It’s TV law: Story-sniffing, pavement-pounding, muckraking journalists always end the day tossing back some vice while tossing around stories of their biggest catch. Fictional intrepid reporters will trade tales over cigarettes on the backstairs of the Baltimore Sun building, like the city desk crew in The Wire (season 5). Or, a la Lou Grant, they spin their stories of corruption exposed or Senators caught “compromised” while knocking one back at the bar around the corner.

So if one day it’s me leaning on that Sun stair railing or sitting at McKenna’s with LA Tribune staffers, and one of those noble, seasoned reporters looks my way and says, “What’s your story, Hovey?” finally—finally!—I can say, “Well, get a hold of this one boys…my story is the story of the story that almost never was.” Hmm…almost sounds like the title of a screenplay…

What Hovey means is that you can read it right here