"That's great!" I yell into the phone.
After a few moments of awkward silence I ask, "What did I win?"
"Um," he ponders as though I'm an idiot, "Book of the Year."
"Really?"
There's another long moment of uncomfortable silence before Richard asks, "Aren't you excited?"
Sitting in my office with my feet on my desk and a hundred people outside waiting to see me, I inquire, "Who's 'Book of the Year'?"
"Well it's actually 'Paperback of the Year,'" he boldly proclaims, "awarded to US last night by the Mid-America Book Achievement Awards in Chicago."
"Why wasn't I invited?" I ask.
"Aren't you excited?" he counters. "After all you are now ... ahem ... an award winning author."
I will never forget the ... "ahem."
Seriously Richard set it up that way because they were too cheap to fly me to Chicago for the awards ceremony and put me up for the night ... because he and Marg Pon went ... and are calling me the next day to tell me how great WE DID!
The only reason the book exists at all is because Terry Ball, Deputy Director of the Georgia Department of Community Affairs orders me to write it at Fannie's-On-the-Beach one day.
"You need to write a book about solving homelessness in America," he says over shrimp burgers.
"Why?" I mumble with a mouthful.
"Because I won't give any more money if you don't," he grins.
It is not politicians who run Government but the people who work for Politicians who run Government.
That's how "Why the Homeless Don't Have Homes and What to do About it" came to be.
I needed the money.
And the book got famous for a while.
Terry Ball was pleased and we got more money.
"Hey," Michael Stoops of the National Coalition for the Homeless asks me over beers at another awards ceremony in New York City, "you need to write another book about the homeless."
"I've got nothing else to give to them right now. I mean a Life is enough isn't it."
'Hmm," he mumbles as he sips his beer. "So what's next?"
"A book about Tybee Island where I live ... and where you've stayed ... it's almost done."
"Ahem," Michael says as we sip our beers.
"Ahem," I reply as we toast.
