Right now my favorite thing is working to recall our absolute shitbag of a governor. He's been screwing up my state for more than a year. I want him out.

If the beard gives a modifier to seduction, I'm guessing it's not a positive one.

You do not know the first note of the music that moves me.

For me, language is something that I've always loved. When I read, that's what I look for. When I write, that's what I strive for.

That was another lesson I had learned perhaps too well: people meant pain.

It's like the query letter problem that I just mentioned, magnified a hundredfold. You might be good at telling a story, but that doesn't mean you know anything about marketing. Or layout. Or editing. Or publicity. Or selling your books for foreign markets.Everyone can point to a few examples of people that have done very well for themselves self-publishing. But honestly, those folks are lucky as lottery winners.

I knelt and opened up my lute case. Moving the lute aside, I pressed the lid of the secret compartment and twisted it open. I slid Threpe's sealed letter inside, where it joined the hollow horn with Nina's drawing and a small sack of dried apple I had stowed there. There was nothing special about the dried apple, but in my opinion if you have a secret compartment in your lute case and don't use it to hide things, there is something terribly, terribly wrong with you.