Thursday, June 28, 2007
(June 26, 2007) THEY CAME FROM BELOW DAY


Today is THEY CAME FROM BELOW DAY. (official release date) Feel free to celebrate with friends.













Check it out at Amazon:
www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765314231/ref=cm_arms_pdp_dp/105-9441918-8482007


Monday, June 25, 2007
(June 25, 2007) My Wall of Cool Covers


Packing everything up now. Wanted to take a picture of this wall before I took the stuff down. My approach to moving is to put all my most important documents in a big envelope, my most favorite books and CDs in a box, as much clothes as one suitcase will hold and throw everything else on the street (In NY at least, where it vanishes instantly). However, I am married now. So we actually have to think about things. And keep things. And not throw everything away. I hate that. Thinking, planning, keeping. Yuck.


Friday, June 22, 2007
(June 22, 2007) CAIO MANHATTAN


Moving to LA in a week. So I'm walking around New York as much as I can to say goodbye to my various haunts. Not that I won't see them again, but as anyone who's lived in NY will tell you stuff changes fast around here. Come back in two years you don't even know what street you're on.

So I walked down to Battery Park, where I read WALDEN one summer while I waited for my first novel GIRL to come out. There was a heatwave that summer but I was so excited the only way I could keep from going crazy was walk around the city all day, drinking Arizona Iced Tea.

Also checked out the Lower East Side where I sublet Jim Taylor's (SIDEWAYS screenwriter) apartment for the summer in '97. That was where I wrote a story called A STREET WITH NOTHING ON IT, which later appeared in JANE MAGAZINE. It was about an idealistic zine girl who comes to NY and gets a magazine gig. She eventually gets spit out by the corporate culture and goes back to Cleveland. I remember fully expecting to get spit out myself. But alas I survived.

But the place I keep ending up is Greenwich Village around NYU. This is not the greatest area in NY. Sixth Avenue has become totally skanky, and Washington Square Park is kind of gross. But this was where I lived when I first moved here. Oh my god, was I so blown away when I first got to NY!!! I was such a hick, just walking out the door was a cultural experience. I would walk around the park, or get a slice, or venture across Houston to Soho, which was in those days an old abandoned industrial area. It was supposedly an artist hang out but there was only one bar and mostly it was just abandoned warehouses and dark narrow streets some of which didn't even have actual pavement, they were just gravel and broken stones.

The other thing I remember from those days was the World Trade Center Towers. How they would loom above you like something out of a science fiction movie. Foggy winter nights we'd be walking around in our eighties Euro-overcoats. Ha ha! Bright Lights Big City!


Wednesday, June 13, 2007
(June 14, 2007) THE BRAVERY


Continuing my survey of World Cinema I was watching Rosselini's FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS (Italian, 1954?) the other day. St. Francis is a famous monk from the middle ages. He was kind of a rebel and when he was still a young man, he ran off with a bunch of followers and lived in the woods and totally tripped out on God. He was the original hippy I guess, or rockstar, if that's not too blasphemous to say. Everyone in his time thought he was crazy but the Pope called for him and he impressed the Pope a great deal, and thus became a legendary religious figure.

In the movie one of the scenes shows Francis meeting Sister Clair, who was the female equivalent of himself. She was the charismatic "leader" of her own little sect of nuns. When the two of them meet all the followers gather to watch. Every little flicker of expression between the two superstars is noted with great excitement by the followers. It is a big big day for everyone.

Having been a musician, I kept thinking this is what it's like when say, two great bands come together, and the two leaders of the two bands meet and everyone is like: oooh and ahhhh . . . "Bono is finally meeting Sinead OConnor" or whatever.

Like imagine the first time Joan Baez and Bob Dylan met, people must have gone apeshit. Or in our own time Conor Bright Eyes meeting someone like . . . Johanna Newsome or someone like that.

That was the other thing I was thinking all through the movie. The closest thing we have to Francis of Assisi is people like Conor Bright Eyes.

But what quality exactly is it that makes you one of these superstar people that everyone wants to follow?

So then a couple days later I was at a lecture about Buddhism and the woman was talking about this nun she knew, who was a "fully realized" teacher. This person was therefore, not like you or I, but a person who's elevated spiritual vibe was totally obvious the minute she entered the room. I thought: "Oh, like St. Francis."

So then I went up to the lecturer after and asked her: "What's the difference between a "fully realized" person and a normal person." To myself I thought the answer was going to be: "Charisma". Or "great talent". Or "a great calling".

She said: "They're more brave than the rest of us."

I like the idea that they're "brave". Because that seems right to me. Conor Bright Eyes is brave. And so was Bob Dylan. And so was Francis.

Here's a thing from Wikipedia about St. Francis of Assisi, it's a pretty amazing story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_of_Assisi


Monday, June 11, 2007
(June 10, 2007) West Coast/East Coast


Just read one of the stories of Miranda July in the New Yorker. Really loved it, as I have loved everything of hers I have read. Interesting too as I read her story I had a pang of regional pride. I think of Miranda as a very "West Coast" person and artist. I get the same feeling from the excellent fiction writer Jonathan Raymond, who's a fellow Portlander. Both have involvement in film stuff too: Miranda's movie YOU AND ME AND EVERYONE WE KNOW was a big indie success and Raymond's story "Old Joy" was turned into an amazingly slow and quiet but still totally absorbing film. Nothing like either of these books or films could ever come out of New York.

Why is Miranda July's writing west coast? I don't really know. There's a freedom in her stuff. There's a looseness. Same with Jonathan Raymond. A directness too. You don't have to justify what you're doing, you can just do it.

Moving to LA in a couple weeks, I am finding myself psyched to be going out west again. Not that LA will be anything but utterly foreign and weird to a Portland person, but it is still the west, and the desert, and an ocean you might actually go to. The west is still open. The traditions are still being formed. When someone like Miranda comes along, you can't immediately say what lineage she is in. She's not the new Lorri Moore, or the new Susan Minot. She's not the new anything. She's just new.

Anyway, check out her website:

www.noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com


Thursday, June 07, 2007
(June 7, 2007) TEEN DRINK NIGHTS


Did a reading last night at the Tompkins Sq. Public Library with some other Teen Writers. It was my first time reading from THEY CAME FROM BELOW. It was a little weird to do a girl's voice out but I got used to it. (I better get used to it as the re-issue of GIRL is due this fall.)

The reading itself was MCed by David Levithan, who also puts on a thing called "Teen Drinks Night". In fact the two are related. TDN, as we affectionately call it, has become a big part of the teen writing scene here in NY. You get to meet everyone, hear what's going on, get drunk, hang out. I can't imagine being away from it. I will feel so out of the loop!

This picture is not from last night, but from another one I did, since I didn't have my camera. David Levithan is the one with the tie. He's the juice of so much that goes on in the NY Teen writing scene. We all owe him a huge debt.

Last nights readers were all great. Here's the list of writers and their new books:

Claudia Gabel (In or Out)

Maureen Johnson (Girl at Sea)

Nico Medina (The Straight Road to Kylie)

Sarah Mlynowski (Spells and Sleeping Bags)

Jenny Pollack (Klepto)

Sara Shepard (Pretty Little Liars)

I kind of know everyone at this point (thanks to David) so it was a little sad to be doing my last one. But if you're in NY and you get a chance to catch one, they are a lot of fun.


Sunday, June 03, 2007
(June 3, 2007) SUNNY'S


On Sunday I did a reading at Sunny's in Red Hook. I have read there a lot over the years. My buddy Gabe Cohen runs it and it's my literary home away from home, and has been over the years.

The reading today was the 6th Anniversary of the Sunny's Reading so fifteen or so authors who have read there in the past were summoned to read a passage from an author who influenced them. I read some early journals of Henry Rollins. This was a little shocking to the assembled. . . . or so it seemed to me . . . but the audience, i think got the point. Henry's "annihilation man" rants are better representations of the current American adolescent mind than something like Holden Caulfield.



(june 2, 2007) party and reading


Had a party on Saturday Night at the house. Were surprised by the appearance of Portland literary impressario Kevin Sampsell and his GF Barbara and company. They were at BEA and sort of snuck over without telling us they were in town. Totally fun to see them. Kevin does Future Tense books in Portland which has had a storied place in the history of Northwest Literature. Publishing among other things, PLEASE DONT EAT THE FRESHMAN in it's early zine form.



(June 2, 2007)


good news today: Prom Anonymous was nominated as a Top Ten Teen Book of 2007 by the ALA. This is excellent news and is voted on by teens themselves. So it's a nice honor.



(June 1, 2007) FRIED IN NEW YORK


I just couldn't quite wake up this week. Jet Lag and the general let down after such a big event. "A once in a lifetime" situation people had said over and over. And so it was.

After all the film stuff, I was eager to get back in publishing mode. Talking to my agent and editor, trying to figure out what the next project is. The day after we got back I was up at like 4am, still on France time, fiddling with a recent draft of a book I already pretty much know isn't going to work. This happens though. It's hard to give up on stuff. You wake up in the middle of the night and you suddenly think: if I just change that one character, then that whole book will work! But after three or four hours you realize it is still not working and you just wasted a whole day . . .

Plus, my agents, editors etc. are not in the same time urgency mode I am. They're still psyched about the film and are not thinking three books ahead like I am.

So as this week has proceeded I've just tried to calm down, chill, get some sleep, relax. The book biz moves slow. Especially in the summer.