Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Dead Birds
No, I'm not going on more about spiders or birds or other creatures in my pool; this is to let y'all know about a wonderful and acclaimed book called The Book of Dead Birds by Gayle Brandeis.
Check it out:
Ava Sing Lo has been accidentally killing her mother's birds since she was a little girl. Now in her twenties, Ava leaves her native San Diego for the Salton Sea, where she volunteers to help environmental activists save thousands of birds poisoned by agricultural runoff.
Helen, her mother, has been haunted by her past for decades. As a young girl in Korea, Helen was drawn into prostitution on a segregated American army base. Several brutal years passed before a young white American soldier married her and brought her to California. When she gave birth to a black baby, her new husband quickly abandoned her, and she was left to fend for herself and her daughter in a foreign country.
With great beauty and lyricism, The Book of Dead Birds captures a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her mother's terrible past while she searches for her own place in the world.
The Book of Dead Birds won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for Fiction. Barbara Kingsolver created the award to advocate serious literary fiction that addresses issues of social justice, and the impact of culture and politics on human relationships. Toni Morrison and Maxine Hong Kingston were the judges who, in addition to Barbara Kingsolver, selected The Book of Dead Birds.
Praise for The Book of Dead Birds
Lyrical, imaginative, beautifully crafted, and deeply intelligent. Before anything else, its characters take you by the heart.
--Barbara Kingsolver
The Book of Dead Birds has an edgy beauty that enhances perfectly the seriousness of its contents.
--Toni Morrison
BIO
In addition to The Book of Dead Birds, Gayle Brandeis is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperSanFrancisco) and Dictionary Poems (Pudding House Publications). Both Fruitflesh and The Book of Dead Birds were chosen as selections for the BookSense list, compiled by the American Booksellers Association. Her second novel, Self Storage, will be published by Ballantine in 2007.
Gayle's poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies (such as Salon.com , Nerve.com , The Mississippi Review, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency) and have received several awards, including the QPB/Story Magazine Short Story Award, a Barbara Mandigo Kelley Peace Poetry Award, and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Her essay on the meaning of liberty was one of three included in the Statue of Liberty's Centennial time capsule in 1986. The Writer Magazine honored Gayle with a 2004 Writer Who Makes a Difference Award for her work in the community as well as her commitment to craft.
Gayle holds a BA in "Poetry and Movement: Arts of Expression, Meditation and Healing" from the University of Redlands, and an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction from Antioch University. She is on the faculty of the UCLA Writers Program, and is writer in residence for the Mission Inn Foundation's Family Voices Project. She lives in Riverside, CA with her husband and two children.
Check it out:
Ava Sing Lo has been accidentally killing her mother's birds since she was a little girl. Now in her twenties, Ava leaves her native San Diego for the Salton Sea, where she volunteers to help environmental activists save thousands of birds poisoned by agricultural runoff.
Helen, her mother, has been haunted by her past for decades. As a young girl in Korea, Helen was drawn into prostitution on a segregated American army base. Several brutal years passed before a young white American soldier married her and brought her to California. When she gave birth to a black baby, her new husband quickly abandoned her, and she was left to fend for herself and her daughter in a foreign country.
With great beauty and lyricism, The Book of Dead Birds captures a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her mother's terrible past while she searches for her own place in the world.
The Book of Dead Birds won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for Fiction. Barbara Kingsolver created the award to advocate serious literary fiction that addresses issues of social justice, and the impact of culture and politics on human relationships. Toni Morrison and Maxine Hong Kingston were the judges who, in addition to Barbara Kingsolver, selected The Book of Dead Birds.
Praise for The Book of Dead Birds
Lyrical, imaginative, beautifully crafted, and deeply intelligent. Before anything else, its characters take you by the heart.
--Barbara Kingsolver
The Book of Dead Birds has an edgy beauty that enhances perfectly the seriousness of its contents.
--Toni Morrison
BIO
In addition to The Book of Dead Birds, Gayle Brandeis is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperSanFrancisco) and Dictionary Poems (Pudding House Publications). Both Fruitflesh and The Book of Dead Birds were chosen as selections for the BookSense list, compiled by the American Booksellers Association. Her second novel, Self Storage, will be published by Ballantine in 2007.
Gayle's poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies (such as Salon.com
Gayle holds a BA in "Poetry and Movement: Arts of Expression, Meditation and Healing" from the University of Redlands, and an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction from Antioch University. She is on the faculty of the UCLA Writers Program, and is writer in residence for the Mission Inn Foundation's Family Voices Project. She lives in Riverside, CA with her husband and two children.
Friday, November 18, 2005
Fishies and Spiders and Phantoms ... oh my!
I admit it. I obsess about things. And one thing I've been obsessing about ever since we signed the contract in July and they started digging the hole (apparently our backyard is a quarry ... who knew?) is our new swimming pool.
It's done! They finished it in mid-October...just in time for the weather to change. And, not withstanding the dips into the 40s (or lower), can I just say that I AM SO LOVING IT!
Here's a picture (not a great pic, but a pic none the less):
Ah, it's sooooo glorious.
But I confess to being a little antsy.
Because of plaster curing issues, we couldn't turn the heater on for 28 loooooong days. No problem. It was still warm (this is Central Texas, remember? Real Winter is one weekend in February). I swam 3 days in a row, the water a brisk 75, which was okay once you got moving, but not okay when C wanted to join me and, thus, I couldn't move as much. Bless her little heart, even cold, she didn't want to get out! Chocolate and bribery were involved.
Then we had the cold snap. Got into the low 30s. And the pool dropped to 68. Brrrrr.
I quit swimming. Until ... I remembered I used to SCUBA dive in California, and still had the equipment, including a thin wetsuit. And, b/c I'm bizarre, I tested it out and ... voila! ... three more days of swimming laps (in the meantime, bought a solar blanket for the pool and the temperature ecked up to about 73).
And then came the glorious, glorious Day O' The Heater.
The ambient air was in the 80s and the pool was 80 as well (kicked up to 82, and then 84 once the temp did another nose dive). Oh, happy day! I was (am) in heaven. And the temp is cold now. Which I figure is good b/c it keeps me in the 80ish water that much longer.
And, b/c I get bored swimming laps, I have discovered the MOST indispensible piece of equipment (even more than my prescrip goggles so the world is not a gray blur): A waterproof MP3 player. I've listened to Spamalot, Evita and Chess so far. I'm behind on my musicals, so I'm all ears for suggestions.
And the really, really cool thing? Already my jeans are fitting looser.
Pools, ya gotta love them.
(Oh, and in case you're wondering about the title of this post:
Fishies -- self explanatory
Spiders -- the poor Tarantulas seem attracted to the pool. I find many drowned spiders. I like the little guys. It's sad.
Phantoms -- the gizmo that sucks up the BILLIONS of leaves from our oaks and cedar elms. I'm naming it Fred. It is my good friend)
Ta ta!
It's done! They finished it in mid-October...just in time for the weather to change. And, not withstanding the dips into the 40s (or lower), can I just say that I AM SO LOVING IT!
Here's a picture (not a great pic, but a pic none the less):
Ah, it's sooooo glorious.
But I confess to being a little antsy.
Because of plaster curing issues, we couldn't turn the heater on for 28 loooooong days. No problem. It was still warm (this is Central Texas, remember? Real Winter is one weekend in February). I swam 3 days in a row, the water a brisk 75, which was okay once you got moving, but not okay when C wanted to join me and, thus, I couldn't move as much. Bless her little heart, even cold, she didn't want to get out! Chocolate and bribery were involved.
Then we had the cold snap. Got into the low 30s. And the pool dropped to 68. Brrrrr.
I quit swimming. Until ... I remembered I used to SCUBA dive in California, and still had the equipment, including a thin wetsuit. And, b/c I'm bizarre, I tested it out and ... voila! ... three more days of swimming laps (in the meantime, bought a solar blanket for the pool and the temperature ecked up to about 73).
And then came the glorious, glorious Day O' The Heater.
The ambient air was in the 80s and the pool was 80 as well (kicked up to 82, and then 84 once the temp did another nose dive). Oh, happy day! I was (am) in heaven. And the temp is cold now. Which I figure is good b/c it keeps me in the 80ish water that much longer.
And, b/c I get bored swimming laps, I have discovered the MOST indispensible piece of equipment (even more than my prescrip goggles so the world is not a gray blur): A waterproof MP3 player. I've listened to Spamalot, Evita and Chess so far. I'm behind on my musicals, so I'm all ears for suggestions.
And the really, really cool thing? Already my jeans are fitting looser.
Pools, ya gotta love them.
(Oh, and in case you're wondering about the title of this post:
Fishies -- self explanatory
Spiders -- the poor Tarantulas seem attracted to the pool. I find many drowned spiders. I like the little guys. It's sad.
Phantoms -- the gizmo that sucks up the BILLIONS of leaves from our oaks and cedar elms. I'm naming it Fred. It is my good friend)
Ta ta!
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Fictionista Tour Pic!
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Megan Crane - EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL
Be sure to check out Megan Crane's EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL!
I asked Megan a few questions about her and her book ... check it out:
EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL is your second published novel, right? How did the
experience of writing your second book differ from your debut?
---My first novel just sort of poured out of me, over the course of about three weeks one summer. (It took much longer to edit, of course.) But there was no pouring with EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL. Every word was a struggle, every scene was a fight. I changed from first person to third person and then back again. It was like running uphill! But I hear most second novels are like that, so I'm just glad to be finished!
What was the inspiration for EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL?
---I wrote the bulk of EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL while involved in what I like to call an "extended move" from York, England to Los Angeles, which really means I spent six months hidden away in my parents' attic finishing up my dissertation, something I felt I was unlikely to do once I escaped west.
What, I thought at the time, was more likely to make a grown women revert to her absolute worst than an extended stay right smack in the middle of her adolescence? And from that thought came Meredith!
Your bio indicates you live in Los Angeles, which was my stomping ground
a few years ago. What's your favorite restaurant in the LA area? Your
favorite kitschy clothing store?
---I'm a little bit obsessed with the dates wrapped in bacon that they serve at A/O/C. SO delicious. But I'm not sure I have a favorite restaurant. I love to eat far too much to narrow it down. I feel the same way about clothes. I love all the little boutiques along Third Street (although I can't really afford them) and I have an unhealthy addiction to Lucky. And, of course, I love wandering around Fred Segal while dreaming of a starlet's bank account... I could go on and on.
When (and under what circumstances) did you realize you wanted to write
novels?
---I'm not sure I had that realization, really. I had always written, but, with the exception of a teen romance I wrote in high school, I'd never completed a novel. One summer a friend of mine, also a writer, sent her completed book out and got an agent and I thought, why have I never finished anything? (This might have had a lot to do with the doctoral dissertation I was also not finishing at the time.) So I decided that the next thing I started I would finish NO MATTER WHAT, and four hundred pages later, I had the first version of ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE. Once I sent it off to the woman who would become my agent (this was about a year later, for various reasons), I thought I should probably have a second novel. It wasn't at all clear to me that I could write a second novel. The same friend who inspired me to write ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE pretty much talked me into finishing that one, too. After HEAVY revision, it became EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL. Then there was nothing to do but write a third...
***
here's some more scoop:
Megan Crane’s debut novel, English as a Second Language, was a hit when it was published last year, garnering overwhelming buzz and now in its fourth printing. Kirkus called it “an engrossing, intelligent read never lacking in drama or humor,” and author Melissa Senate (The Solomon Sisters Wise Up) hailed it as a “very funny, from-the-heart debut.” Crane’s sophomore effort, EVERYONE ELSE’S GIRL (Warner Books Trade Paperback Original; October 21, 2005; $12.95), is a smart, sassy story about a quintessential “good girl” who discovers she may not be so good after all. EVERYONE ELSE’S GIRL is a welcome addition to the newly minted 5 SPOT imprint launching this fall.
***
Meredith McKay has gone to a lot of trouble to create the picture-perfect life for herself—far away from her troublesome family, thank you. When her father's car accident forces her back to her hometown, however, she soon discovers that there's no running away from family issues—there's only delaying the inevitable.
Can anyone sort out a lifetime of drama in one hot summer? Throw in a hot guy from back in high school with an axe to grind, a best friend turned enemy turned soon-to-be-sister-in-law, and, of course, the sometimes irritating/sometimes delightful members of her own family, and Meredith is on her way to figuring out that a trip through the past is the best way to move forward.
With one revelation after another coming to light, Meredith must reexamine all the things she’s ever believed, including the truth about herself. Could it be that she isn’t the picture-perfect good girl she always thought she was? EVERYONE ELSE’S GIRL is a funny, poignant reminder that a trip through the past is usually the best – and only – way to move forward.
***
Megan Crane, author of her debut novel English as a Second Language, is a New Jersey native who graduated from Vassar and received her MA and PhD in literature from the University of York in England. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
I asked Megan a few questions about her and her book ... check it out:
EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL is your second published novel, right? How did the
experience of writing your second book differ from your debut?
---My first novel just sort of poured out of me, over the course of about three weeks one summer. (It took much longer to edit, of course.) But there was no pouring with EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL. Every word was a struggle, every scene was a fight. I changed from first person to third person and then back again. It was like running uphill! But I hear most second novels are like that, so I'm just glad to be finished!
What was the inspiration for EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL?
---I wrote the bulk of EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL while involved in what I like to call an "extended move" from York, England to Los Angeles, which really means I spent six months hidden away in my parents' attic finishing up my dissertation, something I felt I was unlikely to do once I escaped west.
What, I thought at the time, was more likely to make a grown women revert to her absolute worst than an extended stay right smack in the middle of her adolescence? And from that thought came Meredith!
Your bio indicates you live in Los Angeles, which was my stomping ground
a few years ago. What's your favorite restaurant in the LA area? Your
favorite kitschy clothing store?
---I'm a little bit obsessed with the dates wrapped in bacon that they serve at A/O/C. SO delicious. But I'm not sure I have a favorite restaurant. I love to eat far too much to narrow it down. I feel the same way about clothes. I love all the little boutiques along Third Street (although I can't really afford them) and I have an unhealthy addiction to Lucky. And, of course, I love wandering around Fred Segal while dreaming of a starlet's bank account... I could go on and on.
When (and under what circumstances) did you realize you wanted to write
novels?
---I'm not sure I had that realization, really. I had always written, but, with the exception of a teen romance I wrote in high school, I'd never completed a novel. One summer a friend of mine, also a writer, sent her completed book out and got an agent and I thought, why have I never finished anything? (This might have had a lot to do with the doctoral dissertation I was also not finishing at the time.) So I decided that the next thing I started I would finish NO MATTER WHAT, and four hundred pages later, I had the first version of ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE. Once I sent it off to the woman who would become my agent (this was about a year later, for various reasons), I thought I should probably have a second novel. It wasn't at all clear to me that I could write a second novel. The same friend who inspired me to write ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE pretty much talked me into finishing that one, too. After HEAVY revision, it became EVERYONE ELSE'S GIRL. Then there was nothing to do but write a third...
***
here's some more scoop:
Megan Crane’s debut novel, English as a Second Language, was a hit when it was published last year, garnering overwhelming buzz and now in its fourth printing. Kirkus called it “an engrossing, intelligent read never lacking in drama or humor,” and author Melissa Senate (The Solomon Sisters Wise Up) hailed it as a “very funny, from-the-heart debut.” Crane’s sophomore effort, EVERYONE ELSE’S GIRL (Warner Books Trade Paperback Original; October 21, 2005; $12.95), is a smart, sassy story about a quintessential “good girl” who discovers she may not be so good after all. EVERYONE ELSE’S GIRL is a welcome addition to the newly minted 5 SPOT imprint launching this fall.
***
Meredith McKay has gone to a lot of trouble to create the picture-perfect life for herself—far away from her troublesome family, thank you. When her father's car accident forces her back to her hometown, however, she soon discovers that there's no running away from family issues—there's only delaying the inevitable.
Can anyone sort out a lifetime of drama in one hot summer? Throw in a hot guy from back in high school with an axe to grind, a best friend turned enemy turned soon-to-be-sister-in-law, and, of course, the sometimes irritating/sometimes delightful members of her own family, and Meredith is on her way to figuring out that a trip through the past is the best way to move forward.
With one revelation after another coming to light, Meredith must reexamine all the things she’s ever believed, including the truth about herself. Could it be that she isn’t the picture-perfect good girl she always thought she was? EVERYONE ELSE’S GIRL is a funny, poignant reminder that a trip through the past is usually the best – and only – way to move forward.
***
Megan Crane, author of her debut novel English as a Second Language, is a New Jersey native who graduated from Vassar and received her MA and PhD in literature from the University of York in England. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Large Print, Cool Cover, and New Computer!
So check out the cool cover for the large print edition of Carpe Demon : Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom:
I think it's a great cover!
And, yes, I've been absent from blogging. I've had computer issues (again!) but after my laptop crashed during the Fictionista Tour (on the first night, yet!) I high-tailed it to the Houston Galleria and bought an iBook. Now I'm a Mac girl, and so far couldn't be happier!
More soon!
I think it's a great cover!
And, yes, I've been absent from blogging. I've had computer issues (again!) but after my laptop crashed during the Fictionista Tour (on the first night, yet!) I high-tailed it to the Houston Galleria and bought an iBook. Now I'm a Mac girl, and so far couldn't be happier!
More soon!
