Burro Genius
A Memoir
Chapter One
I'd been writing for thirteen years, received over 260 rejections, and
had just gotten -- thank God -- my first book published! The year was
1973. I was thirty-three years old, in Long Beach, California, at a CATE
conference, meaning California Association of Teachers of English. I
was in the back room along with five other writers. All of the other authors
had previous works published. We were waiting for the main
speaker to show up. This writer wasn't only published, like the rest of
us; no, he'd had a best seller, was a nationally recognized speaker, and
was going to show up any minute and give the keynote address to the
luncheon of the whole CATE convention.
Karen, our publisher's publicist, was nervous as hell, pacing the
room and trying to figure out what to do. The national best-selling author
should've arrived at least thirty minutes ago. He was supposed to
have flown in from the East Coast the night before on the red-eye.
Myself, I was pretty nervous, too. I'd never been in a room with so
many writers before. In fact, I'd neve ... read full excerpt from: Burro Genius ebook
