This week has been a series of gifts. I got a wholly unexpected royalty cheque. We got some good news on another matter, and heard a friend's great news, and the sun shone. Also readers and friends have been showering us with delicious edibles.
For example, last night we made a meal of perfect tidbits: caviar (sustainably farmed sturgeon) with vodka so cold it was gelid, duck pâté and a lovely rose champagne, hummus and beer--provided in large part by fine people who like our books. (Seriously, stuff arrives at the door with ribbons and bows around it. It's awesome.) And then this afternoon I read a Buffy comic (Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 #6: No Future For You Part One)* recommended by someone here a few weeks ago, followed by the first chapter of a book (The Wild Places, by Robert Macfarlane)**, similarly recommended here--and read on a Kindle partly paid for by Amazon.com gift certificates bought by readers for my birthday last year.
Then as I read the last paragraph of the free Kindle chapter and swallowed the last mouthful of a particularly fine cup of tea I thought, Huh, I haven't had any chocolate today, at which point the UPS truck appeared with a bang and a flash and a box of Godiva truffles. I am not kidding. It was like magic. (I even thought, Okay, I want to win the lottery, and waited, listening--for the phone, or the crack of lightning, or something--but nothing happened.)
So here I am grinning like a fool, stuffed with tasties and feeling...graced.
Anyway, the sheer delight of these gifts, and everyone's good news, and the cheque, and the Macfarlane, shook loose four pages of Hild notes to work on tomorrow--which I'll do after I have a massage from a therapist found for me two years ago by a Grateful Reader.
I am not making this up. Patronage of the arts is not dead. Thank you, all. Thank you very much.
* I really enjoyed the comic but it was like getting just one truffle--gone before I could really register it. So, tell me O Comix Readers, at some point will I be able to buy a whole set bound together in one book?
** I'm going to buy the whole thing, but probably on paper. It's cheaper, for one thing. For another, it's the kind of thing I'll want to flip back and forth in, dwell upon, linger over. I can tell it's going to be a fabulous book. It's already triggered massive Hild thoughts.
