I am completely enamored of this image. Isn't it stunning?

By Tim Walker, and from here.

Yesterday I brought a brand new gleaming pink bicycle. I think I am in luvvv.

Also.

Here is a battle scene complete with dead soldier (I believe this one did okay tho I did not see him go down so do not know how much he emoted; another crossed his legs AFTER HE WAS DEAD):



And I don't think I've ever seen a more romantic photo than this one (from my friend Eric):

So Rob and Autumn left last night after a wondrous small town kind of weekend involving much carnival action, many games of bingo in the Boalsburg fire house (my mother was the big winner with $30 and Autumn won $25, but I myself did take a $6 pot OH YEAH), some Civil War reenactments that were, frankly, not very convincing, some funnel cakes and BBQ chicken and root beer sno cones, dinners at the WHISTLE STOP CAFE, some late night disco bowling, that horrible Indiana Jones movie, and many homemade soaps that smell like spices and chocolate. We also played racquetball and walked all over the Penn State campus, which I have not actually done in many many moons despite my ties to this town. It is really a very gorgeous campus with a ridiculous amount of greenery hanging and swaying over curving pathways.

I am thinking more and more that I might just stay here. My plan in coming back was to just live here in Central PA until Godmother comes out next spring, and during this time finish three books (the noir, the Dante one, and a YA about a mermaid) and really focus on my health, eating well and doing a ton of exercise and basically just kicking much ass. I have lost over 10 pounds in month I've been here, by the way. I figured next year I'd most likely return to New York but was also thinking I could just move out into the country here (State College is college town surrounded on all sides by farm land and all kinds of strange, quaint little towns) or go off to Italy or Berlin. A lot depends on what happens with all the above books and whether or not I'll need to go back to work at a real job next year, but I'm thinking I might like to get a little house out here and just occasionally grace NYC and Italy with my presence. Though of course I will really need to work on my bingo game.

If I'd been in New York last night, I would have met up with Joi and gone to see X. After, very likely, having drinks at the Algonquin Hotel.

As I was instead in Central Pennsylvania, the night held a different array of delights. My friends Rob and Autumn were visiting, and we hit the CARNIVAL in Boalsburg, where we had FUNNEL CAKES and played BINGO:




Afterwards, we went to ROCK N BOWL night at the local bowling alley:



We also played defective video games in which we hunted bear.

The end.

So my friend Massie is now selling some of her wondrous jewelry on Etsy. Her full blown kick ass website will be ready soonly, but in the mean time, LOOK! Also, this is me elegantly modelling some of said jewelry a few months back. I know. If I don't have so many damn novels to write I would totally be calling Tyra.



Also, this is what my evil canine charge does when he believes no one is looking.

Here is a photo of the most annoying dog in the world, caught in a rare moment of repose and yet, even in repose, full of plots and schemes. He also has a terrible addiction to his ball, which might account for the glazed, soulless look in his eyes.



Here is a photo from the glamorous PIG ROAST I attended last weekend. There were four kinds of pulled pork and the only vegetables were sauerkraut and cole slaw. There was a teenage cowboy singing country songs and despite my giving him TEN DOLLA to sing Ramblin Man, Sunday Morning Coming Down, and You Were Always on My Mind, he sang a Ramblin Man NOT by Hank Williams and ignored my other gorgeous requests. Also, I ate a brownie from the dessert table and almost died.



The end.

Yesterday I watched the entire second season of Dexter (WHICH WAS AWESOME) whilst also playing Scrabulous and throwing a ball to my parents' very annoying and demanding dog Gus, whom I have been taking care of for the past week while they are off enjoying themselves in far-flung corners of the globe. I also watched Juno, which I thought was wayyy too cute but also hilarious. I am deeply ashamed of the slothfulness such an array of behavior suggests. As punishment, that horrible song, the one about monkeys and part-time friends that plays about 50000 times in the movie and that they even sing at the damn end, has buried itself in my brain and will not stop whispering into my ear. It's the devil!

In other news, I did, on Friday, mail off the copyedited manuscript of Godmother with all the very last changes and edits, which means I am done with it forever, um or at least until the galleys come. Since I hurried so much through Rain Village in these last stages and probably never even fully read the final version through from front to end, I was especially careful with this book to make sure it's perfecto. Though reading the draft through about five times over the last week or so might possibly have scarred me for life. Though not as much as that song from Juno.

In other other news, I am now working on the noir with the goal of finishing a first draft by July 3rd, at which point I will hand it to my friend Eric for his expert opinione. I am also cooking lovely food and playing racquetball a lot with Barb and taking lots of walks and lots of long baths with books in hand. And I am also doing a lot of research for the Dante book, which I will start working on again once the noir is done.

This is all that I do now. It is quite amazing.

I also can't seem to listen to anything other than Beirut, Devotchka, and The Bad Things.

The end.

I have several items of extreme urgency and questionable natures to report.

1. Yesterday Barb and I, after a rousing and athletic game of racquetball, went and had a healthful dinner in the charming town of Boalsburg, PA. Afterwards, we were standing out front having a very secret conversation of things of a scandalous nature when I sensed that we were not quite... alone. Someone, or someTHING, was definitely up to no good. I scoured the landscape with my eagle eye and sure enough, there was an evil eavesdropper... and one trying very hard to escape detection. Can you spot him?



THAT IS RIGHT. The culprit was not more than a few feet away the whole time, trying to look as innocuous as possible. Luckily, I got him on film, and when you focus on that devillish mug it's like staring into the face of pure evil.



2. In cheerier news, I got the BEST PRESENT EVER from my friend Autumn. Imagine my susprise and delight when I opened a package to find not only a set of "eye-catching shimmers in four popping shades" but to see that the back of said package had been signed........... by BEN and PERRY of MAKE ME A SUPERMODEL fame. The two had come in for a shoot at the girly magazine at which Autumn is employed and had graciously (well apparently Ben was far more gracious than Perry, to my great sadness) signed said shimmers for yours truly. Lest you think I am just making this up in order to inspire jealousy worldwide, I present you with the following photo, in which I am gracefully modelling the mysterious and dazzling blue "shimmer."



3. Whilst on the topic of scinitillating gifts, I would like to show you:

a. Both the year's worth of cards and stamped, addressed envelopes given to me by Massie (so that I will write to her.... and inside each envelope is a card on which I must record various things like activities done that week and pages written) AND a pair of very elegant pink feather earrings presented to me by Joi. I mean really now.



b. the most glamorous notebook ever, sent to me by my friend Elissa.



4. Speaking of glamour, on Saturday I am attending a pig roast at the American Legion.

The end.

I am obsessed with the band THE BAD THINGS. Click here and listen!

Some random things:

I LOVED City of Men and also, to my astonishment, Iron Man. I've never never loved a comic book/superhero movie before except maybe Superman when I was a little kid, and unfortunately I've seen most of them. But Iron Man is astonishingly good and never gets stupid or lame or loose or boring like almost every big Hollywood movie does at the end. I've also never really liked Gwyneth Paltrow before and here I thought she was perfect. Oh, I also loved Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days.

AND I loved Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, the loveliest sweetest most wrenching novel about growing up, by Peter Cameron. I am also reading a lot of James M. Cain right now, whom I think is one of the best and most brutal noir writers.

Also: yesterday I got new racquetball racquets and biking stuff and it was very exciting but I was most happy to see that: 1) nowadays one can buy racquet balls that are bright pink, and 2) I look surprising chic in a bike helmet. Who looks good in a bike helmet? That's right, I DO. Ha!

AND: I shall soon be taking either a pottery or a dark room photography class.

The end.

I just had the most wondrous day at my favorite place in the world, my old friend Heather's house, which I know I've described before but clearly must describe again. It's the loveliest place, smack in the middle of the country, where time seems to stop. From my parent's town you take this highway about 20 minutes out, but then instead of turning off onto the interstate you keep going, and suddenly the road narrows and darkens and trees pop up on each side, their branches curving above you, and then you're passing barns and cows and signs advertising fresh brown eggs and warning you to watch out for horses and buggies, and you pass old mills and corn fields and this big campground, and the road twists -- and every time I see a FOR SALE sign I think THAT IS THE HOUSE I WANT TO BUY, THAT IS WHERE I WANT TO LIVE -- and then you round another bend and head up this long gravelly tree covered driveway, up this little hill, and there is the house where Heather and her crazy-wonderful woodworking husband live.

Look:


Here is the view from the porch, and the road extending past her house and into the next town:


And this is Heather, and our friend Barb behind her making coffee:


And here is the living room, with huge windows looking over green and hummingbirds:


I love this house so much and whenever I visit Pennsylvania spend whole days here, just hanging out at the kitchen table and lying on the sofas and talking for hours and looking through photo books and listening to music, all the cool new music Heather's dug up or just old stuff like Marianne Faithful or Lou Reed or Billie Holiday. Today Barb came over and Heather dyed and cut my hair and it was so lovely sitting with two old, very beloved friends in this house I love on a warm spring rain-smelling kind of day, with Heather's cat's stalking around and dye in my hair and all of us talking as easily as we did 20 years ago. And I keep feeling this sense like I always do, like I have to make the most of this day because I have to get back to New York and I won't be back for months and months, and then I keep remembering that I am here now, living here for the next year, with no job and just all these days in front of me with nothing to do but write and read and cook and take walks and spend days like this one.

Also: Heather has a bunch of cats but I love Sita, the glamorous huntress. Sita will sit -- and I have watched her -- over a chipmunk hole for hours in the sleet and snow and rain, shivering with cold but refusing to move. The other (male) cats just lie around while she hunts and stalks and, when inside, sits at the door watching everything around her. Sometimes she'll bring back 10 victims a day. Earlier today we mentioned this one guy we used to know and this comment he made to me that I still think of as one of the most annoying comments ever. We were sitting around after work one day, when we were teenagers and waiting tables at the diner downtown, and I was talking about how I wanted to learn Italian and write books and go to graduate school and travel and this guy just smiles at me in this condescending way and says, "Carolyn, why don't you just try to be happpppy?" I wanted to punch him! Today I was admiring Sita and saying that she is my hero, all hellbent and asskicking. Not to mention an icon of glamour, complete with feather toes. I mean look at her.




And here she is with Heather, attempting to eat the garlic, as all the coolest cats do.


The end.

So I just spoke to my lovely new editor at Crown (my lovely old one left last week!) and found out, among other exciting things, that the publication date for Godmother is March 2009. I just got the copyedited manuscript today and within a few weeks there should be a cover... I am very excited!

Also, here is a description:

In this stunning novel, Carolyn Turgeon tells the story of Cinderella’s fairy godmother – banished to earth for failing to bring Cinderella and Prince Charming together. Forced to live out the rest of her days on earth as an old woman (gone is her porcelain skin, flaming red hair and lush green eyes), Lil resides in New York City and works in a small used bookshop. Her greatest happiness comes from poring over 1st edition books and eating gluttonous meals at a local diner. All the while, Lil is forced to keep prying hands away from her delicate back—where her fairy wings hide beneath layers of clothing. When Veronica, a spunky hairdresser with a past of her own, brings in a book of fairy photographs (a “scam” she calls them), Lil is struck with the idea that a love connection between this young woman and her boss, the lonely George, will right her past and enable her to go back to the fairy world. Just as her plan seems to be working, and as Lil finds herself becoming more and more immersed in the human world, Veronica makes a shocking discovery that pushes Lil even further into her own world. Turgeon’s first novel, RAIN VILLAGE, was a Book Sense Pick for 2006.