11. BUTTERFLIES & ROCKS
Back (again) to our back-story:
The referral came indirectly through my journalist friend Julie, the one who gave me the Mazda that brought me here. Through her I had been introduced to bestselling author Laura Welles, who contacted me one day to ask me if I would be willing to take her place on a panel (“Second Acts in American Literary Lives: Are There Any?”) at a writer’s conference in Saratoga Springs, she herself having been food-poisoned by a spoiled batch of lobster bisque. Possibly because I had vented abundantly to her about it, Laura was aware of the sad saga of my perpetually evolving opus, and of the fact that Sally Treadwell, my agent, refused to represent it. To my surprise she asked to read the manuscript. To my greater surprise, a week later I foun
