The “Honest Scrap” Award

Last week, A Blog in the Rough tagged Dennis and me for the “Honest Scrap” meme, in which you have to list ten honest things about yourself, along with the exhortation “and make it interesting”.  Gosh, ten honest interesting things about me?  I’m not sure I can manage that, but let’s find out.  I’m pretty sure that by the time you’re done reading this list, you’ll consider me an even bigger geek than you do already.

1. I once declined an interview for a writing position with a local paper back in New York because the job involved calling people up and interviewing them, thus violating one of the rules about breaking into the writing field mentioned in AlmostGotIt’s two excellent posts from a couple of weeks ago.
2. My second agent was with a fee-charging agency.  I’ve seen arguments back and forth about paying your agent fees up front for services.  Some people think it’s fine, others think that if your agent only makes money when your book sells, they’ll be more motivated to sell it.  I can’t get inside any agent’s head, so all I’ll say is, I wouldn’t ever go with a fee-charging agent again.
3. I was my high school class valedictorian, which meant I had to give a speech at graduation.  I was pretty motivated to avoid giving a speech, but I was more motivated to avoid coming in second.
4. If you visit the web site of one of my now-defunct publishers, you will find that it has become an interracial porn site (at least, that’s what it was the last time I visited it).  I didn’t find out about this until some time after it happened, so for an indeterminate period, visitors to my old web site who clicked on my book link ended up seeing porn.  Oops.
5. I once wrote a text-based dungeon crawl game for the DOS computers in our high school computer room and gave copies to other students to play.  Some of them edited the code and changed the names of the monsters to other students and/or teachers.  I think all the copies ended up getting confiscated.
6. I still sometimes wish I had gotten an Commodore Amiga computer in college instead of a 286.  (I told you I was a geek.)
7. Whenever a film or book comes out with a plot essentially identical to one of my unpublished works (which has happened more than once), I entertain paranoid fantasies that the writer(s) somehow got hold of one of my submissions and stole my idea.  And if it sucks, I get annoyed, because I’m sure I could have done it better.
8. I somehow got talked into dressing up like a pirate and doing a polka routine at the San Diego Fred Astaire studio for a show that will be going on next Wednesday, February 11th, at 7pm.  I think it’s been at three or four years since the last time I did a routine, and I don’t even really know how to polka all that well, and I don’t really like dressing up in costumes.  If someone can explain why I agreed to do this, please let me know.
9. I thought I would ride my mountain bike all the time after we moved to California, but instead it’s been sitting in the garage for months.  I think it’s because we don’t really have proper forests out here, and while I thought that I liked riding my bike, what I actually liked was riding my bike in the forest.
10. All my cousins out here in California call me “Jimmy” and I kind of like it, because it makes me feel younger!  😉

According to the rules, I now have to tag seven others to do the Honest Scrap testifying.  That’s a lot of tagging, but here goes (feel free not to participate if you aren’t into blog tag):

• My writer friend from down under, Alyson
• My writer friend from Ohio, S. Le (Dennis gave her an honorary tag, but this is a real one)
• My writer friend Megan from Write Meg
• Amanda from New York City
• My poetic friend Shadow
• The Undead Blogger (“life” edition)
• Belle Narcissa

I encourage everyone to check out these blogs!  For more Honest Scrap and blog tag, check out Dennis’s post.