Gave away an I WILL KEEP YOU ALIVE.
It happened like this.
Faithful readers will know that I am a Mended Hearts volunteer, a program in which people who have had heart surgery visit hospital patients, who have just had or are about to have similar surgeries. We answer their questions and address their concerns as someone who has beenthere; done that. We are, we say, “Vertical role models.”
The last patient I saw was an 80-year-old with white hair and a red scar showing, mid-chest, through which his aortic valve had been removed. His cardiologist was Dr. E.
“My cardiologist’s in the same office,” I said.
“Who’s your cardiologist?” he said.
“Dr. M,” I said.
“I know her,” he said. “I love her.”
“We love her too,” I said.
“She saved my life,” he said.
“She saved my life too,” I said. “What kind of work did you do?”
“I was a lawyer. Civil litigation.”
“I was a lawyer too. Workers’ comp.”
“We should be friends,” he said.
So I sent him my (and Adele’s) book.
In other news…
1.) Received my contributor’s copy of SPEAKING OF ATLANTIC CITY (Bodoff and Toscano, eds.), in which my story “A Palace of Wisdom” appears. I will be writing more about it in a few days, so I will leave it there for now.
2.) Our café anthology is only moments from the printer. (My check is already en route.) Our last board-of-directors meeting resolved ISBN (No), TOC and page numbers (Yes), and hiring a self-publishing “guru” to guide us further for $80/hour (NO, NO, NO). We withdrew our offer to sell discounted copies to contributors (Each will receive one free one), agreed to split all costs, divide all remaining books, and allow each of us to do what we want with our copies. Everyone is still talking to everyone else.
Fingers crossed the files we send the printer are files the printer can work with.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.