We did the fair last weekend, so this weekend, with our friends Phyllis and Lavon in town, we decided to go to the zoo.

There were animals!


Unofortunately, they were mostly plastic.

Ah, Billings, the only city that could have a zoo without animals. We walked around for a good 15 minutes, saying things like, "Let's go there, maybe there are animals there!"



Alas, there were not.

Finally, we found a sign for a Red Panda.

Lavon saw it, we didn't, as we were too slow. She reported seeing a red tail and something about the size of a squirrel, or maybe two squirrels. We believe that the Billings Zoo people taped two squirrels together. It is entirely possible, based on the evidence here.

There was one Siberian Tiger.

But we worried that he looked sullen, if not pissed. Given his options, I think he'd probably choose Siberia.

There were some Bald Eagles, although they seemed to have hair on top. Balding Eagles?

It was pretty, despite the lack of actual animals, and a nice place to walk. But this was my favorite sign:

Thank God for the Optimist Club, which has chosen to believe that ZooMontana is half full.
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...Wadorf to Your Astoria is done. Through. Finished.

This will be the final post here.

But fear not! If you go over to my brand-spankin' new website, billkonigsberg.com, you will see that I am still blogging over there. And on that site, powered by the fine folks at wordpress, you may comment using your Facebook account.

Sorry, Blogger. We liked you, but we needed more. We needed actual comments!

So thanks to those of you who perused this blog regularly.
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Just four more days in 2012... Hard to believe how quickly --

Who the hell am I kidding?

This was the slowest year in the history of man. I don't mean that in a bad way. It just went slowly. To me, last December seems like years ago.

It was a great, slow year:

1. My agent sold my next book, Openly Straight, to Arthur A. Levine Books (Scholastic).

2. I got involved in a very cool project at ASU, to be explained/described in due time.

3.

People often ask me: Bill, how did you find the perfect man?

Okay, no one outside of my head has ever asked me that. While people do often say nice stuff about Chuck, about him being handsome and funny and kind, I have found that people rarely ask questions:

A) Like the aforementioned outside of bad movies and trashy novels

B) Of me in general in which advice of any kind is sought.

So while this has not been asked of me, I do feel as though I have some expertise on the subject.

About four months ago, I took a home test and found that my blood sugar was in the "pre-diabetes" range.

I can't say I was shocked, because it wasn't the first time I'd had that result. But I was horrified, because it was rising from the last time I'd had it checked. I decided that if I wanted to avoid having diabetes, I needed to change my diet and my exercise.

I did both.
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Tomorrow is the first day of NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month. Every November, all sorts of writers take on the challenge of trying to write a draft of a novel in a month. Note that I say "Draft," because very, very few novels are finished in one draft, and while some writers might be able to draft and then revise a novel in a month, I don't think that's a very realistic goal.

For me, especially.

I'll tell you what, people who plan to vote for Mitt Romney:

I disagree with you, and not just a little. Your support of the Romney/Ryan ticket feels like a kick to the stomach, because as a gay man, this stuff is personal to me.

But you know what? Don't de-friend me.

In his Huffington Post blog post on Oct.
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What would happen at an all-boys boarding school in Massachusetts if an athlete came out as gay?

This is NOT the subject of my upcoming novel, Openly Straight. In fact, it is the setting for that novel, but it is the plot of my first novel, Out of the Pocket.

I mention it because of a comment I received last week from a former student at a school I visited three years ago.
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Here it is, boys and girls! The cover of my forthcoming novel "Openly Straight."

Like it? I love it!

I love that it is a visual representation of the story. Given a choice of all the labels my main character, Seamus Rafael Goldberg, can choose, he chooses the most innocuous one. He just wants to be a "normal kid."

I had no idea, when I wrote this, about how much I was writing about myself. That's how clueless I can be about myself.

Today I've decided to be one of those helpful authors and let you know what happens when you attempt to use copywritten song lyrics in your novel. So if you are not a regular reader of this blog, I'm guessing you found me because you just used those lyrics to Rapture by Blondie in your novel, and then you thought, "Wait. Can I do this?"

The answer is: yes and no.

I love using lyrics.
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We are back from our first full-fledged vacation in about three years!

Chuck, Mabel and I went to Northern California for two weeks, and what can I say? Paradise!

We had such an amazing time doing nothing and loving it. We drove about 900 miles each way and stayed for nine days at a place called Driftwood Bungalow in Manchester, California. It's about 150 miles north of San Francisco, about 30 miles south of Mendocino.

Nothing is there, and that's how we wanted it.
Waldorf to Your Astoria
Waldorf to Your Astoria
Waldorf to Your Astoria
The blog of author Bill Konigsberg
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About Me
Tempe, AZ, United States
Author of Lambda Literary Award-winning novel OUT OF THE POCKET (Dutton). For more information, go to www.billkonigsberg.com
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