Heads up, I’m postponing self-publication of “Pemberton Lane and Other Stories.”

Why?

Backstory Time

There’s this unofficial, totally made-up thing called the I.B. Syndrome* . In high school the I.B. Program was made up of a small cluster of the nerdiest nerds I have ever met. (You know those stereotypes where you have the smart girls and the dumb guys? The girls were smart; the guys looked and acted like dorks, but holy moley they could write papers and analyse the crap out of anything in ways that would make textbooks and pro essayists jealous. Half the time when their work was read aloud, I had no clue how they could even invent those sentences, let alone the arguments. I was probably the dumb kid in class.)

Program teachers typically assigned midterm and final papers instead of tests (I remember a senior history paper which could be a maximum of 25 pages; the main student complaint was that 25 pgs was too short).

By our senior year we pretty much all had this quirk where we obsessed over the perfection of our papers, adhering to rubrics to strengthen arguments and striving for that elusive 100%, not simply to have the grade but to deserve it (and with the high standards of my contemporaries, you can imagine they set some incredible standards) (like I said, nerds).

Given the option to turn papers in a week early, we’d all still be editing until the last possible minute, trying it make it as perfect as possible. It was a class joke that, at the deadline, you’d have to pry the papers from our fingers (and possibly beat us with a stick) to force us to submit them.

The I.B. Syndrome never goes away.

And so, that tendency combined with being perpetually exhausted for the past year (long story), I’m not certain I’ve caught every flaw possible. Nor am I confident that “Pemberton Lane” is awesome enough to appease the I.B. nerd in me at this point in time. (I feel like I say that a lot but, like I said, perpetually exhausted.) 

The New Publication Date? 

TBA.

What I need is sleep. Like a month’s worth of sleep crammed into one night (Quick! Someone find a real magician with the ability to make that possible!).

*(I.B. = International Baccalaureate; a high school academic program similar to taking AP or honors classes)