The Astonishing Blog

2011-01-24T12:16:00.002-05:00

So I have been horrible writing on here, mainly because I have been working on a new mermaid blog, which I shall now urge you to peruse as I just posted my first interview, with one Mr. TIM GUNN, whom I love and adore and who was incredibly, incredibly gracious.

Look: http://iamamermaid.com/

Later this week I'll put up interviews with Alice Hoffman and Michael Kaluta, and I have a ton more interviews and articles standing by. Just you wait. If you likes it, please tell more people. Thank you! MWAH!

Oh and here is a video I made for Mermaid (the book is out March 1st):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F3wVBQkKMA

2010-11-08T18:13:00.002-05:00

So MERMAID doesn't come out till March 1 but it got its first two reviews in the past week. Plus I have my first reading scheduled: March 16 at the KGB Fantastic Fiction series (in NYC), curated by Ellen Datlow and Matt Kressel. !

Look!

From Publisher's Weekly:

Mermaid
Carolyn Turgeon, Three Rivers, $14 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-0-307-58997-2
In Turgeon's surprisingly dark retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, two women pine for the affections of a prince: mermaid Lenia, who pulls Prince Christopher from the sea, and Margrethe, the princess of the rival kingdom, who witnesses the rescue from the convent where she hides from the war raging between their two kingdoms. Lenia, who falls instantly in love with the prince, sacrifices the sea, her voice, and her health to be with him on dry land. Meanwhile, Margrethe believes that marrying the prince would unite their kingdoms, but when she arrives to arrange it, she finds him already enraptured with Lenia. While he remains unaware that the girl he loves is also the mermaid who saved him, Margrethe recognizes her rival immediately and puts into motion a plan to send the ailing mermaid back to the sea and save her own ravaged kingdom. Turgeon has done a superb job of creating compelling characters and conflict from a story already familiar to readers. (Mar.)

And from Kirkus:

MERMAID
A Twist on the Classic Tale
Author: Turgeon, Carolyn

Review Date: November 15, 2010
Publisher:Three Rivers/Crown
Pages: 288
Price ( Paperback ): $14.00
Price ( e-book ): $14.00
Publication Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN ( Paperback ): 978-0-307-58997-2
ISBN ( e-book ): 978-0-307-58998-9
Category: Fiction

Two princesses (one earthbound, one aquatic) vie for the heart of a prince in this new twist on the classic fairy tale.

For 18-year-old mermaid princess Lenia, the world of men could not be a more exotic or fascinating place. Although her experience with humans is limited to the shipwrecks and dead sailors she comes across in her ocean-floor kingdom, she yearns for more. She gets her wish when she is finally permitted to go up and explore the surface, and has to save a young man from drowning during a storm. She delivers him to the shores of a convent and into the arms of a young novice. That girl, Margrethe, is actually the daughter of the northern king, hiding at the convent for her own protection. And, as luck would have it, the rescued sailor, Christopher, is the son of her father’s arch nemesis, the southern king. The two royals share an attraction, without knowing each other’s identity, and Christopher leaves without knowing Margrethe’s secret. Back with her merpeople family, a smitten Lenia pines for the prince and strives to find a way to be with him. Her quest takes her to the sea witch, Sybil, who informs her that becoming human is indeed possible, but comes with a steep price. Lenia has to give up her beautiful voice, and her lovely new legs will cause her chronic pain, like walking on knives. Also, Christopher must marry her if she is to survive and acquire a human soul. No matter. Lenia takes Sybil’s potion and goes to her beloved, who is indeed charmed by the mute otherworldly creature Lenia has transformed into. They become lovers, but she has competition. In order to stave off an almost inevitable war, Margrethe hatches a plan to marry Christopher herself, and unite their kingdoms. But while that might be good politics, it does not bode well for Lenia, who is unable to explain her situation to anyone. Faithful for the most part to Andersen’s dark fable, Turgeon’s (Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story, 2009) version wisely gives voice to the mermaid’s rival, making the prince’s ultimate choice—and Lenia’s sacrifice—even more poignant.

A gothic love triangle with two equally matched heroines. This isn’t kid’s stuff.

2010-11-03T11:45:00.001-04:00

So yesterday I met the fabulous Kitty Von Sometime, who does this amazing Weird Girls visual art series in Iceland. They've done 11 videos so far including this massive gorgeous Busby Berkeley style mermaid video you can watch below (along with an interview w Kitty). She is fundraising for episode 12 now. Go look!!! Give her some moolah!!

Kastljos Interview about The Weird Girls Project from kitty von-sometime on Vimeo.

2010-11-02T06:30:00.002-04:00

Those Youtube videos really are very unwieldy and run right into my gorgeous right-hand column I see. They are so rood. Yet awesome so please forgive them and watch them immediately.

2010-11-02T06:28:00.001-04:00

So I am in Iceland now, I got here Sunday and am on my way back to New York, after spending a couple more weeks in Berlin and a couple days around Heidelberg visiting my old friend Erika and her family and seeing some amazing creepy castles, including CASTLE FRANKENSTEIN which supposedly the Shelleys and Lord Byron visited and which inspired her to write Frankenstein (though we went on Saturday night and thus were chased around by vampires and werewolves and men with chainsaws), and MESPELBRUNN CASTLE, which is old and weird and full of deer heads and weapons and creepy portraits of everyone who lived there including a woman stylishly yet unoriginally named Marie Antoniette who hosted the Grimm Brothers regularly and helped them select which versions of various tales they were going to use. Oh, and not just deer heads but heads of every animal you can think of, stuck on the walls.

Anyway, in Iceland yesterday I took a trip out to see GEYSIR and GULLFOSS and THINGVILLIR national park and I think I might be in love with the weird weird alien landscape here, all volcanic rock covered in bright green moss and snow, big rifts where the earth is pulling apart, giant wounds and huge mirrory lakes and this weird pearly soft sky you could tip over and drink out of, and I feel like I'm in Alaska mixed with Mars. I was supposed to go out last night to see the Northern Lights but sadly it was too cloudy, so I shall have to let the sky dazzle me NEXT TIME around, and then slip me into some Blue Lagoon.

But those geysers blew my mind a bit. Look:

And here is Gullfoss and me almost blowing away:

I would write more but I have to go interview a fabulous artiste named Kitty Von Sometime for my new MERMAID BLOG which will probably change your life.

2010-10-14T07:36:00.004-04:00

So I've been meaning to update this and now it's been many weeks since I have and I've been to all these lovely places I would like to show you, but first look, here is the UK cover of Mermaid, which it seems will also now be the USA cover (in place of the fishtail one which I also love) since it is so so beauteous and possibly more commercial:

Isn't it looovely? The book comes out in the US and UK in March 2011 but I have galleys now in case you are dying to REVIEW it or blurb it or something similar.

So, since the book is based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, last month I took a little trip by myself up to Copenhagen and Odense, Denmark (from Berlin, where I've been since mid-August), to visit all these Hans Christian Andersen sites. Like, the house where he was born and the house he grew up in (both in Odense), several places he lived later in Copenhagen, the very weird "Wonderful World of Hans Christian Andersen" in Copenhagen, the very awesome museum about him in Odense, his grave in Copenhagen, Tivoli Gardens where a copy of the little mermaid statue is right now since the real one is roodly on loan to SHANGHAI, and so on. I tromped all around with map in one hand and Flip camera in the other and took many many teeny videos of myself talking about HCA (who was extremely weird and awesome) whilst obnoxiously glowing-with-health Danes sprinted or biked by (I think some might have flown) staring and laughing at me and occasionally waving to the camera. You'd think they'd never seen an authoress filming herself in front of random buildings before!! Or maybe they were just amazed and appalled at my relative unhealthfulness. Really, they are very obnoxious.

Here are some photos here. On Facebook, as I am very lazy. Later, when I am less lazy, I shall post videos, too.

So then last week I flew to Italy to meet up with my mama and sister for five nights in Florence and one in Siena, and that was all awesome (and photos are here), but I already loved Florence and Siena, and so what blew my mind was WARSAW, POLAND, where I turned around and went on Saturday after returning from Italy Friday night.

I went to Poland because I wanted to see Leonard Cohen in concert, finally, after loving him for so long, since I was a teenager, but never seeing him, and because I was mad that I missed him in Berlin. He played here in August, like the day after I got here, but I had no idea! So my choices were Warsaw, Hannover, or Bratislava, and Warsaw was the cheapest and seemed most interesting, I thought, and then my friend Jen in Dresden decided to come, and so we planned two nights at a Holiday Inn and got our tickets and met Saturday morn on the train platform at Hauptbahnhof in romantical and even cinematic fashion.

Now the whole trip was amazing and we both fell madly in love with the city, which I'd heard was sort of fugly and uninteresting but is in FACT totally gorgeous, but what really astounded me is that Warsaw is full of MERMAIDS. I even thought to myself before I left that maybe I should bring my Flip camera, maybe there was some Polish or Warsaw mermaidly thing I didn't know about and then I thought that was ridiculous and left said camera behind. So imagine my surprise when Saturday night, Jen and I walk into Old Town, which is very very charming and cobblestone-y, and then into the main square, at the center of which is a statue and a fountain, and I almost don't even go look at them but then I do and then suddenly realize that this sword- and shield-carrying figure is actually a mermaid.

A twin-tailed mermaid with the name SYRENKA (which means little mermaid, I would discover) carved below her.

So this is pretty weird, I think, and I take a bunch of photos, and then we randomly walk down one of the smaller streets shooting off the main square and we pass some televised window display and we stop and realize that we are looking at tons and tons of photos (the screen changes every several seconds) of mermaids. And we realize we are in front of the city archives and this is a whole show about the history of mermaids in Warsaw and how the mermaid has been the city's symbol since the 1400s or something and has appeared in all kinds of historical documents and on the city's crest and there are old Mucha drawings from old Warsaw newspapers and all KINDS OF THINGS which really leave me feeling quite astonished.

So that night I glamorously sit in the lobby of the HOLIDAY INN with my laptop reading and reading about the Warsaw mermaid and about all these myths about how she swan down the Vistula River one day many moons ago (after parting, in the Baltic Sea, from her sister, who went on to Copenhagen) and fell in love with the city and then, after being caught by some evil merchant and rescued by some lovely brothers, vowed to protect the city from then on. And she's everywhere. I mean, on every street lamp, every bus, every little thing on every sidewalk, like this:

Or under business signs, like these:

And there are more statues, like these:

And honestly, the whole thing was really quite STRANGE and amazing.

Many other things about Warsaw were amazing, and I put up more photos here. But in brief: WWII is everywhere in a way I've not seen before, and that was pretty fascinating and intense; the city is really beautiful though it was almost entirely destroyed in the war (but you wouldn't know it, with how it's rebuilt itself); Leonard Cohen completely wrecked me, was amazing, and the Polish president was in the audience, too; and oh my God pierogies. Baked. With bacon and green peas and vats of sour cream on the side. I mean really.

So we're going again next year and will see us some Krakow, too, unless of course fate has other plans which it sometimes does.

For now, though, I have two more weeks in Berlin, and then I head back to NYC via Heidelberg and Iceland, and I'm working on my children's book and my book that will follow Mermaid, and I hope to be able to talk about both projects in a more official manner very very soon.

Also, look at this totally weird statue in Berlin from 1907 of a merman spying on a sleeping naked lady:

Never, never fall asleep when there is a merperson around.

2010-08-31T09:36:00.005-04:00

So a few writing-related things I've meant to mention here...

1. As part of the University of Alaska at Anchorage Low-Residency MFA Program, all us faculty gave public readings almost every night of the program. Everyone in the program attended these readings--usually, all the faculty and all the students, which I think was something like 60 people total though I'm not sure...--as well as a bunch of people from the community.

On my night, I was scheduled to read with Craig Childs, another new faculty member and this amazing, wild, wonderful adventurer type who's written at least a dozen books and lord knows how many articles and does things like get dropped onto ice caps and salt deserts to explore the terrain while scribbling furiously the whole time in these little notebooks he carries and, if they're not available, on whatever's handy, including his own skin. For me, writing usually means isolation and not writing means being out in the world and having adventures, and so I think my usual pattern is to constantly swing back and forth between the two, but for Craig every moment seems to be about adventure and about writing, at the same time. He seems quite inexhaustible, and in fact observing him staying out late with students every night and attending all activities during each day probably made me more tired and I secretly blame him for the 50000 naps I took during the residency...

Anyway, knowing we were reading together, we talked about it beforehand, and he was even suggesting that we might coordinate our reading, going back and forth.... I told him I would be reading from Mermaid, and ended up giving him the first two chapters to look at, since he had an endless supply of writing to choose to read from... I think he was surprised to end up liking the chapters so much, and finding that he could relate to them, even. And he ended up deciding we should read separately but that he would go first and lead into mine, and he decided to just improvise, showing all these wonderful slides and talking beautifully and passionately about water.... always being drawn to water, wherever he is, in all different kinds of climates and worlds. He talked for almost an hour, and it was totally mesmerizing, and then I got up and read a chapter from Mermaid which was all about this creature from the sea longing for the earth. (Mermaid is based on the Hans Christian Andersen story, right, and I read a chapter that follows the plot from it fairly directly, when the mermaid takes the potion from the sea witch and gets her tongue cut out in exchange, then goes to the prince's kingdom and drinks the potion so that her tail turns to legs...). It was a really cool combination, I thought. The writing being so fantastically different--and our personalities, Craig shouting and practically beating on his chest, me reading quietly from my book--and yet all these common themes emerging, about water and earth, being drawn to the end of the world...

It was a very cool, unique experience. Here is a podcast of it.

By the way, Craig's latest book, Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession, just came out, and here's the NY TImes review.

Many of the other readings, by the way, were spectacular. I became quite close to the poet Anne Caston while I was there, and her reading absolutely knocked me out and had me in tears practically the whole time (she is devastating, amazing, and she reads in this soft, sweet, hushed voice, and the most heartwrenching things come out of her mouth... I felt like I was listening to someone out of Greek myth...). She read with Rich Chiappone, who is unbelievably funny--what a combination, those two!--and then Sherry Simpson ended that night with a reading from her new book about bears, which was really lovely and sad and eye-opening. Anne and Rich's readings are here, and Sherry's is here. And of course there was Jo-Ann Mapson, who is this incredibly charming, wonderful storyteller (her 10th novel, Solomon's Oak, is about to come out) and wonderful lady, and I will love her forever for plucking me up and bringing me to Alaska in the first place. I became close to a lot of people in Alaska, but Jo-Ann and Anne really made the experience warm and lovely for me. The three of us went out to lunch on the first day of the program and again on the last, and I miss them! Anyway, Jo-Ann read with Judith Barrington and program director David Stevenson, both of whom are wonderful but if I keep saying that word I am quite sure something bad will happen to me; the link is here.

Here is a photo of me with Anne (sitting) and Jo-Ann (behind us):

Aren't they lovely??

There were many other great readings and they are all on podcast on that same site (include Kim Addonizio's, which I mentioned before).... I have not listened to any to any since I was there, and have not listened to my own because I would surely faint away and die. But you should listen, this minute!

I am not even mentioning all the students I came to love, including my four lovely mentees, all women writing really cool and really different novels that I will be working with them on all year from afar....

2. I must ALSO mention the anthology of fairytale stories which I am roodly NOT IN but which Kim Addonizio is in and the amazing Timothy Schaffert is in (amongst may others), My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, which comes out next month. Timothy, whom I met a couple times in Omaha, the first time during his literary festival there, which was so much fun, emailed me to ask if I would join him and Terese Svoboda in a conversation about mermaids for the Prairie Schooner blog. (That will happen in a month or so I think). He said that his story in the anthology is called "The Mermaid in the Tree" and is also a based on "The Little Mermaid" and I demanded that he send it to me right then and it is totally, totally stunning and weird and gorgeous and macabre and AWESOME.

Listen to the first few paragraphs (which he said I could post, lest you think I am being uncourteous)!:

Desiree the child bride, and her sister Miranda, had gone grave-robbing for a wedding gown. In the north end of the cemetery, among the palatial mausoleums with their broken windows of stained glass where the ivy crept in, was the resting place of a young woman who’d been murdered at the altar while reciting her marital vows. The decaying tombstone, among the cemetery’s most envied, was a limestone bride in despair, shoulders as slumped as a mule’s, a bouquet of lilies strewn at her feet. Though her murder, by her groom’s jealous mother, had been long in the past, everyone knew that her father had had her buried in her gown of lace and silk.

“Can you believe we’re the only ones to have ever thought of this?” Miranda said, her knuckles bloodied from shoveling dirt, as she undid the delicate whalebone buttons lining the back of the skeleton’s dress.

Desiree, however, was less inclined to be enthused, and she climbed from the hole, distracted, to light a cigarette on the flame of the lantern. She uncorked a jug, gulped down a few fingers of whiskey, and squinted at the horizon of plains burnt black by old prairie fires, the setting sun leaving behind a thin ribbon of violet. His heart isn’t mine, she thought.

Admit that is one of the best openings ever.

3. SPEAKING OF "The Little Mermaid," and inspired by a conversation I had with Timothy, I have been reading a couple of biographies of Hans Christian Andersen, who is so gorgeous and so weird and dark--and that's just in his stories! in real life he was so over the top, so always falling on love with everyone and never being loved back--and have scheduled a trip for myself to Denmark in late September. I'll be staying in Copenhagen for two nights but taking a day trip to Odense, Fyn Island, where HCA grew up and where he wrote his mermaid story....

AND WHERE HIS GHOST CONTINUES TO HAUNT THE LANDSCAPE.

(I hope.)

The end.

2010-08-30T04:21:00.001-04:00

I am so behind in writing on here and have much much to update... Since writing last I left Alaska, returned to Pennsylvania for a week, then took the Queen Mary 2 from Brooklyn to Southampton, England (very very romantical and wondrous), then spent a day in London and a day in Paris with Olivier before getting myself to Berlin, where I arrived almost two weeks ago and where I am now...

I love this city, and love all the fabulously decadent and elegant events like Boheme Sauvage, which I'd been to last fall and which I went to again on Saturday. I will post photos later, of that and all kinds of other things, but for now here is a little video I took of Coco, the host, tapdancing furiously and gorgeously in front of the decked-out crowd. I first met this boy at his "Oskar Wilde party" last fall, where he read "The Selfish Giant" to a room full of guests sitting around a super-decadent candelabra and rose petal covered long table. I believes I just sat there struck down with awe.

2010-07-18T02:45:00.001-04:00

So tonight at the residency we saw a reading of a new play by faculty member Zack Rogow, who is amazing and lovely and brilliant and speaks like 500000 languages and during his own reading a few nights ago read his own poems as well as unbelievably gorgeous poems he'd translated from French and German and Urdu (working with someone else), and then, just to be more annoying, he sang a damn song.

Showoff!

Anyway, his play is called Things I Didn't Know I Loved: The Life and Work of Nazim Hikmet. It was great.

Here is Zack (on the right) sitting with the actors afterward, answering questions:

And I had never heard of Nazim Hikmet before, and his poems were so gorgeous, and after the reading I bought a book of them as well as a novel by Colette that Zack had translated.

Listen to this:

Things I Didn't Know I Loved

it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only Platonic love

and here I've loved rivers all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before
and will be said after me

I didn't know I loved the sky
cloudy or clear
the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino
in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish
I hear voices
not from the blue vault but from the yard
the guards are beating someone again
I didn't know I loved trees
bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
they come upon me in winter noble and modest
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish
"the poplars of Izmir
losing their leaves. . .
they call me The Knife. . .
lover like a young tree. . .
I blow stately mansions sky-high"
in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief
to a pine bough for luck

I never knew I loved roads
even the asphalt kind
Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea
Koktebele
formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish
the two of us inside a closed box
the world flows past on both sides distant and mute
I was never so close to anyone in my life
bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé
when I was eighteen
apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take
and at eighteen our lives are what we value least
I've written this somewhere before
wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play
Ramazan night
a paper lantern leading the way
maybe nothing like this ever happened
maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy
going to the shadow play
Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand
his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat
with a sable collar over his robe
and there's a lantern in the servant's hand
and I can't contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason
poppies cactuses jonquils
in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeen
my heart on a swing touched the sky
I didn't know I loved flowers
friends sent me three red carnations in prison

I just remembered the stars
I love them too
whether I'm floored watching them from below
or whether I'm flying at their side

I have some questions for the cosmonauts
were the stars much bigger
did they look like huge jewels on black velvet
or apricots on orange
did you feel proud to get closer to the stars
I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't
be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract
well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to
say they were terribly figurative and concrete
my heart was in my mouth looking at them
they are our endless desire to grasp things
seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad
I never knew I loved the cosmos

snow flashes in front of my eyes
both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind
I didn't know I liked snow

I never knew I loved the sun
even when setting cherry-red as now
in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors
but you aren't about to paint it that way
I didn't know I loved the sea
except the Sea of Azov
or how much

I didn't know I loved clouds
whether I'm under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it

I didn't know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved
rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

19 April 1962
Moscow

Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)

2010-07-16T01:46:00.002-04:00

Oh! I don't think I have mentioned that I will be crossing the Atlantic on the glamorous old-time ocean liner the QUEEN MARY 2 on August 8, arriving in Southampton England on August 14, with the romantical French scientist (from the French Alps!) with whom I am currently smitten and who shall be returning to LYON, France, indefinitely after a two-year postdoc in the U.S. that ends this month.

Here I am with him at SHANGHAI MERMAID a few weeks ago:

I will then be in England and France and back in Berlin and then in France again and maybe Italy to meet up with my mother and sister who will be there the first week of October and I will probably come back after that but then again maybe I will stay FOREVER.

The end.

2010-07-16T01:30:00.001-04:00

So I am writing from my dorm room in Anchorage, tired after days of reading student work and leading workshops (my first! Monday I co-led one with Jo-Ann Mapson, yesterday I led one alone) and giving talks (one so far, a "craft talk" on retelling fairy tales) and, last night, giving a reading to the public--and I will write about that later, about how cool the reading was, how I was paired with another new faculty member Craig Childs, who was AMAZING....--and there are readings every night of this program, every night from 8 to 9:30pm, and I have not been to so many readings in so little time ever... and then the days are filled with talks and workshops and panels and lunches and dinners and I am going to them all--well, almost--and getting to know everyone and I would say more than half of these students are coming from various parts of Alaska and they tell me about mushers and dogsleds and native villages and tundra and abandoned railroads and it is all SUPER COOL and I LOVE EVERYONE or at least LOTS OF THEM and that is a lot of love and it is exhausting.

SO really, before falling into bed right now at 9:30pm when it is still broad daylight and will be for another couple of hours, I just wanted to quickly copy in this little snippet of writing from Anne Dillard that the wondrous Judith Barrington, who is faculty here, read to us in her talk this morning, which was about memoirs and ghosts.

I was blown away.

Listen:

I was running down the Penn Avenue sidewalk, revving up for an act of faith. I was conscious and self-conscious. I knew well that people could not fly--as well as anyone knows it--but I also knew the kicker: that, as the books put it, with faith all things are possible.

Just once I wanted a task that required all the joy I had. Day after day I had noticed that if I waited long enough, my strong unexpressed joy would dwindle and dissipate inside me, over many hours, like a fire subsiding, and I would at last calm down. Just this once I wanted to let it rip. Flying rather famously required the extra energy of belief, and this, too, I had in superabundance.

There were boxy yellow thirties apartment buildings on those Penn Avenue blocks, and the Evergreen Café, and Miss Frick's house set back behind a wrought-iron fence. There were some side yards of big houses, some side yards of little houses, some streetcar stops, and a drugstore from which I had once tried to heist a five-pound box of chocolates, a Whitman sampler, confusing "sampler" with "free sample." It was past all this that I ran that late fall afternoon, up old Penn Avenue on the cracking cement sidewalks--past the drugstore and bar, past the old and new apartment buildings and the long dry lawn behind Miss Frick's fence.

I ran the sidewalk full tilt. I waved my arms ever higher and faster; blood balled in my fingertips. I knew I was foolish. I knew I was too old really to believe in this as a child would, out of ignorance; instead I was experimenting as a scientist would, testing both the thing itself and the limits of my own courage in trying it miserably self-conscious in full view of the whole world. You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy.

Up ahead I saw a business-suited pedestrian. He was coming stiffly toward me down the walk. Who could ever forget this first test, this stranger, this thin young man appalled? I banished the temptation to straighten up and walk right. He flattened himself against a brick wall as I passed flailing--although I had left him plenty of room. He had refused to meet my exultant eye. He looked away, evidently embarrassed. How surprisingly easy it was to ignore him! What I was letting rip, in fact, was my willingness to look foolish, in his eyes and in my own. Having chosen this foolishness, I was a free being. How could the world ever stop me, how could I betray myself, if I was not afraid?

I was flying. My shoulders loosened, my stride opened, my heart banged the base of my throat. I crossed Carnegie and ran up the block waving my arms. I crossed Lexington and ran up the block waving my arms.

A linen-suited woman in her fifties did meet my exultant eye. She looked exultant herself, seeing me from far up the block. Her face was thin and tanned. We converged. Her warm, intelligent glance said she knew what I was doing--not because she herself had been a child but because she herself took a few loose aerial turns around her apartment every night for the hell of it, and by day played along with the rest of the world and took the streetcar. So Teresa of Avila checked her unseemly joy and hung on to the altar rail to hold herself down. The woman's smiling, deep glance seemed to read my own awareness from my face, so we passed on the sidewalk--a beautifully upright woman walking in her tan linen suit, a kid running and flapping her arms--we passed on the sidewalk with a look of accomplices who share a humor just beyond irony. What's a heart for?

2010-07-12T01:41:00.005-04:00

So I am now in Alaska, as part of the Low-Residency MFA program at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, as FACULTY no less, in a part of the world where one can get off a plane at 10:30pm on a Thursday and be met by bright, glaring sunlight. It is very odd, very gorgeous, and I am surrounded by Alaskans who mention strange little towns one must get to by plane and use the mysterious, up-to-no-good word "Arctic" with a shocking regularity.

My program didn't start till yesterday--a 12-day intensive residency that kicks off an academic year during which students are mentored over email from anywhere in the world and just to be clear i hope to be doing my mentoring from as many places in the world as possible--but I got here on Thursday night and was picked up by a fabulous lady named MARY who is a Pulpwood Queen extraordinaire and who, on Friday, took me to see the Portage Glacier, drove me through a conservation center at which I saw ELK and GRIZZLY BEARS, took me to meet with ladies from the book club chapter located in the WOMEN's PRISON--wonderful, aching-for-knowledge women who read and discussed Godmother last year and treated me like I'd swooped down straight from heaven, even making me a little welcome sign and signing it one by one and breaking prison rules to give me and Mary hugs--and THEN took me to dinner with a bunch of un-incarcerated book club ladies and THEN to a drag queen show at which I was brought on stage and, amongst other atrocities, examined for a tramp stamp. It was what I like to call A FULL DAY.

Look:

Then yesterday I checked into my DORM ROOM where I shall spend the next 12 days participating in and/or leading/giving many many workshops and lectures and readings and generally being up to no good with all kinds of suspicious writer types. I had lunch with Jo-Ann Mapson, who is the fairylike authoress who done plucked me up and brought me here--and the poetess Anne Caston, and then today was chock full of events including a keynote lecture this morning and reading this evening by the poet Kim Addonizio, who was FABULOUS and gorgeous and hysterical and who played harmonica and also surprised me by dedicating the following poem to yours truly, which I just done went and found for your reading pleasure:

Snow White: The Huntsman's Story
* * *

I took out my knife and held her head back. She closed her eyes. A deer crossed the clearing, stopped and turned. I thought it watched me, I think it watches me still ... I swore an oath: to follow orders, without mercy or pleasure. Even the part you think might have been pleasure- She wasn't a creamy girl. She wasn't a girl at all. She was my assignment. When I took the lung and liver they were warm. I brought them bloody in a bag to the queen, who thanked me and mentioned a medal. That night I left my quarters, crouched in the weeds and got sick. Think what you like: that I spared her, that she sang while keeping house for seven little men. Believe in the apple, the glass coffin without its covering flag, where she lay as perfectly preserved as Eva Peron until the prince came to carry her away. Of course he didn't carry her; the servants did. And when they stumbled over a tree stump- if you believe the story-the piece of apple, caught in her throat, popped out, a magical Heimlich. I can see it so clearly now: she sits up, the prince takes her soft little hand, and the evil queen trades her Ferragamos for cast iron sneakers. And I remember my place in the story. I let the girl go into those fabled woods, in winter, while the snow fell around us, white on her black hair, white on her blue Aryan eyes, white on her pretty, open mouth.

!

I would say more but I am completely jetlagged and will now collapse until the morrow, or possibly next week.

The end.

2010-06-25T06:54:00.001-04:00

So yesterday I met Tink's brand new baby girl Clodagh (clo-duh), and witnessed Aoife holding her new sister for the first time. As you can see, it was QUITE RIDICULOUS. I held Clodagh for a while and Aoife cautioned me to be careful as "SHE IS VERY SMALL."

2010-06-23T16:42:00.003-04:00

I have a bunch of things I've been meaning to write about, like for example the rest of Tink's book tour in DC, NYC and Boston, a gorgeous workshop my sister and I are taking with Ms Veronica Varlow in NYC, many ravishing plays and shows and movies, and a romantical sojourn or two including my recent summer solstice BIRTHDAY this past Monday which has shockingly left me less than one year away from becoming the NEW 30 and was spent with a wondrous French scientist at a haunted Victorian b&b in a town famous for its elk viewing and chainsaw art. Oh, and I'm not sure I mentioned that Godmother has been optioned for a second time, by a fancy old studio in France which is in no way related to said scientist. Oh! And I am leaving soon for ALASKA and will, among other things, visit with a Pulpwood Queens book club chapter in the Anchorage women's prison (a club that read and discussed Godmother last year!), after going to a glacier that morning and before spending the evening at dinner and a drag queen show with those Anchorage Pulpwood Queens not currently incarcerated.

But for NOW I would just like to share with you the recently unveiled COVER of this wondrous collection of retold ghost stories that yours truly is in and that is edited by Ms Ellen Datlow and Mr Nick Mamatas and available for your purchasing needs in early September.

Look how awesome it is:

And you can pre-order it here.

I know!

THE END.

2010-06-02T01:17:00.001-04:00

Today was the launch of Ms Jeanine Cummins' new book THE OUTSIDE BOY, about which I sagely and reflectively once said:

"The Outside Boy will charm you, fascinate you, delight you, snake into your heart and bust it wide open. I’m hard pressed to think of a narrator more lovable than Christy Hurley, who describes his lost, beautiful world — that of the Irish travellers in the late 1950s — in prose that’s as profound as it is funny. What a graceful, perfect book."

And I totally didn't even get paid to say that, even though I used snake as a verb.

Look at this byoooteous cover:

Not to mention this byeeeeteous article that came out in the Huffington Post today.

I know.

And then tonight was a reading and party involving CHAMPAGNE and STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE at Mr. Dennehy's in the West Village. Beforehand, I met Ms. Elyssa East for red wine and vanilla cupcakes just to ensure I had an adequate sugar intake for the day, and then my sister came and lots and lots of people came and it was all Irish gypsies and merriment and lives being changed forever. I think alliances were formed and babies made tonight, too.

I mean look at that cake:

And because I am like the best friend ever in this world, and because Jeanine AKA Tink is like 50000 months pregnant, and because this book was a long time a comin and I was there watching said comin for said long time, and because I enjoy partaking of free booze, I am driving with her to DC tomorrow for two readings/parties there and then attending her Queens reading on Saturday and then driving with her up to Boston next week for yet another night of unbelievable glamour.

Here, let me be more specific so that you might alter all of your plans and attend all the following events with me:

JUNE 2

Germantown, MD @ 7pm

Borders at Milestone

Reading & Signing for The Outside Boy

JUNE 3

LAUNCH PARTY! Bethesda, MD @ 7 pm

Flanagan’s Harp & Fiddle on Cordell Street

www.flanagansharpandfiddle.com

Reading, Signing, & Toasting The Outside Boy

JUNE 5

Glendale, NY @ 5 pm

Borders at Atlas Park

Reading & Signing for The Outside Boy

JUNE 8

Boston, MA @ 7 pm

Boston University Barnes & Noble

Reading & Signing for The Outside Boy

That is all for now, even though I did many exciting things this weekend, like for example I went FROG HUNTING. I have also magically switched to italics now and there is no way to stop them, and they have ruined everything.

In a last act of despair, I leave you with the following photos:

The end.

2010-05-27T21:49:00.001-04:00

So today I went to a Book Blogger cocktail party with Anton Strout and Jennifer Belle and Jeanine Cummins -- the one thing I did at Book Expo tho I am in NYC this week and COULD have done more things -- but oh my goodness. I hate networking! I pictured cocktails and dresses and whores derves and even maybe some DANCING, but sadly it did not involve any of the above, just much peering at nametags and exchanging of business cards and an occasional moment of amore between author and blogger, or mermaids (I met the author of this book, for example), or authoress and marshmallow-topped brownie. I was also very happy to receive a copy of this book, which could possibly save my life. Overall it was not unpleasant, but I suppose that when it comes to yours truly, as much as I love all humankind, not to mention all animalkind, when put in a room and expected to mingle, my wide-open heart begins to falter in its love-in with the world at large. Oh, but I did meet some lovely bloggers who read and reviewed Godmother, even if one of them roodly hated the ending despite it being, like, the perfect ending. I'm just saying. Overall tho, I am not the best mingler in this world, though I might possibly be in the next, since really, you never know.

We did all have a gorgeous dinner afterwards, the four of us, some fancy Cuban food in a place with sparkling tiles and dim lights and flickering chandeliers, and Anton even showed me an ARC of Haunted Legends, which I have a story in.

Speaking of Jennifer, honestly: this might be the best video ever.

The end.

2010-05-25T16:52:00.001-04:00

So I am at Tink's house in Queens for a few days, visiting Tink and my best friends Aoife, who just turned 3, and Shameless, the Dog without Shame. I spent the weekend upstate with my friend David, his wife Julie, and their four crazy boy children, ages 2 to 11, who almost killed me by making me play baseball and badminton non stop and, in brief moments of respite, reciting the plots of my books to them. We also spent much time traipsing around ponds.

Look:

In other news, today I have a guest post up at Random House's sci fi/fantasy blog.

And today Tink and I visited Penguin for her to do bookly things related to the imminent launch of her NEW BOOK, and said visit included some quality time with nerdly author extraordinaire Anton Strout:

The end.

2010-05-18T23:28:00.002-04:00

I came up to NYC today for the launch of Jennifer Belle's new novel The Seven Year Bitch, which I can't wait to read after hearing her totally hilarious and charming reading tonight.

Here's Jennifer, Tink (whose own book The Outside Boy comes out in two weeks) and me at the party after:

And how gorgeous is this book!

Obviously, you should go buy it immediately.

2010-05-17T13:33:00.001-04:00

So on Saturday I drove to Philly for the final performance of Curio Theatre's steampunk version of Twelfth Night starring, amongst others, actress extraordinaire Trillian Stars AKA Jennifer Summerfield. Curio Theatre has this amazing space in this old church and the play was staged right up against the old organ pipes, around which steam billowed in a gorgeously atmospheric fashion while actors scuttled up and down stairs and fireman/stripper poles. And so fashionably! Look!

Here are a bunch of photos from the byooteous program photographed by Mr. Kyle Cassidy: http://www.jaredaxelrod.com/main/2010/05/12/your-last-chance-to-see-twelfth-night-is-fast-approaching

Speaking of which, I caught said photographer extraordinaire, and husband of Ms Trillian Stars, in the act, post-performance:

So romantic! They are really the most romantical couple ever. Like Dietrich and Sternberg! But more nice and less German.

My old friend Sue came as well, and after we all had drinks at an awesome Indian bar with mirrored walls and Christmas lights, and then I stayed over at Sue's lovely lovely tree-and-garden-surrounded house where I was awoken by what I thought was a baby crying but was actually a very boisterous and ill behaved BIRD, and then I met her dashing husband and totally sweet son Duncan and we all had bagels and sat on porches but due to my discombobulation I forgot to take any pictures at all and then I went back to the middle of the state where I visited one Ms Vivienne Coco Lee Witmer, who roodly fell asleep on my lap whilst holding my hand, as if yours truly has nothing better to do in life but act as a BED to lazy children with drag queen names:

Look at her and her mama, I mean really:

Oh, and I had lunch today with my friend Hannah who told me about many wondrous things including The Great Skedaddle which I believe is the best name for anything ever.

The end.

2010-05-14T21:32:00.003-04:00

So today I went with my friend Jay to visit his friend Chantelle, who works as a "rod wrapper" or "winder" for this man Jim who makes world class fly fishing rods by hand in Coburn, Pennsylvania, which is this totally charming little town right on Penn's Creek, one of these famous famous fishing spots around these parts, about 40 minutes from State College. It is also the town in which yours truly had the misfortune to work as an artist's model for one afternoon last year, in an art studio in a converted church, thinking I could read or otherwise occupy myself but then realizing with growing horror that I in fact had to sit completely still for 50000 hours -- and nearly died in the process. Anyway, so today was just the loveliest day, warm and breezy and verging on storm, and we sat leisurely around Jim's sweeping, bamboo-fishing-rods-in-various-states-of-creation-all-around, cluttered, old-timey workshop talking with him and Chantelle about their craft and fly fishing generally while Chantelle's dog Tater lounged shamelessly at our feet. It was totally lovely. I have only been fishing a handful of times, as a kid with my grandfather in Florida, and I've never been fly fishing, but man, the people who love it are so passionate about it. It's so cool to slip into another way of life, just for a few hours... Jim's workshop is right behind this store, The Feathered Hook, which is also this cool B&B where you can come and stay and learn about fly fishing and be taken around to all the best spots, etc etc. You can also come and take rod making workshops with Jim at his workshop, and spend like a week making a rod of your own. Anyway, I thought it was super cool and I sorta want to build my own rod now (I wonder if Jim would approve of some... glitter?) and stay at The Feathered Hook and step into some highly fashionable waders and pick out some sparkly lures and go catch me and release me some FISH.

Anyway, here's the shop sign:

And inside were a million lures (and some other things I SUPPOSE) laid out like jewels:

And pretty nets!

And then you step out of the shop and Jim's workshop is in back, across a parking lot and in front of a big farm upon where some nosy horses were hanging out and eying us suspiciously, to the left of what you see here. Horses! But how awesome is this building? Complete with a finger pointing you to the rod shop.

Here is the workshop:

And there were cool things everywhere!

I love tiny boxes jam-packed with colorful things, like in those zipper and button stores in NYC's Garment District and apparently like in fly fishing rod making workshops:

I would post more but that might be EXCESSIVE.

Check out my new best friend Tater tho (not to mention my fashionable footwear, obviously up in front):

AND THEN, afterward, Jay, Chantelle and I walked down to Penn's Creek, and as we gazed reflectively into its waters some young lads obligingly came along and began to fly fish in a most Tom Sawyerly manner:

AND THEN Jay and I drove along the creek a little bit, out to this old train trestle stretching over the water, where the train used to run over it:

We even walked over it tho we could have DIED:

AND THEN we saw, in the distance, a portal into other worlds:

And we got very close to it... getting right up to the entrance, picking across the wet rocks...

... but we knew that if we went inside we would never, ever come back.

So we turned around and went to the Whistle Stop Cafe in Centre Hall and had crab cakes and truffle peanut butter pie instead, dreaming of what might have been, trying to fill the great void in our hearts.

THE END.

2010-05-13T18:31:00.001-04:00

EVIL DOG PHOTOS

2010-05-13T13:19:00.002-04:00

So I wanted to post some photos from Philly, too, which I did not get to the other day due to excessive VERBOSITY. BUT I had this lovely weekend in Philly with my sister, staying with my friends Mark and Jen and their beauteous hellion daughter Anna, who fell madly in love with my sister and decided that I am now chopped liver, sigh, even tho I brought her a RAGGEDY ANN DOLL from her favorite place CRACKER BARREL, I mean really, and we did sweet things like play frisbee in parks and have lovely brunches, and then Saturday night we had a big wonderful dinner in Chinatown, all of us plus our friend Rob, and one Ms. Trillian Stars and Mr. Kyle Cassidy, glamorous couple extraordinaire, and one Ms. Lindsay who was visiting Trillian, and my sister's and my old friends Sue and Bob whom we had not seen in many many moons but now are in touch with again due to the wonders of Facebook, and afterward many of us went to see the best show ever in this world, DEVOTCHKA followed by GOGOL BORDELLO at the Electric Factory. Which was amazing. I've seen Devotchka a few times and they're one of my favorite bands, and they were gorgeous as usual, but then Gogol Bordello came out and I have to say sorta blew everything and everyone else out of the water. I believes they come from that circus mentality of throw everything out at you at once, razzle and dazzle and overwhelm you, and they were all leaping about and dancing and practically hurling themselves into the crowd. Awesome.

Look!

The end.

2010-05-11T15:17:00.001-04:00

So when I was in Florida I took a bunch of photos of pictures in my grandmother's old old photo book, including of her own grandfather Ginther whom she totally and utterly adored and speaks of with unending affection. Gus Ginther (1863 - 1955) was a painter -- not only of big beautiful still lifes and so on but of movie posters and circus posters, the old-timey kind that were painted by hand, and I sure so wish I could get my paws on some of those but they is lost to time -- and he lived with his wife OLA and children in a gorgeous sweeping Victorian house in MOBERLY, MISSOURI, a state away from the Illinois town his parents came to from some other town in Saxony, Germany.... and, according to my grandmother, he wore a diamond stick pin in his tie and loved circuses and carnivals and Christmas and would bring home hot tamales from the street vendor outside for his grandkids, much to his wife's disapproval. And I guess he was very involved in the town and a big deal in Moberly and "larger than life" and everyone everyone loved him.

Check out his amazing house:

And look how dapper he was:

And look at this newspaper clipping from the year before he died, in 1954.

Admit that is awesome. Touring the continent at age 91!

And as I was looking through these albums and listening to my grandmother's stories, I turned around to see that I was being SPIED ON by this evil creature the whole time.

It was all very suspicious.

2010-05-11T13:05:00.001-04:00

So I am back in State College, Pennsylvania, after a week in Florida, a weekend in Philly, and another week in NYC, and I am very very excited for a few reasons but ONE reason is that after a few false starts and much going back and forth with my agent I have finally, finally figured out book #4, which I believes will have something to do with one SNOW WHITE. Snow White being, in my opinione, the coolest and weirdest fairy tale of all time. I mean really, beautiful dead girls lying in glittering glass coffins in the middle of the spooky woods (and there are some extremely weird corpse-lovin variations on this already weird theme in some of the old-time variants of this story, one involving a dead girl locked in a series of crystal coffins, one inside another, and locked in the furthest room of the house) and stepmamas (or mamas) eating, or thinking they're eating, the hearts or lungs of said dead girls, cooking them up with salt... Little mermaid is weird enough, what with tongues being cut out and legs that feel like they're being run through with knives... and of course all of this is balanced out by sheer, utter gorgeousness... BUT I shall stop now, in mid-thought, and with no transition at all sum up the following wondrous events:

1. Ok so in Florida I finally got to go to WEEKI WACHEE SPRINGS, the live mermaid city old-time roadside attraction in Weeki Wachee, Florida. I love these amazing, cheesy old places that were once so popular and so glamorous and are now sort of half glamorous and half weird. I mean once upon a time, girls came from all over the world to audition to be a Weeki Wachee mermaid, and those girls were treated like royalty... like old circus stars were, like Lillian Leitzel the old trapeze star that Tessa from Rain Village is semi inspired by was... Weeki Wachee is a pretty small old park with underwater mermaid shows in this little theater where a curtain lifts and mermaids are swimming about behind glass, two different shows, one about the history of the springs and one a take on the little mermaid... and there's a boat ride... and some animal shows, and some random mermaids sitting around... and it's all extremely awesome, in my gorgeous opinion.

What made it especially awesome was that one Miss JULIE KOMENDA happened to write to me a few weeks before, and happens to be the ARTIST IN RESIDENCE at Weeki Wachee. She does these lovely batik kinda shimmery mermaid paintings (click on the link to see) and lives right there in Weeki Wachee. When I told her I'd be coming there, along with my grandmother, uncle, mother and sister (and, as it happened, due to the wonders of Facebook, our old friend Michelle who now lives in St Pete and joined us for the afternoon), and invited her to lunch with us, she offered to show us around and take us behind the scenes. And so we drove 2.5 hours from my grandmother's house, and Julie, who was totally charming and felt like one of the family immediately, met us at the gate, and we all had lunch and then went to see us some mermaids, as you do. Look!

This may or may not have been part of the Lee-Greenwood-playing-in-the-background mermaid tribute to the US of A:

The little mermaid loving her some human things:

This is how the mermaids get in the water:

Mermaid fins:

Me and Julie:

My sister, Michelle, and me:

Me just casually hanging out:

And my grandma doing same:

2. I also, whilst in Florida, spent a very cool day with my uncle, who took me up to LAKELAND, which is the "city of swans" and has a number of swan statues scattered all over the place as well as a big lake with about 5000000 swans strutting around it right in the middle of town. Actually I don't know if that lake is in the middle of town but it is a very cool lake nonetheless, and the town itself is quite pretty and I was enamored not only by the swans but by that same old-time Florida glamor, like of the POLK THEATRE, one of those old-time movie theaters I love love love, this one being famous for having hosted my boyfriend ELVIS (a Weeki Wachee claim to fame as well). Anyway, I spent much time observing said swans, in part because my children's book coming out next year shall involve a SWAN MAIDEN. But more on that later.

Look at this poser:

At one point these ladies gave me some bread and I said "thank you!" and then looked up to see 5000000 swans HEADED STRAIGHT FOR ME and so I glamorously threw them the bread and ran away. But not before screaming in a lady like fashion and snapping this photo to use as evidence. Just look at the gleam in that one no-good swan's eyeballs!

And look at the sheer laziness of this one, no doubt reflecting on its latest crimes:

Said crimes no doubt including but not limited to the snatching of bonneted babies:

Sigh.

3. My uncle also took me to see the Lakeland's Florida Southern College campus, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who had a deep love of shiny colored glass, which appeared over and over again, embedded alluringly in the buildings, winking at me and licking its lips:

!!!! Really, I think all buildings -- and things -- should be so adorned.

4. So ALSO, during our Florida visit my sister and I stayed with my grandmother's friend GLENNA, who is awesome and loves Jack Daniels and poker. Every evening we'd go back to Glenna's and get to work:

Sadly, she cleaned us out, and drank yours truly under the table. She also introduced us to the pleasures of DEAL OR NO DEAL, which was very emotionally taxing. As a thank you, my sister and I sent her the above photo placed on the back of a set of playing cards, with the words "GLAMOROUS.... YET DEADLY" written along the bottom. We are very classy that way.

THE END.

2010-04-29T10:18:00.001-04:00

I've been in Florida since last Friday but haven't had much of a chance to write here and now must skedaddle to my grandmother's house to help prepare for and partake in a lovely picnic by the lake, one involving the best food ever DEVILED EGGS, but yesterday I was looking at old old photos and hearing 500000 old stories and I would just like to point out that my mother mighta been one of the most glamorous children ever in this world. Check out these arched brows!

More later!

2010-04-23T07:38:00.001-04:00

So two nights ago I got to meet my friend Barb's new baby, Vivienne Coco Lee Witmer. At one week old Vivienne has a quite astonishing repertoire of coos and sighs and burbles--she is downright orchestral--so I'm pretty sure she is a superbaby and I secretly suspect she has wings and possibly psychic powers. Look at her!

Here are more photos, too. I know, she is really a very wondrous child and almost certainly has some fairy blood running through her veins.

In other news, today I am flying to Florida and Monday I shall be hanging out with mermaids.

The end.

2010-04-21T10:48:00.003-04:00

So last week I made a last minute decision to come up to NYC after reading about this opera of Dante's Divine Comedy that would be debuting at Carnegie Hall, "La commedia" by Louis Andriessen, which I saw last Thursday night with my friends Michael and David and which I loved. I don't know anything about this music, I just wanted to see it because of the poem and because the description sounded really cool. And it was this crazy thing, this journey through hell up to heaven and there was a lot of weird weird music, atonal and dissonant and eerie and sometimes, to me, stunningly beautiful and unnerving, and there was this one opera singer whose voice did not sound of this world at all, it was so high and strange, and another who was like this long long column of a woman who skulked about the stage all glamorous and odd like something out of an old German expressionist film. It was intense: at times I felt like I was being directly transported into Dante's poem, which was not entirely pleasant I'm not gonna lie.

Anyway, here we be, pre and post journey:

So then I stuck around for some days mainly to meet my agent and hang out with my sister, and on Friday after a long and fruitful and lovely lunch with my agent and her assistant -- MERMAID is now officially finito and signed off on and off into production, and I have a few new projects in the works! -- my sister and I went with a few friends to see some HIP HOP ACCORDION at Pianos and to hear about our friend Michelle's travels... Michelle having recently up and spent a whole YEAR travelling the world, trekking through Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, South America. She had a special affection for South Africa, where among other things she went to the best spa ever in this world, and Namibia, where she volunteered for a week at a wildlife sanctuary and fed lions and slept with some very ornery, feisty, up-to-no-good baby baboons, and I would like to do both immediately thankyou.

Saturday I went to see the newest show my brilliant friend Eric is working on, RED, about Rothko, and that is one elegant, fascinating hour and a half, all between Alfred Molina as Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as his studio assistant. At one point they prime a canvas together, working furiously together to transform the whole thing to red in, seemingly, seconds, and it is very very astonishing and balletic, and this show has gotten all rave reviews and you should see it this minute. Oh and Alfred Molina as Rothko is an amazing character: totally obnoxious and insufferable and pretentious and overbearing and yet very touching and lovable and fascinating at the same time. I don't know how many writers and/or actors could pull off such a mix!

That evening some friends came over and we spent many wine-drenched hours playing Mexican train DOMINOES. I know. I must admit I find games involving smooth shining clinking things very glamorous. I always thing of a scene from Lust and Caution (I think) where a whole table of Chinese (I think) ladies are sitting around a table, all elaborately adorned with long polished nails and fingers covered in rings, and all smoking long long cigarettes, playing mah jong. Clinking clinking clinking while they talk and smoke and glitter.

And then Sunday I met my friend Anthony for the Swedish film Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I have not read those books so don't know how the film compares but man, that is one awesomely mesmerizing pot boiled movie full of snowy landscapes and evilness abounding and our main girl zipping about on her motorcycle and kicking ass and staring out at everything with these black, ferocious eyes. All kinds of creepiness and violence and even old spooky Swedish doods who with horrific Nazi pasts.

And then I have been working working working, trying to nail down this next book, the one to follow Mermaid, as well as my children's book and YA idea, and it is fun but it aint easy and in the meantime, I found out yesterday that Josh Sears, who did the U.S. covers for Godmother and Mermaid, was just announced as one of the winners of the American Illustrators competition for Mermaid, with only 280 pieces chosen out of 8k. OK I guess you can admire it again. I am really very madly in love with this cover:

Oh!! And lastly, my friend Barb's baby Vivienne Coco Lee was born last Wednesday!!! Look!!

I went to the hospital that day but Vivienne was locked away and so now I will finally meet her this very eve once I get back to PA and in fact I have to get ready for said leaving right this very minute and with that I shall take my leave.

The end.

2010-04-21T10:48:00.001-04:00

So last week I made a last minute decision to come up to NYC after reading about this opera of Dante's Divine Comedy that would be debuting at Carnegie Hall, "La commedia" by Louis Andriessen, which I saw last Thursday night with my friends Michael and David and which I loved. I don't know anything about this music, I just wanted to see it because of the poem and because the description sounded really cool. And it was this crazy thing, this journey through hell up to heaven and there was a lot of weird weird music, atonal and dissonant and eerie and sometimes, to me, stunningly beautiful and unnerving, and there was this one opera singer whose voice did not sound of this world at all, it was so high and strange, and another who was like this long long column of a woman who skulked about the stage all glamorous and odd like something out of an old German expressionist film. It was intense: at times I felt like I was being directly transported into Dante's poem, and at some points I really was almost shaking with the intensity and horror of it.

Anyway, here we be, pre and post journey:

So then I stuck around for some days mainly to meet my agent and hang out with my sister, and on Friday after a long and fruitful and lovely lunch with my agent and her assistant -- MERMAID is now officially finito and signed off on and off into production, and I have a few new projects in the works! -- my sister and I went with a few friends to see some HIP HOP ACCORDION at Pianos and to hear about our friend Michelle's travels... Michelle having recently up and spent a whole YEAR travelling the world, trekking through Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, South America. She had a special affection for South Africa, where among other things she went to the best spa ever in this world, and Namibia, where she volunteered for a week at a wildlife sanctuary and fed lions and slept with some very ornery, feisty, up-to-no-good baby baboons, and I would like to do both immediately thankyou.

Saturday I went to see the newest show my brilliant friend Eric is working on, RED, about Rothko, and that is one elegant, fascinating hour and a half, all between Alfred Molina as Rothko and Eddie Redmayne as his studio assistant. At one point they prime a canvas together, working furiously together to transform the whole thing to red in, seemingly, seconds, and it is very very astonishing and balletic, and this show has gotten all rave reviews and you should see it this minute. Oh and Alfred Molina as Rothko is an amazing character: totally obnoxious and insufferable and pretentious and overbearing and yet very touching and lovable and fascinating at the same time. I don't know how many writers and/or actors could pull off such a mix, really.

That evening some friends came over and we spent many wine-drenched hours playing Mexican train DOMINOES. I know. I must admit I find games involving smooth shining clinking things very glamorous. I always thing of a scene from Lust and Caution (I think) where a whole table of Chinese (I think) ladies are sitting around a table, all elaborately adorned with long polished nails and fingers covered in rings, and all smoking long long cigarettes, playing mah jong. Clinking clinking clinking while they talk and smoke and glitter.

And then Sunday I met my friend Anthony for the Swedish film Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I have not read those books so don't know how the film compares but man, that is one awesomely mesmerizing pot boiled movie full of snowy landscapes and evilness abounding and our main girl zipping about on her motorcycle and kicking ass and staring out at everything with these black, ferocious eyes. All kinds of creepiness and violence and even old spooky Swedish doods who with horrific Nazi pasts.

And then I have been working working working, trying to nail down this next book, the one to follow Mermaid, as well as my children's book and YA idea, and it is fun but it aint easy and in the meantime, I found out yesterday that Josh Sears, who did the U.S. covers for Godmother and Mermaid, was just announced as one of the winners of the American Illustrators competition for Mermaid, with only 280 pieces chosen out of 8k. OK I guess you can admire it again. Honestly I am just madly in love with this cover:

Oh!! And lastly, my friend Barb's baby Vivienne Coco Lee was born last Wednesday!!! Look!!

I went to the hospital that day but Vivienne was locked away and so now I will finally meet her this very eve once I get back to PA and in fact I have to get ready for said leaving right this very minute and with that I shall take my leave.

The end.

2010-04-17T10:33:00.000-04:00

Do you know this Grimms Fairy Tale?

The Rose

There was once a poor woman who had two children. The youngest had to go every day into the forest to fetch wood. Once when she had gone a long way to seek it, a little child, who was quite strong, came and helped her industriously to pick up the wood and carry it home, and then before a moment had passed the strange child disappeared. The child told her mother this, but at first she would not believe it. At length she brought a rose home, and told her mother that the beautiful child had given her this rose, and had told her that when it was in full bloom, he would return. The mother put the rose in water. One morning her child could not get out of bed. The mother went to the bed and found her dead, but she lay looking very happy. On the same morning, the rose was in full bloom.

--The End--

2010-04-11T14:50:00.003-04:00

While I remain in a journalizing kind of mood I will randomly note the following:

1. I saw THE RUNAWAYS yesterday and I completely, totally loved it even tho it was a little on the UN-DEEP side and not altogether cohesive... But it looked amazing, sounded amazing, the girls in it were amazing, and I appreciated the I'm-your-wild-girl-ness of the whole thing, down to sort of random girly moments like where one girl gets her period for the first time and another learns how to orgasm. I would have liked it to be a little deeper but a girl can't have everything -- unless she's Joan Jett.

2. A few days ago I saw The Last Station, and I didn't even have any idea what it was about, just that Helen Mirren was in it... but man! Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as his countess wife, the two of them madly in love with each other after 48 years of marriage but diametrically opposed to each other in their ideologies, him wanting to give away his moolah and copyrights to the people, her wanting to secure their children's futures... I was a complete sucker for the romance of it all, this I-can't-stand-you-but-I-totally-love-you-ness of it, which I in part blame Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers for -- "I can't stand what you do but I'm in love with your eyes" -- not to mention Wuthering Heights, and by the end of the film I was all swooning and weepy, and honestly I just thought it was the most romantic thing ever. Which is probably why I'm so bad at relationships. Sigh.

3. I ALSO recently saw Hot Tub Time Machine, and clearly I have no powers of discrimination as I loved that, too.

4. Writing wise, I turned in what I BELIEVES is the final version of Mermaid a week or so ago (the book comes out next March, and I'm excited, I think it's better than Rain Village or Godmother), and I am now working on the first chapter and synopsis of the next novel and will present it to my agent and hopefully editors next week. If all pans out, it will be another kind of fairytale retelling, but maybe mixing together more than one, and maybe with a little more goofiness added in with the glitteriness and weird, twisted aspects. I'm also working on the children's book that will come out next year (a middle grade chapter book -- awkward girl stuff mixed with some beautiful fairytale stuff, more on that later!), and the idea for a YA novel. Plus I want to finally finish my noir and publish it under a glamorous PEN NAME, and I'm also trying to do a screenplay.

5. Plus I am playing lots of racquetball and watching too many shows like AMERICAN IDOL and PROJECT RUNWAY and CELEBRITY APPRENTICE on DVR, and I'm taking bellydance lessons. And soon I'm gonna be able to play this on the accordion. And any minute now my friend Barb's gonna have herself a baby named Vivienne Coco and I can't wait to meet her.

The End.

2010-04-11T14:50:00.001-04:00

2010-04-11T01:08:00.003-04:00

So last weekend I drove to Cincinnati with my mama to see my friend David Bar Katz's play The History of Invulnerability, the first preview performance at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. My mother did things like force me to see Blue Velvet and Almodovar movies when they came out and always took my sister and me to plays, about 500000000 of them when we were sprites, and I knew she'd love to see the play, not to mention the first public performance of a play written by a (very brilliant) friend, so it was really lovely, and we did it very luxuriously, taking two days to get to Cincinnati and two days to get back even tho it's about 7 hours away, and staying two nights in a fancay historic art deco hotel downtown so we could also see the other show at the playhouse, Daddy-Long-Legs, a (possibly overly) sweet very old-fashioned musical which could notta have been more different from David's play, which is about the creator of Superman, Jerry Siegel, as well as that sweetest of subjects the Holocaust.

Seeing David's play was also special for me because I read a draft of it about 4 years ago, when he was furiously writing it in like TWO DAYS for the summer workshop of the Labyrinth Theater Company (an amazing company, where Phillip Seymour Hoffman was artistic director) and I remember talking to David when he was in mid-meltdown, trying to write this thing, and I offered to read what he had and he sent it over and I thought it was really great, what he was doing, funny and smart and moving, and had some comments for him, and anyway, he magically finished, as he always does, and did the workshop, which is only for company members tho I sneakkkkked in last summer to see his latest play, and then that fall Joi and I saw a reading of it at the Public Theater as part of Labyrinth's Barn Series, which takes place every fall (and where you can see readings of brand new plays for fa ree) and it was really great, seeing this play I had read come to life a bit... but a reading isn't a fully fledged thing and the play is pretty complicated and I remember thinking there were moments of greatness, moments that were a little heavy handed, moments that worked perfectly and moments that worked less so. But anyway, it was many moons later that David told me that he credits me with him being able to finish the play, which I believe was a case of yours truly being very chirpily gung-ho and can-do at just the right moment.

So then a few years later the play gets swooped up and produced by this really gorgeous, top-rate playhouse in Cincinnati, and so then there we were, and last Friday my mama and I arrived in town, lazily had room service dinner, and then saw Daddy-Long-Legs, and then afterward met David and the director and a bunch of the cast, who had all just finished the first dress rehearsal in another part of the theater, at this swanky bar nearby, the kinda bar where glamorous older ladies sing old tunes on shell-shaped stages and chandeliers glitter sluttily and stare at themselves in the windows, and because there was a certain amount of barely contained PANIC in the air I was sorta vaguely expecting the play the following night to be a little messy, a little in need of more work, and so fast forward to Saturday -- after we slept and slept and sampled Cincinnati-an things like chili with cinnamon in it, and then slept some more and had a very fancy dinner at our hotel, the kind where chefs send out AMUSE BOOCHES -- and I will just say that I was really just MIND BLOWN at how everything just came together. I mean David's play just done blew me away, and I mean the whole thing, every aspect. The set alone was spectacular, all sorta based on old comics and then with tons of projections flashing on screens around the space, to the left and right of the stage and across from it (there were seats in front of the stage and on either side), including tons of new artwork by Joe Staton.

Look:

So the play sort of traces the story of Jerry Siegel, who created Superman and then quickly lost the rights to him, and the story of Superman himself, and makes the point that Jerry was one of several Jewish writers in the 30s and 40s who created superheroes as possibly unconscious responses to the rise of Nazism. At the same time we see the story of two men and a boy in Auschwitz, the boy reading Superman comics while the men plot an uprising (based on historical fact), each engaging in his own fantasies of rescue and invulnerability.... and these stories all sort of layer and wrap around each other, delicately delicately, and we go from scene to scene and place to place really deftly, with changing projections and lighting to guide us through, and it's ridiculously funny and super smart and so painful and, finally, just completely devastating. It's the kind of play that has to be done so well and so carefully to work properly and I'm writing this whole long entry out of just pure astonishment that it done did. It was really one of the best things I've seen. I think the whole audience was in tears by the end and there was an immediate standing ovation. The official opening was on Thursday and look at this review. Really, it was amazing, and I can't believe it all came out of that feverish couple days of writing 4 years ago. I hope David's play will go to other theaters so that you can see it, too. Unless you're in Cincinnati, in which case you should buy tickets this instant. And send me some chili.

Here are some more photos:

That's David and my mama before the show and below is David, Joe Staton, and David's beauteous wife Julie, who is by the way publishing mah first children's book next year.

Also, here is my mama and me at dinner:

And here is the evil little moppet who was making eyes at me and smiling over his shoulder the whole time, save for the few moments when I cleverly snapped this photo:

Look at him so obviously up to no good, pretending to drink from his "sippy cup." It's a wonder we made it to the play at all.

THE END

2010-03-31T13:51:00.001-04:00

A teeny, tiny Mermaid snippet:

“Stop it, all of you!” Nadine said, lifting a heap of jewelry from the chest and tossing it out at them. Heavy gold and silver, jewels of every color, streaking across the water. All manner of sea creature appeared suddenly, from under rocks and among the coral, attracted by the flashing gems. “It’s over. Lenia’s back. We’re arguing over nothing.”

Bolette laughed as a bracelet knocked against her cheek, then fell onto a tentacle of a passing squid. And then they all began to laugh, twisting onto their sides, batting jewels and stones and coins, hundreds of coins from the bottom of the chest, back and forth.

Just like that, the argument was forgotten.

Only Lenia remained quiet, watching as an eel slinked by, catching a twinkling silver ring in its open, gaping mouth.

2010-03-31T00:47:00.001-04:00

Henry Rollins is just so good.

2010-03-29T16:26:00.001-04:00

So I'm so excited today because I just randomly remembered about the existence of WEEKI WACHEE SPRINGS in Florida, the weird old mermaid roadside attraction that was huge in the 50s and 60s, that MS JOI BROZEK roodly told me about only just after I last returned from Florida a couple years ago, causing me much grief and sadness as you might imagine... Now I'm going back there in late April with my mother and sister to visit my grandmother and uncle--which is really the only reason I ever go there--so I just looked up Weeki Wachee and saw it's two hours from where I'll be and will indeed be open... There will even be a little mermaid show based on the original Hans Christian Andersen story, justa like my next book. Which, as it happens, I am now doing the last last last final draft tiny edits on and will be done with forever on Thursday. And I might have possibly said that before but this time it is really, really true and not just semi true.

Anyway, WEEKI WACHEE! Some snippets from the website:

In the 1950s, Weeki Wachee was one of the nation’s most popular tourist stops. The attraction received worldwide acclaim. Movies were filmed at the spring, like “Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid.” Sights at the park included the mermaid shows, orchid gardens, jungle cruises, and Indian encampment and a new beach. The mermaids took etiquette and ballet lessons.

In the 1960s, girls came from as far away as Tokyo to try out for the privilege of becoming a mermaid. The glamorous mermaids performed eight shows a day to sold out crowds -- as many as half a million people a year came to see the Weeki Wachee mermaids. Weeki Wachee Springs employed 35 mermaids, who took turns swimming in the shows and captivating the crowds by playing football and having picnics underwater. Some of the mermaids lived in the mermaid cottages out behind the attraction. The mermaids wore one-piece suits and were treated like royalty wherever they went in Florida.

!!!!

By the way I own Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid if you'd ever like to come over for a Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid party.

Here's a video from Weeki Wachee in 1952:

And some photos, old and new. The first is from 1947, by Toni Frissell for Harper's Bazaar.

Admit those are amazing. I am hoping to lure my grandmother there and then we can all go, but I might possibly go by my lonesome or with a friend who'll be in Orlando then. My grandmother has a pool down there that my sister and I used to swim in all the time as kids while my grandmother told us we were like little Esther Williams es. To this day I have never seen an Esther Williams movie so I have now proposed that we all watch an Esther Williams movie or two before spending the day at WEEKI WACHEE. You're supposed to go to Florida for theme vacations in my humble opinione, and I really can't think of one that's better.

I mean really.

In other news, tomorrow I'm seeing Henry Rollins and Wednesday I go back to bellydancing class after more than a year (next up: accordion!). Then Thursday, the unbelievable glamour of CINCINNATI.

I know.

The end.

2010-03-26T14:39:00.001-04:00

I have become very bad at writing on here due to the gorgeousness of Facebook, where you can tell almost all of your friends (that you've ever had, ever! and even all of your acquaintances!) something in two seconds, not to mention the ungorgeousness of my own attention span... but anyway, two quick things involving two of my favorite things, glass and ICE!

First, I am completely in love with the glass dresses of Ms. Karen Lamonte, like this one at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian that my friend Brien went to see yesterday. He sent me the link and I done lost my breath. Gorgeous and strange and haunting and ethereal... everything I love, like out of some spooky fairytale. I hope to go down to DC in the near future for the DC reading of one Ms JEANINE CUMMINS, whose first novel The Outside Boy is about to come out, so I can see it in person. Plus Karen Lamonte has got some amazing stuff at the Corning Museum of Glass.

I don't know why I'm so in love with glass. But glass, snow, ice, water, rain, glitter... all of that makes me swoon. I once dated this art collecting guy who had this unbelievable table that was like a swoosh of glass, just a mass of glass that went straight across and then swooped down on one side, like some frozen waterfall, or a glacier, and he also had these glass balls that hung from his ceiling, tons of them, at different levels, so that in a certain light it was really unbelievably ethereal. And he lived in this Tribeca loft so you could see the glass from different levels and angles. Amazing. Of course, this man was completely insane. Sigh.

Anyway, speaking of glaciers (and insane men, most likely) I am incredibly excited to be going to ALASKA this summer, where I've never been, and among other things I shall be visiting this FAMOUS GLACIER that you see in the distance here:

You can take a one-hour boat ride to get up close and personal with said glacier, and I shall be driving myself over within hours of getting off the plane. I'm going to Alaska in the first place because in July I'll be teaching at the University of Alaska at Anchorage Low-Residency MFA program, which holds this two-week long summer residency each year where all MFA students and faculty (including the wondrous Jo-Ann Mapson, who thought of me for the job) gather in Anchorage and have 500000 workshops and lectures and readings. (For the rest of the year I'll mentor a few students from afar, via email.) I got my plane ticket yesterday and tacked on an extra week and made a car reservation so I can see me some Alaska and befriend me some moose, all by my lonesome. I'm excited -- for the MFA stuff, and the moose! And then for that week I can do whatever. I might do a ten-hour road trip to see my old friend Erika in Haines, and/or I might just drive around looking for polar bears and hidden treasure and sleighs.

The end.

2010-03-13T20:47:00.001-05:00

So today I went and met this most gorgeous peregrine falcon named Isis. Isis has some missing feathers and can't fly properly, so she is kept by a local wildlife rehabilitator named Robyn, whose house and rehab center I visited today. I also met a very pretty little skunk who likes to hide in cabinets and who bears a shocking facial resemblance to my parents' pet poodles, as well as a sumptuous pair of turtles named Fred and Wilma, plus a bunny and a kestrel and a snake and a blind squirrel. Oh and a teeny owl named Sam who looked like a toy and who I'm quite sure secretly wanted to come home with me. And an almost-albino robin who was a quite elegant show-off shade of white, like Meryl Streep's Oscar dress. All of them are injured in some way. Many by cars, some in more horrifying ways. And the skunk was rescued from the pet trade! The skunk pet trade! Who knew.

I felt like SNOW WHITE in the forest hanging out with all her friends.

Almost.

Anyway, look at this glamorous lady:

Ain't she stunning? Now I just need to find some real falconers. If you know one or are one, email me this minute!

In other news, I'm now on the last, last round of MERMAID, just cleaning up some last little things, and in a week or so I'll be done with it forever and ever and ever... or at least until the copyedits come. And I am brainstorming like crazy all the next things. Just you wait!

Oh, and last week I had the most lovely whirlwind trip to New York, mainly to see Max Raabe at Carnegie Hall with my sister and the fabulous artiste Mr. Michael Kaluta, whom I suspected would be completely swept away by it. Which he was. I also have never sat in a box seat before and I half felt like I was in an old movie and half felt like I was immediately going to pitch to my death. My friend Jill from LJ who is the house manager there even arranged for me to go backstage but I was afraid I would faint dead away if I did. Really, it was a very treacherous evening, but all the best evenings are.

The end.

2010-01-31T17:59:00.001-05:00

Look:

2010-01-31T17:37:00.005-05:00

Some random bits of wondrousness:

1. Last night I finally watched FORBIDDEN PLANET, after having had it vehemently recommended to me, and after having bought some Robby the Robot toys in Berlin not knowing what they were from, and I was blown away. Not only did I think it was one of the coolest movies of all time, BUT I think I might want to LIVE IN IT. All those 50s space age sets, including glittery pink couches and diamond-shaped metal corridors and fake looking gardens with tigers roaming through them, had my friend Barb and me a-swooning. And the clothes! Look!

2. Speaking of a-swooning, I also recently sat down for a private MARLENE DIETRICH festival with my friend Michael that involved the extremely gorgeous Song of Songs and Seven Sinners (with John Wayne!), both great, both absolute luxury to look at -- like a silky hot bubble bath, for your EYEBALLS -- and both chock-full of wardrobe concoctions that will make you lose yo breath. I mean really, look at this lady.

3. And while I am speaking of glamorous ladies, I thought it was funny and sweet that on Facebook recently, for the little who-is-my-celebrity-doppleganger game, my friend Christy said she'd describe yours truly as a mixture of JULIA CHILD and BETTIE PAGE. I wouldn't say I look like either, or any other I was compared to (Megan Fox -- ha, Genie Francis, Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet) but I love the idea of that combination... Honestly, can you imagine a better duo of pure awesome mind-reeling kickass womanhood:

I know.

4. Another movie I really liked recently was An Education, set in England in the early 60s, where Peter Sarsgaard seduces a 17-year-old girl who's thirsty for culture and adventure by taking her to glamorous clubs and concerts and eventually to PAREE. And they're always hanging out with this other super-fashionable couple and smoking out of long cigarette holders and listening to French pop music and twisting up their hair like they was some AUDREY HEPBURN and wearing little leopard caps whilst driving about in snappy sports cars. It's all very swoony and made me wanna smart smoking even tho I already smoked through all my teenage years and most of my twenties, near ruining my lungs, and have been smoke free for ELEVEN YEARS now. Actually, this film is totally a bad influence and I forbid you to see it.

5. So my friend David's play The History of Invulnerability (about the creator of Superman, Jerry Siegel) is going to be opening at the CINCINNATI PLAYHOUSE IN THE PARK in April, and this is a big deal, I read this play as a draft and I saw it performed in a reading as part of the Barn Series of the Labyrinth Theater Company, and now it's gonna be a PROPER PRODUCTION, and so my mama and I are driving to Cincinnati for the opening, which I am very excited about. And also, whilst there, we will hopefully see the late-in-life second husband of my late great aunt Dee Dee. They had one of those great romantic tales: they fell in love as teenagers in Ohio but were forbidden to marry by their families and so went on to marry other people. They lost touch with each other, they moved away, they raised families, lived their lives, grew old.. and eventually his wife died, and he got to thinking about his first love and spent a long time tracking her down, and found her living in Kentucky and also widowed (or else her husband died at some point after, I forget). They fell madly in love and married. My mother, sister and I visited them in Lousville a few years back, and they were very clearly madly in love, and she was sick, and he doted on her and took care of her. I think they had a handful of years together before she died, and now he is back living in Cincinnati. So I cannot wait to see him. I also understand that, way back in the day, Dee Dee's family lived in a great big Cincinnati mansion where "maids churned butter in the basement." !

6. I mentioned how one of the highlights of my time in Germany was seeing MAX RAABE & THE PALAST ORCHESTER with my friends Eric and Uli. I loved them so much that I'm seeing them again with my sister at Carnegie Hall on March 4, and also persuaded my parents to go see them in Erie, PA, on February 27 and even found said parents a lovely B&B to stay in and agreed to look after their crazy and possibly psychopathic dogs whilst they're away, as added incentive. Max Raabe is a huge deal in Germany but less known here, and he's about to do this odd sort of mini-tour of the US (from Carnegie Hall to Erie PA!) and so if he's coming to your town and you like you some OLD-TIME GLAMOUR -- that word needs a U -- then you must go see him! He and the show in general are just completely charming and elegant (in a most extreme, exaggerated way) and hilarious and heartbreaking and sweet sweet sweet.

Here, look:

So imagine: this most perfect, glossy Art Deco-lookin tiered stage, a perfect little orchestra composed of all white-tuxedo-ed men and one woman, the violinist, who sits in the midst of them in a bright red sparkly gown, and Max Raabe in front, leaning against the piano, long and lean in a black tuxedo, never smiling, wry and bored and mischievous, kinda like if Marlene Dietrich were a DOOD, moving his eyes slyly about, and then they start playing all those best best most lovely old songs, sweet and simple but always a bit melancholy and nostalgic and wistful even when all they're saying is you're the cream in my coffee. And all this is punctuated by these unexpected moments of pure magic.

LIKE, for example, after the intermission... the curtain opens, and they are all on stage, Max Raabe and the orchestra, totally quiet and still, and then, out of nowhere, this sleek silver zeppelin floats into the stage, slowly slowly, and the contrast to the gorgeous art deco-y elegance of the orchestra, this sleek gleaming space age kinda thing, is sort of shocking and lovely, and the zeppelin floats over the stage and then slowly turns, and begins to float over the audience, and -- now I'm switching into past tense! -- everyone sort of gasped as this thing floated over us, really slowly, so strange, and it kept going and going and floated right out of the back of the theater and disappeared. And once it disappeared, the show just started up again as if nothing had happened. It was so simple, but in those few moments it seemed like everything in the world had stopped, and it felt like everyone in that theater forgot to breathe... It reminded me of this moment in the Italian film Stanno Tutti Bene, where these characters suddenly get stuck in a traffic jam and the narrative just stops for a few minutes as they get out of the car and walk, everyone's walking everyone's abandoning their cars to see what's happened, and they all come upon this great beautiful elk standing in the middle of the road, and they just stand there before it, one beat two beats, before the narrative starts up again as if nothing's happened...

One of the loveliest moments in film, if you axe me.

The end.

2010-01-30T16:08:00.003-05:00

I also wanted to mention that if you, dear reader, whoever you may be, would like a SIGNED BOOK PLATE with which to gorgeously festoon your copy of Godmother or Rain Village.... and/or if you would like a STACK of such book plates with which to delight your BOOK CLUB or your literary-minded BOWLING LEAGUE or what have you, then please just send an email to yours truly at carolynturgeon at gmail dot com and I will be happy to gift you appropriately. I MIGHT EVEN throw in a few glass slipper temporary tattoos, if I am feeling exceptionally generous.

LOVE,
CAROLYN

2010-01-30T16:06:00.002-05:00

Today I bought the latest issue of Faerie Magazine and saw the following lovely review of Godmother:

On its surface, Godmother is a smart, entertaining, and lovable new novel that tales a look at the Cinderella tale and then shakes it up like a snow-globe. But lurking just below that surface is a deep, dark fable, and by the time the book ends one might wonder where the light and dark met, so deft was the transition.

Meet Lil, an elderly New Yorker who works at a bookstore in the West Village. The sole employee of the handsome, wealthy, and endearingly self-deprecating owner, Lil spends her mornings walking the thirty-or-so blocks from her home to the store, sweeping, organizing books, and lovingly preparing the shop for opening. Each morning she dusts and fusses over the many rare and first edition titles, but none more so than a thick book of fairy tales. It soon comes to light by the progression of Lil's days that she is none other than the fairy godmother from the Cinderella tale, fallen from fairy grace and forced to live among the mortals. The explanation for that fall spans the length of the book, and the foreshadowing and slowly unraveling mystery are expertly done. It is a chance encounter in a diner with a man who might be from her past that forces Lil to remember the events leading up to her banishment. Told almost half in flashbacks, Godmother goes back and forth between the behind the scenes of Cinderella and the story of Lil, which takes place in modern New York and is every bit as interesting and mysterious. As the two threads intertwine and increase their momentum, it is hard not to notice that something is amiss in Lil's world. Is it simply the plight of the earth-bound fairy? Or does Lil have another secret? Carolyn Turgeon has crafted a lovely and moody piece, full of sounds and smells, rife with descriptive language, and teeming with atmosphere. -- Hattie Unglesbee

I also love this recent review from another very gorgeous fairy tale publication.

In other news, tonight my friend Barb is coming over to watch Forbidden Planet with me, but roodly suggested that she would NOT be into watching MISS AMERICA pageant.

These uppity people and their standards!

2010-01-24T12:04:00.004-05:00

Also: yesterday my friend David gave me Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which has the best opening paragraph ever:

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

Also, while I was at David's (whose play by the way is opening at the Cincinnati Playhouse, LOOK!), his son Morris tried out my glamorous new MONOCLE, which was gifted to me by the coolest artiste ever:

I KNOW.

By the way, David's wondrous wife Julie is starting a children's book publishing company, and is publishing MY FIRST CHILDREN'S BOOK, about an ENCHANTED TREE and an ENCHANTED GARDEN with flowers that LOOK LIKE LADIES, next year. I am pretty sure it will change your life.

2010-01-24T11:31:00.004-05:00

I have been awfully remiss in the journal-keeping department and now I am just TOO BEHIND. Since I last wrote here I have been to Bavaria, where I visited my old friend Lisa and her husband and crazy children and saw medieval cities and consumed magical schnitzels, and to gloomy, glamorous Dresden, where I stayed with Lisa's friend Jen in a glamorous old 19th century villa and spoke to Jen's book group in another glamorous old 19th century villa and did things like tour opera houses and have high tea in fancy hotels, and I went with my friend Rob on a whirlwind little trip to Prague, where we wandered about castles and cathedrals and hung out in cool little country bars where bearded folk gathered around long tables and sang Johnny Cash songs in Czech, and to Vienna, where we met up with Tink and Aoife and Tink's old friend Evelyne and her beau and their new baby and went to wondrous, twinkling Christmas markets in front of palaces and gorgeous, elegant lamp-filled dark-wooded restaurants and cool old writerly cafes, and I had many, many more adventures in Berlin, with Eric and with Rob and with lots of new friends, and these adventures included seeing the best show ever in this world by MAX RAABE & PALAST ORCHESTER, which I will describe later, and a gorgeous Pina Bausch performance at which Wim Wenders sat right in front of us, and then in December I came back to New York for Christmas with my family and Marlene Dietrich film festivals and to see Joi and Kryzstof for dinners in fancy Brooklyn hideaways, and then in January I went back to Pennsylvania, where I am now ensconced with MERMAID once more, making last last edits and changes -- the book is now coming out in March 2011, please do not cry -- and working out like a MOFO in an admirable effort to become more SVELTE. Tho right now, at this moment, I am in New York again, as Mr ANTON STROUT has just turned 40 and his wondrous wife Orly threw him a surprise ZOMBIE PARTY last night, some photos from which are herein: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=142155&id=812268886&l=0774493e43. Please do not be too scared. We did all die, but we did, in true zombie fashion, came back to life shortly thereafter. The end.

2009-11-07T09:34:00.000-05:00

Look: here are clips from the lovely burlesque show I went to a few weeks ago here in Berlin...

2009-11-04T20:48:00.002-05:00

So Joi visited me for just over a week in October, and after three weeks of being in Berlin mostly just writing in cafes by myself, getting Mermaid together, suddenly I was traipsing all over the place... We had much much fun; we went to all kinds of clubs and bars, we spent a lot of time working in cafes (this city is full of the best cafes!), we saw this amazing little cabaret show about Marlene Dietrich, we met up with our friend Jen and went up to Hamburg to see Nick Cave and Blixa Bargeld... and then Eric came to town, too, and we had more adventures, including a gorgeous Oscar Wilde party in this lavish, candlelit Victoriany apartment, where we all sat around a long table strewn with grapes and roses while our crazy host, Coco, read to us from Oscar Wilde's fairytales and, later, tapdanced like a little whirlwind.

Since there are way too many photos to try to post here, I'm just linking to the Facebook album documenting Joi's visit, complete with EXPLANATORY CAPTIONS. Honestly, she should pay me for these things.

And then Joi left and Eric was here till just a couple days ago, and we spent most days writing together in cafes... And we went to a bunch of amazing bars and restaurants (my favorite was this place that only serves roasted half chickens that have been FRIED, and you have a choice of either potatoes or cabbage on the side, that's it), and I met his glamorous friends Uli, who's an actress, and Marc, who's a composer, at their wonderful little house where I was greeted, at the door, by a whole barrel full of walnuts from their backyard and was immediately in luvv.... And one night we went to one of "Berlin's secret restaurants"... secret because it's in a hidden location you only find out a couple days beforehand... And we met Ms. Bee Lavender and Mr. Byron Cook one afternoon at one of my favorite cafes... And then on Halloween night, Eric's friend Wendy was in town and Eric, Jen, Wendy and I ended up having the most weird and varied night ever: we started off with dinner at a rockabilly tiki bar cafe, then went to see Lily Allen in concert, then went to this weird 70s Russian disco bar to see this incredibly fun, crazy Russian polka ska band (my favorite event of the night!), and then went to a goth club followed by a trip to the famous techno-club-in-a-former-power-station Berghain, where I lasted about half an hour before whisking myself into a cab home. I am really more of a polka gal.

Oh, one night we also had a fabulous Japanese dinner, Eric and Jen and Amy, who is friends of a friend in Kansas, and Lidia, whom I met at the Oscar Wilde dinner, and I... and then went off to see some quite spectacular Berlin burlesque at the appropriately named BANG BANG CLUB. Here I met this lovely artiste, with whom I shall do some glamorous little collaborations in the near future and who also pointed out "Berlin's Dita," who was standing in front of us exuding glamour. I mean as if it were an Olympic sport. Unbelievably gorgeous, these German ladies!

Anyway, here is my general Berlin album that contains some of the wondrous events and places and people described above.

AND I BELIEVE THAT JUST ABOUT SUMS IT UP

The end.

2009-11-04T18:02:00.002-05:00

I do love me an autumn snowfall, especially in Berlin.

Today it snowed for less than an hour, I think. I was in my apartment, writing, and then I walked through the snow a few blocks to the German restaurant at the end of the street, which was dark and candlelit, and ate a big bowl of tomato soup with cream.

2009-10-26T18:42:00.001-04:00

I have lots and lots of things to post about Berlin, which I am madly in love with, BUT for now... here is the lovely, lovely cover for my third book, Mermaid, which comes out next summer...

2009-10-09T09:09:00.003-04:00

So I would like to generously share with you some more exciting and illuminating photos from Berlin.

First, please note the pleasantness of this scene, as I innocently walked down the street in Prenzlauer Berg the other day on my way to write wholesomely about mermaids:

And then look more closely...

at the evil and cowardly moppet shooting me a death glare from within the safety of his momma's arms!!!

I know. Evilness abounds here.

I somehow managed to make it to my favorite cafe, however, which I have now generously documented in a rare moment when all the beautiful Hegel-reading boys were absent:

Doesn't that look like the perfect (perfectly pretentious!) place to write? Sadly, with my book (over)due, that is the main thing I do in Berlin right now, but now I am set to turn in my book MONDAY. Plus there are other rooms here, plus secret staircases that lead to more secret rooms with disco balls downstairs. Lord knows what evil happenings take place there.

Anyway, here is me, every day, stuck to my laptop like a princess to her tower:

Oh and yesterday I found another new favorite cafe, which is decadent and Middle Eastern and romantic and candlelit and gorgeous, where I drank rosewater lemonade and wrote for many moons whilst beautiful boys played chess nearby, and where I am sitting at this very moment accidentally updating this blog instead of writing my book.

I also spent a long time yesterday talking to this Frenchman who lives between London and Berlin and bought a place in Prenzlauer Berg a few years ago for THIRTY THOUSAND EURO (!!). Said Frenchman was speaking English in such a rumbly, accented fashion that I missed the whole "I am from London BUT ORIGINALLY FROM FRANCE" part and suspected he was severely disabled for the first part of the conversation. I also, by the way, spent many hours the other day speaking to this German guy named VOLKER, a name that sounds suspiciously and unfortunately like "fucker" when pronounced properly, I'm just saying, and eventually found myself talking in half sentences to him like a non-native speaker. Isn't it weird how that happens? Just another way the Germans are trying to undo me.

Anyway, please admire a window from the best toy store in the world:

Would you believe that this morning I bought both those robots as well as the bird cage in the back (which holds a singing toy bird) and a variation on the circus/carousel music box in front of the bird cage? I know.

Oh, yesterday I also tried some of this horrible beer that is supposedly very famous with tourists in Berlin and that tastes like kool aid mixed with beer as if the kool aid on its own weren't horrible enough:

It comes in red (strawberry) and green (my waitress didn't know the English word) and I could not even drink it, it was so awful. By the way I have never been a beer drinker and am not sure it's wise for any reason to become one now, but... beer is so good here! And so cheap!

Speaking of horrible things, however, I will just mention how a week or two ago I had dinner at this Mexican place in Prenzlauer Berg. It looked okay and there were a lot of people inside and it was in a neighborhood where almost every restaurant serves some foreign cuisine and so I went in, but the menu was totally confusing, I mean there were pictures of quesadillas where it said "fajitas," and it was all in German of course, so I just asked the waiter what was best and he pointed and said "BURRITOS. Everyone they love these. Do you know burritos?" and I said yes, a burrito was good, and he asked would I like beef or chicken and I said which is better here and he said chicken and so I ordered a chicken burrito and then 15 minutes later he brings me out this huge cracklin platter of chicken fajitas trailing huge plumes of smoke through the whole restaurant. SIGH. No girl would order a plate of fajitas when dining alone, am I wrong? And I am pretty sure that chicken was covered in ketchup.

Anyway, so Berlin is pretty beautiful and you see graffiti and murals everywhere. Look:

Also, Brecht apparently spent a bit of time in Weissensee down the street from where I'm staying and so there's this big crumbling Brecht house and close by this mural, which has a Brecht quote on it that you totally can't see in this photo but I am posting it anyway.

I guess that is all for now. Oh, except I saw my MERMAID cover this morning and it is completely, utterly gorgeous. I am totally in love with it. My editor is sending me a version to post in a bit so please be prepared to be SPELLBOUND.

Now I might possibly consider getting back to actually finishing the book it shall be so gorgeously covering.

The end.

2009-09-30T16:15:00.001-04:00

While I am here in Berlin I hope to learn a bit of German. In fact I am contemplating returning here in the spring for longer, possibly living here full-time.

It is for this reason that I find it very helpful when people write English to German and German to English translations on bathroom walls.

2009-09-30T04:10:00.003-04:00

So this week I found the most perfect writing spot, this place in Prenzerlauer Berg that TIME OUT told me was "pretentious" during the day because everyone seemed to be "working on a novel." Given my own pretensions to novel writing, I figured this place was perfect, especially as MERMAID is (over)due in one week and if I write in my apartment I am liable to accidentally FALL ASLEEP or watch an episode of the RACHEL ZOE PROJECT or MY ANTONIO on itunes. Plus I love me some pretentious writer types, what can I say. Even now when EVERYONE I KNOW is a writer, when I hear that someone is a writer I think "oh!" and feel vaguely fluttery. It's a sickness, really.

Anyway, so it's just the loveliest area, this part of Prenzerlauer Berg, with these uneven streets and sidewalks, like cobblestone but maybe not actually cobblestone, I don't know, but sort of leafy and cobblestoney and the streets lined with cafes and these elaborate wedding cake type buildings with tons of flowers dripping off the sides and fancy little windows and moldings. And this cafe is perfect for very practical reasons, like it has outlets and wireless and big tables and it's empty enough in the day that you can stay for hours working, and plus it feels like it's always dusk there, it's lit by faint lights and lamps scattered throughout, and everything is a bit ragged, old couches and old dinette tables and rickety little wooden tables for salt and pepper and napkins, and there are at least three rooms, so it's all sprawling, and big big windows that just add to the twilight effect by letting in that smoky dying sky. It's autumn now, so the sky's darker and the sidewalks are filling with dead leaves and everything sort of smells like smoke... Oh and I did not mention the cheap wine and all them cute boys sitting around talking (I am convinced) about Hegel.

Anyway, finding a perfect place to write is very important for one who for purposes of MEETING (extended) DEADLINES must write ALL THE TIME. I have also, as it happens, found the perfect place to eat, right down the street from my apartment, this sweet little family-run restaurant where the owner might one day tell me that "the fish today is very good!" and I say OK and then he brings out a WHOLE FISH that his son had caught the day before in Bavaria and when I look at that dead almond-covered thing in horror he comes and takes the head off and debones it and then it's the most delicious thing I've ever eaten.

In future post-deadline news, I am very excited that Joi will be here a week from next Monday, and that amongst other very exciting things we shall be seeing this. An "evening of reading, music and conversation with Nick Cave"! And Blixa Bargeld! And in Hamburg, where HEAD ON (GEGEN DIE WAND) took place, and if you haven't seen that movie you must see it as it is one of the best films ever, incredibly intense and gorgeous and sad. We're going up for the day with this girl Jen I haven't met yet but who is a friend of Sheena's, and we'll look around Hamburg and stay the night. I am very excited. It only occurred to Joi and me LAST NIGHT, however, that Mr Cave and Bargeld might be roodly speaking in GERMAN, but I am quite sure we will magically understand it all due to the deep love we have for them and if not we will just charmingly stomp our feet and demand that they repeat everything they've just said in English.

Right around then ERIC arrives in Berlin as well, and will show us/me all kinds of wondrous things about this city, and it is Eric of course who made me come here in the first place as he's been having a passionate love affair with this city for the past several years and is the one who convinced me that I would love it too. He is also almost finished with a beautiful beautiful haunting novel that is set here and that has very much set the tone of this city for me so it will be lovely to see him as well as to go to some of the main places he's written about, with him. Plus I will meet some of his friends, including this actress who plays some glamorous supervillain on a popular German tv series but is sweet as pie in real life.

The day after Eric leaves I'm heading to LONDON, for the first time, and going straight from the airport to meet my publicist and new editor at Headline, the company that published Godmother and will be publishing Mermaid in the UK, as well as other members of the team, and I hope to meet up with some other friends before heading down to PORTSMOUTH for a few days to stay with my friend Lisa, who will be taking me to Brighton and to her favorite castle and (hopefully) to meet with her ex who is a FALCONER. We will also spend at least one evening watching Elizabeth Taylor movies and painting our nails. I would also like to note that my round trip flight came out to a total of THIRTY EIGHT DOLLARS, which done blows my mind. I knew that flying around Europe was cheap, but I mean really.

After that I'm flying back to Berlin and then taking the train down to AMBERG, this old old town in Bavaria, where my old friend Lisa lives with her husband and three kids, and we will also be going around to castles, including the CINDERELLA CASTLE, and to see falcon things (that's for a new project, by the way!) and generally being gorgeously super medieval.

And then I will be back in Berlin for a couple of weeks and then at the very end of November my other friend Lisa is planning to visit from NYC, and we'll hang out in Berlin a few days and then head down to Prague for a few nights and then to Vienna, where Tink's close friend Evelyne lives with her beau and brand new baby and where Tink and Aoife will be visiting at the same time so we can all meet up and hang out and be EXTREMELY GLAMOUROUS. I have also proposed that we spend a day in BRATISLAVA but I do not know yet if Lisa thinks that is as good an idea as I do.

I really like planning wondrous glittery future events, what can I say.

I would also like to note that I am in love with this creature:

And this Little Mermaid drawing by Edmund Dulac:

Speaking of little mermaid drawings, the other day I was in this amazing English book store debating whether to get this incredibly beautiful (but huge and heavy) folio version of Hans Christian Andersen fairytales, with illustrations by W. Heath Robinson, or this one, also gorgeously put together and much smaller and lighter (much better for traveling!), but filled with these most fugly illustrations. I showed the owner and was like "what are these awful things?" and we were both stricken with horror until he looked inside and realized they were done by HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN himself. Sigh.

The end.

2009-09-22T07:42:00.004-04:00

I am finally in a cafe in Prenzerlauerberg with FREE WIRELESS where I can write upon my own wondrous pink laptop and not on an evil German one in which the y and z have been switched for the sole purpose of confounding innocent, unsuspecting souls like myself. I also cannot figure out how to make the @ symbol or the / symbol on them, as they have been hidden for no doubt nefarious ends.

Anyway, I can now post some PHOTOS. The fact that I haven't done anything tremendously exciting so far I think is entirely irrelevant.

First, here I am a few days ago in my very lovely Weissensee apartment, in a building that was once a factory and now contains many artist's lofts. Of course I am much less innocent looking now, due to my prolonged exposure to German keyboards. Please note the very fashionable shoes in the background. Please also note that those gorgeous scarves are arranged much more artfully and neatly than they appear in this photo.

Next, here is the most glamorous street sign in the entire world.

I took another photo of a Marlene-Dietrich-Platz sign and later, upon careful review, noticed something highly suspicious therein.

You see that man who is obviously up to no good and who appears to be eying me with something verging on suspicion?

Here he is up close, and it would appear that he is sticking out his tongue:

I don't know exactly what this means, it is probably a secret German expression for "I am about to murder you," but I am quite certain I was lucky to escape Marlene-Dietrich-Platz with my life.

After this narrow escape yesterday, I did, as previously noted, see UNDER THE SEA, the poster for which contains my new favorite three words:

DIE EXOTISCHE UNTERWASSERWELT

!!!!

Also, here is a photo from my very romantic date with myself a few nights ago. Well, with myself and this hot little number:

In case the tropical milieu isn't entirely evident, please note the palm tree just to my right:

Also, here is a photo of me looking askance at my very own private front door, which leads from the street into my apartment and is covered with some very dastardly graffiti.

I also, by the way, was going to take a photo of myself yesterday sitting in the big IMAX theater wearing extremely ridiculous oversized 3D glasses and sipping from the oversized soda I had bought for 5 euro, as I thought while sitting there that this might possibly be the dorkiest thing to do in all of Berlin, but even I could not bring myself to take such a nerdly self portrait with the many many German people surrounding me. I mean who knows what they are capable of when provoked en masse like that.

Here also is a spooky photo from the Jewish Memorial, which is quite amazing. I thought the two planet like things in the background looked very mysterious, too, until I realized my lens is just dirty. Also, you can barely see it here, but I totally dig that television tower. I never say that I dig things but that particular structure seems to demand it.

And for good measure, here are two photos of the world's only drive thru strip club, tho I do not believe it is still open, on this highway maybe half an hour east of Pittsburgh.

Admit that is the coolest place ever. I wanted to drive through and see how it worked but that car was cruelly blocking me. Honestly, a dood who goes to a drive thru strip club has got to be the most lazy person in the world.

Before I go I would also like to mention the things I like about Berlin. Here is my list so far:

1. The trams. I like how, before every stop, there’s this little bell sound and then this breathy female German voice announces the stop and then the doors whoosh open and it’s all sleek and Blade Runner-ish and calming but like calming in the sense that if you get lulled into sleep that voice will do something bad to you.

2. I like how there are tall handsome boys everywhere who look like they’re thinking about Hegel. All the time.

3. I also like how these same boys remind me of my old friend Mike, whose German mama made apple dumplings so astounding that as a young lad he was once so devastated by her refusal to make them that he “ran away from home,” sobbing and wailing, until his dad came and picked him up on the street.

4. I like these big ex commie box buildings everywhere that are painted, like, lavender and have ornate little squiggly decorations around the windows and little flower boxes stuck on so that the effect is charming but in this weird artificial way.

5. I like that everyone sounds like Blixa Bargeld or like the angels in Wings of Desire or like the characters in two of my all time favorite movies, Head On and Run Lola Run. By which I only mean that they sound like they German. But still.

6. I like that everyone seems to think I am German, as this makes me feel I am much less likely to be mugged. (Unless I start talking.)

7. I like also that not one person in any shop or on the street seems annoyed when I ask them in English if they speak English and where I might find xyz. In fact if they do not speak good English they seem apologetic. In fact, people are so polite that the other day I totally moved right in front of a girl riding her bike on the sidewalk, forcing her to stop, and she didn’t even swear at me. She just courteously almost flew off her bike and to her demise by stopping much too quickly and then moved to my left and began riding again. How un New Yorkly! By the way I totally don’t approve of bike riding on sidewalks, it is very annoying. I did not however move in front of that girl on purpose, tho I realize my action sounds vaguely suspect.

8. I like that there are so many flower shops and so the word BLUMEN is stamped everywhere and it is a very sweet word, let’s face it. And so at least 5000 times a day I think, oh flowers, I should buy some flowers, but of course I don’t, what a waste of dough.

9. I like all the 80s music all over the place. I even heard that Nik Kershaw song “Wouldn’t It Be Good” the other day and that is one of the best songs ever.

10. I love currywurst. I’ve only had it once but I woke up hungry today and was like, I want some currywurst immediately. I have resisted thus far but it is only 1:30pm. Actually I hate currywurst, it will ruin my life.

12. This city looks totally romantic at night when all the street lamps go on and there are candles everywhere. And by everywhere I mean the few places I’ve been.

THE END

2009-09-21T11:05:00.001-04:00

So I am sitting in the DUNKIN DONUTS at the Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz, in Berlin. I was lured here by promises of FREE WIRELESS that seem to have been false, today anyway, but I did sit down and have my first currywurst, that bratwurst covered in shocking ketchupy stuff and curry powder that is all over the place here, tho it did little to ease my broken heart.

I got here on Wednesday afternoon and slept till Thursday afternoon and then the last few days I´ve mainly stuck around my own neighborhood in Weissensee, in former East Berlin. I´ve done some writing and I´ve read three books -- The Other Boleyn Girl, The Sugar Queen, and The Monster of Florence -- and I´ve watched one movie -- They Shoot Horses, Don´t They? -- and am about to go see UNDER THE SEA in IMAX (and in German, the only word of which understand is thanks to HEIDI KLUM and PROJECT RUNWAY, sadly) for some last mermaidly inspiration, and I´ve wandered about and I´ve admired the lovely LAKE WEISSERSEE, which is like ten minutes from my little apartment and this beautiful big lake and park that is weirdly lined by a SANDY BEACH and FAKE PALM TREES. I went there the other evening, to this cafe bar on the lake, and I read and had wine as the sun set, and I was like this is the most romantic self date ever, and then I went back on Saturday afternoon and to my horror the place was packed with people in bathing suits suntanning and playing volleyball and drinking, like, pina coladas. I don´t appreciate real beaches let alone fake ones and so I glamorously fled, and just in the nick of time as I very well could have died.

Anyway, so far I´m not doing anything exciting and I won´t be probably for the next couple of weeks as I write like a mofo and finally finish MERMAID, the due date for which was extended after I got feedback on the first chunk from my US and UK editors. And then Joi will get here and then Eric, tho they will both be doing a lot of work here as well, and my friend Lisa will come too at some point, and then in November I have some extremely lovely plans involving England and Bavaria and Prague and Vienna, not to mention some exciting new projects, as well as old projects, like my Dante book that has been on hold for the last year or two. But being in this foreign country, with no phone, no tv, no friends, no easy internet, no conveniences like Im used to... is totally LOVELY.

I am also, by the way, at this very moment, just a couple minutes away from MARLENE-DIETRICH-PLATZ.

I know.

2009-09-14T12:13:00.003-04:00

So I wanted to also mention the following:

-- So a week ago Sunday I went to PITTSBURGH to see the boy with whom I am enamored -- I CANT HELP IT I LIKE SAYING BOY DESPITE MY ADVANCING YEARS -- and we went to a RENAISSANCE FAIR where we saw jousts and shot bows and arrows and ate turkey legs and bought strangely scented magical soaps and had our eardrums assaulted by bells... oh and where I bought about 50000000 BELLY BUTTON GOBLINS, strange little knitted monsters that you can attach to buttons, a fashion craze I anticipate will catch on like WILDFIRE.... And then the next day we went to this ice cream shop where you can pick all these flavors to add in, like for example ROSE H20 which was the choice of yours truly... We also watched Robert Rodriguez's PLANET TERROR which I'd never seen and thought was the best movie in all existence.

-- A few days later I stuffed two bags so full they now weigh FIFTY POUNDS each and made my way to NYC, from whence I shall fly to Berlin Germany tomorrow evening for the next three months... and I dropped off said bags at my sister's and headed to Tink's house in GLENDALE, QUEENS, and accompanied her when she went to pick up Aoife from her third day at preschool. We had a lovely evening and I stayed over in their new fabulous guest room/BASEMENT and the next day Tink and Aoife and I met BRENNA for lunch at Indian Taj in Jackson Heights and Tink ordered Aoife a dosa and when it arrived it was about 500000 feet long, more a ship we could all sail away on than an item of food, and when the waiter set it in front of Aoife she shrank back and said, quiveringly, in this tiny voice, "Mommy, I'm scared," and it was one of the best things I've ever seen.

And let's face it: dosas are scary.

-- After, we went and met Brenna's three month old twin babies HARRY and ABBOTT, who immediately and inappropriately buried his face in my volumptuous bosoms. Volumptuous being my new favorite word, via the REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ATLANTA.

-- That evening Tink and I met my sister, Lisa, and Autumn at SIMPLY FONDUE where we spent the next 4 hours elegantly consuming all manner of foodstuffs dripping with cheese, sauces, oil, and chocolate (or more precisely, BANANAS FOSTER and CAMPFIRE SMORES), not to mention exceptionally slutty cocktails like my own STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE and Tink's PEANUT BRITTLE complete with peanut butter rimmed martini glass. Many photos were taken this evening but I feel it is highly inappropriate to share such debauchery so publicly and without shame. Isn't it enough that I have a tiny red line extending from my mouth across my right cheek, a wound resulting from a burning-hot-with-oil fondue fork. Just after our waitress explained to us how we must remove cooked food items from said burning forks before SHOVING THEM IN OUR GOBS.

-- Saturday I spent the day with my sister recovering, and Autumn and Rob came over that afternoon to watch high end cinema fare with us like TAMARA (from Netflix: "In a high school prank gone horribly wrong, an outcast named Tamara is murdered, but her tormenters get off scot-free. Now, as a sexy siren returned from the grave with an arsenal of superpowers, Tamara dedicates her afterlife to exacting revenge.")

-- That evening my sister, her beau and I went out to dinner and then to see the very first preview of HAMLET starring Jude Law. Jude Law! I thought he was just in dumb movies and into nannies but that man was amazing on stage! Totally hilarious and awesome and nubile (bounding around the stage, doing that crab walk and acting like an ape and doing all manner of other Hamlety things). And the show was great generally, with all this dramatic, beautiful staging... At one point this huge silky white fabric drops down from the ceiling to create Hamlet's mama's bedroom and it's like a woman's golden hair being let down out of a tower or something, totally magical. Oh there were tons of gorgeous moments and the moment it ended and the rest of the actors stepped back and Jude Law stepped forward that whole place jumped into a standing ovation. It's only on Broadway for a few months so buy tickets this minute!!!!

-- And yesterday morning I visited my friends ROB and DRU and their son LEVI and we had melon and eggs and coffee and they showed me all these amazing photos from their recent trip to Berlin.. and even tho I'm about to go there I really don't know the city, have never been there before, haven't read much about it... and so it was nice to really sit down and see all these amazing things that I shall see IN PERSON on WEDNESDAY.

-- And then I went to meet mister amazing artist MICHAEL KALUTA at this brunch his theatrical friend Suzanne was having with all these wondrous people, including this English man who is both a wig wearing JUDGE and some kind of super accomplished fancy LATIN DANCER. And I sat across from Michael and next to a lovely Brazilian screenwriter girl and it turns out that her father and Michael's father both played the ACCORDION and of course YOURS TRULY loves some accordion and Michael's father even played said accordion whilst doing strange squatting Russian dances with lady dancers twirling about in front and so we had much lovely talk about such things. After, I went back to Michael's fantastical apartment which is filled with wonders, including about a gazillion books, half of those seemingly being old volumes of fairytales and children's stories filled with those most amazing old time pen and ink drawings... Honestly I think my head almost done exploded and if I keep talking about it it might explode still. I mean books that you can open to any random page and see the most amazing drawings and read the most ridiculous, wonderful writing. Go look at the illustrations here if you haven't done so! http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/illustrations/index.html. Oh! And Charles Vess had just been visiting Michael and apparently pulled GODMOTHER out of his bag and Michael said something to me about these two men reading my book at the same time in his apartment and I done fainted.

-- Fortunately, however, I recovered in time to whisk myself down to COSI at UNION SQUARE to meet Julia and Hans, the friends of friends who are renting me my apartment in Berlin, in Weinssensee, in a building consisting mostly of artist's lofts and a short walk from this big lake and a short tram ride to Prenzerlauerberg and Mitte. For two hours they showed me maps and told me 500000 details about the building and the neighborhood and the city and now I just cannot wait to be there myself.

-- But first, today, I must meet my agent to discuss NEW PROJECTS and then my friend Elyssa WHOSE BOOK COMES OUT DECEMBER 1 and then my friend Eric who is taking me to a fancy dinner and whom I shall next see when he visits Berlin in October. And tomorrow I shall meet Valerie, my gorgeous friend who is the one who optioned GODMOTHER for Random House Films and Focus Features and whom I BELIEVE may have just (or is close to) hiring a screenwriter to do the SCRIPT.

And then I be flying away.

The end!

2009-09-14T09:22:00.003-04:00

So I've been meaning to write about a week ago Friday, when I met my friend Jill in Philipsburg, PA, and fell completely in love with that town, which had already semi won my affections by being part rundown and part gorgeous (one of those towns in PA that was fancy and posh over 100 years ago but has fallen on hard times since) and by being home to my wondrous accordion teacher CLARICE. As well as to Jill, who wrote a column about life in Philipsburg for many moons in the Centre Daily Times and lives in the most gorgeous, glamorous, pristine 1920s Philipsburg house that cost like TWO CENTS and has this sprawling front porch and these gleaming wood floors and these arched doorways and these FRENCH DOORS and about 500000 other things that might shrivel my heart with jealousy should I continue to describe them. So on Friday I arrived at Jill's house... and here she is on the porch...

and after looking around and fainting dead away at least five times, and after making the acquaintance of her boyfriend and her two ridiculous girly dogs, she took me down the street to her friends Rita and Willy's house... where they have built a HORSE STALL (or whatever it's called) in the adjoining lot to house their horse BRAVO. Whom Rita often hooks an old time Amish buggy to and RIDES AROUND TOWN and into the woods behind it... Jill had arranged for me to take such a ride, and so I hopped in said buggy with Rita and off we went, clattering through the streets, across the main drag, through this whole neighborhood and onto this gorgeous lonely road alongside a cemetery and then into the woods beyond...

Here are Rita and Bravo:

And then here was the view from the buggy, including of my very practical yet inspiring red and rhinestoned sandals:

Now, riding through the woods on this bumping carriage with plants lashing you on either side and that horse breaking into a run was about as lovely a time as I can imagine, tho I did once or twice hear some crackling of wooden wheels and imagine myself hurtling to my glamorous demise. Unfortunately, after about 45 minutes, around the time that we were turning back... I discovered that my terrible allergy to horses -- which I discovered last summer after being lovingly and connivingly nuzzled by one Mata Hari and then BREAKING INTO HIVES -- does not even allow me to SIT BEHIND one of them trotters without watering and sneezing and basically becoming supernaturally ill. This was a very sad realization for me, of course, as I had vowed then and there to travel only by horse and buggy from then on. Miraculously, I arrived back at Rita and Willy's with limbs intact, if not heart.

Jill and I then meandered about the town and she showed me many of its wonders, including the astonishingly preserved ROWLAND THEATER, which was originally a late 19th century vaudeville theater and is about as jewel-like and elegant an old theater as you will find. I mean super lavish, with ornate murals and red carpets and framed fabrics and stained glass and skylights and this art deco-y stage.... I do love me some fancy perfume-bottle-lookin theaters and this one was just gorgeous. Sadly, the movie playing was ICE AGE, whereas the week before it had been INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, so noooo movie for us. Plus Jill had arranged a backstage tour for me but due to the lengthiness of my BUGGY RIDE it shall have to wait.

We THEN went to the newly restored PHILIPS HOTEL for a fancy dinner and "sexy drink" (according to the menu... but I'm not gonna lie, my "pear-a-sol" was rather alluring) and then wandered about some more and admired many of the elaborate old churches in town, especially Jill's favorite, an old gothic cathedral with a spooky graveyard bordered by an old stone wall and like four Civil War soldiers buried within.

We then stopped by 1 NORTH FRONT STREET.... another gorgeous old building that used to be some big bank and is now being rented out by this fabulous lady KRISTINE, who just moved to Philipsburg in the spring from DC and is set to open a coffee shop and bookstore on the old bank's first floor. Jill wrote about it here. Kristine came down and opened up the building and showed us all around and it's just such a cool thing to me, moving to a little town into this old fabulous building and making something wonderful. The second floor is then all wood and gorgeousness and like SIX huge sweeping rooms where all the bank offices and meeting rooms used to be... One is now a massage room, one is a waiting room for the massages, and then three are just these big gleaming old rooms with huge windows and big wood tables.. and one even has an old time telephone booth made from wood and that glittery spooky lookin old glass. I asked Kristine what those rooms were for and she said "whatever I want them to be!" and she's totally open to ideas and I immediately and selflessly thought how my friend Rowan could teach bellydancing there and I've also been contemplating holding a fiction writing workshop there and/or a day long workshop about publishing, since everyone always asks me about agents and editors and how stuff works. Oh, and this is because I PLAN TO BE MOVING TO SOME PHILIPSBURG once I get back from Berlin. To which I shall fly tomorrow.

SO standing with Kristine and Jill, both of whom love this old dying-but-trying-to-come-back-to-life strange little town, I was thinking this is exactly where I'd like to be, at least for a while, who knows. So when I get back I wanna get a car and a beautiful old place to live, and set up shop, and admire BRAVO from afar, with glamorously wistful tears accentuating my eyeballs.

We ended the evening having drinks on Jill's porch, all candle-lit and moonlit with swaying trees and plants crowding around and two crazy dogs scurrying about at our feet.

THE END.

2009-09-05T11:41:00.001-04:00

I had many adventures yesterday and will write later about the bulk of them... but earlier in the day I went to my friend Heather's new place for lunch, where amongst other things Heather, Barb, and I enjoyed the gorgeously newly released and newly-colored-by-Lee-Moyer comic STARSTRUCK:

And Heather's glamorous cat SITA, whom I always likened to Joi's glamorous cat the late Elly, posed elegantly in the sunlight as we did.

Plus, our friend Hannah had lunch with us, but left before PHOTO OPS, and amongst other things told us about her INSECT STUDIES (she's getting her PhD in em) and pet HISSING COCKROACHES. She also told us about dissecting roaches in some class and their insides being like marshmallow, and I fainted dead away for at least two hours as a result. Paramedics were called and I survived, just barely.

The end.

2009-09-04T11:12:00.002-04:00

So yesterday I had the loveliest day with my mama. Listen to what we did:

-- Played double solitaire
-- Had a delectable lunch downtown
-- Went to KITCHEN KABOODLE where in typical fashione I purchased the following: a very large glittery, mosaic-y light blue bowl with two orange fish on it; a tannish doormat with a very large crow on it; two shiny long boxes of matches with very large peacocks on them; and two dish towels with spiders on them
-- Went to the GRANGE FAIR and saw an Elvis impersonator
-- Ate corndogs and funnel cakes and apple dumplings
-- Saw AWAY WE GO, which I forgave for all its sins due to its ridiculous levels of charm and sweetness
-- WATCHED PROJECT RUNWAY and then that show about the dumb models

The Grange Fair by the way is the biggest encampment fair in the country or something like that... There are just hundreds and hundreds of tents and RVs that pop up in spots that get passed down from generation to generation and you walk through these little pathways past all these families sitting in their big tents with name plates hanging from beams -- "The McCloskey Family" or whatever -- and carpets laid out and couches and beds set up and televisions... and at night all the sparkly lights come on and last night was a FULL MOON and in the background a huge ferris wheel rises up so you walk along these glittery pathways under a full moon with ferris wheels and carts selling funnel cakes or soft-serve ice cream all lit up in the distance, and its pretty magical... that is until the wind changes and you get a whiff of them porta potties or all the animales. I sorta meant to go to a bunch of things this year, like bingo and tractor pulls and the ceremony where they pick the GRANGE FAIR QUEEN... and I meant to go into all the many structures where you see pigs and horses and goats... and the buildings full of crazy vegetables -- giant alien squash and so on -- that have been entered in contests.. but I've been awful busy with this book and with packing/organizing for Germany so I just got the one evening for some Elvis and some brief meandering and now it is OVER.

In other news, today I go to BELLEFONTE to hang out with my friends Heather, Barb and Hannah, and then I shall wend my way to PHILPSBURG to do many wondrous things with my friend Jill. Philipsburg being the weird, hicky, used-to-be-important-but-now-dead-and-filled-with-many-Victorian-houses-that-used-to-be-fancy kind of town one finds in Pennsylvania... Bellefonte is like that too but a bit more lively... and today in addition to spending time with my fine lady friends I am all perusing and contemplating both towns for when I return this winter. I sorta feel like staying put more and setting up house in a little hick town and seeing how it goes. Of course with the occasional gorgeous trip to New York. And Kansas. And Oregon. And Italy......

2009-08-29T18:44:00.002-04:00

So I wrote before about staying with Lee and Annaliese Moyer in Portland, both amazing artists and the sweetest people ever, and doing a mermaid shoot with Annaliese in the giant old-fashioned mermaid tank they keep in their carport because that's the kind of people they IS.

Here are some more proofs from that day:

I admit that blank tank tops, albeit SEQUINNED ONES, aren't the most mermaidly attire, and so on a future visit to Portland and chez Moyer I will have to change it up. As one artiste friend told, me "more pearls, less Danskin!" But I loves them -- and I love all of Annaliese's photos -- and think the last close-up one may be the author photo for the new book.

Also, lookit these interviews with yours truly at Book Chick City and Sassy Minx. These things take forever you know so you really ought to at least go blow them a kiss.

Ok I shall now go BACK TO WORK. Mwah!

2009-08-29T00:51:00.000-04:00

So I have a week and a half left here in Pennsylvania before I head off to NYC for some days and then GERMANY till winter. After that I think I might settle in a cute little abode in a hicky town around here in central PA, like for example the town over the mountain in which my accordion teacher lives. I have not practiced that thing for months now and it is way too heavy to lug anywhere like for example Berlin HOWEVER come December I shall make up for lost time and practice with endless diligence and glamour and pure-of-heartedness. That is the plan.

In the meantime, I am working to finish MERMAID (the official title now, after SEA QUEEN was nixed) before I go. I was set to finish a month ago but then got edits/notes back from both my editors (from Crown in the US and Headline in the UK, both great, great editors) on the first half of the book, and some stuff affected the rest of the book, and so it's been a bit longer. It occurred to me I should write more about WRITING on this blog, maybe even talk word counts and other awful things, as that might shame me into being more diligent generally. Shame is really much more effective than anything else, even dough and glory, I've found.

Anyway, in addition to writing with varying levels of effectiveness I have of late also seen many many movies, I mean I even saw POST GRAD, which was actually quite alarming. I mean the girl, this 22 year old just graduating from college, really wants this publishing job and she doesn't get it and then she spends like the whole movie trying trying to get a job, any job, and then near the end she gets, FINALLY, her dream job, the one at the publishing house, and she works and works and then has this epiphany -- through her idiotic cradle robbing neighbor -- that relationships are way more important than careers, and so she QUITS the job and flies cross country to NYC to shack up with this dood who's been pining for her forever but that she had no interest in until that point. And she doesn't even call him first. I mean honestly, it's like the ending of Devil Wears Prada where after struggling through the whole movie and paying all her dues the girl quits her job to get back with her loser boyfriend.

Kids today!

I really liked ORPHAN tho (!!!) as well as THE PERFECT GETAWAY and DISTRICT 9. And I totally plan to like FINAL DESTINATION 3D and wear the glasses with much flair. I also liked Julie and Julia and even vaguely wanted to cook something after, tho I bravely resisted. The Time Travelers Wife and Ugly Truth nearly killed me however and just mentioning them right now is making me woozy. Oh but I liked Funny People.

I've also seen a couple plays at the MILLBROOK PLAYHOUSE, this cabaret theater in a barn in Mill Hall, PA, where you sit at picnic tables and bring food and drink and watch totally first rate theater. I went once with my parents and once with the boy with whom I be smitten, and both times we brought BBQ from this place across the street, but so many people show up with these huge spreads, I mean Tupperware full of casseroles and vegetables and dip and wine glasses and bottles, and I bet there are at least two Tupperware bins full of ambrosia at every performance. One of the plays, Shirley Valentine, was so fantastic I done started crying. Well, delicately weeping, in a garbo-y fashion, to be accurate.

I have more mermaid photos to post and I'm sure many MANY more fascinating things to discuss but I am toooo tired. Good night.

2009-08-16T08:40:00.000-04:00

Please admire this most luxurious, glamorous, zaftig, Jean-Harlowesque feline named Elly, who died last night in typical dramatical style at Joi and Krysztof's house in Lawrence, Kansas. Here she is posing in Joi's Brooklyn garden a few years ago. I know. You expect Clark Gable to appear any second to whisk her away.

2009-08-11T11:30:00.002-04:00

So look at this beautiful photo Annaliese took of Alys holding mah book whilst gorgeously decorated with Wendy's henna art:

And there is this one, too, tho clearly the book selection is OKAY but not QUITE as amazin:

How gorgeous is that girl and that henna and them photos?

In other riveting news, I must say that I just had the most wondrous and romantical weekend. This most beauteous guy that I like, PAT, who lives in Pittsburgh, drove here to State College on Saturday and we had lunch with my parents (who loved him) and then the two of us went to Shaver's Creek to visit the RAPTOR CENTER. We gazed upon hawks and owls and eagles and kestrels and then watched a bird show in which we learned many fascinating facts including that the feathers of these birds are prey are illegal to own and so all extras get shipped to a FEATHER BANK in Colorado where Native Americans with special privileges can go get them and use them for ceremonies. A feather bank!

I also fell madly in love with this barred owl:

He was in this big big cage like all the others birds but he was the only one sitting right at the ledge and looking out alluringly, like an Amsterdam lady of the night. When he shut his eyes (and when he winked at me!) his eyelids were fuzzy and yellow, which I must say was highly glamorous as well as enviable. And the feathers around his face looked like tiny fishbones and apparently stick right out at you in a totally weird way when he's all a flutter. I was starting to plot the many methods by which I could BREAK HIM OUT and take him home with me as my pet and best friend when I realized that might be a little too unfortunately HARRY POTTERESQUE. I also by the way fell in love with a feisty little kestrel named Persephone, who had a habit of flicking up her tail in a suspiciously burlesque manner.

Then Pat and I took a walk on this lovely trail through the woods, and then, just as a thunderstorm was brewing, took off to Pittsburgh, driving through a gorgeous rainfall and then straight into a spectacular sunset as if we was on two horses side by side. For dinner we stopped and glamorously had sundaes at McDonald's. I know.

On Sunday Pat took me to the most adorable restaurant, GYPSY CAFE, for lunch, and not only did I love the place but they were having a JOHN HUGHES BRUNCH, as they have timely themes every week, and so I had some Pretty in Pink penne pesto pasta. Plus they were playing the Psychadelic Furs and the Smiths and all manner of angst filled 80s song. The owner came over and told us about the white trash bbq Dr. Sketchy's she will be modelling in next week and my heart done filled with love for this Pennsylvania city which I believe is highly underrated.

After, we went to the NATIONAL AVIARY (by the way I am scheming and plotting for a new book that will involve falcons) and spent a few hours wandering through rainforests and wetlands with crazy birds swooping around everywhere and watching penguins and lories and other creatures being fed and listening to mini lectures and so on.

At one point there were all these kids in the sprawling wetlands room and I mean there were flamingos and pelicans and toucans and all kinds of crazy birds in there but when one kid spotted a tiny tiny tiny worm on the floor there was general chaos and all them moppets gathered like it was the most exciting event ever on this earth:

For a worm!

Anyway, then we went off to the waterfront and had drinks at some bar and then we went to the movies and saw FUNNY PEOPLE and split a bag of popcorn and it was just the loveliest day and then yesterday we spent most of the day working together, him drawing and me reading, and then he done drove me home last night through more rain and lightning and I mean really, it was so sweet and romantical, and this guy is surely some adorable and I might be a bit smitten, but now I must get back to work and finally finish this damn book.

The end.

2009-08-07T11:10:00.003-04:00

Ok so I spent last weekend in a field in Eugene, Oregon, at FAERIEWORLDS. Like I said, I wrote about it here, how I'd heard about this huge fairy festival on the west coast, how I'd met my friend Signe who was going and we decided to go together (tho she ended up not being able to attend), how I talked to the guy behind the festival and was convinced to just do it up, get a booth and do advertising and the whole nine, and how I felt like well if there is a place where thousands of wing wearers gather, maybe I should bring them my damn book! I mean maybe a few of them could really, REALLY relate to Lil, I thought, the main character in Godmother who's stuck in NYC but actually a full-on fairy with wings.

I have to say tho that I totally initially underestimated what a big project it is, to set up a booth in a 10 by 10 plot of land with not one thing in it. I mean I thought when I first rented my booth that I was renting a BOOTH, like I would show up and set down some books and be open for bidness, but then I realized I would have to get a tent and rent a table and decorate the whole thing and by the time all was said and done if I sold every book I brought I would like maybe cover what it cost to buy the tent and fill and decorate it, but I definitely wouldn't cover what it cost to be at the festival in the first place and would certainly not MAKE any moolah. But that wasn't my aim, anyway. Still. It was some expensive, being there!

But I never go to festivals. And I never vend things. And I never camp. And I never celebrate fairies and such, so it was lots and lots of firsts for me and that is never a bad thing, in my humble opinione.

So anyway, after our wondrous tour of wateralls with Mr Lee Moyer and friends, Barb and I drive down to Eugene Thursday afternoon and show up at the site at like 7. The festival wouldn't open to the public until the next day at 2pm, but I was VERY SUSPICIOUS of our abilities to set up both this big white festival tent -- it was EZ UP supposedly, but sadly, I have been known to buy a bookshelf from IKEA and NOT BE ABLE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SET IT UP -- as well as the camping tent that Circle23 generously loaned to us (and Lee and Annaliese loaned us the sleeping bags and other accoutrements for inside). I figured if we had any problems tho, the antler boys would come to our rescue.

I had only perused a few photos from Faerieworlds and had seen one of a boy walking by with antlers, and was sort of kidding about the antlers.... But as it turns out I think possibly every single dood on that field was be-antlered or be-horned in some manner. Tho only a handful of the truly dedicated seemed to also wear hooves.

Anyway, as I wisely predicted, Barb and I opened both tents and then stared down at them weeping, unable to figure them out even slightly. And was it the antler boys who gallantly came to our rescue? NO. It was the girls from Boston in the next booth who saw our tears and leapt up and in a whoosh of superheroic girl powerness assembled our tents within seconds. In fact the whole weekend for me seemed a whole lot about girl heroics and bonding as our neighbors on the one side helped us in innumerable ways and then, to the other, there was a lovely flame-haired woman who ended up needing our help to close her booth the first night because her man had passed out drunk.

Men!

So here are the girls who kept Barb and me from having inelegant breakdowns right there on that grass field:

The middle girl, Sarah, was selling tutus she'd made by hand and so look at our view when we turned to our right:

It was like staring at spun sugar! How can you not love a tutu? I ended up buying about 50000 from her at a cut rate to give to all the little girls I know (including the book-writing, Tessa-and-Mary-drawing Zoe) plus some adults. I even bought one for the exceedingly fashionable Miss Boo Berry:

And here, by the way, was my booth:

So anyway, I was ALSO SAVED last weekend by the wondrous and generous Ms Mia Nutick and Mr Ryan Nutick, whom I finally got to meet after knowing for 50000 years online and who whisked me away from the festival on Sunday evening and gave me a ride back to Portland, after Barb up and abandoned me to go have adventures in SEATTLE on Sunday morning. The nerve! After some other plans fell through I emailed Mia just days before the festival and she said it would be no problem for them to take me and I just about fainted with relief cause if there is one place I don't want to be stranded it's on a grass field in Oregon during a heat wave. I'm just saying.

SO here they are, my other saviors to whom I am forever grateful, standing under some elegantly draped fabric in my lovely booth. Plus not only did they whisk me out of there but they kindly let me in on one of the best things at the festival: ICE COLD MINT TEA at one of the food booths in the back.

Without said tea, I might have died.

They also kindly took my phone to their hotel room the first night and charged it, after the power our booth was supposed to have didn't work. This allowed me to continue to post obnoxious photos and updates to Facebook which of course is always very important.

I also, as I mentioned, met up with the lovely Wendy Rover and Her husband Vargus Pike, tho I sadly did not have no time to get me no henna gorgeousness and plus I suspect it would have melted right off of my poor poor pale skin anyways. Between this festival and my 4th of July in Gettysburg, where I got burnt so badly after an hour in the sun (I had forgotten to put on sunscreen!) that my chest blistered... my shoulders and chest are now about 5000 shades of pink and red and look a bit like an abstract art project.

Anyway, so the festival itself was three days long and led me to some important conclusions about myself. These are just the more.... negative things:

1. I HATE PORTA POTTIES
2. I HATE ME SOME SNEAKY SUN THAT WINDS ITS WAY IN AND BURNS YOUR BACK WHEN YOU THINK YOU'RE SITTING IN SHADE
3. I DO NOT LIKE IT WHEN PEOPLE TALK ABOUT PUTTING A SMILE ON YOUR FACE AND SEEING HOW IT FITS
4. OR ASK YOU TO HOWL AT THE MOON
5. OR TALK ABOUT THE MAGIC INSIDE YOU
6. I DO NOT LIKE WATCHING PEOPLE OPENLY DEBATE ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT TO SPEND 14 SMACKERS ON YOUR BOOK RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU
7. I AM NOT A CAMPER
8. OR SOMEONE WHO SHOULD EVER BE IN DIRECT SUNLIGHT, EVER
9. I THINK IT IS WEIRD FOR GIRLS TO RUN AROUND TOPLESS AND THEN POSE HAPPILY FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS WITH THEIR BACKS ARCHED.... AT A FAIRY FESTIVAL FULL OF CHITLINS
10. AND I REALLY REALLY REALLY DISLIKE PIRATE JOKES IN WHICH THE PUNCHLINE REVOLVES AROUND THE WORD THAT GRATES ON MY EARDRUMS WORSE THAN ANY NAIL ACROSS CHALKBOARD: "AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"

Oh my god I almost fainted writing that list, from pure horror.

But what I did like?

Were all the lovely people all elaborately dressed up and participating in this -- really, when it comes down to it -- completely splendid, gorgeous fantasy. And every kind of person: tons of babies and little kids running around with wings on their backs and flowers twisted through their hair, old ladies decked out like queens, all those men in fake fur pants and antlers and skirts... I can't possibly do justice to the wild array of characters and costumes surrounding us, or the hours Barb and I spent in that booth just watching people go by, or watching them dance in front of the main stage, which we were right next to... Tons of people dancing to fiddle-y kind of fairy music... Even if you yourself aint all that into twirling on grass fields, you just have to love the kind of gorgeous abandon and freedom all them people are feeling and participating in. Really, really lovely. And I swear there were a few moments when the sun was setting and sorta melting over the field and everything seemed all quiet and it was just wings everywhere, and hula hoops, and dancing, and creatures from myth emerging from every corner, and a thousand people sort of caught in their own moments of bliss, and at those moments I was like WELL MY GOODNESS LOOK AT THIS and it just about took my breath away.

I also really like MOTEL 6, which come Saturday saved us from the camping and the porta potties and the two-hour lines for showers. Thank you, Motel 6!

And I did, actually, sell a lot of books and talk to a lot lot lot of people about it, and really, it is strange how people are with books I think. I mean some people get starstruck just knowing you WROTE A BOOK, even if they have no idea what it is, and children just can't even believe you did something so magical, and some people are just downright suspicious wondering what you trying to pull. And some people are like "oh a book!" and come up like you have a table of sweets set out for them, and some people see a book and immediately glaze over -- that is, until they see the pirate shack two booths down and break into a dead run.

I am awfully glad I went, though. But at the end I gave my festival tent and all the decor inside it to Ms. Wendy for her magical henna workings, as she will put it to much, MUCH better use than I in the future.

The end.

2009-08-07T01:35:00.002-04:00

If you are here reading this, then you should obviously go become a fan of Godmother on Facebook. I mean really.

Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story on Facebook

2009-08-06T23:09:00.001-04:00

So I think I might possibly be slightly momentarily obsessed with the movie (500) Days of Summer, which I thought was just lovely and sad and painful and funny and sweet and goofy, like all these things at once, sort of slight but in this perfect perfect soft way. I saw it with Eric and Shax just before I headed to Oregon, and then saw it again in NYC with my mama. I didn't want to see it again but she was visiting my sister and it was at the right time and I knew she'd like it... and then I loved it even more the second time and was able to sit back and admire (and was surprised by, when I was able to see its workings better) how smartly and ingeniously it was made. There's this bit I love especially, when the Joseph Gordon-Levitt (he's SO good in this, and was so amazing in Mysterious Skin, which I was obsessed with when it came out and might be one of my favorite movies ever, and in which he plays an entirely different kind of character) character attends a party at the Zooey Deschanel character's place and the screen splits and we see the night play out the way it really happened and the way he wanted it to happen, and it's all set to Regina Spektor's song "Hero," and it's like the most mundane, painful experience told in this completely original, beautiful way. And normally I have little patience for cutesy, gimmicky kinds of things, which this should have been, but the emotions underlying it were so delicate and raw and it just all worked for me and now I have the soundtrack and am all about that song. And that bit ends in this remarkable way, too, with the cityscape shifting to a drawing that slowly gets erased. Byooootful!

2009-08-06T14:43:00.003-04:00

So I'm back in Pennsylvania now after a couple quick visits to NYC and a long lovely week in Oregon, where I met up with my friend Barb and stayed first with the wondrous Lee and Annaliese Moyer, who took photos of us in mermaid tanks and showed us many many waterfalls and plied us with Voodoo Doughnuts, and then with the astonishing Lana Guerra and Jesse Reno, who took us to fantastical Portland places with blueberry lime margaritas and rose lemonade and artwork everywhere everywhere and helped us prepare for FAERIEWORLDS, which was last weekend on a big grassy field in Eugene, Oregon. I will write about that later but my blog post for Powell's about the festival is here. In Portland we also spent a day with Roger aka Circle23, who took photos of us in a botanical garden and then took us to meet his girlfriend Carolee, a gorgeous librarian who magically repairs ancient, crumbling books in a mysterious library workshop. Wednesday night was my reading at Powell's and drinks after at GILT where all the above were present as well as, among others, the charming Renee Bosler, whom I finally got to meet after years of admiring her gorgeous artwork, and the byoooteous Kimberly Warner-Cohen, whom I saw read from her book Sex, Blood and Rock 'n' Roll in NYC, and her very funny husband. Also, I got to drink a fancy cocktail called GLITTER PANTS and afterwards meet a satanist with horns in his head.

Anyway, we had many adventures and it is rather overwhelming to have been surrounded by such talented people, at least when attempting to write BLOG POSTS about it, so here is some GLAMOROUS HIGHLIGHTS:

1. So Annaliese Moyer is this fantastic photographer who has acquired an amazing old magician's tank that sits outside of her and Lee's magical Portland house and that she occasionally fills with water in order to take mermaid photos extraordinaire. OF COURSE I was very happy to participate and slathered on a ton of makeup and shimmied into one of her mermaid tails and spent at least an hour or two mastering the art of holding still and keeping my eyes open underwater while she elegantly glided about dressed like a jewel thief and taking photos. Here is one result and there are more on their way, which I can't wait to see! Barb got in the tank too for a bit and there are several shots of us together, as well as a few of me and Annaliese, who jumped in at the end. By which time my eyes were bright bright red and stinging but one must always suffer a bit for beauty, ain't it the truth. Look! And look at the stunning horse photos she does as well.

Ain't that something?

And here are Barb and me pre immersion:

2. So Roger/Circle23, who is an experimental phoptographer responsible for, among many other things, this photo of Lana that I love love love

(isn't it so beautiful and disturbing? doesn't she look so peaceful?) and many other beautiful photos involving suspension and wire corsets and the like (he also has this set of photos printed on canvas that he showed us where these women seem to be struggling out of nylon and out of the canvas itself... totally strange and beautiful and frightening..) took Barb and me to a botanical garden on Wednesday and took a ton of sweet photos like these

and it was very fun despite the GHASTLY HEAT and treacherous pathways that he gallantly and sweetly un-spiderwebbed for us with his tripod lance before we stepped through like delicate flowers.

Oh and here is a picture of Lana, Jesse, me and Roger hanging out at the Pied Cow:

3. Oh I have to mention how at Powell's the lovely 11-year-old Zoe, daughter of the henna genius Ms. Wendy Rover, whom I would meet at Faerieworlds, and her huge-hearted husband Vargas, whom Zoe dragged to Powell's, presented me with two drawings she had done of Mary Finn and Tessa Riley of my first book Rain Village. Now how sweet is this:

I MEAN REALLY. Plus Zoe is currently writing HER FIRST BOOK.

Speaking of brilliant girls, Barb and I spent Thursday with Lee as well as his houseguest Mike and his visiting niece (actually I think she is Annaliese's niece) Alys, who is 16 and funny and smart as a whip, I mean smart smart smart... At one point I caught Alys reading Godmother whilst also eating a Captain Crunch Voodoo Doughnut outside of one of the waterfalls Lee took us to. I wish all people could read my book in such rarefied circustances. Look:

And here by the way is our tour guide Lee looking especially messianic whilst returning from one of the falls, which is thundering and glowing to his left, out of the photo:

And Lee with Barb, I think at Crown Point:

Oh and me with Barb waiting for Mike, Lee and Alys to return from an especially treacherous path to some stunning fall that we were too lazy to see. I know. But thank goodness for digital cameras.

4. ALSO, I just have to say that being in Lee and Annaliese's house, where you're surrounded by art, including these gorgeous huge paintings that Lee made for Annaliese when he was wooing her (hey no one's ever painted me squat!), and then Jesse and Lana's house, which is like an explosion, I mean Jesse's amazing paintings everywhere everywhere, hung up and stacked up and spread across the floor, and Lana's dolls and clothes and wigs bursting from every corner, in every every color... It is some amazing.

But I have been writing this for too long now so more later and I leave you with this fearsome photo of Lana's cat BOO BERRY

The end.

2009-07-23T14:09:00.002-04:00

So last fall in Pennsylvania I sat in (when I could) on a dark room photography class at Penn State -- which was gorgeous and mysterious and I would like to spend many many many more hours in the future watching images appear magically on paper! -- and during that time one of the TA's for the class, Rob Martin, asked me to partcipate in this self portrait series he was doing for his MFA. His project? Was having people do self portraits but with him standing in for them. So I had to think of how I'd want to present myself, and then present him like that, and then take the pictures with his camera. So I immediately decided he had to wear the things I always wear -- rings and earrings, red lipstick, black eyeliner, mascara, pale powder, glitter... as I go for the earthy, natural look at all times... I also brought gypsy-ish scarves to drape him with -- and that he had to have little baubles around him and a pile of books there, too... my own books and books of fairytales and a book on Joseph Cornell and at least one old-time noir.. And that he definitely had to be holding and playing my accordion. I thought that right away and then I thought well I have ONLY been studying accordion a few months, is that really what my self portrait should be based around? And then I realized YES INDEED as the accordion is like everything I love (not to mention try to do in fiction) all wrapped up together: it's gorgeous and showy and dazzling and beautiful... like what other instrument do people routinely write their names across IN RHINESTONES?.. and it always has mother of pearl and just all kinds of flash and dazzle to it.. but at the same time it's incapable of making a note that's not touched with melancholy and sadness. Even at its most jaunty and vibrant it's got that sadness underneath, and that's what I love most about it. Plus it's so beautiful but so awkward, really, a bit inelegant... but in the most glamorous way.

So anyway. We did this photo session and he set up lights and I got to direct him and adjust the lights and take the photos, and then later he went through them all and picked the best ones and did his magical things... and now months later there's this show in Chelsea that Rob's in and it's one of my self-portraits that's in it.

And I think it's the first image here that's in the show but here are two he sent me, resized.

2009-07-22T22:32:00.000-04:00

Oh also, I forget to post stuff now because of Facebook, but yesterday Godmother got two lovely new reviews.... which is especially cool since the book's been out since early March!...

Look:

From January Magazine

In a season of reimaginings, Carolyn Turgeon (Rain Village) delivers Godmother: The Cinderella Story (Three Rivers Press). Turgeon’s retelling finds Cinderella’s fairy godmother banished from her fairy world and working as a bookseller in New York. For her fairy faux pas, she has been pulled away from her life, though if it seems to her that if she can contrive one selfless and beautiful act, all will be forgiven.

Godmother is exquisite: oddly chic, dark, sweet and elegant... and not a zombie in sight. Turgeon has a light but meaty touch. The author has said that after her challenging debut, she was determined to work on something simpler. “I just wanted to work with something wonderful -- a fairytale -- and play,” Turgeon has said.

Godmother is a delicious departure.

And from Fantasy Magazine

Cinderella didn’t go to the ball, her Fairy Godmother went instead. It was a night of dancing and romance. A night filled with the magic of being in love, with the delight of being human. One night that alters fates course, and at the end when there should have been a “Happily Ever After” there is only regret. Leaving her charge alone and vulnerable, Lil did the unthinkable and fell in love with the Prince. Her actions skew the course of fate and have tragic consequences for all involved.

Three hundred years after being banished from the fairy realm for her failure, Lil meets a girl who amazingly resembles Cinderella. This meeting is the beginning of a string of signs. A book of fairies with a photograph of her fairy sisters proves that fairies are still around. She catches a glimpse of the Prince, her old and eternal love. Then she hears of a modern ball that a lonely, princely man is attending. These signs give her hope, if she can correct her mistake, if she can redeem herself by helping this “Cinderella” find her true love, maybe they’ll finally let her come home.

Godmother: The Cinderella Story is a straightforward story of longing and tragedy. As the story progresses we are effortlessly transported between the vibrant, beautiful fairy realm, and the dingy, colorless human world. The story is gripping and suspenseful and takes us back to the root of the fairy tale. Back before stories were romanticized and edited for children. When they contained warnings and heartache and even violence. Before happy endings were standard and expected. The ending is definitive while being open to the reader’s interpretation, and leaves you with a single question. “Will you choose to believe in the fairy tale?”

2009-07-22T22:31:00.002-04:00

2009-07-20T12:57:00.001-04:00

So I have been busy writing and writing and trying to finish this mermaid book up here in the Hudson River Valley, in this old farmhouse with Massie and Marcie. I either go to the local coffee shop to write, sometimes all day, or hang out at the house and write in my room or at this old red metal desk in the basement. And Massie and Marcie both work here and work in the big organic garden and run a CSA and they knit and quilt and sew and cook and bake and do other magical things. I came back the other night and Massie was quilting and Marcie was knitting and they were both in front of the television and Mumu the dog was spread out on the floor and they all looked up at me and I said well hello, old ladies, and it was then decided that I need to take up TATTING which sounds good as it involves something mysterious called a BOBBIN. And then there's a big porch out front that you can sit on and watch swaying trees and rain from, and we all sort of collect there a few times a day. And I like this town, Cornwall-on-Hudson, a lot, and am especially fond of the witch store where I've been taking classes now and then, and this beauty spa where they have hot stone massages for 50 dolla and manicure/pedicures for 35. Plus you can get a chair massage whilst waiting for your nails to dry. I mean really. Porches and massages and witches! I am not quite sure what else a girl needs, at least when in book-finishin mode. And the other night I went to see the most gorgeous bellydancing and drumming performance at a local yoga place/dance studio, and it was sort of sponsored by the witch store I think, and we sat on pillows on a wide-planked wooden foor in a room with slanted ceilings, and outside it was stormy, and inside it was all fairy lights and draped fabrics and lit tea candles scattered across the floor. The three dancers were all in white sparkles and the main one, Elizabeth, pale with long red hair, did a whole dance with a simitar balanced on her head across a Persian carpet while the drummer boy cast a spell on everyone. A few days later at the witch store I found out that the two are madly in love and I said well I would think so. I mean, what a romantical pairing.

And then Lisa came to visit this weekend and so both mornings we went out to the very, very beautiful Blooming Hill Farm where on weekend mornings you can get brunch and sit outside on wooden picnic tables next to a creek. I took a little photo with my phone of the store inside which you must admit is some damn charming:

And then here is Massie looking devious and Lisa about to purchase blueberries and sugar plums.

The food was delicious--omelets with fresh herbs and cheese, big mixed green salads--but I was most enamored by the lovely jars of iced mint tea with mint leaves sticking out of them, not to mention the fresh squeezed lemonade with lemon slices floating in it.

We also saw Harry Potter and I almost died of boredom, and LIsa and I went and got manicures and massages. We'd made massage appointments together and when they actually led us into the same room we realized they were giving us a COUPLES MASSAGE and we said well ok, I suppose it is a bonding experience.

Oh and Saturday night I drove mahself up to Annandale-on-Hudson to Bard College where the Labyrinth Theater is having its summer workshop intensive and where my brilliant friend David Bar Katz's new play was being workshopped, and it's a closed thing but as I was nearby and had read bits of the draft, etc., he decided I could just come anyway, and it was really very cool... I mean lots of things were cool about it (and the play, The Atmosphere of Memory, might be one of the best things I've seen of his -- so hilarious and smart!!), but after spending weeks and weeks working so intensively on this novel, which could not be a more solitary process, it was so cool to see this new piece of David's come to life right there in front of me with actors and directors and this whole audience of company members--maybe 100 were there?--all so deeply invested in each other's work, watching. And clapping and hooting and just generally being a theater company. And David had written several characters specifically for specific actors, and to see those actors bringing characters so tailor made for them to life was pretty magical, especially seeing the chemistry between David Deblinger and Michael Stuhlberg, both great but very different style theater actors Id seen act in David's stuff before, and then seeing the very astonishing Ellen Burstyn read the main female role. I should also mention I was in a room filled with actors I recognized from my favorite show LAW AND ORDER, and I'm sure many other wondrous things but what can I say I love me some Law and Order (actually David's last play reading had Eric Bogosian in it and I totally appalled David by being impressed by his LAW AND ORDER CI cred rather than all the other great stuff he'd done), which was cool. Oh and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, of course, and I have to say that in person, in that warm, rich, creative environment, that man was much more glowy and handsome than I ever done seen him on film. Another thing I have to say is that by now, having read several of David's plays in draft form before seeing them performed in workshop/reading and then production type scenarios, it is much impressed on me how lines that seem to work on paper or seem to not work on paper... how much of that is in the actor's hands. A few times I've been critical of lines that David then told me would work on stage, mainly because of David Deblinger, and then lo and behold they totally would.

The end.

2009-07-11T17:54:00.000-04:00

My cousin just sent me this photo of Jonathan Richman with mah book (my cousin gave it to him at a show in Des Moines last month). It's like he can barely stand still, he's so anxious to crack that baby open!

2009-07-10T21:33:00.001-04:00

Massie is designing a banner for me for FAERIEWORLDS and just obnoxiously sent this one to me to see what I thought:

2009-07-10T19:03:00.002-04:00

So Godmother is book of the week in the UK's Inside Soap magazine. Can you believe the over the top sluttiness of the following legs-wide-open display?

Please note that the new Harry Potter movie is recommended for two nights earlier (the less cool night).

In other news, last night Massie and I went to a workshop on HOODOO and then rented and watched the hoodoo classic SKELETON KEY, which might be the best movie ever. Please do not be too scared. We made magical candles in said workshop, dressing them with herbs and oils, so if you find yourself uncontrollably running to stores to buy my book, I think you'll know why....

2009-07-09T13:04:00.001-04:00

So I will be at POWELL'S in PORTLAND, the main store on Burnside, on WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, at 7:30pm, so please come! This is my take two at Powell's, since when I was first there, in January 2007, to read from RAIN VILLAGE, it snowed like one inch and the whole city shut down and my reading was rooodly cancelled and my heart broke into 50000000 snowflake shaped pieces.

I have many other fascinating things to report, as there have been GLORIOUS ART SHOWS and ROMANTIC RENDEVOOOUS and EMERGENCY ROOM VISITS and BOOKS COMING OUT IN THE UK and DEATHLY SUNBURNS ON ANCIENT BATTLEFIELDS taking place since I last wrote here, but I am too busy trying to finish books about mermaids by the end of the month as well as prepare for FAERIEWOLRDS, where I shall share a booth with LANA GUERRA and JESSE RENO and have just learned that amongst Lana, Jesse, my friend Barb and yours truly, not a one of us knows anything about putting up tents or camping. I have ordered a big white festival tent for this event--which I did not realize I had to do initially; I thought that when I rented a booth I was renting a BOOTH--in which we shall display my books and Lana and Jesse's many wondrous things, and now I fear that if we succeed in hoisting up this tent at all it will soon thereafter blow softly away into the wind as we all stand there and cry.

Now to take the sting of that very devastating image away, I leave you with this photo of my best friend AOIFE showing Marcie's Boo Radley tree -- one of the wonders at the art show Compass up here at the Grail in Cornwall -- to her bear. I mean really.

Please note the exceptionally fabulous boots I bought her, which light up when she walks.

I know.

2009-06-22T11:23:00.004-04:00

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.

2009-06-17T10:41:00.001-04:00

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.

2009-06-17T09:49:00.004-04:00

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.

2009-06-09T22:23:00.001-04:00

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

2009-06-09T14:07:00.001-04:00

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.

2009-06-09T11:03:00.001-04:00

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.

2009-05-19T08:29:00.001-04:00

So I'm now in Cornwall-on-Hudson, at The Grail, staying in this old beautiful farmhouse with my friends Massie and Marcie, who live here, and two cats and a dog. I've written about this place before but it's totally idyllic: my room looks out on green in every direction... and right this second I'm sitting on a bed in front of a huge window and right below me is a deer stopped between two trees, chomping on leaves. I'm part of an art collective that Massie and Marcie started -- I'm collaborating with this amazing artist Timi in Arizona, who's making a sculpture based on a story I'm writing about a girl with a compass for a heart (the theme of the collective's first show, which will be held here on these grounds on June 27 and then stay up through the summer, is "compass") -- and spent a big chunk of the weekend helping them clean out and wash and whitewash a huge old garden shed that will be used as an art gallery. To get to the shed you walk from this house down a bright green path lined by swishing tall grass, and there are other structures here.. a cottage where work is done, another house where other women live, an old mansion that gets rented out, a hermitage for people to come to reflect in.. There are 45 acres in all, lots of woods, some ruins, etc. -- and the art show will be spread among the grounds.. -- and down the street a mile or so is the Hudson River. Anyway, I'm here to finish my mermaid book, which is due at the end of July, since this is the most peaceful place I know and the best place to write that I've found. The other night I holed up in the cottage for hours and wrote while it stormed outside and it was totally perfect. As perfect as writing can be, anyway.

I haven't had time tho to write about the last week or so... starting with the lovely lovely afternoon I spent at the home of Ms Trillian Stars and Mr Kyle Cassidy, now newlyweds!, who hosted a lovely reading/music salon in their gorgeous old house in West Philadelphia. I wish all readings could be like that: everyone talked and milled around and ate scones (made by Trillian's mama!) and drank wine and then everyone sat down and I read from my mermaid book, and then people asked questions and were talking and I ended up reading from Godmother and Rain Village as well, and THEN after a break, Nicki Jaine sat down with her guitar and played us cabaret songs, mostly ones she's written with a couple Marlene Dietrich songs thrown in, and that girl is all lithe and sweet and elegant and then she starts singing and this voice that comes out, this deep rich crazy dark soulful Dietrich-y Marianne Faithful-y voice you wouldn't even think could fit in that body, and it's astonishing, and then the song ends and she transforms back and is all light. She's really wonderful. PLUS it turns out has some good friends in Berlin -- including a girl who writes vampire novels -- to introduce me to for when I'm there this fall. Anyway, Trillian and Kyle are amazing hosts and I hope to write many books and read from all of them at they house!

Plus Kyle takes gorgeous photos wherever he is. Look!

And me, Trillian, and Nicki:

Kyle also, by the way, took my author photo:

Anyway, so after hanging out in Philadelphia for a night and day and seeing a bunch of friends, I flew down to Texas to the home of Ms. Kathy Patrick, Pulpwood Queen Extraordinaire and owner of the only book store/hair salon in the country (which is one of the coolest places I've been to). But I have to write about that later! In the mean time, I will show you the hairdo she gave me for the Charm Night Out event I went to with her and a few other authors (Lauretta Hannon, Carol Lay, and Marian Henley, all awesome) in Nacogdoches, Texas:

That is right. She plucked a fairy from a Christmas tree and done pinned it in my hair.

I was in Texas!

The end.

2009-05-10T09:23:00.000-04:00

So I've been in Pennsylvania the past couple of weeks, writing writing my next novel (about the little mermaid), and today I'm heading to Philadelphia with my friend Barb to read from it at the gorgeous house of Kyle Cassidy and Trillian Stars. In case you don't know, Kyle is an amazing photographer who published this book and just did a book with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer (not to mention did my author photo!), and Trillian is a gorgeous actress who is now starring in this, and they are the most glamorous couple ever and live in an old, sweeping West Philadelphia house with a big fireplace and a Victrola and window seats and many many cats. So this afternoon I'm going to read and Ms. Nicki Jaine shall sing old world and original cabaret songs with Ray Ashley accompanying her on the accordion. A few months ago I sat next to Nicki Jaine at a dinner and she was vibrant and light and girly and then later that night Kyle and Trillian played me some of her music and I couldn't believe that that same girl has a voice like Marlene Dietrich, rich and deep and melancholy and gigantic. I'm very excited to see her sing in person.

Then tomorrow I fly down to Texas to see Ms. Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queens book club and author of this and owner of the only hair salon/book store in the country, and will be on a panel at this event in Nacogdoches.

Then I fly back to NYC to see my sister off on her 6-week trip to Europe, where she will, among other things, do a walking tour of the Scottish highlands and go to a yoga retreat in southern Sweden. I know. She is very obnoxious.

Then I shall go to a big farmhouse in Cornwall-on-Hudson where Massie lives and hole up and write like a mofo until I turn my book in at the end of July.

Oh!! And I saw the loveliest film! And yesterday I bought my ticket for Berlin, where I shall be all this fall!

The end.

2009-05-10T09:18:00.002-04:00

So earlier this week I was procrastinating on Facebook, looking up people I knew back in Michigan, where I lived from when I was 12 to 14, and then I decided to look up this boy Michael that I had a mad crush on when I was 14 and a freshman in high school. He was a senior, and on the football team, and he was pitch black and his hair stood straight straight up and whenever I passed by him he would stop and stare at me and my heart would A FLUTTER cause I just thought he was so byoootiful. And weird and deep, and all those things, because he was always carrying around notebooks and poetry, etc., and I was a sucker for that. So anyway, halfway through the year my family moved to Pennsylvania but then that summer I went back to visit and stayed with my friend Janice and MICHAEL lived near her and saw me and one night he tapped on Janice's door and lured me out of her house (which infuriated her parents, who were from China I think, and promptly made Janice my ex friend) to the park nearby and that is when I had my first French kiss. I think we also went out to see ALIENS 2 together that week. And maybe after I went back to Pennsylvania he called once or twice, but that was it, and I didn't really think of it much after.

Except now I have a big deadline and am writingwritingwriting and in these moments such things become very important and fascinating.

So I looked up Michael, and found about 5000 photos like this one:

It turns out that he is now a street preacher who goes all around the country, and abroad, preaching against homosexuality (and sexuality in general).

Sometimes it is very sad to see how people have done turned out!

2009-04-18T12:39:00.002-04:00

So I flew back from Kansas on Thursday and am now back in NYC. It was very very fun being in Lawrence and seeing Kansas City, which I love (Tuesday night we went to the glamorous DRUM ROOM after seeing MR Gregg Todt of Federation of Horsepower playing a lovely stripped-down show featuring, among other thing, his 6-year-old son singing the Spiderman theme song), and I think Joi will be happy there. Krysztof and his adorable chitlins are pretty much perfect, and it's the kind of easy, sweet place where you can walk downtown and no place is too crowded and friends are everywhere and you hang out in people's houses and in cool little bars you don't have to push through 50000 people to get to. It's also a lovely place to be a writer I think, especially one like yours truly with a big deadline a-looming -- there are so many coffee shops where you can write all day, and it's just easy -- and if I wasn't heading to Berlin this fall I'd probably go there. But maybe I will next spring unless I want to stay me in some Europa. WHO KNOWS AS I AM LIKE THE WIND.

Oh and Wednesday we went to the GLORE PSYCHIATRIC MUSEUM in St. Joseph, Missouri, which is the weirdest, most disturbing museum I've ever been to, illustrating all kinds of barbaric old-time psychiatric treatments through the use of chipped-up wild-haired crazy lady fashion model mannequins and faceless male doctors. I mean look:

In this weird little box, please note the scotch tape used to create water, as well as Joi's admiring reflection in the glass:

Somehow we made it out alive -- alive, tho scarred eternally.

And then theremin was played for Krystof's dancing chilllen

and drinks were had

and dinner was eaten

and girls were girls and boys were boys

and all was well.

The end.

OH AND GODMOTHER WAS SOLD TO CHINA YESTERDAY!
And now I am going to get some lunch at MOMOFUKU -- please don't be too jealous.

The end.

2009-04-13T16:06:00.001-04:00

So I just booked a ticket to Shreveport for the day after the glamorous Philly reading featuring me and Nicki Jaine at Trillian and Kyle's abode (on May 10! email me if you want the top secret address) -- I'm heading to East Texas to hang out with the gorgeous PULPWOOD QUEENS as they discuss their May pick, GODMOTHER. What exquisite taste those ladies have! I shall be staying with Kathy Patrick herself and hope to see an abundance of East Texas delights, including the scandalous grave of one Ms DIAMOND BESSIE.

Meanwhile Im still in Lawrence, Kansas. Joi, Krysztof and I left Omaha Saturday and headed into Kansas City for fondue and roller derby, then got back here in time for Easter festivities with Krysztof's gorgeous family. I mean look at these crazy chitlins:

Last night we hung out with Chris and Lydia and watched the cinema classic BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, but I was very tired and almost died, especially when they brought out a wily RODENT they have actually named and let crawl all over themselves. They even let it race around the living room floor in a glow-in-the-dark ball! Joi was giddy with delight while I nearly passed out from the assualt to my delicato sensibility. AS USUAL. Sigh.

2009-04-11T12:11:00.000-04:00

Oh and here is Joi, Krysztof and me at La Buvette. Have I mentioned that Krysztof's website is here?

and our friend Gregg and Joi and Krysztof a few nights ago in Kansas City:

and here is my cousin and his wife Cindy a couple nights ago in Omaha. Aren't they so cute!

2009-04-11T12:06:00.001-04:00

SO yesterday involved these wondrous Omaha-ian activities:

-- Hanging out with the glorious artiste Wanda Ewing, who took us to her house and showed us her artwork, which involves things like these gorgeous pin-ups on wallpaper

and the art she owns and fills her house with, including this DEEP FRIED BARBIE by Brett Reif

and latch-hook pin-ups by Whitney Lee.

Wanda took Joi, Krysztof and me to Louie M's Burger Lust, which stole all of our hearts, as you can see in this photo of Wanda and me

and then we left her and visited scooter shops and bookstores and our byoooteous hostess ALICE KIM's Omaha shop TROCADERO, which is chock-full of wonders and glamour -- shoes and notecards and purses and chocolates and makeup and plates and jewelry (bracelets with bird's nests!) and really, it's like a jewelry case flung open. I exercised extreme restaint and acquired only this extremely fashionable necklace.. please do not be too jealous. It does have starfish and shells hanging from it, as well as a huge glittery fake gem. Oh and I also bought some very very glittery nailpolish and eye shimmer.

I know.

So then we had wine and snacks with Alice at LA BUVETTE, which is as I've mentioned the best wine bar ever, and then we rushed off to BARNES & NOBLE. This B&N as I've mentioned has made Godmother its hand sell pick of the month and has sold like 100 copies of it so far and has, right at this moment, about 70 copies displayed right as you walk in. Look:

Please keep in mind that almost every other B&N in this country has about 4 or 5 copies on hand, many on display tables up front along with other new releases... and this one has SEVENTY. And makes announcements about the book like 4 times a day on the loudspeaker. It is quite amazing. Apparently, this all came about because a customer named MARTHA picked up Godmother as soon as it got to the store, read it, and recommended it to the manager, STEPHANEE, who then made it the pick of the month. Here I am with Martha and Stephanee:

And here is Joi with the very passionate and awesome community relations manager MARCIA, who arranged the event:

And here is my old friend Kelly with the novelist Timothy Schaffert, whose house we all went to after for champagne and who told us about his amazing-sounding new book about a missing child who may or may not actually exist:

And here is Alice with Bill, an Omaha-ian who had emailed me about Godmother and then came out last night with his VERY CUTE niece and nephew:

It was so casual I ended up not reading at all, just meeting staff and customers and signing all them books, and it was totally lovely and obviously Omaha is the best city ever.

Today we head back to Kansas City for FONDUE and ROLLER DERBY.

The end.

2009-04-10T12:16:00.001-04:00

So Joi, Krysztof and I drove up to Omaha yesterday and met up with my mother's cousin Joe and his wife Cindy at LA BUVETTE, my favorite wine bar. Joe and Cindy drove in from Des Moines to see us -- and now I'm dying to go to Des Moines not to mention the famous IOWA STATE FAIR -- and I hadn't seen Joe since I was 16 and went to my great grandmother's funeral in Alabama and, before that, when I was maybe 6 or 7 and Joe came to see us for a few days in Illinois and my mama, sister and I left him off at some prairie-lined highway where he was going to hitchhike to his next destination. This seemed awfulllllly romantical to us. Anyway, it was totally lovely to see them and then my friend Alice joined us -- Alice, the glamorous NYC fashionista who up and left her life two years ago to buy a princess house and open a high-end accesory store in the Midwestern city of her dreams -- and we all whisked off to dinner and it was a gorgeous eve, and then Joe and Cindy left and Alice, Krysztof, Joi and I got some vino and went back to Alice's to sit in front of the fire and watch some tv. It is very hard to leave a cozy, wondrous princess mansion once one steps foot in.

But today we shall try, and my artist friend Wanda is on her way over and this afternoon we shall all get wine and my friend the genius novelist TIMOTHY SCHAEFFERT shall come and then tonight is my reading, where I shall see my old friend KELLY whom I haven't seen for maybe 16 years, and we shall go to Timothy's house as well as to bars with CHAMPAGNE ON TAP. Both sweet and dry.

THE END.

2009-04-08T11:26:00.002-04:00

So I have two wondrous events coming up:

First, this Friday in OMAHA I will be reading at 7pm at the B&N at 3333 Oakview Drive. Joi, Krysztof and I are heading up tomorrow.. since I LOVE OMAHA, and then I found out last week that this B&N has made Godmother its hand sell pick of the month and has 100 copies in stock..! I've been visiting plenty of B&Ns in the last week or so and they all have about 4 or 5 copies on hand, NOT ONE HUNDRED. So they are obviously geniuses in Omaha, as I have long suspected. If you HAPPEN to live in Omaha or within 10 hours' driving, you should obviously attend.

THEN ON SUNDAY MAY 10th at 4pm I will be reading at the fabulous fireplace- and victrola-havin abode of MS TRILLIAN STARS and MR KYLE CASSIDY in West Philadelphia. And the wondrous NICKI JAINE will be singing gorgeous, Dietrich-esque cabaret. And I think it will be the most lovely evening ever. Oh, and I plan to read maybe a snippet of Godmother but then mostly from the mermaid book I'm writing now, and that should be out next spring or summer (I think)... If you can come to that, please email me (carolynturgeon at gmail dot com) for the top secret address!

Actually, in between those two things, on May 7, I will be going to a book club discussion of Godmother at the State College B&N...

IN OTHER NEWS, I totally love Lawrence and Kansas City. Joi, Krysztof and I headed in on Monday and met Chris and Lydia at this awesome live play version of THE BREAKFAST CLUB, then we met up with one Mr Gregg Todt and had some drinks and we were at this one bar where you can write in chalk on the bathroom walls so of course I wrote READ DANTE as I am extremely cool and like to promote literacy even whilst glamorously getting waysted. Actually, I drank like one wine and then switched to Diet Coke. Sigh.

Yesterday we finally unloaded and returned that damn Uhaul, which seemed so monstrous and badass at first but was actually pretty I GUESS A BIT ON THE DINKY SIDE (we pulled up next to another Uhaul truck back in West Virginia and it was then that I realized I was slightly less badass than I'd thought, but still a bit badass don't get me wrong).. And Chris and Lydia whisked me to a dinner that involved FRIED CORN ON THE COB and CHOCOLATE COVERED BACON, both of which were quite delicious tho I believes roodly made me quite sick later in the eve, and then a group of us ended up watching TWO LOVERS at the adorable old timey art theater here and then having some vino.

Today I must write like a mofo as I have some extreme deadline coming up for the mermaid book, which REALLY interferes with my vino-drinking chocolate-covered-bacon-eating time. But then tonight I get to partake in a dance party with Krysztof's chillens and then watch bellydancing videos and go bowling. The best way to spend a Wednesday night I always say.

The end.

2009-04-06T13:46:00.002-04:00

So Joi and I arrived in Kansas yesterday, after 8 lovely days of travellin, and we're now sitting in Krysztof's living room with Joi's cats splayed sluttily all around. A big siren started going off just now as I was writing this and we are debating whether it is a tornado warning or not. Those damn wily tornadoes. Sadly, I think it was just a fire truck, so no being whisked off to Oz for us. Yet. I AM here for a week and a half so there's still plenty o time.

Our last day in Memphis was great: we went to Graceland and among other things had this delightful and elegant photo taken:

It was my second visit to Graceland, and I was again overcome by the desire to hang out with Elvis and his friends playing racquetball and riding golf carts around and eating weird sandwiches involving bananas and bacon. Speaking of which, I shall soon, maybe even as early as tomorrow, partake of a Lawrence, Kansas offering known as CHOCOLATE COVERED BACON. Please do not be too jealous. The place also offers deep fried corn on the cob, which seems an apt dish to follow the fried dill pickles Joi and I both became enamored of in Memphis.

After leaving Graceland and partaking of said fried pickles on Beale Street, then, we wandered about and had drinks at the Peabody Hotel and had drinks on Beale Street whilst watching an ELVIS IMPERSONATOR and shopped for weird memorabilia and came across two postcards with Krysztof's pin up art on them, which I of course bought, and then we met my friend Stephen for sushi at a restaurant where our seat was a BED and after he took us to this crazy dance club awash in DRY ICE and BALLOONS and MIRRORS and he and I even got up and danced to YOU GOT THE LOOK by Prince and Sheena Easton and it was awesome and then we drove around and went to other places and it was a lovely, weird night overall which is how all nights should be.

Here are some photos:

Then Saturday we went to three Memphis bookstores where I signed stock and met peoples, and then we were off to COLUMBIA, MISSOURI. I loved the drive. I loved all the driving, and I did all of it I might add, but I did like leaving Memphis and heading through Arkansas and into Missouri. I lived in Illinois from 6 months old to 8 years, and we drove to Missouri every summer to visit my grandparents, so I do got this romantic sort of longing for it and felt happy drifting through that flat terrain.

Oh, and in Blytheville, Arkansas, we stopped at THAT BOOKSTORE IN BLYTHEVILLE on River's recommendation, and I introduced myself to the lovely lady Norma who was working there and told her I'd written a book she might have in the store and would be happy to sign it and she looked at me suspiciously and found the one copy they had on the shelf and returned to the counter, setting it down, and then a minute later she realized she'd read an advanced copy of Godmother and suddenly her whole demeanor changed and she was friendly and animated and told me how much she'd loved the book and she couldn't believe I was there.. and it was very funny and sweet.

We stopped to gaze upon the Mississippi too somewhere in south Missouri, and stopped in a couple of weird little towns to get gas, places where the locals looked at us like we were some exotic kind of shimmery bugs and occasionally told us how they were wanting to move to New York because "aint nothing new happens around here" and it was all awesome, I love all those towns and wish we could have stopped in more of them and talked to everyone.

We got into Columbia late Saturday and checked into this foul Motel 6 and proceeded to drink Ravenswood wine out of plastic cups whilst watching BABY MAMA.

Sunday we met Tink's awesome aunt Jacquie and her beau for brunch, and then went out to Jacquie's adorable house, which is on a horse farm, and it was all gorgeousness and swaying grass and gloomy sky and we got to hang out with horses and meet Jacquie's crazy dogs and see her glass work -- she has a whole studio in her basement, complete with kiln, and I fell in love with her old timey glass kaleidoscopes -- and she gave us a whirlwind tour of Columbia, including its bookstores, and then we was gone, off to Kansas with the clouds gathering overhead. And we listened to Goldfrapp and the Killers and sang like dorks I MEAN ANGELS and then lo and behold we'd done arrived in Lawrence, Kansas, at the home of one Krysztof Nemeth. And then we hung out with his adorable chillen, who were visiting, and then Chris and Lydia came over and some other friends and we all drank wine and ate pizza and listened to Pink Martini.

The end.

2009-04-03T14:59:00.004-04:00

Oh and here is a picture of YOURS TRULY AS A PIN-UP penned by the wondrous KRYSZTOF NEMETH who awaits our Sunday arrival in KANSAS with the most bated of breaths.

2009-04-03T14:53:00.001-04:00

So I'm sitting at the Days Inn Graceland, where the pool in the shape of guitar is roodly unfilled tho I'm planning nonetheless to sit next to it in a bikini and with a large half coconut in hand later this afternoon, crooning Elvis tunes. Right now Joi and I are in a room full of Elvis photos and with at least two Elvis movies playing on the tv at all times, and soon we shall head to Graceland. It is all extremely glamorous, obviously.

I must mention tho how much fun we had in Nashville, staying with River and Owen and Titan in their house on a hill with a roaring fireplace and a porch overlooking a whole woods-filled valley. Yesterday River, Joi and I headed into town and hit up some bookstores, where I met people signed stock -- and David Kidd even had a copy of Rain Village, making it one of the BEST BOOKSTORES EVER -- and had lunch and went to the PARTHENON and did many other delightful things and ended up that night at one of those bars on Broadway watching a great rockabilly band. Then yesterday we all headed to the LOVELESS CAFE

and had some famous biscuits

and I bought some very fashionable pink guitar pick earrings which no you can't borrow and then we went to more bookstores and then there was a huge earth-shaking thunderstorm and with the rain pouring down and the sky blazing we rode along the gorgeous gorgeous Natchez Trace, all lined with lush green and some sluttily purple legs-wide-open flowers. I do like driving in a thunderstorm when the sky goes all smoky and lightning-charged and all the greenery gets bright bright bright, and it was pure loveliness, and then River dropped Joi and me off at our UHAUL and we headed off in the storm and made our way to Memphis, where, after driving around this devillish city about 50000 times trying to find our exit, we checked into our glamorous digs and then were whisked away by my friend Stephen for a night on the town. He showed us the weird pyramid here, and Beale Street, which I was just at two months ago BUT STILL, and then we ended up at Molly Fontaine's, this sparkly and decadent bar/restaurant/clubby place in an old mansion with a sweeping staircase, and we had wine and expressed undying love for each other and the universe in general.

THE END.

And here's River, Joi, and me at the Parthenon. You'd think we'd just stepped down from MT OLYMPUS itself now wouldnt you.

2009-04-01T17:03:00.003-04:00

So yesterday Joi and I left Pigeon Forge and drove to Knoxville, where we stopped in a few bookstores -- Carpe Librum, Barnes & Noble, and Borders -- so I could sign me some books and say hello, and we met my third cousin Nathan and his wife Claire for lunch. Nathan is my mama's cousin Kathy's son and I didn't know about him until a few days ago, but he and Claire were completely lovely and adorable, a young artist/photography/film-making couple who are, among other things, making a low-budget zombie movie set in Knoxville. I MEAN REALLY. After, Joi and I glamorously headed to Nashville. It's a gorgeous, purple-flower-lined drive until you hit Nashville and suddenly 50000 freeways pop up and start twisting about and semis try to run you down and for a second I thought we were in Los Angeles but after losing our way once -- and I don't mean in the spiritual sense except, possibly, in Joi's case -- we got back on the right road and ended up outside the city in a lovely wooden house on the top of a hill, where River and her husband Owen and their wondrous dog (and my new best friend) Titan live. River and Owen could not be more gracious and we spent the evening in front of a roaring real fire drinking red wine. This morning we had coffee on the porch overlooking the woods and cavorted with Titan, and then River returned at lunch time and took Joi and me downtown and now we here we all are, sitting in a glorious cafe. And soon we will be somewheres else.

THE END.

2009-03-31T11:04:00.002-04:00

So I'm writing from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where Joi and I arrived late on Sunday night after about 11 hours on the road. I love driving, and now that I've mastered the UHaul truck feel more confident than ever that I'd be an awesome truck driver should the writing thing not work out. And I could decorate my cab smashingly, and listen to lots of audiobooks, and meet serial killers. We drove from Pennsylvania through West Virginia and Virginia and into Tennessee, and then Pigeon Forge gleamed and winked out at us like a miniature Las Vegas and we were home.

Here we are at a gas station in West Virginia with the coolest sign ever. Please note Joi refusing to pump gas:

Here we are entering West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee. It is true. I can drive a UHaul truck and take riveting photos at the same time. I missed the Virginia sign as it sneaked up on us and flashed itself just after we drove through this disturbing tunnel. But everyone knows Virginia is the wiliest state.

Then yesterday we spent the day at DOLLYWOOD. Which I went to once before maybe in 1995. Now they are celebrating some "Festival of Nations" there -- as if one goes to DOLLYWOOD for a multi-cultural experience -- so we saw some terrible Cirque du Soleil-ish typa show first, then dined on (well I dined on) a turkey leg glazed Asian style with a side of stir fried veggies. I remember years ago seeing some song and dance about the history of the Smoky Mountains but now that theater was showing some band from Ecuador I think. What has Dollywood come to? Anyway, we spent the day wandering around and we rode a rollercoaster and we took this steam train ride through the mountains ("The Smokies are a neverending song that change with every season, and every pair of eyes") and we watched the multisensory Dolly movie Heartsong (where butterflies start flying through the theater and rain comes from the ceiling) and we ate funnel cakes and fried green tomatoes and kettle corn and almond brittle and we bought post cards and rode a carousel.

Here we are elegantly waiting by the side of the road for the trolley to DOLLYWOOD. Behind us, you can see the alluring sign COUNTRY HAM (the Little House of Pancakes sign is just behind), which is where we had a scrumptious breakfast involving many grits:

Here is Joi being extremely inspired by the Tennessee mountains:

And here we are riding the carousel like all the coolest people do:

Then we took the trolley back to the hotel and got back in the UHAUL and glamorously made our way to THE MIRACLE THEATER.

Now look at this awesome brochure for the "stunning musical re-creation of the life of Christ told in epic proportion":

Joi was less convinced that this would be the BEST SHOW EVER so I bought the tickets and used my powers of VERBAL PERSUASION to get her to go. And it was indeed awesome. The show opens with a winged Lucifer flying over the audience from the back of the theater and landing on the stage, then engaging in a ferocious sword battle with many other winged angels and also narrating the history of creation to the audience. On a screen behind him, we see flowers opening and many exotic animales running through the jungle... and he's all expanding arms and looking up at the audience with his head bent down, his bald head gleaming and goatee dramatically pointing I-think-you-know-which-direction and his motorcycle boots clomping on the stage.

I do love me an insane over-the-top stage/passion play life of Christ, that crazy mixture of mouth-dropping hammy extravagance mixed with imagery that is (to me) genuininely powerful and moving no matter what. There were camels and horses and sheep on stage and walking down the aisles of the theater, tons of angels flying and swooping around, lots of dancing and singing and even a boat bucking and swaying across the stage during a thunderstorm.. There was Lucifer cackling and strutting about with a snake around his shoulders, listening in on people and hissing in their ears.. There was Jesus glowing white and performing miracles and calming a deeply slutty Mary Magdalene convulsing at his feet.

And of course there was the whole crucufixion scene, full on lashings and crown of thorns and crosses being risen, and it was as over the top as it could possibly be but also weird and moving and breathtaking and it was all extremely awesome, and the audience cheered during the resurrection scene and during a final battle where Jesus conquered Lucifer who then dissolved in a puddle like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Awesome.

Today we're heading into Knoxville to visit a few bookstores and have coffee with my second cousin Nathan and his wife Claire, and then we wend our way to NASHVILLE, where we shall spent the eve in a house on a hill in the woods with my lovely friend RIVER JORDAN.

THE END.

2009-03-29T13:12:00.002-04:00

So Joi and I left Brooklyn yesterday and drove to Pennsylvania, and today we drive to PIGEON FORGE, TENNESSEE. Joi is, if you do not remember, moving to LAWRENCE, KANSAS, for true love.

Here are some photos before we go:

2009-03-27T14:56:00.001-04:00

Also, here is a photo of the wondrous and debonair KYLE CASSIDY reflecting on the very deep themes in his favorite book:

2009-03-27T14:53:00.001-04:00

So I am verrrrrrrrrry glad that my readings are over for now, and that tomorrow Joi and I head off in our UHaul on a big adventure. Last night was fun -- I read at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble -- but I felt a little more nervous than I thought I would, and then it was a good turnout but tons of people ended up canceling at last minute or emailing me today to apologize for not being able to come. After, a few groups of us headed to Lucky Cheng's and it was very very fun, and my sister and Ms Trillian Stars and I headed home around 1am I think, and Trillian stayed over and this morning I introduced her to the wonders of The Millionaire Matchmaker. It was all extremely glamorous.

Here are some glorious photos.

The end.

2009-03-26T14:32:00.001-04:00

I forgot to link to this essay I wrote for Beatrice.com.

2009-03-26T10:13:00.001-04:00

So I had a really lovely reading on Monday night at Webster's Bookstore Cafe in State College. My mama made some very pretty white cupcakes with white cake mix and white frosting and white sparkly crunch sugar stuff on top and they were like CUPCAKES FROM HEAVEN ABOVE, and my sister was down from NYC and we had a big dinner beforehand with some friends and then, since I knew that about half the people coming had already been to my reading at the State College Barnes & Noble a few weeks before and I didn't want to read the same exact passages to them, I decided last minute to just read a couple of short scenes from Godmother and then read two big chunks from my mermaid book, from the opening two chapters (and the only two chapters written!). And as I was reading them I was thinking oh this is too long, and I should be reading from Godmother, this is a mistake, and then to my surprise it seemed like everyone afterward only talked about how much they liked the mermaid stuff. Even people I didn't think would like anything and were just there to be supportive. I think people reallly like mermaids. Not to mention mermaids swimming in big storms with shipwrecked men dropping around them, trying to save themselves a prince. WHICH IS AWESOME.

Speaking of mermaids, it looks like that book will probably come out next summer, 2010.. If not then, maybe a little earlier. And I have some due dates for handing the book in, first the opening 150 pages and then the whole thing, that will completely require me to WRITE EVERY DAMN DAY and actually be disciplined and hard working for once. It's exciting, because there's no reason I shouldn't be writing pages and pages a day (actually I only need to write about 2 pages a day to meet these deadlines), I just don't. And I'm feeling especially lame about that since lately I've been answering all these interview questions and everyone always asks about my writing schedule and I always say UMMM WELL I ASPIRE TO HAVE ONE and then they always say "Oh you just write when you're inspired" or "You need to wait for inspiration to come" and that's completely not true, actually, I can always sit down and write, I know what I need to write, especially now when I have a whole book to write and I know exactly what the book is -- and if for some reason I'm stuck.. the way to get unstuck is just to sit and write, anyway -- the fact is I just don't write in a disciplined manner because I'm not disciplined. So now I have to be, which is good. I've not really been in this position before... I mean I wrote and sold Rain Village and Godmother when I had a full-time job and now that writing is my full time job I gotta start treating it like one.

Oh! So I should be turning the book in October 1, and after that I shall immediately turn back to my Dante book and get a proposal together for that.

In other news, last night I saw Sunshine Cleaning, which was quite good.. Tho when a guy selling a van tells the main character's kid that if he talks into a CB his words will go "out in the heavens" you know there's going to be a cheesy ass scene on the way where said kid talks on said CB to said heaven. Which was bad enough. But then in a climactic moment the main character also talks on a CB to heaven -- "mom, can you hear me?" -- and THAT IS JUST DOWNRIGHT INEXCUSABLE.

NO CB CALLS TO HEAVEN!

That is my hot writing tip of the day. That, and be more disciplined than yours truly.

Now I am at my sister's and I have no plans today except to WRITE TWO PAGES and then luxuriate in the bath and in front of the tv because tonight is my NYC Barnes & Noble reading and it is a little nerve wracking. And then Saturday morning Joi and I head to the highway and into the wild blue yonder.

The end.

2009-03-25T10:52:00.002-04:00

A gorgeous reminder!

2009-03-23T11:05:00.001-04:00

Mayfly photo Hannah just sent:

I guess it is quite pretty. For a bug.

2009-03-23T10:27:00.001-04:00

My last few days were incredibly social, and now I feel chock full of stories and wonders. I had lunch Friday with my old Italian professor, Dr. Triolo, and amongst other things he told me about attending the Palio horse race in Siena in 1961 and seeing Sophia Loren there..! And I had dinner with my old schoolmate Chuck and his gorgeous wife Rowan, and they make lustrous pottery and travel all around to fairs and festivals selling it, and I learned all about this crazy life they have and about the elaborate over-the-top lengths people go to at these festivals, like for the Society for Creative Anachronism's Pennsic event, where one "baron" builds a whole palace complete with chandeliers and running water. And Sunday I met this art professor James and he showed me these beautiful hard plates and jewelry he makes entirely from paper, and told me about this show he'll be having in Pittsburgh this fall where he'll be presenting a series of artifacts from the fictional perspective of a 24th century curator. And I had an interview for the Centre Daily Times and hung out for a while with the interviewer and photographer after, learning about the seedy dealings the one uncovered during her time as a reporter in Buffalo/Niagara Falls, and the foray into coupon-cutting the other has recently begun with adorable and breathless abandon. And I had dinner with my sister and Barb and Jill, and then my sister and I went out for drinks with our old friend Hannah and we ran into more old friends, Jim and Ted, and Hannah is now getting her PhD in etymology and is conducting this huge study about mayflies and is trying to re-introduce them into this creek here that they once populated and then disappeared from. Mayflies! She said mayflies are the most beautiful and most ancient insect, and that the kind she studies come out at night, only one week a year, and have these white abdomens as adults that make them glow as they gracefully dip into the water and fly up again. Now I am no bug lover myself and roodly yet glamorously exclaimed "ew!" a few times as she spoke, but how can one not be swayed by the passion of a girl who loves mayflies and lights up when describing them. When I'm back here in May, she's promised to take me down to the creek to look at them.

Please don't be too jealous.

The end.