead leader's commode was stolen recently from a driveway along with three other toilets and a bidet.
Garcia's salmon-colored toilet was the subject of a legal battle before it was finally moved to Sonoma, to await shipment to a Canadian casino.
It's unclear if the toilet was swiped by a wayward Deadhead or a thief remodeling a bathroom. Police have no suspects or leads.

How I Got Published

I posted this over on the Cherry Forums-- a writing group made up of writers that are also fans of Jenny Crusie's writing. The question was How did you get published? Although I haven't actually BEEN published yet, the deal is done. So it will happen. God willing, March of 07, it will happen. I've edited this down to the short blog version. My story:

About five years ago, after a few false starts, I began diddling with a novel and realized that even though I had read about writing all my life and owned a gajillion craft books, I was ultimately clueless.
I considered going back to school and looked around for a program in creative writing-- but I didn't want a to write literary fiction. I wanted to have fun and the learn the craft and write genre fiction. Funny mysteries.

Meanwhile, I'd read Tell Me Lies by Jenny Crusie and loved it. I read more of Jenny's books and then got the bright idea that maybe she taught somewhere. Classes from her might be handier for writing fiction than a degree in English or whatever. And boy was that right.

So I checked on the web and found that Jenny was teaching at Writers Retreat Workshop in Kentucky that May. I took a deep breath and feeling like a total impostor, I signed up. I almost turned the car around somewhere near Cincinnati I was so scared.

The first year, I met Jenny and others at WRW and learned a ton about the craft and then joined the Cherries online where I learned even more. That was 2003.

The second year at the workshop, Jenny taught the master class and I learned more still. At the same workshop, I met my agent and signed with her. When she told me she wanted to represent me, I literally pinched myself during our meeting I was so convinced I was dreaming.

The third year, I had the first book done, and we were shopping it while I worked on the second one. (That Spring, we had pulled the book off the market after a few rejections and I did a revision based on feedback.) Then we got more rejections. Two "almosts" which was kind of painful.

We finally got The Call December 27th. Midnight Ink bought BrigaDOOM for release next March and asked to see the synopsis and partial for Little Shop of Murders. They bought that one in February. So that's my story.