Sublime

I was an uncomfortable child, a small adult biding my time.

I’ve always been grateful (and somewhat amazed) that I read The Magic Mountain in my high school English class. That novel’s basic plot—a group of strangers are thrown together by circumstance and form a society in confinement—became the story line for just about everything I’ve ever written.

For the first time in my life, I was going to have money (paid out over three years in four installments), and the only thing I could think of to spend it on was having the air conditioner in my car fixed. It had been out for two years. Now that I had a book contract and an advance on the way, I went to a mechanic. He said the air conditioner was l