Friday, May 14th, 2010

Stand Aside Folks, I’m in Charge…

…at least until tomorrow morning.

For now, do as I say and the first round of dumplings is on me.


Fortune Cookie stating, Today you should be the leader. Things will go your way.
Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Small Cookie, Big Fortune…

Yesterday, after the reading at the Library of Congress, Colleen treated us to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. (I got “Happy Family,” btw, one of my favorites.) And, of course, at the end, we were treated to fortune cookies.

I’ve talked before on my blog about fortune cookies. I’m certain it won’t be the last time. [Because Chinese, like cheese and chocolate, is one of the four major food groups. (The fourth is salt.)]

Here’s a photo of my cookie…and for the record, there were seven  fortunes inside, although some were duplicated.

Kelly A. Harmon's Awesome Fortune Cookie with SEVEN fortunes inside!

(Yes, dear Broads, I smuggled that cookie into my purse and managed not to crush it during the LC tour, the crushing metro ride, or eventual drive home. And I was hungry on the drive home…very hungry.)

And, poor thing, after surviving the humiliating and cramped confines of my purse, I made it pose on a red background like some harlot, for your viewing pleasure.

Then I ate it.

(And it wasn’t stale it all…which is kind of scary, really, if you think about it, considering it had been nearly nine hours from lunch until photo shoot. Fortune cookies must have the same half-life as Twinkies™.)

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Woe Unto Me

When I was a sophomore in college, my best friend Amy and I ate a lot of Chinese food. Amy would take the fortunes from her fortune cookie and tape them to the back of a spiral notepad. By the end of the semester, the reverse cover of her notebook would be plastered with little white slips in neat rows from top to bottom.

I was fascinated by the practice, and started doing the same. (Disclaimer: as much as I enjoyed Chinese food (and still do), my notebooks never achieved the same coverage Amy’s did.)

To this day, I retain my fortunes (often lamenting that fortune cookies have stopped dispensing predictions and starting meting out platitudes). But every once in while, one comes along that is particularly fitting to my writing life.

My favorite, taped to my computer monitor:

All your hard work will soon be paid off. 🙂

Yes, it even contains the smiley, albeit in black and white. Now, as far as I’m concerned, this prediction hasn’t come true yet – no novel published so far, right?  “Soon” is definitely a time span defined by the writer-gods. Or, on the other hand, fortunes could be a lot of bunk…which is what I’m hoping because…

Woe unto me, here is my latest:


You never suffer from a money problem, you always suffer from an idea problem.

Folks, for a writer, it doesn’t get any worse than this.

Or does it? I’d love to hear from anyone else who’s been cookie-cursed! Please share in the comments.