A Glimpse Into My Genius

I'm courting a college pal who used to design covers for St. Martin's press -- hoping he'll lend his talents and do some No Tell Books covers. I gave a brief description of the books, indicated concept ideas by the authors and told him the modest budget set aside to pay him for his labor. He's done lots of really great covers, but I'm getting the sense he's used to dealing with, um, I don't know what you'd call them, fancy spancy book professionals maybe (?) because he keeps asking about the "budget for the images."

This is how I finally explained it to him:

Publishing poetry books is like depression-era cooking -- we get really creative with what we have and in the right hands, it's fabulous, and sometimes, well you barf on an airplane because the possibilities for Jell-O are endless, unusual and quite unequal.

We'll see if I convinced him of the nobility of designing a book cover with a stick of gum and paper clip.

Four hours ago I considered making Jell-O and if I had it would be almost ready to eat. But instead, like an asshole, I made microwave popcorn. Ruing that choice.