The long silence has ended. This is what the Interested Editor at the Major House had to say in response to my agent's gentle inquiry:

Sorry to be slow--I've been fighting in my corner here, and in the end I failed. The draft of the letter I was writing you follows--I'm very upset I couldn't do it, but there were just too many questions in people's minds. Anyhow, here's the letter, and I'll send the materials back today. Best for now, **:

Dear ******:

Sorry to report that I won't be making an offer for THE ACCIDENTAL TERRORIST by William Shunn. As I told you, I've never come across a manuscript that caused as much consternation—consternation in a good way, mind—than this one. Most of the editorial group read most of it, and all agreed that it's very well written, very compelling, and not a little disturbing; Lord knows what's coming in part two. Mr. Shunn can really handle a tale, and his writing line-to-line is never less than impressive. Unfortunately, though, in the end we just couldn't work out how best to publish this book—the sting in the tale is perhaps too sharp, especially as it does shine such a light back on the rest of the book. A Mormon coming of age story with a terroristic ending—I just couldn't convince my colleagues how best to read a substantial readership with that as my hook. It may be that other editors see the opportunities more clearly, and I hope that's the case as the book is certainly not one I'll easily forget. If Mr. Shunn's work should come free in the future, I'd be very happy to reconsider it—he's a real writer, that much is for certain.

The material you submitted is enclosed, and thanks, as always, for thinking of me.

Yours,
**** *******

I installed the latest version of Eudora a couple of weeks ago, and I immediately became curious as to why two or three chile-pepper icons were appearing next to some of the messages in my inbox.

Investigation revealed this to be a mood indicator, although I had no idea until a few days ago what that meant.

It seems that this new Eudora scans incoming and outgoing messages for offensive words and then rates the text according to how incendiary it is. If you try sending a message with a bad word in it, you get a warning like this:

Your message to "laura" regarding "Nice ass" is the sort of thing that might get your keyboard washed out with soap, if you get my drift. You might consider toning it down.

Send anyway? Cancel?

On another level, I don't know whether the motherly tone of the warning more offends me or amuses me. I don't yet know whether or not I'm going to disable this feature.

Oh, by the way, how did I first discover this warning message? I was sending a perfectly innocuous message to my friend Stephenie Van Dyke.

Once in a while in my Usenet newsgroup, I post the current state of the table of contents from my book, just so I can demonstrate to myself that I'm making progress. If you don't care for statistics or for recitations of accomplishments that don't affect you, you might want to steer clear now.

I finished Part I of my memoir late in August (including an interlude that forms the connective tissue between the two halves), then shipped it off to my agent. That was 25 chapters plus a prelude and an interlude, and it amounted to a horrifying total of 523 manuscript pages.

Over the next few weeks, I whittled about 70 pages (and two full chapters) out of the manuscript, completely replaced the prelude, wrote a synopsis of the second half, and let my agent start submitting the thing. I also carved two excerpts out of what I had already done for her to try selling to magazines.

This was all a lot of work, and it took me a while after that to get my notes for the second half organized, get my head around the shape of the rest of the book, and get all the necessary loafing out of my system. It seemed like I'd been away from the book itself for quite a while when I finally sat down a week and a half ago, at last, to start producing new material. This morning before work I finished what is now Chapter 24, the first chapter of Part II of the book.

This brings the current page total back up to 478, and it is not without a certain pride that I present the latest table of contents:

And there you have it. No applause necessary. Just doing my job—finally.

I'd been smelling the smoke for a while and wondered vaguely what was burning. So had everyone else. We even talked about it, but no one knew what it was.

This was yesterday afternoon at the office. I'd been trying to catch up on some overdue LiveJournal comments, and I was exchanging a flurry of email with Eleanor as we tried to work out a place to meet for drinks that evening. Then my coworker Monjay poked her head around my cubicle wall and said, in her soft, unflappable voice, "There's a small fire on the first floor, and the other half of the floor is all evacuated."

I wasn't sure what to do with this information, and I'm not sure many of us were. We heard no fire alarm. Surely there was no danger.

Then my friend Geoff, our lead Muppet illustrator and creator of the wonderful caricature on the front page of Inhuman Swill, strolled by and drily said, "Hey, there's a fire in the building. I'm thinking we should all get outside."

So I gathered up all my stuff, which you're not supposed to do in a situation like this—Monjay helpfully pointed out that I had left my jacket behind ("It's a nice one, too"), so I went back to get it, pausing again to send Ellie a quick email telling her about the fire—and I headed out to the lobby. When I got there, I was alone, but I now could hear the fire alarm ringing on the other half of the floor.

As I looked through the glass doors out to the elevator lobby, trying to find the emergency stairs, I spotted the door I wanted—because a fireman armed with a flashlight had just emerged therefrom. I hastened myself over to the door and slipped through, joining a crowd of women from the upper floors who were streaming down the fire stairs to street level.

I found many of my coworkers outside, including Geoff who said proudly, "I did my part. I got all my people out." The thing was, it turned out there were other coworkers of mine who never left the building at all.

I walked down the street and called Ellie from my cell phone, and we arranged to have drinks earlier than I'd thought I'd be able to. Then I slipped off to the subway. I'm no fool.

I learned this morning that the fire was in a restaurant on the ground floor of our building, and that it never posed much danger. That's as may be—I'm still disturbed that I never heard a fire alarm, and that the evacuation plan we've all been drilled on seemed to go right out the window. (I heard there was one man from the executive offices—one man—wandering through all the Sesame Workshop floors spreading the word that people should leave.) What ever happened to the floor fire marshalls? Why were the elevators never shut down?

What happens if this happens again, late one night when I'm working alone? Will my family get a visit from a Muppet bearing a folded Sesame Street flag and the sad news?

Halsted's entry about the SAG commercial actors' strike reminds me of an incident from my past that used to be part of my memoir but is one of those bits that has ended up on the cutting-room floor—not because it was a bad bit of writing, but just because it turned out not to fit. I thought I'd rescue that bit from eternal obscurity and reuse it here:

I have a close friend in Utah named Scott. He's a writer and an actor, and for the past several years he's supplemented his sometimes lean income with guest appearances in television series and made-for-cable movies. He's also a devout Mormon, and more clear-headed about it than just about anyone I know.

One Sunday in 1994, Scott had asked me to drive him the forty miles to Salt Lake so he could attend the callbacks on a movie role he was auditioning for. His car had given up the ghost again, as it did every full moon or so. I readily agreed.

That summer was the last time I attended church on anything like a regular basis. It was my last-ditch effort—or so I thought—to get my life together and back on the right track. I was attending a student ward at BYU—a congregation made of entirely of eighteen- to thirty-year-olds, not all of them college students, but all looking for that certain special someone, that magic mate, that bright twin spirit from our premortal existence whose eyes you would meet with a shock of recognition, and you both would know you had found your foreordained eternal companion at last.

Sacrament meeting ended in the early afternoon, and as I was gathering up my notebook and my scriptures—the same oversized set from my mission—a girl named Monica sidled over to me. Monica was attractive, with her light brown hair and long patterned skirts, but she didn't make my heart turn over in my chest. You could already see the suburban housewife inside her, struggling to emerge. Still, I thought she might be fun to make out with.

"Hey, there," she said, smiling, not quite meeting my eye, swaying forward and back on her feet with her hands behind her back.

"Hey."

She turned her head so one eye looked up at me through a veil of shiny hair. "So, are you going to stay after today and join us for choir practice? We could really use that nice baritone . . ."

I grimaced. Like the lacrosse player in American Pie, I did want to show her what a sensitive, expressive guy I could be, but the timing just wasn't working out. "I'm sorry, Monica, I'm not going to be able make it today."

She pouted. "What—not Sunday dinner with your family again?"

"No, not this week. It's just—I have this friend, his car doesn't work, he needs to go to a movie audition in Salt Lake. These are callbacks. He's made the first cut."

"On a Sunday?"

"Hey, that's when they do it."

"Doesn't sound like a very uplifting Sabbath activity," she said with a sniff. "What movie is it?"

"Halloween 6."

The way her lip curled, you would have thought I'd just waved a beaker of vomit under her nose. "Oh, my heck! That's awful! I hope he doesn't get it!"

My mouth fell open. When I found my tongue, this is what I said: "Why in the world would you hope that? Why would you hope that my friend, who works in a nursing home, would miss out on the opportunity to earn five hundred dollars a day for a week or two? Why would you hope his wife can't afford to buy the kids new clothes for back-to-school, or that she has to keep using food stamps to buy groceries? Is that what you hope?"

It was one of those rare moments where the perfect thing to say pops out right on cue, rather than waltzing into your head that night just in time to make you crazy as you're trying to fall asleep. I couldn't believe I was saying it. It felt good, and Monica couldn't offer much in the way of a response.

I stopped going to church altogether a few weeks after that. I never did make out with Monica. A guy's got to have standards, after all.

I knew this was going to happen, but that doesn't make it any less aggravating now that it has.

See, as part of this Mormon missionary memoir of mine, I've divulged secrets of the Mormon temple ceremony that I'm not supposed to talk about. In fact, I took gruesome oaths on my life in the Mormon temple never to reveal the contents of that ceremony.

Now that the book is picking its paraplegic way toward publication, I figured I should give my parents a heads-up about the coming betrayal. (Not only will the book contain, early on, this temple material, but I've also culled those pages out as an excerpt for my agent to try to sell to some major magazine.) I emailed my parents, told them about the contents and purpose of my book, and offered to let them see what I had written so far so they could be prepared for the consequences. My mother asked to see the book so I sent it to her a couple of weeks ago.

Well, this morning I received the following loving email from one of my siblings (I have seven):

Bill,

As I was visiting with Mom this weekend, she shared e-mail that you sent her as she explained to me (amid tears) that she was reading your book. She shared the e-mail to alert me to the contents of your novel so I would not be surprised later. Unfortunately, I was not surprised, but rather deeply saddened.

I will, however, without hesitancy, firmly voice my opinion. You, of course, are entitled to yours. Without dispute, you are my superior intellectually speaking. However, intellect often forgets both common sense and wisdom. Some things are more wisely felt than reasoned. Here is one: There is absolutely no need to profane what those you love hold sacred, whether you agree with those beliefs or not. I would challenge you to rise to a higher level than that. No amount of money or fame, or any other reason for that matter, should entice you to feel compelled to write of the temple endowment. What good purpose comes of profaning things of a sacred nature for profit and gain. As one who knows of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the restoration of all things through the prophet Joseph Smith, I would also issue out of love a warning of an eternal nature to you in publishing such writings.

Even if you don't believe what we do, why destroy even in part something which does many people good. Do you not respect the right of individuals to worship as they will? I believe that with your talents and gifts that the avenues for success in your writing are many and broad. Why choose to wallow when you can fly?

I love you more than I can explain, yet my loyalty lies with my testimony which I will never deny. I will defend it at the expense of our relationship if necessary. Mom and Dad have been hurt enough. Please rethink your approach. It is never too late to make a better choice.

Love,
****

****:

I love you and I appreciate your forthrightness. I won't stop speaking to you because we differ in our opinions, or because you're willing to express yours. But I'm also not going to silence my own.

First, I wish you'd read the book before criticizing it. You can't really understand my point of view otherwise. Second, I believe very deeply in people's right to worship as they see fit. The flip side of that, constitutionally and morally, is the right of other people to disagree and to discuss their disagreements openly. Third, I have a bone-deep belief in informed consent, which is that people have a right to know everything they can about what they're getting into before they get into it.

I'm writing the book that I've been aching to write my entire adult life, the book that I wish I'd had to read before I ever went to the temple. To speak very frankly, my endowment was about the most degrading and horrifying experience of my life. I don't believe it's godly in any way, shape, or form, and it's a dead certainty that the reason the penalties were removed from the ceremony in 1990 is because so many good Latter-day Saints felt the same way and weren't afraid to tell their bishops and stake presidents so. What clue did you or I or anyone else have when we walked into the temple for the first time that within an hour we'd be pantomiming spilling our blood and vitals in the most gruesome way possible? The God I believe in doesn't need to protect his heaven with bloodthirsty frat rituals and fear, and if it turns out that I'm wrong, well, that's not the kind of heaven I would care for.

I believe people need to understand the traditions from which their beliefs and practices arose—not only that but that they have a right to seek information about every side of a question before they yoke themselves to a philosophy that could end up hurting them. True, Mormonism seems to do good for some people. But it damages others pretty badly, and to withhold compassion and the balm of shared bad experience from those people outweighs, in my mind, the hurt feelings other people are going to have when what they hold sacred is exposed. How many people are trapped in misery in the Mormon Church because they're afraid to talk to anyone else about their doubts and hurts? There are a lot—I correspond with them on the Internet all the time. Some of them have gotten themselves out, some are still in the process, but most of them could have been spared a lot of pain if they'd just known there were other people going through the same thing.

I don't hold a grudge against Mom or Dad. I'm not writing the book to hurt them, and I gave it to them early specifically to spare them from a harsher revelation later. My beliefs and lifestyle are painful to them period. I'm not going to stop acting or living the way I do because of that. I can't. That would be a lie and only harmful to myself, as harmful as living in Utah and trying to conform to something I couldn't morally square myself with. I try not to rub anyone's face in my choices, but I have every right to make them and not be ashamed of them, and when someone tells me not to talk about my relationship with Mormonism, that's tantamount to telling me to be ashamed of my beliefs and my choices. I won't do it.

If Mom is crying reading my book, then I'm deeply sorry, but I believe she's crying because her beliefs tell her that I'm going to be eternally damned. Writing or not writing this book doesn't change the fact that I am a constant source of pain to her because I do not share her beliefs. I obviously don't regard my temple covenants as having any moral hold or authority on me, and I haven't for some time. I think that when you attack the writing of the book as the source of her pain, you overlook the fact that this pain is out there already. I'm in deep trouble with God, according to Mormon beliefs, whether the book exists or not. Mom and Dad believe I'm lost. At least with the book out there they don't have to imagine what my "transgressions" are and be afraid of something they can't quantify. If they have a handle on who I am, what I think, and why, then at least they may be able to deal with that unformed dread they've been feeling on my behalf. And if they can start dealing with something quantifiable, ultimately I believe we'll be better able to heal our relationships than if we all just sit back with our mouths shut and wonder what the other person is thinking. That's one of the functions of the book.

But that's not all I think the book does. If there's any one thing Dad demonstrated to me growing up, it's not to be ashamed or afraid of standing up for what I believe in. How many times did he tell principals and bishops and other leaders that he disagreed with them? It sure didn't make him popular, and it offended a lot of people, but he did it anyway, and I admire that. The thing about standing up for what you believe in, as you're doing, is that if you're going to claim that right then you must allow everyone else the same right. Well, I'm standing up for what I believe in. You can disagree with me about Mormonism, but if you have a conscience from God then you shouldn't be able to sleep at night and still advocate the silencing of a differing opinion. That's the sort of thinking that, widespread, could get your right to free speech and freedom of religion overthrown, together with mine. Your freedoms and mine are opposite sides of the same coin.

Can you tell I'm passionate on this subject? I'm as passionate about it as you are about your beliefs. Thank you for sharing your feelings. I hope you'll listen to mine as well and take that into consideration.

love,
Bill

Kind of like my family in regard to my book.

Have you ever experienced Chinese water torture? I haven't either, but it's probably much like waiting to hear from an editor who has expressed a hope of making an offer on your book.

I'm writing this book called The Accidental Terrorist. It's a memoir, really—the first-person story of a loveable young Mormon dissident-to-be who unwillingly serves a mission for his church, only to have it lead him to a terrorist act when he starts taking the whole thing a little too seriously. It's a light-hearted book, really.

My agent submitted the (partial) manuscript to seven publishers last month. About two and a half weeks ago, she wrote to tell me that one of these esteemed editors had called her, and that he loved the book and hoped to be able to make an offer soon. I was stunned.

Then, about a week and a half ago, he called my agent again to tell her that he had a lot of support for the book at his house and was presenting to his editorial and publications boards the next week. He expected things to go well, though he was a little worried about the "dual" nature of the book (i.e., Mormon coming-of-age story melded with terrorism drama).

The presentations should have taken place last week. Still no word. Sure, yesterday was a holiday, but still. The passage of time is driving me crazy, drip by excruciating drip.

The Chinese should have developed a manuscript torture. It's just as effective as water torture, and you don't have to confine the subject to a messy dungeon. He can walk around like a regular human being, but still the uncertainty slowly chews up what lies behind his forehead.

The entire purpose of this entry is to announce that I'm currently listening to a friend's bootleg of a recent Beck show at Radio City Music Hall. On CD. With headphones.

It doesn't get much better than this.

Well, I just received disappointing news. I was scheduled to do a reading—my first really significant public reading—in November, but now, due to circumstances beyond much of anyone's control, the gig has been cancelled.

There were five of us, "up-and-coming" "young" science fiction writers, who were going to participate together. I had compiled an email list of about seventy friends and acquaintances I was going to invite. It was going to be cool.

Originally we were all supposed to read in October. But then Ursula K. Leguin became available for a reading in the same series the same week, and most of the other participants decided they didn't want to compete. So our reading was delayed until November.

It didn't matter that much to me. I would have gone head-to-head with Leguin. Most of the friends I was inviting wouldn't have gone to the Leguin reading anyway. And now it's not going to happen at all.

I'll get over it. But it would have been cool, dammit.

So last week Laura thought I had died again.

Here's what happened: As we were saying goodnight on the phone, she offered to call me at seven in the morning to make sure I was awake, since she knows I often sleep through my alarm clock. This is not an unusual offer. I accepted.

Then I did a strange thing. I woke up at five in the morning and decided I wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep, so I got ready and went to the office, figuring I could get some work done on my book before anyone else got there. I was out of the apartment by 6:30.

Well, around 9:30 I got a call at my little cubicle. "This is Bill," I said.

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!" said Laura.

"Oh, no! I came to the office early and forgot to call you!"

"I've been calling your answering machine for two and a half hours trying to wake you up! I didn't know if you had the bedroom door shut and couldn't hear me or if you choked in your sleep! My coworkers are mocking me! I was about to go to Brooklyn and make sure you were alive!"

Well, I apologized as best I could, and she insisted that I call my answering machine and listen to all the torture I had put her through, which I happily agreed to do.

This episode harked back to the most infamous "Bill is dead" episode of all, which happened at a little ryokan in the hills south of Mishima on whatever that peninsula is called that juts south off Honshu from Mt. Fuji. My high school friend Jon, who has lived in Japan for eleven years, hosted us on a two-week vacation. This particular night, he had booked Laura and me into a small traditional inn with famous natural baths, arranged everything we needed with the staff, then taken the train back home.

This particular ryokan featured co-ed bathing in a natural cave, but only at certain times of the day. That evening Laura and I agreed to each try the segregated indoor and outdoor baths, then to meet back at the hotel room at 9:30 to visit the co-ed bath together when it opened.

After an amusing adventure deciphering the kanji for "men's dressing room" and "women's dressing room"—and a near-disaster when Laura almost walked naked into the men's bath—we each found our respective baths and began soaking. I started out in the men's indoor bath, then moved to the outdoor bath. I had it to myself, and there was nothing more pleasant or relaxing the whole trip as sitting back in that hot water with twisted trees all around staring up in the night sky with a light snow just beginning to fall.

After a nice long interval, I hauled my carcass out of the bath and dressed. According to my watch, it was about 9:22, so I figured I'd rest in the dressing room, looking out at the snow, for a few minutes before returning to our room to meet Laura. I felt very relaxed.

Next thing I know, Laura is grabbing me by the shoulders shouting, "I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!" and bursting into tears.

I sat up, confused, and looked at my watch. It was 10:15. Oops. Must have fallen asleep.

Over the next hour or so, Laura regaled me with the story of how she had tried to communicate to the staff of the ryokan, none of whom spoke any English whatsoever, that her boyfriend had not reappeared from the baths and had probably hit his head and drowned. The little man who eventually understood had apparently seen me sleeping in the dressing room and led Laura there, asking her, "California?" as they negotiated the maze of hallways.

"No, New York City," she said, stunned that someone should try to make small talk while her boyfriend was lying facedown in a pool of hot water and blood.

Then the little man opened the dressing room and motioned for her to go in. As soon as she saw me and started emoting, he discreetly disappeared.

We didn't end up trying the co-ed baths that night, but we did the next morning, and I saw enough naked old Japanese ladies to last me a lifetime.

I hope I'm not making Laura sound like a bitch. That's hardly the case, and in fact it's pretty nice to have someone who worries that you're dead if you don't answer the phone for two and a half hours, or if you don't come out of the hot spring on time.