My #MayTale

Well, I truly seem to have earned a nice packet of Twitter karma this past week. Apart from some very lovely, chirpy interactions with a few of my favorite people-whom-I-don't-actually-know in the whole world (Andy Partridge, John Flansburgh, Alan Davies...) I participated in a compelling project begun by much-adored author Neil Gaiman. His forthcoming "Calendar of Tales" will take inspiration from a series of twelve Twitter questions which he asked, one per hour, last Monday. This seemed like fun, so I joined in. I really enjoyed the process of composing (necessarily) succinct yet creative answers to each of the questions -- they worked brilliantly as writing prompts. Thousands (perhaps millions? Neil has that many followers) of responses were logged on Twitter, with Neil himself re-tweeting scores of them every hour. I can only describe my reaction as astonishment when I noticed this string of messages in my evening e-mail:

Neil had re-tweeted my submission for the May tale... and favorited me. And commented! I was delighted. What did he say?

"Glorious."

You guys.

Neil Gaiman, whom I've admired for nearly three decades and whose writing has tickled and touched and thrilled me more than I can even express, told me he considers some small fragment that I wrote to be "glorious." Let us take a moment to catch our breath and perhaps even bask in the awe of this.
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Okay. So. This wonderful exchange alone would have made my whole month, but my "Tales" tale wasn't quite over yet. A few days later, I got a Facebook message from Neil's assistant Cat, asking for my contact info because... well, because "Neil really likes your tweet and hopes to use it." (Do we need another moment? Yes, please.)
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I was asked to sign a release form and to follow BlackBerry on Twitter (they sponsored the project) and basically give up any future rights to my humble 140 characters. I don't know much else about what will happen next, except that Neil has already written tales for a few of the other months. I'll be Miss May, if you will. I guess the calendar will come out later this year, for 2014, and be sold for charity. Even though I'm just a small part of it, I can't help feeling pleased. Twelve muses are better than nine, don't you think?