Fear and Shivering in Second Life

Continuing with "Jason Boog Is Going To Publish Whether You Like It or Not Week," here's a story I worked hard on last month--to no avail. Even though my editor killed the story, I wanted to run the story on ThePublishingSpot, just to see what people thought.

If you read it, I will publish another installment next week. If you don't don't read it, I will never mention this again. Dig it:

"My super screwed up last month, leaving my building without heat for 5 days; without hot water for 7 days; without a stove for two weeks. Gas companies were called and city inspectors inspected, but I still spent $110 in electricity running a space heater 24 hours a day. On top of all that, I lost my shot at publishing the best story I had all year.

As I contemplated burning furniture for warmth, I "escaped" to a wacky press conference held entirely inside the computer-generated world of Second Life. Time has passed, wrapping both these events together in my head—much like a wooly mammoth and a diamond mine buried under the same glacier. Something compels me to tell both stories, even after the editors killed them.

In real life, I was pounding away on my laptop and breathing puffs of frozen air. In Second Life, I was lounging on the tropical island pictured above, with a crew of pixilated characters that included a blue skinny Martian, a Goth girl with a shimmering halo, a foot-tall monkey with cymbals, and some guy dressed tight black pants who floated in mid-air, bitching about everything he saw."

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