Losing Everything

I exaggerate.

I don’t mean that I’ve lost everything, I lost everything on my computer two weeks and two days ago. My computer’s hard drive collapsed, broke, fell apart, stopped working. Everything that I’ve written over the last six or seven years is on that hard drive. Did I have a backup? Really, do you have to ask that? I’m so barely computer literate that I thought I was backing up because I was hitting the save button; also I have something called a Time Capsule, which an Apple guy sold me over the phone years ago, assuring me that the capsule would save everything. I thought all I had to do was plug it in.

So, now I’m coming out of my mourning period and getting over the idea that a) I can’t afford the thousands to reconstruct the hard drive and b) I don’t even remember all of what was on it.

I’m moving forward. I’m going to use my first generation iPad when the keyboard that I just ordered arrives and eventually I’ll haul myself back to an Apple store and buy a new laptop and a backup whatever that thing is called.

The good news is that I’d emailed my book to my agent, Faith, months ago. The REALLY GOOD NEWS is that the book has been sold. Welcome to My Breakdown will be published by Atria Books in May 2014.

I’d gotten the news about my book and about Baldwin getting accepted to Sarah Lawrence within the same week. It was a great three days.

Then I got sick and lost my voice for a week, we got hit with a giant tax bill, dropped…nope, I’m not going to start enumerating here for fear of tempting some Murphy’s Law god to come back around to pay me another visit, or three.

I’m really just telling you all this computer stuff as a way of explaining why I haven’t been blogging.

Keep checking though. I’m borrowing Baldwin’s laptop for the few moments she lets me pry it out of her hands.

Soon I’ll be up and running again, this time with a backup.