Pages

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Curated Author Quotes

For some time now on Facebook, I have been sharing author quotes on Tuesdays. I try to match these quotes to my own ideology behind why I write. It's kind of like a subtle author's statement of purpose, maybe similar to a teacher's statement of purpose or teaching philosophy? I thought it would be nice now that 2015 is over to post the entire list in one place. So here it is. Enjoy!

Cormac  McCarthy
“I don’t know why I started writing. I don’t know why anybody does it. Maybe they’re bored, or failures at something else.”

Gloria E. Anzaldúa
 “Why am I compelled to write? . . . Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and anger . . . To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, to preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispell the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit . . . Finally I write because I’m scared of writing, but I’m more scared of not writing.”

Mark Haddon
“I don’t remember deciding to become a writer.  You decide to become a dentist or a postman.  For me, writing is like being gay.  You finally admit that this is who you are, you come out and hope that no one runs away.”

Anaïs Nin
“Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.”

Alex Miller
“I write because I love writing. I think I became a writer in order to explore my ideas and responses to the world around me, which I often found it difficult to share with others. Also I liked my autonomy, and a writer can choose his or her own working hours – midnight to dawn or whenever. The difficulty of becoming a writer never bothered me. I knew it was going to work for me sooner or later. And if you’re a writer you don’t have to retire but can keep on doing the thing you love till you drop off the chair.”

John Green
“I believe there is hope for us all, even amid the suffering – and maybe even inside the suffering. And that’s why I write fiction, probably. It’s my attempt to keep that fragile strand of radical hope, to build a fire in the darkness.”

Charles Bukowski
“Writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.”

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
“Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”

Cheryl Strayed
“The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels…. These things are your becoming.”
Joe Bunting
“No one is born a writer. You must become a writer. In fact, you never cease becoming, because you never stop learning how to write. Even now, I am becoming a writer. And so are you.”

Anaïs Nin
“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.”

Henry Miller
“One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.”

Franz Kafka
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

Ezra Pound
“The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.”

David Foster Wallace
“The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows.”

Stanley Schmidt
"Resist the temptation to try to use dazzling style to conceal weakness of substance."

Harlan Ellison
"People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it."

Melissa Scott
"Writing isn't generally a lucrative source of income; only a few, exceptional writers reach the income levels associated with the best-sellers. Rather, most of us write because we can make a modest living, or even supplement our day jobs, doing something about which we feel passionately. Even at the worst of times, when nothing goes right, when the prose is clumsy and the ideas feel stale, at least we're doing something that we genuinely love. There's no other reason to work this hard, except that love."

Maya Angelou
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Allen Ginsberg
“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”

Oscar Wilde
“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”


William Faulkner
“A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.” 

Sunday, September 27, 2015

The Executive Summary is a Private Affair

What I find interesting is a lot of authors talk about putting together an author business plan, but at the same time I don't see concrete examples of what these author business plans look like. I am a big proponent of writing by example, and writing the executive summary has been difficult a difficult process. Typical executive summaries highlight what's inside the entire business plan and is written toward investors. The executive summary generates a buy-in, but as an author you are not asking others to invest money; you are asking yourself to invest in you. An author executive summary, to my way of thinking, is more personal, more intimate. You don't have to share the executive summary publicly because the executive summary is a private affair. Thus, also probably the reason I don't see author's executive summaries posted online.
If you have written an author business plan, I want to know. Specifically, I would like to see the executive summary. How did you write the summary? What was your process? What was your thinking when you drafted the executive summary? You are more than welcome to post your executive summary or business plan writing adventures in the comments below. Or, if you want to be more private about the affair, feel free to email me. I promise not to spam you. :)
I have found several online resources for the business plan's executive summary from purely an entrepreneurial pursuit, a more traditionally aligned "Let's make money by selling stuff and/or services" attitude.
                   Entrepreneur has a nice template.
                   Mplans, which basically sells business writing software, has a decent executive summary sample that is reminiscent of my pizza shop experience.
                   Alxel Schultze, CEO of Society3 posted a run down of a one pager, which I really like.
                   Amy Fontinelle wrote a piece on Investopedia.com titled Business Plan: Composing Your Executive Summary.

I've used these sites to assist me in composing my own executive summary.

What I liked in particular about Fontinelle's piece was that she quoted William Gregory O, an Illinois attorney and owner of the law firm Lex Scripta LLC and Mike Coleman president of The Startup Garage, and these two dudes basically say if the executive summary is not engaging, then potential investors won't look beyond that page and won't bother investing. Because the investor in your author career is you, the executive summary is written to grab your attention and no one else matters. My executive summary is personal and fits only my personal needs. It excites me to read my own executive summary. I want to buy this guy lunch and a beer:

I am an author embracing the creative life and helping other authors to do the same. I write mainstream literary fiction and fantasy fiction. My audience includes independent authors, literary readers, and fantasy readers. Currently, my audience resides on Amazon. Eventually, my audience will also reside in brick and mortar bookstores. I sell stories. More specifically, I sell stories that not only entertain but hopefully speak to a greater truth in relation to the human experience. I also sell the author experience, although not necessarily for monetary gain. I help people to succeed in their writing endeavors.


This, of course, is only the first paragraph of the executive summary. The rest of the piece needs to highlight the entire author business plan. After the entire plan has been drafted, I will be returning to the executive summary to include the plan's highlights—so as this blog series continues, look forward to that future post. Next week: the business description.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Write Another Book: Setting Goals

Goals for me, personally, often are confused with what I want to happen in relation to events that I cannot control. My wife and I went over next year's summer budget. I want to take time off to hike the Appalachian Trail. She wants to spend time in Ohio with the extended family as well as take our kids on several day and weekend trips. Except for the Ohio bit, none of this will happen unless I am able to make $XX,XXX by late May 2016. In addition, last week's post dealt with annual budgetary needs. So my immediate gut-level reaction is to set a goal that states I will make $XX,XXX off my writing by May 2, 2016.

That dollar amount end goal will get me into trouble. I will experience complete, utter failure not because I don't think my writing is worth $XX,XXX, but because I have zero control over how many people decide to purchase my books. It's like saying, "I will get 20,000 Twitter followers by December 31st 2015."

A distinct difference lies between wants and goals. A goal moves you in the direction of a want, but does not guarantee the want. A goal is an actionable achievable that you have total control over. A goal is a choice. You don't choose who follows you or how many people follow you on Twitter. How and what you tweet, on the other hand, you do have complete control over. You can choose to tweet or you can choose not to tweet. You can choose to tweet the annoying "BUY MY BOOK" or you can choose to promote healthy online relationships through your tweets. You can choose to tweet once a day or 50 times a day. You can choose to deliver pizzas or you can choose to write another book.

------------------------------------------------------CLICK TO TWEET--------------------------------------------------------
                                        Via @SteveBargdill http://ctt.ec/035Qk+ #writetip
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, first and foremost a goal is a choice to do something and to complete that something. The goal should work toward what you want, but achieving the goal is not the all-beat end result. The goal is relevant to what you want—to what you are going after and chasing with passion.

The goal is specific. To continue with my Twitter analogy, I want 20,000 followers and the only way to move toward that want is to tweet—but tweet what exactly, and how many times? A specific goal moving toward 20,000 Twitter followers might read like: "I will tweet at least 10 times a day for the next three months." Better yet, the goal might read: "I will tweet at least 10 times a day for the next three months. 5 tweets will share a useful article I found online. 3 tweets will be retweets, and two tweets will direct my current followers to either my blog or my Facebook page. Additionally, on Mondays I will participate in #FF."[1] Notice the time component to the goal. The goal is an ongoing activity that runs for three whole months. Goals, therefore, are linked to a time frame. Lastly, goals are measurable. At the end of the time-frame that the goal is linked to, you can look at whether the goal had been or had not been accomplished. You can examine your Twitter feed and actually count how many times you tweeted over the last three months; you can check to see if you actually followed the mix of tweet-types. And lastly, you can examine whether that particular goal you set brought you any closer to those 20,000 followers.

In my last post, Dealing with Realities, I figured I need to publish 13 more titles to begin to see more income from my writing. I also learned I need to write faster. In my Vision Casting post, I mentioned that I want to see my novels sitting on actual brick and mortar bookstore shelf. Lastly, I'm concerned with visibility, marketing and sales. My goals need to chase after those wants. I've listed the goals just below here. In addition, I've limited the goals to 30 days. At the end of 30 days, I will measure my success and/or failure and change accordingly.

  1. I will keep a writer’s log for 30 days. In this log, I will set daily writing word count goals aimed at pushing my limitations beyond the average 2000 words per day. At the end of each day, I will log the number words I have written. If I fall short of the daily word count goal, I will explain why. If I exceed my word count goal I will explain why.
  2. For additional accountability concerning the number of words I write per day, I will tweet a word count before I go to bed. I will not comment in the tweet whether I hit my target word count or not.
  3. In 30 days, I will complete a rough draft of a grammar guide aimed at fiction authors. I will use my Top 20 Grammar Error blog series as a template for this grammar book.
  4. In 30 days, I will complete the writing for the business plan for authors blog series. Once the series is written, I will outline a book based upon the posts.
  5. By the end of 30 days, I will begin a blog series on Scrivener Writing software. I will have at least 3 posts completely drafted and the rest of the series outlined. I will look forward to, but not yet work on, converting this series of blog posts into book form as well.
  6.  I will begin writing a five book series in the neo-noir genre about newspaper reporter Jack Boomer. Each book must be roughly 35,000 words. At the end of 30 days, I will have completed the rough draft of the first book. Additionally, at the end of 30 days, I will have outlined the rest of the series. When I write, my individual scenes normally run at approximately 500 words. This means at the end of 30 days, I will have outlined a total of 280 scenes. As these books are completed, they will be posted on Amazon.
  7. In the next 30 days, I will send out 13 short stories to various literary magazines for publication. These stories have already been written, so only the queries need sent.
  8. I will research literary agents. By the end of 30 days, I will have a list of at least 10 literary agents who I think might be interested in my WIP Breath: An American Story.
I believe the above goals fit my needs. The first two goals are aimed at writing more per day. Goals three and four address my blog, a place my presence is visible online. Number seven also is directed toward visibility. Number eight is aimed at that vision cast of seeing my books in an actual real-life bookstore. Overall, the list aims towards another eight books, not including Breath, which I plan to market toward traditional publishing as opposed to my efforts through Amazon.

I considered adding more goals for the next 30 days; however, eight began to seem overwhelming. I think when you get to the point where you are starting to feel overwhelmed, that's a good stopping point. Goals are meant to push you in the direction of your wants. That doesn't mean stressing out about everything you have to do, but it does mean stretching further out in a direction you have previously thought you could not reach. Get that ladder out and start up some goals!

I'm of course not the only one talking about writing and setting goals. Check these sites out:
Setting Effective Writing Goals by Moira Allen
Goal Setting Strategies for Writers by Mindy McHorse
How to Set SMART Writing Goals by Dustin Wax
Self-Publish Like a Pro: Setting Goals for Your Book and Career by Alexandra Fletcher

Next Week: The Executive Summary!




[1]For those uninitiated, #FF stands for "Follow Friday." You tweet the names of people that you think are cool, that you think others should follow as well. Traditionally, this is done on Fridays, but I am weird and do not follow the rules, so I tweet #FFs on Mondays. 

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Dealing in Realities

With any business, the end result should be a focus on money. As I stated in my vision casting post, for me writing is not just a job but a lifestyle choice, and the writing has to support that lifestyle. It does not have to necessarily support employees, but it does have to first and foremost support my individual needs.

My individual needs include paying out some money every month.

Here's my monthly budget:

Rent
nnnn
Renter's Insurance
nn
Cable/Internet
nnn
Gas
nnn
Auto maintenance
nnnn
Auto Insurance
nn
Groceries
nnn
Dance
nnn
Karate
nnn
Running Money
nnn
Bus Pass
nn
Life Insurance
nnn
Savings
nnn
Total
nnnn
annual
nnnnn

I have blacked out the numbers for, well, obvious reasons, but these are the numbers I have to hit with my writing for me to be able to live comfortably. Does not really include upcoming college loan payments, or my daughter's soon to be a college expense. In fact, the budget above leaves a lot of stuff out, but this quick and dirty monthly budget gives me a number to shoot for.

Here's the kicker: every time I sell a book on Amazon, that brings in $2.05. That royalty number is not a secret. Anyone can look it up.

In my vision casting, I mentioned a part of this whole thing is teaching writing at the university level. I'm doing that now, though it is not creative writing but developmental writing and beginning college composition and some writing center coaching/consulting. Not totally where I want to be, but pretty dang close and on my way, so I'm going to include that income as writing income. Teaching adjunct covers rent and gas.

That leaves me with monthly expenses of $n,nnn, which means I need to sell on Amazon nnnn books a month. I'll be honest: that number seems like an absolute impossibility to achieve.

Chris Mullins has something different to say, but I think he is over optimistic. He suggests a committed author should sell way over between 300 and 700 per title. For argument sake, that means a successful author should have 800 sales per month per book. Which means, to hit that number a successful author needs to have at minimum 2 ½ books published on Amazon. I actually do have that many books on Amazon.

Mullins also suggests the book should be ranked in the top 10,000. Actually, he uses an author ranking, and I'm not quite positive where he's getting this number from. Amazon? Maybe?

My novel Banana Sandwich hovers right around the 10,000 mark for its genre. The novel is ranked 1,309,362 in the best sellers at the time of this writing. Wasteland, Neighborhood Mums, Color of Hope, those rankings are much more dismal than Banana Sandwich. I don't even want to talk about those numbers.

For 2014, I made seventeen dollars in royalty checks. Thus far this year: eight dollars.

Maria Force published some harder 'soft' numbers not based on as much speculation as Mullin's ideas on where an author should be rank-wise for sales. Force reports 2012 sales figures per author per unit sold. The lowest number on that list is 5 total unit sales in a single year, and the highest number on that list is 646,908 unit sales in a single year. That means, one author sold over fifty-three thousand books per month.

More specifically, Force highlights Liliana Hart's success: 441,069 sales in one year, never been traditionally published. In 2010, Hart had zero sales, and in 2011 she had 76,527 sales. By the way, I just liked Hart's Facebook page. My question has to do with what happened for Hart between 2010 and 2011.

Man, listen, I'm content with a starting point. Everyone needs a starting point. The numbers Hart shares suggest overnight success. We all know that's not true. Overnight success means sweat, blood, and tears that no one ever sees. A closer examination of Force's post suggests authors didn't really start hitting significant sales numbers until they had around 15 titles available. For example, Laura Hunsaker has one title available and only 193 sales. Juliana Stone seems to be the exception in Force's list; Stone has three titles and 19,000 unit sales.

Practically, that means I need 13 more titles available for purchase to hit Mullin's magic number of the top 10,000 ranked authors.

Here's the bad news: on average it takes me about a year to write a novel. To achieve 13 more titles, I'll be 55 years old.

Here's the immediate take away: I need to change.


Next week: Starting Point Goals

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Vision Casting


Last week, we discussed the epiphany of having an author business plan. Today is about vision casting,[1] and I've actually been avoiding writing this particular blog. What I'm writing is not anything I haven't already thought of. There has been countless midnight after the kids go to bed discussions with my wife where we have talked about all of this stuff I'm going to share with you today. This is private stuff. Soul-searing stuff—dreams and hopes of a not yet reality. A reality I am unsure if will actually manifest. The following eleven points encapsulate my personal vision cast.


  1. I want my novels sitting on actual brick and mortar bookstore shelves.
  2. I want to publish and work closely with, but not necessarily edit a well-respected literary journal.
  3. I want a house with two barns & a guest cottage
  4. I want to provide writer in residence programs and utilize the cottage on my property for this purpose where an author can reside rent free and most meals provided while he or she crafts art.
  5. One of the barns I want to convert to a radio and video broadcast studio where I can produce online training courses for writers.
  6. The other barn I want to host writing conferences, workshops, and classes.
  7. I want to purchase an Espresso Book Machine and publish independent titles that would be distributed to indie bookstores only.
  8. I want to open my own bookstore/coffee shop and host nationally known authors on live radio.
  9. I want to teach fiction writing and literature at the university level.
  10. I want a personal assistant.
  11. I want a team of enthusiastic, passionate people around me


Why eleven points? Why not ten or five or fifteen? I don't know. I simply wrote down what I wanted my future to look like; what I wanted my career to be. Who I wanted to be.

I believe writing is not just a job; not just something one does in his or her spare time as a hobby. I believe writing is a lifestyle. Writing is about how I want to live my life. It's how I want to contribute to the greater world around me. Coming from this perspective, my author business plan will probably look considerably different than the plan I created for the pizza shop.

Obviously, this vision is my vision and highly personal. You may not relate to any of the stuff on the list. You might think I'm crazy. That's okay because this blog is about the process of casting your vision. To create your own vision cast, imagine yourself five, ten years out into the future. What do you want that future to look like? Write it down.

Next week, we'll look at some of my immediate realities. That is, what I want need to accomplish now.





[1]Vision casting is normally done by church pastors. The pastor and his/her team communicate their goals for the church to the congregation. Often times, vision casting is couched in terms of what God wants for the church. The vision is sometimes far flung into the future.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Success in Failure

I have this weird relationship with my writing. It's one of the reasons I disdain MFA programs—they are full of people who believe they are artists.[1] I am not an artist, and that statement is not true. Writing is an art form, and I have to own that, but I also want to sell my art so I can eat and pay bills, and that makes my writing a business. The question becomes, how one balances those two very disparate pursuits: one of art and one of business. I will be the first to tell you that I am not very good at the latter.
Years back, I attempted opening a pizza shop. The restaurant never opened,[2] but I did come out of the experience with a very thorough business plan. I had pepperoni priced out to the ounce, and I knew who my competition was. I knew what the restaurant's mission was, and yeah the restaurant did have a mission. The last few days I've been thinking about the pizza shop—not about what went wrong, but about what went right. I had, for example, catering contracts in place before I was even anywhere near opening—before I even had the pizza oven. And speaking of the pizza oven, I managed to get a local company to move a PS360 Middleby Marshall conveyor belt oven weighing over a thousand pounds with a 90-inch width through a 32-inch wide door for free. And oh, yeah. I didn't have to pay rent on the restaurant until six months after opening. I knew how many deliveries Domino's down the street made a night because I sat in my car across the street and counted how many times their delivery drivers left.
There was a lot of success hidden away in the failure.
Now, here I am today with two novels sitting on Amazon that in the three years the books have been for sale, I have to account for their effort several very nice reviews and a twenty-five dollar royalty check. I have a web page that I pay twenty dollars per year on, and I have maintained that web page for three years. I have made negative thirty-five dollars. By all accounts, this is a much worse business venture than the pizza shop. But, you know: my writing is an art and if you write a good book people on their own will find that good book and that's all you have to do.
Because it's writing, and because I've been told by so many people that writing is just a hobby and you can't count on income from writing because it's art and no one can make money at art, and I have even heard myself utter these words to myself…. because it's writing, I don't take what I do seriously enough for my writing to make money. This attitude must change. I have to look at that 32-inch door and stand beside my 90-inch oven and say, "This is not a problem."
What was successful about my pizza shop was the business plan. What isn't successful about my writing business is I have no plan.  I need to do some back-tracking. That doesn't mean removing my novels from Amazon, but that does mean putting together an author business plan, and following the plan. Business plans are normally a private ordeal—something very few people see: the CEO, the banker, your landlord. One of the things I believe though, being an author means giving. Over the next several weeks, I'll draft my author business plan together. I'm going to share the plan and its writing process right here on this blog.
My pizza shop plan had seven chapters: the executive summary, the business description, market strategies, competitive analysis, design and development plan, the operations and management plan, and financial factors. Those seven chapters are pretty typical in a business plan. I'm not sure at this point whether I need all of those chapters or if I need different chapters or exactly what I'm getting myself into. I've done some initial research and have discovered that business plans for authors are not unheard of. The following are links I've so far found useful:

      -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
      -----------------------------------------------------------------------------


What I'm going to do next over the next few days is to study the above links a bit more in depth. I am not going to comment on them outright. I'll leave it for you to decide whether they were useful articles or not. My next post will be on vision casting, and we'll see where that takes us.




[1]I say this with jealousy. I chose to do a MA. My wife was recently accepted to the University of New Hampshire's MFA program. I spent a semester in the Iowa Writer's Workshop as an undergraduate. I have dreams of applying to the low residency program at Fairleigh Dickinson University after I attain a PhD.
[2]Let's just say I didn't do my due diligence. The landlord went through a bankruptcy and the repossessing bank decided I was one of the landlord's assets. It was a painful moment.

Some Flash Fiction Just Because

Cooking Pumpkins

Coffee is not enough.
There is no day or night. Only periods of light. And dark. Sleep comes between kids and school and a third shift-job. Sleep apnea without the CPAP—multiple trips to the bathroom for no reason, smoking cigarettes in the back yard until the entire pack is gone, fits of gasping for oxygen. The wife upstairs. The couch is hard and never enough money. The two year old refuses to drink the powdered milk from the food bank. The food bank that you did not know your sister-in-law worked at. Your big-assed better than thou sister-in-law who sits in that small, cramped office with her government forms asking questions about nutrition, and handing recipes for pumpkin strudel pie. A week ago you bought three pumpkins and took the fucking time to carve three fucking jack-o-lanterns with your eight year old daughter. You took the pumpkin innards and made cookies and stew and bread and meatless pumpkin burgers and roasted the fucking damn seeds because you didn't really want to carve the jack-o-lanterns, but the pumpkins were the cheapest thing in the grocery store that week.
What the hell does your sister-in-law know about cooking pumpkins?
“How's the wife?” she asks.
“Fine,” you say. “Everything's fine.”