Is this for real?

According to the tickets/pass site for the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, I'll be on this panel:

Women to Watch: Bright new talents Jesmyn Ward (Salvage the Bones), Ellen Baker (I Gave My Heart to Know This), Laura Ellen Scott (Death Wishing), and Jessica Maria Tuccelli (Glow) will discuss their latest works and their rise in the literary world.

That's right. Jesmyn Ward. Salvage the Bones. National Book Award.

Wonder if this will hold?

Giveaway at Goodreads--in time for for Solstice Day!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Death Wishing

by Laura Ellen Scott

Giveaway ends December 15, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Taking a breather

The Barrelhouse party at The Black Squirrel was terrific, and Amber Sparks was amazing. The room was nice and full, the beer flowed, etc etc. Rather than read the intro again, I read three very short stories that came from the novel: "Do you know what it means to miss"/Juked, "Karaoke People are Happy People"/Storyglossia, and "The Dusty Bastards"/JMWW.

But now no more travel until mid December. What to do, what to do? Perhaps I should so some of that "grading" I hear everyone buzzing about. Sounds fun. Oh, and I could get caught up on the wigleaf reading.

On the Weather search page my auto-fill spits out Brooklyn, Seattle, San Francisco, Baton Rouge, Baltimore, New Orleans. Sweet. It's almost like I had a life for a couple of weeks there.

 me, robin, batman

second guessing

BIG Week

So this week was/continues to be a whopper, starting off with a packed reading at Brooklyn's Greenlight Books, which was a semi-sloshy hoot with my publisher providing home-made hurricanes and Zapp's potato chips. Erin Fitzgerald trekked out to provide moral support and logistics, but I was reading on my own, no matter what this chalk and slate promised:

I stayed on the 19th floor of a Holiday Inn in Times Square. Check out the enchanting view:

Then last night was another jam-packed event at One More Page Books & More, a shop that sells books, wine & chocolate. Most of the people at the event were folks I know, but that didn't stop them from buying bags full of stuff.  Here's what happened when I asked how many of them were at the store for the first time. The manager was pleased:

Tonight, it's a Barrelhouse hosted "Evening of Death with Laura Ellen Scott and Amber Sparks" at the fabulous Black Squirrel in Adams Morgan. Really looking forward to it.

After tonight, nothing booked until December 13. I'm really okay with that.

3 fab things

1) The provost has approved my promotion to Term Full Professor and the reappointment of my contract for five more years, effective August 2012. So I'm booked until 2017.

2) An amazing, a wee-bit spoiler-y review of Death Wishing  at David Allen Barker's excellent blog.

3) My contribution to The Story, So Far feature at The Northville Review.  (Yeah, I don't know what I'm talking about there, either)

Writing Tip

When writing fiction, try to make it up.

Book tour adjustments, drama

Back from readings in San Francisco (City Lights)  and Seattle (Elliott Bay), only to learn that the author with whom I had been partnered is unable to continue with our schedule and will not be attending any of this week's events (Brooklyn, Providence, Arlington VA, & DC).  As the Providence stop was something he had arranged with friends, that won't be happening now. However, we're hoping that the other readings go forward with modifications. So it hasn't gone off the rails or all pear-shaped--at least not yet.

While the Elliott Bay reading was not nearly as well attended as the one at City Lights, both events were really positive experiences. In addition to meeting up with old friends at both readings, I also hooked up with writers Ethel Rohan, Lauren Becker, and Matthew Simmons (who has a pinball finder app on his smart phone). 

West Coast Beckons, plus mentions and reviews

Off to San Francisco's City Lights for a reading Wednesday the 9th, and then to Seattle's Elliot Bay Book Company for a reading on Friday, the 11th. Both with start at 7pm. Love this mention about the Seattle reading: "Scott's Death Wishing is about a world in which wishing actually does something for a frickin' change." I've never been out to these parts of the country, so forgive my ignorance, but I have two questions: 1) They don't really call it "Frisco," right? And 2) Will Seattle folk get upset because I can't stop humming the opening theme to Here Come the Brides? I was a huge Bobby Sherman fan, thought David Cassidy was sleazy.

Jen Michalski wrote some gorgeous thoughts about Death Wishing over at her blog last week:  "With the commercial fiction market often saturated with sameness, I'm always excited when I read something so completely bizarre and engrossing."

I stumbled over a very nice review by Diane Pinckley over at Nola.com--she wasn't completely convinced by the ending, but she did dub Death wishing a "fun fantasy captures the feel of this unique city."

Finally, the relentless Tara Laskowski interviewed me at Art and Literature. It was big fun.

The Other Kind of Promotion

A week ago I was in a room in what has been called the most haunted hotel in New Orleans, getting ready to out to a restaurant where later we'd disagree about the steak I'd ordered; it was either carved from God's back or merely "cooked in fuck" (Dean's theory). But before that, I got a call from one of my colleagues telling me that the department had met that day and unanimously voted to recommend me for promotion from Associate to Full Professor status. The decision is in the Dean's hands now, and I'll let you know what happens. I've been in my job since 1993, ineligible for tenure-line at Mason because I got my MFA there. So yeah, looks like I'm about to hit a plexi-glass ceiling, and I'm pretty happy about that. My department has always been pretty noisy about respecting my publishing activities along with all the other things I do. I know not everyone is as fortunate.