It's "kill fee" time!

The very first article I sold to a publication having national distribution was a short piece I wrote for RUN magazine, a periodical devoted to the Commodore computers of that era (the VIC-20 and the Commodore 64).

I mention that only because I just sent off an invoice for one day of my time to my erstwhile today-and-tomorrow client, who apparently won't need my services tomorrow, either. (FWIW, I might add that I did so at my client's request, and that I am satisfied with the outcome.)

Be that as it may, the collocation "kill fee" flashed through my mind as I created the invoice, and it occurred to me, as I sent off the invoice, that I hadn't thought of that particular combination of words in... a while.

But I try to avoid that kind of thinking, as I do not think it is very healthy, so instead, my mind focused on the first "kill fee" that I was paid, by BYTE magazine, for a review of a microcassette tape storage unit that had not performed so well. The amount wasn't quite what I would have been paid had the review been published, but to me, it represented a passage into the real world, where publishers at least took a stab at acknowledging a writer's efforts (then again, it had been an assigned review).

Enough with the reminiscing... I have work to do!

Cheers...