Chapter the Fourth: I write more books, go to Ireland, and get fooled by everybody.
In the last 10 months, I've been right busy! December 20, 1998, I signed up with Top Floor Publishing to write book #17, MP3 and the Digital Music Revolution, a book and CD on MP3. Early sales look good.
In late January and early February, Constance and I used those free tickets to fly over to England and Ireland to do job hunting. There was a lot of interviewing going on, so it was really more of a business trip than a vacation, but it's always nice being in London and Ireland. But we did do a little shopping and saw three plays in London.
We saw Tom Conti do a wonderful one-man show entitled "Jesus, My Boy." It was the whole story told from the point of view of Joseph, very moving and a real winner. He came out after an intermission and told stories and fielded questions from the audience for about 20 minutes (and expressed a general loathing for theater in the round as it happens).
We also saw a show of Michael Frayne's called "Alarms and Excursions" starring Felicity Kendall, formerly of "Good Neighbors." (Michael Frayne also wrote, among others, "Noises Off," which made a great play I saw at the Savoy in London in 1986 and a poor movie in 1993 with Michael Caine.)
And perhaps best of all, we saw Judi Dench in a light Neapolitan play called "Filumena." Constance had seen her in 1968 in London in the stage version of Cabaret opposite Joel Grey. She was great (but of course!). We also saw F.W. deKlerk speaking in the Piccadilly outlet of Tower Books, an odd thing--there were no protesters, no hecklers, and everyone in the crowd of perhaps 200 people was listening quite intently to what he had to say. One might figure that, if there was anyone had a right to an opinion about what had happened and was happening in South Africa, he'd be one of several at the top of the list. It was a delightful difference in the way things are done there versus here in the States.
While we were gone, I won another writing award , too, bringing it up to 16 so far. :)
We got back from our trip, I dove back into the MP3 book, and slowly the thing grundled to a close. I also wrote an article for Accounting Technology magazine entitled Who's Winning the Accounting Software War? during this period. I also provided Elisabeth Knottingham with some small advice on her first book, Visio 2000: The Official Guide , but she's a first-rate author and didn't need much advice or handholding; she did Just Fine.
Constance and I also went to Vancouver, B.C., for a long weekend later in the spring. Most notable was doing a lot of book shopping at Duthie's and hitting the outlet stores on the I-5 corridor on the way there and back. It was a quiet pleasant trip. We spent evenings curled up in an attractive B&B upstairs room, watching the finals of the Westminster Dog Show and reading.
In March, Elisabeth Knottingham, my friend and favorite co-author (and the then-Secretary for the Puget Sound STC chapter), informed me that the Board had voted on who was to receive the Johnnie Kohl award at the annual investiture of new officers and charity auction held in May. (This is an award for continuing service above and beyond the call. I am pleased to say I won it some years ago, putting me into some really distinguished company.) Elisabeth told me that the Board had voted to award this to an old friend of mine named Pam (also a former President of the chapter) and, furthermore, that the Board wanted me to award it to her. Well! It's an honor that I think Pam's well-deserving of. And it pleased me to be picked to give it to her; normally, the current President takes that pleasure.
I phoned Pam a week or two later to see if she was coming. Nope, she hadn't planned on it. Aggh! I plied my best soft-soap and encouraged her to show up, telling her (truthfully) that Constance my sweetheart was coming and was looking forward to seeing her (also true, but I didn't tell Pam that Constance was looking forward in particular to seeing her get the award). After some gentle wheedling, Pam figured that she'd do this. ~whew~ Crisis averted.
So, it's Tuesday the 11th of May. I've been looking forward to the meeting for quite a while now and, at the meeting, I was tapping a couple of old friends and Society officers for information about Pam that I could work up into a presentation speech along with my personal recollections of when she was just an intern working for me 15 years ago. Everyone was very helpful. The chapter President gave me a fancily gift-wrapped box to hold with the award in it. I had my notes. I was all set.
Comes the time for the presentations. The outgoing President gave gift certificates to her board members, officially passed the gavel to the new President, and then Pam came up on stage and started talking for a moment about me. I turned to Constance and Elisabeth and said "What's going on?" Elisabeth said "I don't know" and I watched Pam. Pam talked more about me and how much I'd done for the chapter over the last 13 years and then the new President called me up on stage. Ah, they're giving me a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble, I thought. Nope. I got up on stage and they told me that they'd pulled one over on me and they gave ME the Johnnie Kohl award! And then as I was stunned into silence, they laughed. A lot. :) Elisabeth got great photos of me looking flummoxed. They'd all been in on it the Board, several of my old friends... even Constance had known about it for a month! I didn't guess, even at the last minute, and no one, NO ONE, had cracked a smile around me. I was kept completely in the dark while all this was going on around me. The outgoing and incoming Presidents said that they'd done it not only to honor the continuing contributions I've made to the Society and the profession, but also for the sheer pleasure of having 30 seconds of silence from me. Haw haw haw haw!
Well, I have to say that I have never been so "had" in all my life! It was a truly wonderful experience and I am deeply honored at being made a fool of in such a grand fashion. ) Everyone thought Pam was being really mean, keeping me dancing like that, but they were really impressed with what she'd done... and no one wanted her to stop jerking me around about it. Elisabeth says that I had provided the conspirators with hours of amusement at my general cluelessness. She suggested as she was leaving the meeting that maybe Constance needed a piece of string to lead me home with. :) :) Nobody quite expected that I'd fall for this one so hard, but I sure did--it was a hook, line, and sinker kinda job. As I said with a red face to the audience Tuesday night, "Well, when bigger fools are made, I'll *be* them!"
In mid-May, I went to Cincinnatti, OH, for the annual STC conference. That was okay, but I didn't get enough sleep getting there and was sleep-deprived the whole trip. :( I got to see Phylise and Paul, though, and met any number of new and wonderful people. I came back, signed a book contract for The RoboHELP 2000 Bible, wrote an article for the July 1999 issue PC Magazine entitled Creating Your Own MP3 Files, did a short contract for Sierra Online that took up too much time but made a lot of money, and worked out at the gym 3 or 4 times a week on a new training program.
At this point in September 1999 as I write this, Elisabeth's finished the Visio book and will be joining me as we'd planned on the RoboHELP book, I've got two other books in process on the side--"MP3 for Musicians" (with the Sandy Bradley, noted stage and music star) and "Peachtree 7.0 Made Easy." The former is a book that's a superset of the previous MP3 book, written for musicians on how they can promote themselves on the Net. The latter is Yet Another Peachtree book, and it'll be actually updated by Connie Brenden, because I haven't got the time to write it, nor the patience to deal with the ya-yas at Peachtree again. I'll have more information about those two books in a few months, doubtless, with web pages 'n everything. Somewhere in this flurry of books, I'll hit the 5-million-word mark, too. To quote Neil Simon, "'I am now capable of committing the perfect crime, as I no longer have any fingerprints.'"
I recently had a dear friend from high school named Pam get in touch with me. We talked for hours and hours on the phone. That was grand; I hadn't heard from her for 26 years. Another friend to carry forward into the future! I'm so happy to have reconnected with her.
The next few months promise to be hideously busy with writing, but they should be pretty good. I recently donated my 68th pint of blood (that's 8-1/2 gallons so far). I have high hopes for my royalties for next year and I'm already lining up book #22 to start in February. Constance and I still don't feel one bit closer to making our move to Ireland, but we're coming up on our fifth anniversary together, and that's something in itself.
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