So yesterday was my birthday and I am now THIRTY EIGHT and therefore extremely old in that soon-i-wont-be-able-to-have-babies-not-that-i-want-to-but-what-if-i-do-later! kinda way. To celebrate said happening I treated myself to the most gorgeous 90 minute hot stone massage and the lady was so thorough she included my 38 year old mug! She even massaged my glamorously fluttering eyelids! It was quite blissful and those smooth stones... like hot liquid spreading across your skin! I have decided I should get one every single day from now on. I was also serenaded in the morning by Massie and Marcie, my roommates in the old upstate farmhouse I'm staying in for the moment, and Merissa, who was up for the weekend to install her piece for the art opening this Saturday... and that was very lovely tho somewhat disturbing, I'm not gonna lie.

(HERE IS A GORGEOUS PREVIEW OF SAID OPENING, AS WELL AS A TOUR OF WHERE I BE..)

I mean really:



As you can see from the tour and photos I have generously provided above, it is so beautiful here... and even tho people are complaining about the weather right now, I LOVE IT and think it makes everything that much more stunning. The other night I worked late on my book at the cottage, and when I left I walked, enchanted, back to the grey house. There was the most light, soft, veil-like rain falling... you could barely feel it yet it was streaming streaming down in the lights... and the long grass swaying back and forth and the trees rustling..! And there is a big old porch to sit on and watch as these big rains come down... Yesterday after my massage I took a long afternoon nap with the window open and this rain-laden breeze coming in... And even now I'm sitting here in this coffee shop and everything's all gearing up for more rain... the sky's all silver with charcoal colored clouds moving in.. It's gorgeous and strange and I love that feeling of a storm coming on... And so really.. I HOPE IT RAINS ALL SUMMER LONG!

In other news, look at this lovely little article. I like the photo too and have decided to pose with lemons in the foreground from now on, at all times. Oh and a few nights ago we had a big dinner and maybe 20 or 25 women came and we all ate and then sat around the cottage living room and I read a snippet from Rain Village and a bit more from Godmother. I have to say, after reading at Trillian and Kyle's in Philly last month and then here... it is so much nicer to read in those intimate, homey settings, sitting on a couch cross-legged with people gathered around. It feels very warm, very old-time storytellery, like we should all be sitting around a fire. I love that!

Finally, here is a photo of the most byootiful and glamorous dog in the world. She is a very old lady, but she is still spry and always, always dainty in her movements. In fact, recently my friend Rob came to visit and we were glamorously doing a JIGSAW PUZZLE and when one of the pieces seemed to be missing and he speculated that "maybe the dog ate it," I didn't have any idea what he meant at first. And then I realized he was referring to MUMU.

"A dog"! As if she would be caught dead with a puzzle piece in her mouth!!! I mean look at her!



If some Dom Perignon or some truffles went missing, then MAYBE.

I forgot to share with youse the beautiful ad Massie made me for the FAERIEWORLDS PROGRAM:



WHICH IS OBVIOUSLY THE BEST AD EVER.

HOWEVER this the one she made that I sent in for the program:



I know. The combination of the two could just about make one faint from love and longing. Sigh.

SO I am in a coffee shop in Cornwall, NY, and have been going between here and NYC the past few weeks... still writing about mermaids and hatching 5000 other plots and schemes and plans, including preparing for Faerieworlds at the end of July, and the launch of the Godmother paperback in the UK next month.. and helping to prepare for the first big art show of the One Stone Collective next Saturday, June 27, about which I shall post later.. not to mention prepare psychologically and emotionally for this approaching weekend, when I shall turn the very MATURE sounding age of THIRTY EIGHT.

38!

I think I will be here upstate for my birthday and I might go to this witchy summer solstice ritual thing that the very cool, wondrous woman, Bernadette, who owns the local witchy store, told me about... It do seem like the kind of birthday that calls for a touch of magic... I met Bernadette yesterday and decided last night to go to her introduction to Wicca class at the shop--mainly because she's so un-hokey and cool, and because I thought all that magic talk might help me in my writing about mermaids and all, and I was right: I left there full of images of sprinkling salt and herbs thrown on fire and all kinds of other lovely things... Who don't love witches and witchy things? I mean really.

Speaking of which: last week I went into Manhattan to meet Robert Gould, the man who runs Faerieworlds and does many many other things besides, and his friend Diana Zimmerman, an ultra glamorous lady magician novelist/business lady, for drinks at the Algonquin and dinner next door (where I had one of them fancy burgers for the first time, the kind made out of kobe beef and that have braised short ribs and foie gras thrown in just for kicks.. it was the most obscene, slutty, legs-wide-open burger I ever done seen!), and it was a wonderful night, full of stories about magical Egyptian perfumes and peacock-filled Bavarian castles and magic circuses in South America and magic castles in Los Angeles and Garboesque fairies with broken wings, oh and healers who use gems and light..... So many things! AND speaking of new peoples and magic I don't think I mentioned how the week or so before that I got to meet the dashing, brilliant Lee Moyer for the first time, after knowing him and his equally dashing and brilliant wife Annaliese online for some time, at a Saturday brunch full of artist types, including the amazing Michael Kaluta, and the extremely charming Zelda Devon... After, Lee led a group of us up to the Nicholas Roerich Museum uptown and we passed, on the way, the Isadora and Ida Straus memorial... in memory of this old married couple who died on the Titanic. Look: "Mrs. Straus was offered a seat in a lifeboat, but she said: “I have lived with him for 50 years - I won’t leave him now”, and they sat on deck-chairs until the end." Now, honestly!

I have also spent much time with babies recently. I saw my best friend Aoife this weekend AND ALSO attended my first bris, for one Ms. Brenna and her two twin baby boys. It was awfully traumatic, I'm not gonna lie. That rabbi explained to us how them babies don't feel a thing, they just cry because they're being restrained.. and then proceeded to elicit the most soul-splitting screams you ever done heard from them chitlins.

Anyway, so in other news here is an audio clip of me reading from Godmother that I prepared for the UK reader's guide.

And in other news, I found out yesterday that B&N will be RE PROMOTING Godmother on its paperback fiction tables from July 14 thru August 10 -- a time at which I was afraid that book would be out of stores altogether, stacked in warehouses, hearbroken and unloved... and now it's like some little prom queen, with suitors all around!

And in other, other news, look at this awesome thing from this artist.:



filled with drawings like this:


Admit you have never seen anything more awesome.

The end.

Please admire this byoootiful and extremely scary anthology I am in. My story is about LA LLORONA. It will make you laugh, cry, fall in love, gnash your teeth, and wave your hands in the air to praise the lawd above. And that's just one story out of TWENTY! Unless I counted wrong, which is entirely possible!

Love,
Carolyn

Haunted Legends edited by Ellen Datlow & Nick Mamatas TOC
An anthology of original stories inspired by regional ghost stories and urban legends, coming out from Tor (hopefully in 2010).

Table of Contents

"Introduction: Saying Boo" Nick Mamatas

"Knickerbocker Holiday" Richard Bowes

"That Girl" Kaaron Warren

"Akbar" Kit Reed

"The Spring Heel" Steven Pirie

"As Red as Red" Caitlín R. Kiernan

"Tin Cans" Ekaterina Sedia

"Shoebox Train Wreck" John Mantooth

"15 Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku & the Jotai" Catherynne M. Valente

"La Llorona" Carolyn Turgeon

"Face Like a Monkey" Carrie Laben

"Down Atsion Road" Jeffrey Ford

"Return to Mariabronn" Gary A. Braunbeck

"Following Double-Face Woman" Erzebet YellowBoy

"Oaks Park" M.K. Hobson

"For Those in Peril on the Sea" Stephen Dedman

"The Foxes" Lily K. Hoang

"The Redfield Girls" Laird Barron

"Between Heaven and Hull" Pat Cadigan

"Chucky Comes to Liverpool" Ramsey Campbell

"The Folding Man" Joe R. Lansdale

I was just cleaning up and getting ready to leave the big city and return to the farmhouse upstate and I found these heartwarming family photos which I am generously and selflessly sharing with YOU.

So... this past Christmas my parents were here and we all stayed at my sister's and one night the four of us were all in a cab heading out to do something extremely glamorous, I'm sure, and I was sitting in the passenger seat and turned around and told them to SMILE and LOOK EXCITED and this is how they looked back at me:



I also came upon this old family photo from the one time my mama decided to take us all to a professional photographer. I believe I was about 19. We were all exceptionally cheery and full of good will, especially my evil yet fashionable sister, who is off in southern Sweden twisting her body into evil yogic positions AS WE SPEAK.



THE END.

Oh! I also wanted to share this swoony review from School Library Journal:

Adult/High School—Turgeon manages to turn the classic fairy tale into a transcendental apology for the unacknowledged linchpin of the tale: the fairy godmother. Lil is an old woman, spending her days eating, sleeping, and working at a used bookstore in New York City. Her failure to get Cinderella to the ball has haunted her for centuries. No one knows who she is or why she has been exiled from the fairy kingdom to live out her days as a human, strapping down and hiding her beautiful fairy wings. But when the opportunity to once again pair a lovely, deserving woman with a handsome prince presents itself, Lil believes that maybe, just maybe, this is her chance to go home. The story and its characters are unveiled in alternating flashbacks and present time and carry readers along to a jaw-dropping, unexpectedly melancholy conclusion. Is Lil really who she believes she is, or has she created her world out of fairy dust and whole cloth? Teens who expect a fluffy, chick-lit read may be disappointed with the magically pervasive sadness of this story, but those who enter with an open mind will be well rewarded.—Charli Osborne, Oxford Public Library, MI

TURGEON, Carolyn. Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story. 288p. Three Rivers. 2009. pap. $13.95. ISBN 978-0-307-40799-3. LC 2008021054.

I've been so bad about writing here, since I've been struggling with this deadline for my mermaid book: writing, and then avoiding writing..

But now I've been writing like a mofo, and will turn in the first 150 pages this Thursday, and the whole book by the end of July. This is the first time I've had ready made editors for a book, tho, and not one but two, from two different publishers (and countries), which makes it more exciting and of course MUCH more intimidating.

Here is a teeny mermaid preview:

Now Margrethe could see clearly: the mermaid lying next to the warrior, worrying over him. Her pale, naked torso that shifted to glittering scales as waist flared to hip. The curve of her tail like a perfectly fitted, exquisitely colored dress, with a line of oyster shells clamped onto the back. She sat up and pulled in her tail to her side. And she didn’t seem affected by the cold at all, despite her exposed, wet skin, which shimmered in the faint northern sun. But as it hit Margrethe this was the mermaid’s actual body, a feeling of revulsion mixed with her wonder and awe. What would it be like to be half a fish, she thought, and she shuddered, even as she found herself under the mermaid’s spell.

The man was sputtering and coughing. The mermaid held him in her arms, kissed his forehead, stroked his wet hair. Even from a distance Margrethe could see the look of pure, radiant love that lit the mermaid’s face as she gazed down on him.

This is what rapture is, Margrethe thought. That thing she saw come over the nun’s faces as they sat in prayer. She’d tried turning to heaven, the way the women surrounding her did, but her heart, she knew, was too tied to the earth.

The mermaid looked up and saw Margrethe then. Margrethe gasped, caught. She could see the blue of the mermaid’s eyes, as if the whole scene had become magnified, feel it inside her despite the distance between them. It was as if, for one moment, the mermaid was right there in the convent garden. Margrethe stopped breathing, could barely feel her own body. But then an expression of terror came over the creature, and with one last look at the man she turned and slipped awkwardly back into the sea.

I have other little bits of shimmery news and loveliness but I believes I must get back to writing.

Oh! Except that yesterday morning I had breakfast with and hung out with my friend David, who played me the wondrous music of Juan Garcia Esquivel. Space-age gypsy lounge music, Vegas style!

I also hung out with his ridiculous baby:



And learned that he wrote one of the best cinema characters of all time: CHI CHI in To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar.



And on Friday this interview thing came out in Shelf Awareness:

Carolyn Turgeon is the author of two novels, Rain Village, published by Unbridled Books in 2006, and Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story, published by Three Rivers Press in March. She's currently working on her third, a retelling of the original little mermaid story. Her website is carolynturgeon.com.

On your nightstand now:

Right now there's Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield, Real World by Natsuo Kirino, The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory and Would-Be Witch by Kimberly Frost. And of course copies of Godmother for me to admire and wink at. (I can't help it, the British cover has glitter.)

Favorite book when you were a child:

I probably loved the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace most, though the Little House and Nancy Drew books would be close seconds. But Betsy! She was so romantic, always hanging out in trees and scribbling in notebooks. In 13 books, you follow her from childhood until she gets married. I loved her. I wanted to best friends with her.

Your top five authors:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Isabel Allende, Alice Hoffman, Patricia Highsmith, Raymond Chandler. I can't count.

Book you've faked reading:

In high school and college, I faked reading a ton of books for class. Like The Tin Drum, which I put down after the eel scene. Midnight's Children, which I put down after the nose picking. I faked reading William Gibson's Neuromancer for three different college classes. . . . If a book ever comes out about cyberpunk nose-picking eels, I might actually die.

Books you're an evangelist for:

I'm not sure I'm very evangelical by nature, but I've told many, many people to read Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell (just read the first page and tell me I'm wrong) and Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim (so gorgeous and devastating, the book and movie). I'm sure I've changed (saved?) a number of lives as a result. I've also tried to get many people to read Dante and Boccaccio by telling them how un-boring and crazy and fun those old books are.

Book you've bought for the cover:

No Orchids for Miss Blandish. There's a beautiful woman's head in a glass bowl, her eyes closed and flowers falling around her. Underneath it's described as "James Hadley Chase's notorious novel of violence and brutality that has left more than 2 1/2 million people gasping!" I've since seen other covers for this book that are just as awesome. One promises a tale of "vile, ruthless gangsterism" and shows a blonde femme fatale on a zebra print blanket. I mean really.

Book that changed your life:

One summer at my grandparent's house in Florida, when I was maybe 12, I checked out Peter Benchley's The Girl of the Sea of Cortez from the tiny local library. I'm quite sure it changed my life: the girl riding the manta ray through the sea, the hammerhead sharks circling below. . . . It's a gorgeous, magical book about a girl and the sea. I read The Clan of the Cave Bear around the same time and that was just as world-changing.

Favorite line from a book:

In Baudelaire's Paris Spleen, in "The Bad Glazier," the narrator is infuriated when a glazier has no colored panes of glass, no beautiful glass, and he throws a flowerpot down on the glazier from a balcony above. The glazier falls, and all his glass is shattered. Then here's the line: "And drunk with my madness, I shouted down at him furiously: 'Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!' "

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Oh, One Hundred Years of Solitude, definitely. I want to re-discover me some ice.


THE END.