Last night Eric and Shax took me out for drinks and dinner at BAR CENTRALE and then to XANADU on Broadway for my birthday. Xanadu was hilarious and awesome and ridiculous and not only featured a rousing and unexpected rendition of "Have You Never Been Mellow" but also one of the cheesiest, best scenes I've ever seen in which our confectionary pink-and-white-clad heroine Kiera rides on Pegasus over the stage while glittery clouds lower and raise around her. Eric, who is a theater person extraordinaire, said it's the first show he's gone to purely on word of mouth. This morning he also reminded me of the musical classic "Make a Move on Me," which is a song that hasn't even entered my head since I was a kid. I downloaded it immediately, of course, and all my Olivia love came rushing back. Grease.. That one album you unfold, where she's lying in her back with her arm raised.. I think she defined all womanhood for me when I was 8.



In other news, this afternoon, in the midst of a lovely manicure and pedicure, my eyeballs fell on this:



THOSE ARE NAILS.

Why I Am Going to Move to the Country

So yesterday my wondrous and glamorous friend Dinah posted photos of what she looks out upon as she composes her intensely vivid, ferocious prose--one view from her no-doubt sprawling and fantastical apartment in Brooklyn and the other from her country getaway someplace mysterious and unnamed. I found myself longing for similar views in gorgeous settings where I might write inimitable prose whilst inhaling the scents of gardenia and jasmine and unpronouncable plants whose names contain many syllables, but alas. I do most of my writing on the QM24 bus to Glendale, Queens.





I hope Dinah will now invite me to her country house.

How Glamour Can Save Lives

So a little while ago I visited Tink and Aoife, and Aoife had been crying allll dayyy long and wasn't having any of anyone's attempts to please her. I had a sneaking suspicion, however, that all she needed was a change of scenery. Specifically, that she needed what every girl needs now and then: some fancy pillows, a bit of leopard print, and a huge dose of good old-fashioned glamour. Lo and behold, the moment she glided into my apartment and spread out luxuriously on my bed, she started posing and squawking like a miniature Jean Harlow. I thought she might pull out a box of bon bons any minute:





I believe that many of the world's problems can be solved in a similar manner. The end.

Oooo. This is from Publisher's Marketplace and it was in there on mah birthday, too!

21 June, 2007

Carolyn Turgeon's GODMOTHER, about Cinderella's fairy godmother and the secret she's hiding about the fateful night of the ball, which has cursed her to live out her days on earth as a human, to Lindsey Moore at Three Rivers Press, by Elaine Markson at Elaine Markson Agency.

A NEW PHOTONOVELA OF SUSPENSE, HORROR, AND SURVIVAL

SO yesterday I went to the MERMAID PARADE at Coney Island for the first time. I have refused to go in all previous years because I hate: sun, beaches, crowds, and parades. I am also not an enormous fan of large groups of people in costume, either, despite the fact that I had a wondrous time at a Renaissance Fair in Waco, Texas, when I was 8. I have heard for so long and so often about how amazing the mermaid parade is, however, that this year I acquiesced. And it was indeed a day full of nightmarish crowds in body paint... an ocean I am convinced that rats and not fish reside in... masses of garbage everywhere and walls literally soaked in urine.. children running around wet and naked.. and all kinds of other horrors.

But much fun was had as well. Here is evidence.


Joi and me before the horror set in.


The 500000-mile-long line to the bathroom.


The crowd we were about to insert ourselves into.


Jeremy and Joi helping Autumn into her corset while the Ramones played on Jeremy's radio and children bathed on the cement block beside us, prompting Jeremy to cry out that "abortion is still legal!!"


A beautiful moment of friendship.


Joi and Autumn being palely glamorous.


The Wonder Wheel, on which we almost DIED.


On line for the Wonder Wheel, I display my eternal optimism while Jeremy communicates disdain for all life.


Joi resorted to her usual methods for quelling her terror.


As did Jeremy.


While Autumn remained aloof and gorgeous.


And yet, somehow, we all survived. The end.

A PHOTONOVELA OF PURE LONGING, LONESOMENESS, AND DESPAIR*






*Tink would like to point out that Seamus (aka Shameless) in fact receives enormous amounts of love and affection. I think it is clear, however, that for some people, love is not enough. Aint that just the way.

So today I had a very lovely lunch with my coworkers, but by the end of the day I was feeling tired and worn down.. I had barely slept at my Pennsylvania slumber party and the next night Joi and I had driven back to NYC in a horrible thunderstorm through the mountains, kamikaze truckers trying to mow us down from all sides, and I hadn't gotten home until nearly 4am and then had had to get up a couple of hours later to return the rental car.. and so I was tired and just wanted to go home, but I had half assedly talked about a birthday dinner and I knew Joi and Massie were coming tho a few friends were busy or out of town and several other people were being completely wishy washy.. and so I was in a bad mood, heading to meet Joi for a drink and then Massie after, and then I got off the subway and it was already really late and it was almost time to go to the restaurant, and Joi had left me a message saying the bar we were going to meet at was closed, and so I headed to the restaurant and then Joi called and was insisting I meet her at the bar even tho I was saying I was almost at the restaurant, and then Massie called in and was also insisting I go to the bar, and I was annoyed at them both because by that point I was in front of the restaurant and they were being weird and then I said FINE and I walked toward the bar and I was thinking WHAT BIYITCHES and I was thinking how lame everyone else was.. that bitchly Anton had never even told me whether or not he was coming.. and then I go and meet Massie and I'm in a bad mood and then we get to the restaurant and ALL MY FRIENDS WHO'D BEEN WISHY WASHY WERE SITTING THERE. And for five minutes I was totally annoyed at them all but after that I had THE BEST BIRTHDAY DINNER EVER and got many many sparkly rings and glittery eyeshadows and scented bath products and bouquets of flowers and even a chocolate penis cake, which was, I might add, THE SECOND CHOCOLATE PENIS CAKE IVE GOTTEN THIS WEEK. The end.

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY AND I DEMAND PRESENTS!

My second novel, Godmother, about the fairy godmother from the Cinderella story living in present-day NYC, is going to be published by Three Rivers Press! I am very very happy.

Also, I just got back from a wondrous long weekend in Pennsylvania.. Among other things, Joi came down and we had an all-girl slumber party at my friend Heather's amazing house in the boondocks. Sangria was drunk, bonfires were built, and new badass girl bands were formed:



More to come!

FIRST LINES

So this writer I know is teaching a class on "hooks" and asked for some examples of best first lines/openings from novels, etc., and a bunch of things immediately came to my mind, like the openings of One Hundred Years of Solitude--"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice"--and Love in the Time of Cholera--"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love"--and that amazingly gorgeous, sad opening sequence of The Hours in which Virginia Woolf drowns herself, and the opening of The Lovely Bones, which I read in a day, completely riveted--"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer"--and any opening by Patricia Highsmith or James M. Cain or.....

And then there is this first line from Daniel Woodrell's Tomato Red:

You're no angel, you know how this stuff comes to happen: Friday is payday and it's been a gray day sogged by a slow ugly rain and you seek company in your gloom, and since you're fresh to West Table, Mo., and a new hand at the dog-food factory, your choices for company are narrow but you find some finally in a trailer court on East Main, and the coed circle of bums gathered there spot you a beer, then a jug of tequila starts to rotate and the rain keeps comin' down with a miserable bluesy beat and there's two girls millin' about that probably can be had but they seem to like certain things and crank is one of those certain things, and a fistful of party straws tumble from a woven handbag somebody brung, the crank gets cut into lines, and the next time you notice the time it's three or four Sunday mornin' and you ain't slept since Thursday night and one of the girl voices, the one you want most and ain't had yet though her teeth are the size of shoe-peg corn and look like maybe they'd taste sort of sour, suggests something to do, cause with crank you want something, anything, to do, and this cajoling voice suggests we all rob this certain house on this certain street in that rich area where folks can afford to wallow in their vices and likely have a bunch of recreational dope stashed around the mansion and gain' to waste since an article in The Scroll said the rich people whisked off to France or some such on a noteworthy vacation.

So I meant to write about last weekend earlier, but then I was struck by a deadly illness on Sunday and have spent this entire week fluttering romantically between life and death, surrounded by white lilies in Garbo-esque style, not to mention with multiple episodes of Law and Order playing softly in the background like old jazz songs.

But back before I was so afflicted, I spent a very wondrous evening with Dinah and Joi attempting to go to the Galleycat BookExpo party but then, when it was far too crowded for our delicate temperaments, retiring to a lovely café across the street for wine instead. Dinah wrote about it all here. We spotted my friend Rona skulking on the street corner and she came over as well, and we spent much time talking about writing and other exciting affairs before meeting up with my friend Ron and his friends at a cigar bar. Sometimes it is very important to surround oneself with glamorous womens and red wine on street corners, before flitting off in taxicabs to cigar bars across town. Of course now the mere thought of a cigar bar or even flitting generally makes me want to faint onto the couch and bring a handkerchief to my mouth, but last week was another story.

Friday I was going to see the Rock Bottom Remainders with Joi and Kathy Patrick of Pulpwood Queens fame, and all her friends, but I ended up just going with Joi to drink ginger proseccos and white sangrias served in slight, curving pitchers, and we had a long fevered discussione and then I ate baked cod with pumpkin seeds and floated home.

Saturday I arose bright and early, blissfully unaware of my impending doom, and took an hour long walk through FOREST PARK, which at times seemed quite rural and fallen-leaf-filled until the Jackie Robinson highway suddenly appeared rudely at my side. I also at one point came upon a wide expanse of perfect lawn and thought it was a field that had materialized just for me to run through, trailing flowers behind me, when I realized that it was a golf course and turned, sadly, back to the lone path I was traversing. After, I went downstairs to visit Tink’s brother Tom and his wife Whitney and their amazingly cute baby girl RILEY, as well as Tink’s astonishingly adorable baby AOIFE, and somehow managed to not kill them both with the germs I was clearly harvesting. I also gave each baby a CD of the song FANTASTIC CAT by Takako Minekawa. After drinking much tea, I then went into Manhattan to meet my newly married genius friend Eric for lunch and coffee and an afternoon of much mutually inspiring talk, and some wandering around the West Village, and then I went and met Kathy Patrick and her extremely cool husband and friends at Carmine’s uptown, where we feasted on calamari and salad and pasta and veal and drank much red wine, and then after we all went to Chelsea for LE SCANDAL burlesque, where Joi met us too, and proceeded to watch much sideshow burlesque wondrousness before going to TRAILER PARK to have some margaritas. It was so much much fun, tho by the time Joi and I got on the L train at 3am I did not feel so hot. I have to ride the L train much further than Joi and I spent the rest of the ride gripping the pole in horror, thinking that I would become one of those horrid drunk people vomiting on a bunch of strangers in a subway car, and then I took a taxi home praying I would not throw up in the taxi, but then I miraculously arrived at home without incident and elegantly passed out.

On Sunday I woke up very early feeling AWFUL, and knowing I would not do anything of any value at all I walked to the ATLAS PARK MALL and saw a 10am show of KNOCKED UP, which I thought was extremely hilarious. Then I stayed and watched MR BROOKS. I almost walked out in the first five minutes, it was so godawful, William Hurt playing Kevin Costner’s bad alter ego, sitting in the back seat going “oooo you knowwwww how much we like having funnnnn, let's go kill people!” while Kevin Costner is responding “no, no, I'm an upstanding citizen now!” but then I decided to give myself over to the pure awfulness of the movie and by the end decided it might be the BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME. Come to think of it, it might have been the movie that killed me, as by the time I got home I began to suspect that I was not simply hungover and not simply just experiencing the horror of William Hurt playing Kevin Costner’s unconscious invading my delicate sensibility, and by that night I had fallen into my bed from which I now write with my last breaths. It is all extremely suspicious and I feel that someone, somewhere, has done me wrong.

The end.