I love vampire stories. I also love seeing my name in a book. Combine the two and I get chills… and two bylines in one vampy collection.
(From the long awaited anthology Blood Sisters)
My brain is fried and it’s not even the end of the week yet.
Until I can string sentences together in some sort of coherent fashion, let me point you to someone who does it far better than I ever will. When the Emperor Was Divine is a novel about a Japanese American family’s experiences during World War II. Like thousands of real Japanese Americans of the 1940s, Julie Otsuka’s fictional, unnamed family is forced to leave their home and possessions behind in California when they are sent to an internment (concentration) camp in Utah. They are held there for over three years and released after the war ends, but their war with identity and belonging is only just beginning.
The subject matter isn’t pretty, but Otsuka’s writing is poignant, lyrical and thought-provoking. This is a lean little novel (I read it in two hours last night), reminiscent of Hemingway in her spare use of details and incredible narrative voice. I recommend it.
There was an envelope from my agent in the mail the other day. I was rather surprised to see her handwriting and my heart jumped a little bit. Back in the day when I was writing and submitting novels, envelopes from my agent meant a couple of things: a revision letter from an editor or a royalty check from my one book sale. My heart would do this little flutter every time I saw an envelope from my agent, even though I almost always knew the contents already because she’d either called or e-mailed to tell me to expect a revision letter or a check (or just a financial statement about my book).
This time, I had no idea what to expect. My agent doesn’t represent my short fiction and it’s been quite some time (4 years?) since I’ve submitted a novel to any publisher. It’s been even longer since my book sale (8 years) and I’ve long since been paid for even the most obscure foreign sales, so I couldn’t imagine what the contents of the envelope could be. There are a couple of manuscripts that made the rounds so many times it’s possible some editor who was still in high school when I submitted it might have discovered it on a shelf somewhere and decided to publish it. I can hope, right?
But no, it wasn’t a letter to tell me I’d sold a long-lost book. It was a royalty check for, apparently, a reprint sale of my book to France. Books occasionally get picked up for foreign reprints, though generally not this long after the original publication. Still, a sale is always nice, even if it’s a small sale. And I mean very small. $3.41, to be exact. Granted, there was some accounting thingy on there noting that the actual sale was a little over thirty bucks, but due to some negative number (perhaps I was overpaid for another foreign sale? I can hardly remember, as it’s been several years since I received a royalty check), once all was said and done, my check was for $3.41. Woo. I should celebrate! Perhaps I’ll buy a… hmm… tall iced mocha from Starbucks. Sorry, I can’t treat anyone this time, but the outstanding payments for my anthology sales add up to about two hundred times that, so I could buy dinner for a few of you if you don’t mind waiting until the end of summer when I will (hopefully) see most of that money.
My little windfall reminded me of how nice it is to get royalty checks in the mail. I think I need to spend my summer break doing what I can to generate some more of those. After I finish this crazy summer semester, of course.
--You’ve seen naked pictures of your editor(s).
--You’re three degrees of separation from any porn star.
--A straight guy tells you about sitting on the lap of a lesbian Santa and you get excited about the gender-bending implications.
--A cute, gay bartender flirts with your straight, male, police officer friend and you decide to write a story about it.
--You get annoyed at the Overstock.com commercial because of their use of the letter “O” for anything other than “orgasm.”
--You watch The L-Word and think, “Shane with a strap-on. Now that’s inspiring!”
--You can deduct all sorts of “adult” things on your taxes, but you don’t because you’re afraid you’ll get audited.
--You think someone should write an empowering, pro-sex version of The Vagina Monologues-- and you contemplate being the one to do it.
--You look at porn on the internet and call it “research.”
--You get weird “fan mail” with requests for “personal” stories about yourself and your “fan.” (Yes, ewww...)
--You get invitations to sex parties. (Yes, really.)
--You know several people who’ve appeared on HBO’s Real Sex. You’ve even received Christmas cards from a couple of them.
--When someone asks what you write, you contemplate their relationship to you and their susceptibility to a heart attack before you tell them the truth.
--You’re not the least bit embarrassed to cash a check with the word “EROTICA” written in big letters in the memo section.
--You have no problem writing explicit erotic scenes while sitting in the Barnes and Noble Bookstore Cafe surrounded by mothers with toddlers.
--You’ve gotten used to personal questions about your own sexuality and sex life from people who would be offended if you asked the same of them.
--You no longer feel the need to defend what you write because you know writing about sex is important and meaningful and educational and fun.
I’m so tired and all I want to do is sleep. It’s been my experience that this kind of exhaustion is a sign of depression. Not surprisingly, I’m enjoying Poe’s darkness these days-- it matches my own bleak soul. Not to worry, I’ll snap out of it. Poe, however, is forever entombed in his mournful melancholy.
A Dream
In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream- that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light, thro’ storm and night,
So trembled from afar-
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth’s day-star?
--Edgar Allen Poe (1827)
What’s it all about?
Life. Love. Writing. Editing. Sex. Books. Romance. Movies. Friendship. Photography. Teaching. Coffee. (Lots of coffee.) Travel. Feminism. Academia. Insomnia. Memories. Experiences. Rants. Raves. Reviews. Babies. Pregnancy. Motherhood. Insanity. Musings of an insomniac writer. Want to know more?
