I've Been Published Again!

Last Spring, a guy in my writer's group (Jed) asked me if I would be interested in writing for a travel guide. I said, "Sure!" Then I had an interview with the editor when he was here from Dubai, did two writing tests and I was in.

Unfortunately for me, at the time, I was also teaching high school part time as well as part time at a local hogeschool (sort of a Dutch college). So I was going absolutely crazy towards the end of the year. I was a beast for about two months. But I got it all done. I really don't know how I did it all. I had classes to prepare for and teach, literally a couple hundred exams to grade, tons of commuting and on top of it all, I was writing for this book. In the initial interview, I said that I was only working part-time, which was sort of true, (and I believed it at the time) but things changed. I did the Activities section as well as the Gay and Lesbian section.

Here's my bio:

Click it to make it really big and readable. The snap of me (with a windmill in the background) is courtesy of Fred. The woman there below me is Ann, a very nice English woman, who also put in a plug for my blog when she was writing one of her sections. Thanks, Ann!


Notice how the knitting is mentioned all over the place? Nice, eh? The books just arrived this morning and will be available "in the major bookshops in Amsterdam as well, as 40 countries around the world" very soon. Check your local listings.

For the record, I've had two other forays into the writing world (the paper writing world, that is). My first was The Diarist's Journal, which is/was a small independent journal about diaries. Excerpts from the journal I kept on my first trip to Europe were published. I haven't seen anything online about the publisher/editor, Hollie Rose, lately. (Anyone heard of her?)

My second was Queer Stories for Boys, which was an offshoot from a storytelling group I was in in NYC. (If you "Search Inside" on Amazon, you can see my name on the contents page.) We also did a couple of performances. That was a fun group.

I called Cindy, a new friend from the book, today to share the thrill, but she hadn't gotten hers yet. I'm alone in the apartment. I need someone to squeal with. I called my pal Venessa; she squealed the appropriate amount. I'll take it to choir rehearsal and my knitting group, both of which are mentioned in the Activities section. They'll be appropriately excited. And Fred will be Dutch-excited when I tell him. (He's in Switzerland for a couple of days.) Dutch-excited is sort of low-key, but no less sincere.

So me and the girls (Ann, Cindy, Elise, Jane, Prue and Kim) will have to get together and celebrate soon. Yes, it is my lot in life to be surrounded by women. I should write about that some time. But, I loves the ladies, so that's just fine.

Just a note about "putting it out to the Universe": Last year about this time, I said, "I want to be published again." Then out of the blue, this came along. My advice: Put it out to the Universe. I am.