Thanks to my friends at American Art & Antiques magazine, a launch I’d worked on with the very capable Jeannie Zebrowski and Susan Colgan, I got a recommendation from them for a job as a reporter for the New York Daily News. It was an incredible breakthrough, and I soon found myself traveling all over New York City writing stories on a wide variety of subjects. I got interested in the survivalist movement that was sweeping the country, and after I submitted this story, it ended up on the front page of the Sunday paper! I had a very strange meeting with the editor of the Sunday edition, however, as he wanted to insert some asides into the text that pushed the piece in a different direction (right wing). I let the editor make the changes (I was a new employee and didn’t want to rock the boat), but after the article was published, I regretted that decision. I never really fit-in with many of that paper’s ardently working-class staff, except the ones like me, who’d been hired to produce a hip new afternoon edition. But after that edition failed to catch on fast enough, dozens of us were fired on the same day exactly one year after we were hired, including me. It was only then I began to sense the paper’s old guard had been waiting for months for that ax to finally fall. No wonder they seemed distant! I put the original story (minus the editing changes) on my smashwords site, where you can read it for free. Just click the link that says “click here for free eBooks” in the middle of the column on the right of this page.