(This article is part of a book called How to Find a Job, which now is available as an ebook on Kindle, nook, and Smashwords. All of the chapters have been revised, many have been expanded, and the book contains three bonus chapters (including Negotiating) that are not available on this blog.)
As I talked about in What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up, one of the things I always find is that people generally think about doing more of what they’ve always done.
And that’s fine. If you were once a loan officer, and want to be one again, then you probably have the necessary skills to be one again.
But the problem with the current economy is that if you were let go from your job, there’s a strong chance that what you do isn’t as in demand as you would like it to be.
Take me, for example.
About six weeks into being unemployed, I got a letter to report to my local Department of Workforce Development (DWD) office.
Now, at the time, I was already going to a (very expensive) office that my ex-company had set me up with. There were computers at the expensive place I could use. Fancy paper to print resumes. Highly paid individuals who could help me vet my resume and cover letter. Classes I could take that would tell me what I was good at, and where I should look for work.
They even had a networking meeting every Friday morning, and bonus classes almost every week, covering everything from opening your own business to… other business-related stuff.
You get the picture.
At any rate, I was called to the DWD. If I didn’t report, they would cut off my Unemployment Insurance (UI) and that, as they say, would be that.
So I went to a two-hour meeting, where they told me all the wonderful things that the DWD had made available to me. Which was pretty much all the same stuff that was available to me at the building across town.
When I arrived, the very first thing that happened was that we were told why we had been called into the meeting in the first place.
Answer One: You were frequently out of work. (Obviously, this wasn’t me.)
Answer Two: There were few or no available jobs in your line of business.
How’s that for a cold splash of water in the face? I had been called into the meeting because THERE WERE NO JOBS I COULD DO. (Cue ominous music.)
The thing is, I went into that meeting feeling pretty good about myself. I was getting my resume together. I was meeting people who I thought might have leads for me. And, okay, there weren’t a lot of job leads out there on the Internet for a guy like me, but I was finding some. Surely I would find more, right?
Well, apparently, the government of my state felt differently.
I spent the rest of the meeting feeling vaguely nauseous.
But in a way, it gave me a push that I really needed. Previous to that point, I had set my heels into the ground and said that I was going to get a job doing more-or-less what I had already been doing. That was my skill set, that was what my resume said I could do, and that’s what I was going to do.
I quite literally “forgot” that I had spent seven years doing an entirely different job, which had an entirely different skill set. I also ignored the fact that I had an education degree.
My brain just sat there, saying that I could do one thing, and only one thing.
But that wasn’t true of me, and I’m sure it’s not true of you.
Granted, you may have skills you don’t want to utilize. You might be able to fix cars and build houses, but maybe you hate building houses. Fair enough.
You might be able to do taxes and sell cars, but you hated selling cars.
Fair enough.
But perhaps you can combine those skills and find a whole new way to use them that’s going to bring home a paycheck and make your workday enjoyable as well.
How? Well, that’s up to you.
Over the course of the last three years, I’ve seen a handful of my friends leave the field of journalism.
One of them started teaching writing at a local school.
Another, who did a lot of work in the business field, got into the non-profit world as a liaison to large businesses. It was easy for them, because the person was already on a first-name basis with most of the people they were going to be in contact with.
Another moved into grant writing.
Now, you could argue that two out of these three examples just took another writing job. And that’s true. But what they did NOT do is leave one newspaper and join up with another newspaper, or magazine, or newsletter. They took their skills and applied them in another way.
As for me, I blew the dust off my old education degree and taught a bunch of kids how to make movies, using the skills I developed writing independent films. I had a lot of fun, and I got to help an amazing bunch of kids make a project that is now part of my hometown’s school curriculum.
That’s a lot of storytelling, but I hope it makes my point: You are more than what you were doing just before you lost your job.
And if you want to go back to doing exactly what you were doing, then that’s fine, and the very best of luck to you.
But don’t ever forget that you have other skills you can pull from. Figure out what they are. Write them down. Find places to put them on your resume.
And then compare and contrast them to the list of things you’ve always wanted to be.
There are possibilities there.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
How to Find a Job: What You Want to Be When You Grow Up
(This article is part of a book called How to Find a Job, which now is available as an ebook on Kindle, nook, and Smashwords. All of the chapters have been revised, many have been expanded, and the book contains three bonus chapters (including Negotiating) that are not available on this blog.)
When you’re a little kid, you spend a lot of time thinking about what you’re going to be when you grow up. Interestingly, my daughter answered this question at school, and at four years of age she’s decided she’s going to be a princess.
It could happen.
In middle school, I was given a set of questions which then spit out a list of jobs I was “suited for.” The top two were, at the time, Priest and Disk Jockey.
In high school, you start thinking about college or technical school, and what you want to do, and what degree you’ll get that will lead you to that career. Then in college, maybe you refine that plan.
Then you graduate, and you get a job, and for a while there, you think you’re set for life. This is what you do, and eventually you’ll go from the guy on the bottom rung to being the guy on the top rung. From the chicken farmer to the owner of the chicken farm, or Chicken Farms, Inc. Or maybe just the assistant manager, if you’re less ambitious.
And most humans are, to a degree, sedentary. Even if they don’t like their job, they can at least tolerate it. So they stay where they are, and they get their raises and their promotions, and they never look outside their little box.
But if you’ve lost your job, well, congratulations! You’ve just been thrown out of the box.
So ask yourself a question, maybe for the first time in years: What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?
Now, I’m not saying that if you were a loan officer, that you should think about becoming a chicken farmer. There’s little to no skill set crossover there.
But hey. Don’t let me spoil your dream.
Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with saying that you still want to be a loan officer. There’s nothing wrong with assembling your resume so that people can tell you were a good loan officer.
And if there are dozens of loan officer jobs, then go for them, and get one, and have a great life.
But if there’s something else you wanted to do, this might be the perfect time to look into it.
So do yourself a favor. Put together your resume. Fix all the typos in your cover letter. And get out there and apply for those jobs you know you can get.
But while you’re at it, take some time, even if it’s just an hour one day, and think about what you really want to do with your life. And if it’s important to you, try to make it happen.
When you’re a little kid, you spend a lot of time thinking about what you’re going to be when you grow up. Interestingly, my daughter answered this question at school, and at four years of age she’s decided she’s going to be a princess.
It could happen.
In middle school, I was given a set of questions which then spit out a list of jobs I was “suited for.” The top two were, at the time, Priest and Disk Jockey.
In high school, you start thinking about college or technical school, and what you want to do, and what degree you’ll get that will lead you to that career. Then in college, maybe you refine that plan.
Then you graduate, and you get a job, and for a while there, you think you’re set for life. This is what you do, and eventually you’ll go from the guy on the bottom rung to being the guy on the top rung. From the chicken farmer to the owner of the chicken farm, or Chicken Farms, Inc. Or maybe just the assistant manager, if you’re less ambitious.
And most humans are, to a degree, sedentary. Even if they don’t like their job, they can at least tolerate it. So they stay where they are, and they get their raises and their promotions, and they never look outside their little box.
But if you’ve lost your job, well, congratulations! You’ve just been thrown out of the box.
So ask yourself a question, maybe for the first time in years: What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?
Now, I’m not saying that if you were a loan officer, that you should think about becoming a chicken farmer. There’s little to no skill set crossover there.
But hey. Don’t let me spoil your dream.
Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with saying that you still want to be a loan officer. There’s nothing wrong with assembling your resume so that people can tell you were a good loan officer.
And if there are dozens of loan officer jobs, then go for them, and get one, and have a great life.
But if there’s something else you wanted to do, this might be the perfect time to look into it.
So do yourself a favor. Put together your resume. Fix all the typos in your cover letter. And get out there and apply for those jobs you know you can get.
But while you’re at it, take some time, even if it’s just an hour one day, and think about what you really want to do with your life. And if it’s important to you, try to make it happen.
Misfits Cover - Plus a Surprise!
Here's the Misfits cover. Fun!
And here's the slightly altered Baby Teeth cover...
And here's the slightly altered Baby Teeth cover...
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
How to Find a Job: A Few Quick Thoughts on Unemployment
(This article is part of a book called How to Find a Job, which now is available as an ebook on Kindle, nook, and Smashwords. All of the chapters have been revised, many have been expanded, and the book contains three bonus chapters (including Negotiating) that are not available on this blog.)
Being unemployed is no fun.
Trying to figure out how Unemployment Insurance (UI) works is even less fun.
Why?
Well, originally, I wanted to fill this chapter with a set of steps that would tell you how to go about filing for UI. But guess what?
That’s impossible.
Why?
Because the rules are different in just about every state. And as a bonus, the rules are always changing. Even if I spent the next couple of months researching (UI), and released this book the moment that information was complete and accurate…
Chances are good that the information would not be complete and accurate by the time you downloaded and started to read this chapter.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have advice. I do.
But before I get to it, I have to make a couple assumptions.
1. You’re a good worker who did your job.
2. You were laid off, and not fired, nor did you quit your job.
Why do I have to make those assumptions? Because if I don’t all my advice is null and void.
At one point, while trying to help a friend, he told me he’d been let go. He told me he was having trouble getting his UI money. I made suggestions. I offered thoughts.
Then I found out he had been fired.
Being fired, whether justly or unjustly, is a whole different issue. It makes it harder to find work, and it makes it harder to convince your local government that you deserve UI, which more often than not requires that you worked hard and obeyed the rules of your workplace.
So if you didn’t, you might be out of luck. And you might want to give some thought to your work ethic before you start hunting for another job.
All that said, a few thoughts:
1. Unemployment Insurance is confusing and underfunded, and getting clarification is a massive headache. So call on Thursday.
A True Story: The week I was going to be let go, I called up the fine folks at UI and to tell them I was losing my job and to ask them what I needed to do next.
I was put on hold for a minute. And then UI hung up on me, with a message to check their web site. I called back several times, and every single time I was hung up on before I could talk to a person. They didn’t have anyone to talk to me, and there was no hold option. There was just the web site.
So do yourself a favor: Go to the web site.
More often than not, your questions will be answered if you read through all the information there. And why not take the time? You could be unemployed for a while, and you have some free time. So sit back and start reading.
If there’s something you really don’t understand, write it down. And call on Thursday. Why Thursday? Because according to a woman I met from the UI office, that’s the least-busy day. You might still have to try a few times (I always did) but you’ll get through.
2. Sooner or later, you may end up Under Investigation. There’s nothing to do but wait, answer their questions, and keep filing for UI.
When I lost my job, I hopped online and signed up for UI, a simple and quick process that resulted in them sending me a check within a matter of days. It was simple and mostly made sense.
Over the next two years I spent five different periods of my life Under Investigation, which was confusing and emotionally draining and did damage to my savings account. Why?
In a word, freelance work.
I started writing for a magazine. And I took on some work at a local school. And I did a freelance movie-editing job. And I wrote a script for an industrial video.
I told UI all of these things, and at the time, they didn’t care.
And then my UI money would run out, and they would have to recalculate what I should be getting, and suddenly, my checks were On Hold.
According to the letter I got, this could last five weeks or longer.
It was always longer, especially the last time, which took 13 weeks.
The fact is, this is an extra-scary time. You’ll get a letter each week telling you they don’t know when you’ll get your money, but that you should keep filing. You’ll get extra letters, asking for monetary information. And you’ll probably end up on the phone with UI, who somehow always manage to call just when you’re in the middle of doing something, and you have no idea where the information they want is located.
Take a breath. Relax. If you did everything they asked of you (and I’m going to assume you did) sooner or later, everything will work itself out.
And please, don’t let my experience sour you on freelance work. While I didn’t enjoy being investigated, everyone I spoke to was kind and fair and just wanted to make sure that everybody on UI was following all the rules.
More importantly, it’s good to get fresh work on your resume. Never pass up that chance.
3. Always remember that it’s your money, and that you deserve it.
One of the things that surprised me was how many people I met got mumbly when they told me they were on unemployment. And I understood. Being on unemployment was something that happened to other people. People with medical conditions. People who were too lazy to work.
Other People.
But there’s no reason to feel shame. At one point, the country I lived in topped out at 15% unemployment. For those easily confused by math (like myself!) that means every time you saw a grouping adults capable of working 15 of them didn’t have a job.
As I type this, the number is still bouncing up and down a bit, but it’s around 9%. A big improvement, yes. But it still means that when you look at 100 people, 9 of them don’t have a job.
My point? You are not alone in your predicament. And UI was designed to help you through it. Now, it might not be enough (in fact, it almost certainly isn’t) but it is something, you have paid into it, and this is what that money is for.
So if someone asks you, tell them the truth. You’re unemployed. You’re currently searching for a job.
Then tell them what you do, and ask them if they know anyone who needs you. Because people love to help.
4. Don’t expect to be off UI in the very near future.
While this isn’t about UI specifically, I do think that it’s important to keep yourself in a positive frame of mind.
When you lose your job, it’s easy to think that in two weeks, or three, or four, you’ll be back to work and things will be status quo.
When I lost my job, I stumbled across a comforting video that told me that at that time, the average span people were unemployed was about 19 weeks.
Granted, I didn’t want to spend 19 weeks without a job, but if that was the average, well, that was the average, and why fight it?
I hit 19 weeks, and then I started to panic. But then I looked around at all the other people I’d run into in my networking meetings. Most or all of them had been let go the same week I had, and here we all were, still looking for work.
I felt the same way after a year.
I felt the same way after two years.
Then things started to change. More of the people in my networking groups started getting jobs. Soon there were fewer and fewer faces I knew.
And then one day shortly thereafter, I had a job.
The economy is in flux. Look around. If you’re seeing that your friends are still out there hunting for work, then take some comfort in that. If you see that all your friends are getting work, then take comfort in knowing that you probably will as well.
And if everyone you know is getting hired but you, start thinking about changing your strategies a bit. But remember – it happens when it happens.
And you’ll be okay.
Being unemployed is no fun.
Trying to figure out how Unemployment Insurance (UI) works is even less fun.
Why?
Well, originally, I wanted to fill this chapter with a set of steps that would tell you how to go about filing for UI. But guess what?
That’s impossible.
Why?
Because the rules are different in just about every state. And as a bonus, the rules are always changing. Even if I spent the next couple of months researching (UI), and released this book the moment that information was complete and accurate…
Chances are good that the information would not be complete and accurate by the time you downloaded and started to read this chapter.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have advice. I do.
But before I get to it, I have to make a couple assumptions.
1. You’re a good worker who did your job.
2. You were laid off, and not fired, nor did you quit your job.
Why do I have to make those assumptions? Because if I don’t all my advice is null and void.
At one point, while trying to help a friend, he told me he’d been let go. He told me he was having trouble getting his UI money. I made suggestions. I offered thoughts.
Then I found out he had been fired.
Being fired, whether justly or unjustly, is a whole different issue. It makes it harder to find work, and it makes it harder to convince your local government that you deserve UI, which more often than not requires that you worked hard and obeyed the rules of your workplace.
So if you didn’t, you might be out of luck. And you might want to give some thought to your work ethic before you start hunting for another job.
All that said, a few thoughts:
1. Unemployment Insurance is confusing and underfunded, and getting clarification is a massive headache. So call on Thursday.
A True Story: The week I was going to be let go, I called up the fine folks at UI and to tell them I was losing my job and to ask them what I needed to do next.
I was put on hold for a minute. And then UI hung up on me, with a message to check their web site. I called back several times, and every single time I was hung up on before I could talk to a person. They didn’t have anyone to talk to me, and there was no hold option. There was just the web site.
So do yourself a favor: Go to the web site.
More often than not, your questions will be answered if you read through all the information there. And why not take the time? You could be unemployed for a while, and you have some free time. So sit back and start reading.
If there’s something you really don’t understand, write it down. And call on Thursday. Why Thursday? Because according to a woman I met from the UI office, that’s the least-busy day. You might still have to try a few times (I always did) but you’ll get through.
2. Sooner or later, you may end up Under Investigation. There’s nothing to do but wait, answer their questions, and keep filing for UI.
When I lost my job, I hopped online and signed up for UI, a simple and quick process that resulted in them sending me a check within a matter of days. It was simple and mostly made sense.
Over the next two years I spent five different periods of my life Under Investigation, which was confusing and emotionally draining and did damage to my savings account. Why?
In a word, freelance work.
I started writing for a magazine. And I took on some work at a local school. And I did a freelance movie-editing job. And I wrote a script for an industrial video.
I told UI all of these things, and at the time, they didn’t care.
And then my UI money would run out, and they would have to recalculate what I should be getting, and suddenly, my checks were On Hold.
According to the letter I got, this could last five weeks or longer.
It was always longer, especially the last time, which took 13 weeks.
The fact is, this is an extra-scary time. You’ll get a letter each week telling you they don’t know when you’ll get your money, but that you should keep filing. You’ll get extra letters, asking for monetary information. And you’ll probably end up on the phone with UI, who somehow always manage to call just when you’re in the middle of doing something, and you have no idea where the information they want is located.
Take a breath. Relax. If you did everything they asked of you (and I’m going to assume you did) sooner or later, everything will work itself out.
And please, don’t let my experience sour you on freelance work. While I didn’t enjoy being investigated, everyone I spoke to was kind and fair and just wanted to make sure that everybody on UI was following all the rules.
More importantly, it’s good to get fresh work on your resume. Never pass up that chance.
3. Always remember that it’s your money, and that you deserve it.
One of the things that surprised me was how many people I met got mumbly when they told me they were on unemployment. And I understood. Being on unemployment was something that happened to other people. People with medical conditions. People who were too lazy to work.
Other People.
But there’s no reason to feel shame. At one point, the country I lived in topped out at 15% unemployment. For those easily confused by math (like myself!) that means every time you saw a grouping adults capable of working 15 of them didn’t have a job.
As I type this, the number is still bouncing up and down a bit, but it’s around 9%. A big improvement, yes. But it still means that when you look at 100 people, 9 of them don’t have a job.
My point? You are not alone in your predicament. And UI was designed to help you through it. Now, it might not be enough (in fact, it almost certainly isn’t) but it is something, you have paid into it, and this is what that money is for.
So if someone asks you, tell them the truth. You’re unemployed. You’re currently searching for a job.
Then tell them what you do, and ask them if they know anyone who needs you. Because people love to help.
4. Don’t expect to be off UI in the very near future.
While this isn’t about UI specifically, I do think that it’s important to keep yourself in a positive frame of mind.
When you lose your job, it’s easy to think that in two weeks, or three, or four, you’ll be back to work and things will be status quo.
When I lost my job, I stumbled across a comforting video that told me that at that time, the average span people were unemployed was about 19 weeks.
Granted, I didn’t want to spend 19 weeks without a job, but if that was the average, well, that was the average, and why fight it?
I hit 19 weeks, and then I started to panic. But then I looked around at all the other people I’d run into in my networking meetings. Most or all of them had been let go the same week I had, and here we all were, still looking for work.
I felt the same way after a year.
I felt the same way after two years.
Then things started to change. More of the people in my networking groups started getting jobs. Soon there were fewer and fewer faces I knew.
And then one day shortly thereafter, I had a job.
The economy is in flux. Look around. If you’re seeing that your friends are still out there hunting for work, then take some comfort in that. If you see that all your friends are getting work, then take comfort in knowing that you probably will as well.
And if everyone you know is getting hired but you, start thinking about changing your strategies a bit. But remember – it happens when it happens.
And you’ll be okay.
Monday, November 7, 2011
How to Find a Job: Introduction
(This is part of an ongoing series on how to find a job. If you have a question or comment or something I think I should add, please hit me up on Facebook, Twitter, or leave a comment here (Links are to your right). I’ll be releasing the revised, expanded chapters as an ebook!)
When I became a part of the work force of the United States of America, it was 1991, and I was in high school. Over the course of my high school career, I worked as a dishwasher, a sandwich maker, and a delivery driver.
In college, I toiled at a computer help desk for my work-study job (mostly saving lost papers from damaged disks), and during the summers I was everything from a furniture assembler to a blackjack dealer. (Ah, temp work!)
Then in 1998, I graduated from college, and it was time to go from having a job to having a career.
It was a great time to enter the work force. At one point a friend informed me that Madison, Wisconsin was experiencing negative unemployment – there were more jobs than workers to fill them.
I got a job at a medium-sized company, and worked there for almost ten years. During that time, the economy started to crumble, and I went from engaged to married to married with a child.
When an opportunity arose to take a new position at another company that offered me more money and a shorter commute, I took it.
Then the bottom fell out of the economy, and I fell with it. I was Let Go.
(It’s funny, really. Two words, five letters, and yet they completely upend your life.)
I spent the next two years either unemployed or underemployed. And while that was distressing to me, what bothered me even more was watching good friends of mine also losing jobs as the economy continued to worsen.
As they got their world flipped upside-down, I started reaching out to them. I’d send them encouraging emails. I’d tell them what web sites to use to hunt for work. When they wanted to see what a resume looked like, I’d send them a copy of mine, as it had been vetted by a half-dozen experts and friends, and was getting me interviews.
And wonder of wonders, my friends got jobs. While, I should note, I remained unemployed. (I later realized there was a reason for that, which I’ll talk about later.)
Still, I got a lot of nice thank-yous from friends and family. One good friend referred to me as the Obi Wan Kenobi of the unemployed. I was the master, showing all the Jedi-in-training how to not just find a job, but handle the stresses of not having a job.
The thing is, I didn’t spend those two years doing nothing. I didn’t sit around and wait for a job to come to me. I went out looking for work, and took on part-time and freelance jobs in an effort to keep myself busy and explore new avenues of my abilities.
I also started putting my novels, which I had been unable to get an agent to look at, up on the Kindle, nook and on Smashwords. I started getting great reviews. And I started a new blog, Everybody Thinks They Can Write.
When I finally got a full-time job more than two years later, I immediately wrote an essay about how I found work. I originally wrote it as a letter to a really wonderful woman who runs a great networking group in my area.
Then I put a revised version of it up on my blog… and it kind of took off. I got emails about it. I got Facebook questions about it. And I got Tweets about it. A LOT of tweets about it, both people who sent it on to friends, and folks who worked in HR and loved my thoughts and attitude, and some folks who were looking for work and got the encouragement at the exact moment they needed it.
The thing of it is, I knew exactly how they felt. During the course of my unemployment, I had low periods. I suspect everyone does. When you lose your job, your first thought is not, “Oh good, I know how to handle this,” but, “What am I going to do?”
Even going to your local library often adds to the confusion, instead of taking away from it. There are probably thousands of books, dozens of networking opportunities, and a handful of headhunters and job gurus available, and trying to figure out what is going to work for you and what you have to spend on it can often make things worse instead of better.
Plus, right now, you’re trying to hold onto every single dollar you have, because you don’t know when you’ll be making more of them.
And that’s why wrote this book.
When I lost my job, I hit the library. I went to networking meetings. And my company generously offered me a free program that was designed to train me in the fine art of finding a job. I experienced the confusion of not really knowing what to do.
In the middle of all of it, my favorite networking lady (the one I sent the email in the next chapter) said this: “If there was a book that told you how to get a job, and it always worked, someone would have already written it, and everyone would have read it.”
That’s why I wrote this.
I wanted to put all the information I got into one book, and sell it, cheap. This book will not tell you, step-by-step, how to get a job.
What it does is it distills all the things I learned over the course of two years into short, easy-to-digest chapters. I wanted to write a book that was simple, fun to read, and would offer up hope and an idea of how to move forward from here.
I wanted to write a book for all my friends who had lost a job, or who will lose their job, that gives the exact same advice I’d give them if we got together over dinner.
I hope this book helps you find work. I hope it fills your head with ideas you haven’t thought of.
And I hope that it gives YOU some hope, when you need it the most.
Happy job hunting.
And by the way, if you read this and have questions, feel free to drop me a line on Twitter, Like me on Facebook, or visit my blog and ask questions. At some point, I’d like to revise and expand this book, and I will put your name in the Thank Yous.
When I became a part of the work force of the United States of America, it was 1991, and I was in high school. Over the course of my high school career, I worked as a dishwasher, a sandwich maker, and a delivery driver.
In college, I toiled at a computer help desk for my work-study job (mostly saving lost papers from damaged disks), and during the summers I was everything from a furniture assembler to a blackjack dealer. (Ah, temp work!)
Then in 1998, I graduated from college, and it was time to go from having a job to having a career.
It was a great time to enter the work force. At one point a friend informed me that Madison, Wisconsin was experiencing negative unemployment – there were more jobs than workers to fill them.
I got a job at a medium-sized company, and worked there for almost ten years. During that time, the economy started to crumble, and I went from engaged to married to married with a child.
When an opportunity arose to take a new position at another company that offered me more money and a shorter commute, I took it.
Then the bottom fell out of the economy, and I fell with it. I was Let Go.
(It’s funny, really. Two words, five letters, and yet they completely upend your life.)
I spent the next two years either unemployed or underemployed. And while that was distressing to me, what bothered me even more was watching good friends of mine also losing jobs as the economy continued to worsen.
As they got their world flipped upside-down, I started reaching out to them. I’d send them encouraging emails. I’d tell them what web sites to use to hunt for work. When they wanted to see what a resume looked like, I’d send them a copy of mine, as it had been vetted by a half-dozen experts and friends, and was getting me interviews.
And wonder of wonders, my friends got jobs. While, I should note, I remained unemployed. (I later realized there was a reason for that, which I’ll talk about later.)
Still, I got a lot of nice thank-yous from friends and family. One good friend referred to me as the Obi Wan Kenobi of the unemployed. I was the master, showing all the Jedi-in-training how to not just find a job, but handle the stresses of not having a job.
The thing is, I didn’t spend those two years doing nothing. I didn’t sit around and wait for a job to come to me. I went out looking for work, and took on part-time and freelance jobs in an effort to keep myself busy and explore new avenues of my abilities.
I also started putting my novels, which I had been unable to get an agent to look at, up on the Kindle, nook and on Smashwords. I started getting great reviews. And I started a new blog, Everybody Thinks They Can Write.
When I finally got a full-time job more than two years later, I immediately wrote an essay about how I found work. I originally wrote it as a letter to a really wonderful woman who runs a great networking group in my area.
Then I put a revised version of it up on my blog… and it kind of took off. I got emails about it. I got Facebook questions about it. And I got Tweets about it. A LOT of tweets about it, both people who sent it on to friends, and folks who worked in HR and loved my thoughts and attitude, and some folks who were looking for work and got the encouragement at the exact moment they needed it.
The thing of it is, I knew exactly how they felt. During the course of my unemployment, I had low periods. I suspect everyone does. When you lose your job, your first thought is not, “Oh good, I know how to handle this,” but, “What am I going to do?”
Even going to your local library often adds to the confusion, instead of taking away from it. There are probably thousands of books, dozens of networking opportunities, and a handful of headhunters and job gurus available, and trying to figure out what is going to work for you and what you have to spend on it can often make things worse instead of better.
Plus, right now, you’re trying to hold onto every single dollar you have, because you don’t know when you’ll be making more of them.
And that’s why wrote this book.
When I lost my job, I hit the library. I went to networking meetings. And my company generously offered me a free program that was designed to train me in the fine art of finding a job. I experienced the confusion of not really knowing what to do.
In the middle of all of it, my favorite networking lady (the one I sent the email in the next chapter) said this: “If there was a book that told you how to get a job, and it always worked, someone would have already written it, and everyone would have read it.”
That’s why I wrote this.
I wanted to put all the information I got into one book, and sell it, cheap. This book will not tell you, step-by-step, how to get a job.
What it does is it distills all the things I learned over the course of two years into short, easy-to-digest chapters. I wanted to write a book that was simple, fun to read, and would offer up hope and an idea of how to move forward from here.
I wanted to write a book for all my friends who had lost a job, or who will lose their job, that gives the exact same advice I’d give them if we got together over dinner.
I hope this book helps you find work. I hope it fills your head with ideas you haven’t thought of.
And I hope that it gives YOU some hope, when you need it the most.
Happy job hunting.
And by the way, if you read this and have questions, feel free to drop me a line on Twitter, Like me on Facebook, or visit my blog and ask questions. At some point, I’d like to revise and expand this book, and I will put your name in the Thank Yous.
I'm Back!
*Blows the dust off the blog.*
So. I’ve been gone a while. Sorry about that.
It was a semi-unconscious decision that slowly became a conscious one. Why? Well, because I put up a post telling people to download a free ebook I wrote called Baby Teeth. It cost readers nothing, and I was going to send money to Ethiopia Reads every time someone downloaded the book. I liked having it at the top of the blog, because I get something like 900 visitors a month, and if they all downloaded it, how cool would that be?
I thought this was a cool, win-win kind of thing.
Turns out… well, I’ll come back to that.
There were two problems with that plan. The first was trying to get Amazon to price-match. I made the book free on Smashwords, went over to Amazon, told them that the book was free elsewhere and… they did nothing. A whole lotta nothing. Even though everything I read on the subject said they would match prices, post-haste.
I had friends and fans get involved. Nothing. Do I know why? I do not.
Eventually, I gave up and told everyone they could go ahead and download the book free on Smashwords.
And I gave away? 44 copies.
Now, what happened to those copies is a total mystery. I only know of two people who downloaded it. One sent me a really cool Tweet telling me she liked it. The other said she had a young baby and was afraid to read the story.
What I learned from that is the conventional wisdom about getting your ebook to be free on Amazon doesn’t always work.
I suppose I also learned that if you try to give away a book on Smashwords, you’re probably not gonna get a lot of takers.
(As I write this, Baby Teeth is still free on Smashwords, and it will probably remain so until I feel compelled to change that fact. Feel free to tell Amazon. Or go download the book. It’s free!)
Other reasons I didn’t write here?
Well, I did three guest posts at various blogs, promoting my novels Mercy and Blood Calling, and my novella, The Werewolf Solution. I also decided to take advantage of the fact that Halloween was coming up, and do a ton of book promotion on Twitter.
And I finished writing the second novel in the Blood Calling trilogy. I just sent it to beta readers, and the reaction has been great so far. That’ll be out by the end of November. I’m hoping before Thanksgiving.
I’m putting together two more books before the end of the year. How to Make a Movie, and How to Find a Job. I’ve got them mostly written, and I’m editing and collating and getting them some bonus chapters, and they’ll be out by Christmas.
For those of you keeping track, that means I’ll have eight books available by Christmas. Feel free to stock up. Or give them to friends as gifts.
And then next year, I have plans to write (or edit) and release six more ebooks. They are:
The Enforcers: A Blood Calling Novel (The final (for now) volume in the Blood Calling trilogy.)
Emma Goes to Egypt: A Blood Calling Novella/Novelette (I’m not sure how long it will be yet… I’m hedging my bets on this one.)
But the Third One Was Great: Volume 1, 2, and 3 – my super-fun horror blog will be revised, expanded, bonus-chaptered and released in three massive volumes.
A sequel to Mercy is also in the works.
And…
After that, I don’t know.
I’ve had a couple requests for a sequel to The Werewolf Solution, but as you can see, I’m a little booked (hah!) at the moment, and I don’t know when I’ll get to it.
For that matter, if the Blood Calling series suddenly became a huge hit, I’ve already got ideas for a second trilogy, and all these other books will be shoved aside.
My goal is to get those first 14 (!) books out by the end of 2012, and after that, I think it’s time to reevaluate… everything.
(Come to think of it, I’ll probably have more than 14 books up, as I plan on releasing all the Blood Calling stories together in one big volume, and I’ll probably do the same with But the Third One Was Great.)
Ultimately, I can see myself taking a couple of paths.
By the end of 2012, I’ll have a lot of different material available, and I’m sure that something will lead the pack in sales. Whatever breaks, I’ll see what I can do about making more of them.
And what if nothing breaks?
I have no idea. At that point, I think it might be poetic to sit down with the first prose book I ever wrote, The Werewolf Solution, and craft up a big, ambitious sequel. Really go all-out.
And if nothing breaks while I’m doing that? Well, then maybe it’s time for me to take a break, and give the books some time to find their audience. Or maybe I’ll finally sit down with my wife and we’ll write the adoption book we’ve been talking about for four years.
March of 2013 will mark two years I’ve been putting things up for sale. It will be very interesting to look back at this post and see What Really Happened.
In the meantime, I plan to blog a big more. I’ll probably put up some more fun blogs about what TV I’m watching, and a few things about what I’m reading and listening to. And I’m also planning to throw up some of my How to Find a Job chapters as I write them, because my post on trying everything to find a job is far and away my most popular blog post.
Clearly, people are looking for answers.
And sometime in 2012, I’d like to go back to doing what I used to do a couple of blogs ago. I would take a month, and do 30 posts in 30 days. It was always a lot of fun, and when I was in a writing slump, it always got the juices going, because I had to put up SOMETHING so SOMETHING had to come out.
And what else? Nothing else today. But watch this space. Things will happen.
So. I’ve been gone a while. Sorry about that.
It was a semi-unconscious decision that slowly became a conscious one. Why? Well, because I put up a post telling people to download a free ebook I wrote called Baby Teeth. It cost readers nothing, and I was going to send money to Ethiopia Reads every time someone downloaded the book. I liked having it at the top of the blog, because I get something like 900 visitors a month, and if they all downloaded it, how cool would that be?
I thought this was a cool, win-win kind of thing.
Turns out… well, I’ll come back to that.
There were two problems with that plan. The first was trying to get Amazon to price-match. I made the book free on Smashwords, went over to Amazon, told them that the book was free elsewhere and… they did nothing. A whole lotta nothing. Even though everything I read on the subject said they would match prices, post-haste.
I had friends and fans get involved. Nothing. Do I know why? I do not.
Eventually, I gave up and told everyone they could go ahead and download the book free on Smashwords.
And I gave away? 44 copies.
Now, what happened to those copies is a total mystery. I only know of two people who downloaded it. One sent me a really cool Tweet telling me she liked it. The other said she had a young baby and was afraid to read the story.
What I learned from that is the conventional wisdom about getting your ebook to be free on Amazon doesn’t always work.
I suppose I also learned that if you try to give away a book on Smashwords, you’re probably not gonna get a lot of takers.
(As I write this, Baby Teeth is still free on Smashwords, and it will probably remain so until I feel compelled to change that fact. Feel free to tell Amazon. Or go download the book. It’s free!)
Other reasons I didn’t write here?
Well, I did three guest posts at various blogs, promoting my novels Mercy and Blood Calling, and my novella, The Werewolf Solution. I also decided to take advantage of the fact that Halloween was coming up, and do a ton of book promotion on Twitter.
And I finished writing the second novel in the Blood Calling trilogy. I just sent it to beta readers, and the reaction has been great so far. That’ll be out by the end of November. I’m hoping before Thanksgiving.
I’m putting together two more books before the end of the year. How to Make a Movie, and How to Find a Job. I’ve got them mostly written, and I’m editing and collating and getting them some bonus chapters, and they’ll be out by Christmas.
For those of you keeping track, that means I’ll have eight books available by Christmas. Feel free to stock up. Or give them to friends as gifts.
And then next year, I have plans to write (or edit) and release six more ebooks. They are:
The Enforcers: A Blood Calling Novel (The final (for now) volume in the Blood Calling trilogy.)
Emma Goes to Egypt: A Blood Calling Novella/Novelette (I’m not sure how long it will be yet… I’m hedging my bets on this one.)
But the Third One Was Great: Volume 1, 2, and 3 – my super-fun horror blog will be revised, expanded, bonus-chaptered and released in three massive volumes.
A sequel to Mercy is also in the works.
And…
After that, I don’t know.
I’ve had a couple requests for a sequel to The Werewolf Solution, but as you can see, I’m a little booked (hah!) at the moment, and I don’t know when I’ll get to it.
For that matter, if the Blood Calling series suddenly became a huge hit, I’ve already got ideas for a second trilogy, and all these other books will be shoved aside.
My goal is to get those first 14 (!) books out by the end of 2012, and after that, I think it’s time to reevaluate… everything.
(Come to think of it, I’ll probably have more than 14 books up, as I plan on releasing all the Blood Calling stories together in one big volume, and I’ll probably do the same with But the Third One Was Great.)
Ultimately, I can see myself taking a couple of paths.
By the end of 2012, I’ll have a lot of different material available, and I’m sure that something will lead the pack in sales. Whatever breaks, I’ll see what I can do about making more of them.
And what if nothing breaks?
I have no idea. At that point, I think it might be poetic to sit down with the first prose book I ever wrote, The Werewolf Solution, and craft up a big, ambitious sequel. Really go all-out.
And if nothing breaks while I’m doing that? Well, then maybe it’s time for me to take a break, and give the books some time to find their audience. Or maybe I’ll finally sit down with my wife and we’ll write the adoption book we’ve been talking about for four years.
March of 2013 will mark two years I’ve been putting things up for sale. It will be very interesting to look back at this post and see What Really Happened.
In the meantime, I plan to blog a big more. I’ll probably put up some more fun blogs about what TV I’m watching, and a few things about what I’m reading and listening to. And I’m also planning to throw up some of my How to Find a Job chapters as I write them, because my post on trying everything to find a job is far and away my most popular blog post.
Clearly, people are looking for answers.
And sometime in 2012, I’d like to go back to doing what I used to do a couple of blogs ago. I would take a month, and do 30 posts in 30 days. It was always a lot of fun, and when I was in a writing slump, it always got the juices going, because I had to put up SOMETHING so SOMETHING had to come out.
And what else? Nothing else today. But watch this space. Things will happen.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Coming Soon: Misfits: A Blood Calling Novel
CHAPTER 1
Being a vampire sounds awesome, but a lot of the time it’s a pain in the neck.
I’m sorry, that was terrible. Let me try again.
Being a vampire isn’t nearly as awesome as people make it out to be.
Let’s consider the life of the average college student for a second. We’ll make up a name. Let’s go with Fred.
Fred wakes up with fifteen minutes to get to class. Maybe he goes, maybe he doesn’t. We’ll say he does. He rolls out of bed, pulls on a t-shirt and heads to class in his pajamas. He takes some notes. He texts his girlfriend.
Maybe he has another class or two. Then he goes to a cafeteria and eats his lunch. No cooking, no figuring out where and what to eat.
Fred goes to another class, maybe hits the library, does a little studying. He goes back to the cafeteria and has dinner. Now it’s night. He goes to his dorm room, maybe studies a little, and then a friend calls him and tells him where the party’s at.
Fred puts on actual clothing for the first time that day. If the ladies are lucky, Fred takes a shower before he goes. Fred gets his drink on. Then he decides to stay up and play pool for a while. Suddenly it’s 2 AM and he’s getting a cheeseburger at some diner called Marv’s, and getting back to his room at 4 AM.
He goes to bed. If the next day is a weekday, he gets up and starts the process again. If it’s a weekend, he sleeps until noon, then goes down to the cafeteria and gets himself something lunch-like to eat.
In case you missed it, here are the things he didn’t have to worry about:
The blazing hot sun burning him to ashes in a matter of minutes.
Finding a human being that will allow him to drink his or her blood so that he can stay alive.
Staying out of the public eye as much as possible so as to avoid uncomfortable questions about why the sick and elderly around you always seem to end up dead and a quart low.
Figuring out what to do with the rest of forever.
Don’t get me wrong, living for all eternity is kind of nice. And I can’t complain about the almost complete lack of morning breath.
But imagine spending the rest of your existence trying to pretend it was normal that no one ever saw you during the daytime, and you’ll get a little taste of what my world is like.
On the other hand, I don’t think I’m the average vampire. In less than a month I managed to become a fugitive from both my hometown and Denver, Colorado. I have a new identity and a new phone and some new clothes, and they all fit into a large blue backpack I carry with me whenever I move to a new city.
Which I was about to do for the third time when me, Wash, and Emma got off our plane in Pittsburgh.
Wash is a lean, well-muscled African-American ex-slave. He’s also missing a hand, thanks to his evil sire, a man who went by the name of John Smith.
Emma was born just after year one, as the Gregorian calendar goes. She was also sired by John Smith.
Oh, and she met Jesus. She was the woman caught in adultery. It’s in the Bible. You should look it up.
Between the three of us, we had a lot of complicated issues, all of which I’ll talk about later.
At that moment, we only had one issue, but it was a big one.
We had gotten on a plane in my hometown in order to leave it forever and ever and ever. Mostly because I was a vampire and I needed to make sure my family and friends (well, friend) didn’t find out what really happened to me. But also because we had killed John Smith, who as far as we knew was the world’s oldest and most deadly vampire.
And we sucked all the blood out of my mom’s ex-boyfriend. And stole a gun off a police officer. But I swear, we did it all for good reasons. See above re: killing oldest and most deadly vampire.
I digress. Again.
Instead of immediately flying away, what happened was: we sat on the tarmac and didn’t get in the air for a long time. So when we landed in Pittsburgh, we had maybe 45 minutes to get off the plane, and get our rental car, and get to our hotel.
So of course we sat on the tarmac some more. And once we finally got to a gate, everyone got to stand around while we waited for someone to open the door.
We got off the plane with 15 minutes ‘til dawn.
CHAPTER 2
There was one more little wrinkle I forgot to tell you about.
When we tried to get on the plane, I was told that my bag was too big. So they took it away from me, stuck a tag on it, and set it in the little hallway that leads to the plane.
No big deal, right?
Except when I got off the plane, my bag was nowhere to be seen. It had all my clothes. And my ID. And it was just gone.
I could buy more clothes, and the ID was fake. But still, it was all the stuff I owned in the world, outside of my mega-awesome smart phone. Which now had no charger, because it was in my bag.
I stared at the place where my bag was supposed to be, but wasn’t. Emma tugged at my arm. Wash tugged at my other arm.
“We need to go. Right now,” said Emma.
“Right now,” echoed Wash.
I looked at them. “My stuff?”
“We’re millionaires. We’ll get more stuff,” said Emma. “Let’s go. Now.”
We walked out of the hallway and into the airport, and I saw immediately what the problem was. Windows. Soon-to-be-sunlight-filled, vampire-killing windows. Everywhere.
Less than 24 hours earlier, I had lost a lot of my hair and scalp to sunlight. I froze. Wash and Emma, still holding me by my arms, pulled me forward. We were walking like they were my parents and I was a lackadaisical toddler.
Which was true in a sense, even though we all looked like we were somewhere between 17 and 22. Ish.
Wash had sired me after I had been attacked and almost killed by John Smith. That means he put some of his blood in my mouth, and I swallowed it, and then I died from blood loss. Which sounds funny when I say it that way.
Later, Emma had told me that Wash loved me, but we had almost literally not stopped moving long enough for me to ask Wash about it.
And now I was pretty sure I was going to die.
The thing is, vampires have very, very low-key emotions. It has something to do with the fact that our hearts don’t beat, so we don’t kick the normal chemicals around that human beings have. If we freak out and get a shot of adrenaline, it lasts maybe a second. Then our heart stops moving and our demeanor returns to neutral.
Which is to say, after a second I unfroze and let Wash and Emma lead me instead of drag me.
I turned to Emma. “Plan?”
“Don’t get fried,” said Emma.
I decided to try Wash. “Plan?”
Wash shook his head.
Emma let go of my arm, pulled out her phone, and started tapping at Mach 5. Watching her was like observing a highly-skilled violin player performing Rachmaninoff.
Emma held out her arm, blocking my progress and bringing Wash up short. We were standing in what appeared, to me, to be a random hallway.
Emma brought her arm in front of her, extending her finger to point. She had her phone in the other hand. “Door,” she said. She turned a little bit. “Out the door, this direction, there’s a hotel. Of course, when we walk out, we’ll be in a parking garage. So we have to get through that, go that way,” she pointed a slightly different direction, “and then run across a bunch of busy airport roads.”
I grimaced. “What could go wrong?”
Wash smiled. “Everything.”
Emma glanced up at a nearby clock. “Six minutes. Give or take. We go to the door at normal speeds. Then we go, go, go.”
So we speed-walked.
A few steps before we hit the door, Wash blurred. He ran, is what he did, but the sudden change in speed was so fast that a human would have seen a strange flash of color as Wash zipped forward, jumped and jerked a cable out of the back of a camera mounted above the doorway.
Of course, to me it looked pretty normal. Vampire vision.
And then we ran.
Being a vampire sounds awesome, but a lot of the time it’s a pain in the neck.
I’m sorry, that was terrible. Let me try again.
Being a vampire isn’t nearly as awesome as people make it out to be.
Let’s consider the life of the average college student for a second. We’ll make up a name. Let’s go with Fred.
Fred wakes up with fifteen minutes to get to class. Maybe he goes, maybe he doesn’t. We’ll say he does. He rolls out of bed, pulls on a t-shirt and heads to class in his pajamas. He takes some notes. He texts his girlfriend.
Maybe he has another class or two. Then he goes to a cafeteria and eats his lunch. No cooking, no figuring out where and what to eat.
Fred goes to another class, maybe hits the library, does a little studying. He goes back to the cafeteria and has dinner. Now it’s night. He goes to his dorm room, maybe studies a little, and then a friend calls him and tells him where the party’s at.
Fred puts on actual clothing for the first time that day. If the ladies are lucky, Fred takes a shower before he goes. Fred gets his drink on. Then he decides to stay up and play pool for a while. Suddenly it’s 2 AM and he’s getting a cheeseburger at some diner called Marv’s, and getting back to his room at 4 AM.
He goes to bed. If the next day is a weekday, he gets up and starts the process again. If it’s a weekend, he sleeps until noon, then goes down to the cafeteria and gets himself something lunch-like to eat.
In case you missed it, here are the things he didn’t have to worry about:
The blazing hot sun burning him to ashes in a matter of minutes.
Finding a human being that will allow him to drink his or her blood so that he can stay alive.
Staying out of the public eye as much as possible so as to avoid uncomfortable questions about why the sick and elderly around you always seem to end up dead and a quart low.
Figuring out what to do with the rest of forever.
Don’t get me wrong, living for all eternity is kind of nice. And I can’t complain about the almost complete lack of morning breath.
But imagine spending the rest of your existence trying to pretend it was normal that no one ever saw you during the daytime, and you’ll get a little taste of what my world is like.
On the other hand, I don’t think I’m the average vampire. In less than a month I managed to become a fugitive from both my hometown and Denver, Colorado. I have a new identity and a new phone and some new clothes, and they all fit into a large blue backpack I carry with me whenever I move to a new city.
Which I was about to do for the third time when me, Wash, and Emma got off our plane in Pittsburgh.
Wash is a lean, well-muscled African-American ex-slave. He’s also missing a hand, thanks to his evil sire, a man who went by the name of John Smith.
Emma was born just after year one, as the Gregorian calendar goes. She was also sired by John Smith.
Oh, and she met Jesus. She was the woman caught in adultery. It’s in the Bible. You should look it up.
Between the three of us, we had a lot of complicated issues, all of which I’ll talk about later.
At that moment, we only had one issue, but it was a big one.
We had gotten on a plane in my hometown in order to leave it forever and ever and ever. Mostly because I was a vampire and I needed to make sure my family and friends (well, friend) didn’t find out what really happened to me. But also because we had killed John Smith, who as far as we knew was the world’s oldest and most deadly vampire.
And we sucked all the blood out of my mom’s ex-boyfriend. And stole a gun off a police officer. But I swear, we did it all for good reasons. See above re: killing oldest and most deadly vampire.
I digress. Again.
Instead of immediately flying away, what happened was: we sat on the tarmac and didn’t get in the air for a long time. So when we landed in Pittsburgh, we had maybe 45 minutes to get off the plane, and get our rental car, and get to our hotel.
So of course we sat on the tarmac some more. And once we finally got to a gate, everyone got to stand around while we waited for someone to open the door.
We got off the plane with 15 minutes ‘til dawn.
CHAPTER 2
There was one more little wrinkle I forgot to tell you about.
When we tried to get on the plane, I was told that my bag was too big. So they took it away from me, stuck a tag on it, and set it in the little hallway that leads to the plane.
No big deal, right?
Except when I got off the plane, my bag was nowhere to be seen. It had all my clothes. And my ID. And it was just gone.
I could buy more clothes, and the ID was fake. But still, it was all the stuff I owned in the world, outside of my mega-awesome smart phone. Which now had no charger, because it was in my bag.
I stared at the place where my bag was supposed to be, but wasn’t. Emma tugged at my arm. Wash tugged at my other arm.
“We need to go. Right now,” said Emma.
“Right now,” echoed Wash.
I looked at them. “My stuff?”
“We’re millionaires. We’ll get more stuff,” said Emma. “Let’s go. Now.”
We walked out of the hallway and into the airport, and I saw immediately what the problem was. Windows. Soon-to-be-sunlight-filled, vampire-killing windows. Everywhere.
Less than 24 hours earlier, I had lost a lot of my hair and scalp to sunlight. I froze. Wash and Emma, still holding me by my arms, pulled me forward. We were walking like they were my parents and I was a lackadaisical toddler.
Which was true in a sense, even though we all looked like we were somewhere between 17 and 22. Ish.
Wash had sired me after I had been attacked and almost killed by John Smith. That means he put some of his blood in my mouth, and I swallowed it, and then I died from blood loss. Which sounds funny when I say it that way.
Later, Emma had told me that Wash loved me, but we had almost literally not stopped moving long enough for me to ask Wash about it.
And now I was pretty sure I was going to die.
The thing is, vampires have very, very low-key emotions. It has something to do with the fact that our hearts don’t beat, so we don’t kick the normal chemicals around that human beings have. If we freak out and get a shot of adrenaline, it lasts maybe a second. Then our heart stops moving and our demeanor returns to neutral.
Which is to say, after a second I unfroze and let Wash and Emma lead me instead of drag me.
I turned to Emma. “Plan?”
“Don’t get fried,” said Emma.
I decided to try Wash. “Plan?”
Wash shook his head.
Emma let go of my arm, pulled out her phone, and started tapping at Mach 5. Watching her was like observing a highly-skilled violin player performing Rachmaninoff.
Emma held out her arm, blocking my progress and bringing Wash up short. We were standing in what appeared, to me, to be a random hallway.
Emma brought her arm in front of her, extending her finger to point. She had her phone in the other hand. “Door,” she said. She turned a little bit. “Out the door, this direction, there’s a hotel. Of course, when we walk out, we’ll be in a parking garage. So we have to get through that, go that way,” she pointed a slightly different direction, “and then run across a bunch of busy airport roads.”
I grimaced. “What could go wrong?”
Wash smiled. “Everything.”
Emma glanced up at a nearby clock. “Six minutes. Give or take. We go to the door at normal speeds. Then we go, go, go.”
So we speed-walked.
A few steps before we hit the door, Wash blurred. He ran, is what he did, but the sudden change in speed was so fast that a human would have seen a strange flash of color as Wash zipped forward, jumped and jerked a cable out of the back of a camera mounted above the doorway.
Of course, to me it looked pretty normal. Vampire vision.
And then we ran.
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