Over the last couple of weeks, I've been doing some lecturing around at High Schools. It is pretty cool, all in all. I get to talk about the things I love and give advice and make jokes and at the end, I'm given applause and cash.

Yesterday, though, I had a really strange, but really cool experience. I had just finished one of these lectures and a bunch of students came up, afterward, which they do. One of them was a girl who had gone to one of my workshops four years ago and had encountered a piece of work there that she liked. For some reason, the title of the author wasn't on the handout, though I would have given it verbally at least. One of my favourite things to do is to introduce authors by the varied personal histories that they have--dead ones are better, of course, but live ones do alright, though alcoholism and abuse is always more palatable in a past tense than a present. The living authors I use don't have those histories, anyhow. They mostly have social concerns and thematics through their work, which I also like to talk about.

Anyhow, this girl, she didn't know the title, didn't know the author. But she could remember parts of it, four years later, she could. She quoted it to me.

"It's Final Girl," I told her. "The author is an American, Daphne Gottlieb."

Then I wrote down Gottlieb's name for her, and told her she would have to buy it online, because the book wasn't available in Australia. She thanked me.

And you know...

...It totally made my day.