The Surreal Life

So, I just got back from my lunch break. How did you spend your lunch break, Blogagaard? Shit man, thanks for asking! I hung around Cedar/Riverside getting my picture taken for a local newspaper article and feeling very much embarrassed! If you know me at all, you know I am not such a fan of pictures of myself in the first place. And now the coffee shop I usually go to knows my dirty writer secret! And for some reason I even gave the coffee shop owner my business card. Quite surreal. One more surreal event in a long list of such events since I've gotten my first novel. And now, without further ago, I give you my Getting Published is Fucking Surreal Top Ten List:

10. Returning to your hometown bookstore for a reading (Mankato).
9. That day my car wouldn't start and I jog-walked 3 frozen miles uphill to speak to a high school English classes at the St. Paul academy. Obviously, i arrived very sweaty and fierce.
8. The first time you see your word document turned into an actually book, with cool fonts and everything.
7. That KFAI radio interview I did. That same day my car wouldn't start.
6. Knowing that there's an Italian speaking person out there working on translating my book as we speak. Weird.
5. Having a full-time temp job, which I started the same week my book came out, and having said temp job lead to the reading I did at the U of MN.
4. That college girl who came to my Edina reading and made me sign something to prove she'd attended my reading. And she also took a picture with me. Then she said she didn't like to read but wanted to be a writer because she had all these stories in her head.
3. Getting that great Washington Post review.
2. Signing books for people with my fifth-grade-like signature. That's totally surreal.
1. When Stan lee sent me my own book, autographed with a congratulatory message.

5 comments:

Missy said...

Stan Lee sent you something that he touched?!?!?!?! Whoa. He knows Spiderman! SPIDERMAN!

David Oppegaard said...

Spiderman came to my fifth birthday party. For reals. He jumped off our second story balcony and when we all ran to look over the side, he'd disappeared.

Now that was cool.

Ian Rogers said...

That's a great list, David. I especially like #4. Classic.

David Oppegaard said...

Thanks, Ian. I like your website, very cool.

starshrines said...

The book from Stan Lee's my favorite of your top ten. And the Spiderman at your birthday party is one of my favorite Dave-in-real-life stories.

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