In NYC for meetings today, just in time for the record-breaking snowfall. The better half and spent Saturday at the Museum of Modern Art, waiting for weather. ("Maybe the forecasters had it wrong! Maybe it's not going to snow at all!"). By the time we went out to dinner, the snow had started to fall. By the time we got out of Spamalot, it was really coming down.
We woke up to find the city silent and buried, except for the dogs running loose along Central Park West.
We had brunch at the hotel, then made our way through the blowing and drifting to see The Squid and the Whale, which left me so depressed I took an hour and a half nap.
Then the better half headed home to retrieve the girl and the dog, I worked on a short story. Now it's meeting time.
In other news, there's an interestingstory over at Galleycat. Young intern gets a job at well-respected independent publisher. Young intern talks fast and loose about the fun that is made of over-the-transom manuscripts. When Galleycat links to fast and loose remarks, young intern publishes bratty screed ("they linked to stuff I published without my permission! Wah!"), delivers finger-wagging lecture about the nature of publishing and the role of fast-and-loose-talking young people within it, takes down fast-and-loose remarks and replaces them with....nude picture of Kathy Bates from About Schmidt.
Now really. The notion that an underpaid, overeducated nineteen-year-old college kid serves as the gatekeeper between an unpublished author and the agent, publisher, and six-figure contract of his or her dreams should be alarming to precisely no one. Armies march on their stomachs; publishing, like many other fields of creative endeavor, marches on the labor of free interns.
The notion that said gatekeepers think it the absolute height of wit to replace their intemperate comments with Kathy Bates in a hot tub? That's scary.
Finally, a short piece from the Times about how authors are handling the potential embarrassment of a James Frey blurb.
