TWO YEARS IN NEW YORK (Michael Mohr's Fictional NYC Covid Memoir)

Chapter 7 (PAID)

Photo by Jermaine Ee on Unsplash

Chapter 7

I turned the A/C on full-blast, across my bed, and then sat down in the chair facing my desk. My Acer laptop sat facing me, my gmail account open. I stared at the email from a small literary journal which told me that they were “delighted” to publish my short story, The Heart of the Emerald Green. I was profoundly satisfied. As an unknown, un-agented writer it was a thrill when I finally got a story accepted. Nine out of ten magazines rejected my work. This was fairly standard, until you became known and had a reliable audience. Maybe I got a story published twice a year, if I was lucky. This piece was yet another autobiographical story about my golden, shadowy youth in Ojai, being young and confused and drunk, unsure of what the future would bring.

It was about 1pm. I gazed across my be…