Lay Off

It occurs to me that all of the interesting things that are going to happen to me following my layoff may have already happened. Which would make this a singularly unfortunate time to start blogging about it. However, let's forge ahead and hope for the best.

I was laid off on February 10th, so I'll have to play a little catch-up here. The morning after I was let go, I wrote an essay about the experience and submitted it to the "Soapbox" column of Publishers Weekly, the book industry's trade magazine. I wanted to stay visible, and thought this would be a good way to put my name and status in front of the industry. I had written several humor pieces for PW over the last few years, so fortunately this was an avenue that was available to me.

Publishers Weekly accepted my essay, which was called "Lay Off," and it ran in the February 23rd issue. The response has been very satisfying. I think my favorite comment came from a college professor in Oklahoma, who said, “You don’t know me from Adam, but reading your ‘Soapbox’ piece in PW just now I felt as if I had just heard some bad news from my best friend." Nice.