Fantastic News! (perhaps)

My chosen profession is not, actually, a fashionably disabled life of leisure. It isn't the life I had before this, either. But before THAT, whoa, mama! I had the life, I tell ya:

Working at the cool alternative newspaper in Denver, I not only enjoyed the passes to concerts and such, I made incredible contacts in my chosen field of Journalism. Because my boss--a mini-Anna Wintour--was cool and fashionable, guess who I got to meet? That's right, the scenesters and style mavens. This is all pre-"fashionista", mind you. We're talking early '90s, when grunge (which I despised) was king.

Anyway, I fell in with a bunch of Hooligans and started freelancing, writing music, art, and lifestyle features for mainstream and alternative magazines and newspapers. I threw wild Lounge parties, the guys dressed in smoking jackets and the gals in smoking vintage, crazy old cocktails from Esquire's Guide to Cocktail Parties, 1950 ed., and my beloved Lounge music. Good times.

I joined a writer's group and the group eventually published an anthology about Gen-X motherhood. The book tour was fun; all those hippies and weirdos and me, splendid in high heel sandals and a vintage bombshell Hawaiian dress. The writer's group had a leader, Ariel, and she said, laughing, "Who's the Hootchie Mama?"

Thus my 'zine was born. Hootchie Mama Magazine had a great run in Denver in 2001-2002. I was promoting non-stop, writing furiously, and staying up all night with Arturo (don't get any funny ideas, you finks) putting the issues to bed. My ex-hubby was the website guy--boy was our site salacious. Too bad it's gone forever.

Since then, since the breakdown and losing everything that mattered to me in life, I've had a bit of writer's bloc. Couldn't compose more than a few expletive-ridden lines in an email.

But now, oh boy! I'm unblocked. I've been writing like my mouse is on fire. I'm several chapters deep into a book I queried to a literary agent. I heard back from her--she wants more! :)

Ergo the "perhaps" part of the Fantastic News. Publishing is a perilous, back-stabbing, demonic world, and it's dangerous to get excited before the book is actually for sale on amazon.com.

Fingers crossed, y'all!