Learning Smarts

Last weekend I attended the inaugural Indie Lit Summit in DC, sponsored by the moguls and mavens of Barrelhouse and The Lit Pub, and facilitated—with charm and efficiency—by B’s poetry editor Dan Brady. The summit is a regional thing where literary editors and publishers convene to discuss the problems and opportunities of the day; in our case, the breakout sessions we decided on were marketing, readings venues, and community building. I should stop writing “we,” though. I’m pretty sure I was the only non-publisher/editor in the room, and I tried very hard not to wade into discussions with ideas like, “Let’s all buy a beach house together and smoke opium and have barbecue party-readings!”

It was an eye-opening, full day of discussions, kicked off with a keynote from Andy Hunter of Electric Literature—and here I should confess that I have ignored EL ever since I first heard about them and that they paid writers $1000 per short story. I’m either a bolshie asshole or I think boutique short fiction is a whitefolks concern (those positions might be the same), but Hunter was pretty convincing about the commercial possibilities of new fiction + innovation. I should also remind you that I believe everything that anyone tells me at the time they are telling me it. One of the points he made was that Rick Moody’s twitter based story for Electric Literature in 2009 was a huge success, despite the immediate backlash from mainstream concerns. You can read the argument here, but the upshot was 1) the story was good, and 2) the delivery resulted in a dramatic (like 10X) increase in followers and subscriptions for EL.

By the end of the day the Indie Lit Summit came up with some very exciting ideas that I probably shouldn’t go into right now, but in general it felt like the smartest-guy-in-the-room from several rooms all ended up in the same one at once: 826DC, appropriately enough.

Several things became really clear as we attempted to build a list of reading spaces that already exist in the DC/Baltimore area:

1) There are lots of places to read. Yay!
2) If you write poetry and nonfiction. Oh.
3) Not many are bookstores. Dang.

So let’s say your debut novel is coming out in October, and your publisher is counting on your hometown events to be big draws. You may be screwed, lady.

Learning highlight: If you skip out on the last minutes of the Marketing & Publicity session to have frozen yogurt with gummi bear mix-ins with your fairy-princess costumed gosh-daughter you’ll miss out on something important about Smashwords.

The Big Secret

Right now my new computer is being shipped from Shanghai, which means that by July 21 or thereabouts I will begin writing my next novel. It's all rolling around in my head--set in Death Valley 2005 during the big bloom and there was enough water in Lake Manley to float a kayak. It's going to be a treasure hunt story with a quirky heroine who inherits a mystery house from a cowboy actor.I can't wait to get started.

I don't do MFA bashing; I have one myself, and I'm a firm believer in the fact that you need to work hard and develop to make those 2-3 years mean something. There are too many folks going into programs expecting to have The Big Secret revealed to them at last, and they slip into a passive mode, almost a regression. Well here it is, this is what nobody is willing to tell you but me: writing novels is a blast. writing short stories is kind of a pain. In MFA programs you'll be writing lots of short stories, and it's gonna hurt.

I found out from my publisher that he was nervous about asking me to do so many significant revisions to Death Wishing because he was sure I couldn't do them. Every other time they'd asked a writer to re-write significantly, it had ended in failure. In fact, it's Ig's unofficial policy to reject any book that needs revisions. But they really wanted this book to be what it is now. End of inspirational story

But here's the pervy part. When they said "change all this, but we might not like how you do it anyway" I was delighted. I got to write the book again.

Writing books is fun. I've known that since I was a kiddo.

Not sure what I'm getting at here. I wish my computer would hurry itself up and get here.

updates

Let's seeeeee. Just sent back galley corrections to the publisher. Working on website. Got my picture taken. All these have bw versions as well, but so far my 3 yr old publicity manager says, "I like the pink one!" The pics with the meerkats statuette are in my office (hence the FROM HELL graphic novel in the back). The Dylan/bird/shadowbox pics were taken in poets Eric Pankey's/Jennifer Atkinson's office. I'm pretty sure the shadowbox was made by my dear friend Tara, the inspiration behind this very short story. My beautiful mother made the necklaces. The photos were taken by artist Jennifer Stone, who remains the only person able to take a non-freakish looking picture of me.

Uncanny Valley's developing catalogue of the strange

So Mike Meginnis' and Tracy Bowling's Uncanny Valley Press now has three web releases, and I think we can see a bit of a pattern developing.

Curio, my 21 little ghost stories

Sutherland Douglass' Peeping Tom 'Rockefeller', an excerpt from a fictional psycho-sexual memoir of 'Clark Rockefeller'

Gabriel Blackwell's Neverland, a satirical exhibition from the infamous Discovery Institute, those champions of intelligent design.

I don't know what's happening with the proposed print version of Uncanny Valley Magazine, but as curators of online weird, I think Mike and Tracy are doing a thrilling job. I am incredibly pleased to be a part of whatever their vision seems to entail.

The Creative Response

So we're sort of going nuts here on Planet Lala, preparing mentally for a book tour that's gonna have us zig-zagging the nation. I say mentally, because nothing concrete is being achieved, except on Mom's end. She's making necklaces for me to read at all the events. She made everything on this table, more than half of which were strung specifically for the tour, and there's another 5 or so coming. Her designs are growing more dramatic all the time.

I have no clothes, though. I'll have to wait until near the end of summer, when I hope I'll be a size smaller.

The second pic I call "Charli's Choice," and yes, that is a Snug Harbor Souvenir Typhoon go-cup near the bottom.

Advance Uncorrected Proofs arrived today!

280 pages--40 more than expected. Can't wait to read it.

But surely not in this order . . .

New Orleans
Seattle
Brooklyn
Boston
Providence
Cleveland
Chicago
DC
Philly
Memphis
Denver
San Francisco
Baton Rouge

De-sentiment

Having a great couple of days here with a new novel idea sort of developing geometrically--a kooky desert romance + treasure hunt, maybe sorta like a 60s movie--and Dean says the concept is a winner, but I have to get my notes on the dry-erase board asap.

Thing is, I don't want to erase the board because it has my Death-Wishing notes on it (once showcased at the defunct Hit and Run blog). I'm so un-sentimental about physical stuff, but this board--I can't do it. And Dean says it's a sign of profligate madness to buy a second board. Sigh.

In other news, Death-Wishing just popped up on a British distribution site with a slightly different and spoiler-y plot description. The more I look at book jacket summaries, the less I understand them.

How to, by Charli

Louisiana Stories

My review of Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt and The City of The Dead went live late last night on Art Taylor's blog, Art & Literature: the Literary Blog of Raleigh's Metro Magazine, and today he interviewed me about Death Wishing for our department newsletter. I just finished a writing up a Q&A to go out with review copies, and I guess I'm relieved that the questions Art asked me were pretty close to the ones I asked myself. Like, "Why New Orleans?"Because that's where I want to be.

Of course the reason Art gave me the Gran book to review was because of the NO connection, and Claire is a wonderful, original book, and I hope there will be a Claire DeWitt series. Gran's New Orleans is a scarier place than my new Orleans, but we both ended up with major characters named Vic. Weird.

Here's an ad we threw together--might appear in the latest issue of Gargoyle if we got it to the editor on time:

back to work

today is the last day of vacation--we went to ocracoke last week, and both of us got colds. I'm still coughing, making really ugly noises in my chest. oh well, seeing as I've not had a cold since Nov 2009, I think I got off easy. We went out to a Louisiana music fest thing today, headlined by Trombone Shorty. Chances of him being referenced in tonight's ep of Treme, about 70%. "Show me something beautiful . . ."

Apparently the book galleys are going out to potential reviewers this week. As part of the package I was asked to write up a Q&A, and that was tough, but I think I'm happy with the result. I wish it was funnier, tho. It's all about the gags, as far as I'm concerned. Screw literature.

We're now turning our attentions to making my big girl's website. I'm really loving Ethel Rohan's page as well as the new Lit Pub deal. I'm pretty sure I want something super simple and clean, at least to start with. But maybe that urge is at odds with having a site that people find interesting . . .

also? my vacation was 2 weeks long, and I had plenty of net access. two things I didn't do--answer work email or check htmlgiant. weird.

Can I catch a break?

How about if plot is just time?

shaping up

So here at Mason, May 21 is Graduation Day. This year that's also Judgment Day. I don't remember Judgment Day from last year, was there a lot of traffic?

I've known it for a while, but I'll be debuting Death Wishing at the Fall for the Book festival in September, somewhat ahead of the official release date of October 11.

Then at the end of October, I've been invited to the Louisiana Book Festival, to be held in Baton Rouge.






November 9 will be the City Lights reading.


I've got about four and a half toes in the door of the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival for 2012. The Louisiana love comes courtesy of my friend and mentor, Darrell Bourque, who is just concluding his tenure as the Louisiana Poet Laureate. It also comes from Dorothy Allison, who blurbed the book and has been supporting my fiction for a while. They love her down in LA. I"m super excited about doing festivals, and the people who run them are so damn sweet.


So those are massive gigs, right?

Curio, reviewed by Ethel Rohan

Early this week Ethel Rohan posted a beautiful review of Curio on her blog. I am very grateful for her kind words and careful read, but also for her honesty concerning her reluctance to read the collection. She was worried that the stories included wouldn't be "storied" enough, an anxiety I share about many contemporary collections. It's definitely true that along with a few conventional narratives, Curio includes some pieces that as stand alone might seem fragmentary or even slight, but that's why I was so eager to get the collection out there. The pieces were written with dependency and accumulation in mind.

As a result of Ethel's kind attention, it looks like a new batch of folks have visited Curio.I hope they enjoy it.

Wigleaf Top 50 izzup!

So my Wigleaf Top 50 news is complicated:

1) I've got two stories on the long shortlist: "The Brewsters" & "Last Seen Leaving," which appeared in Moon Milk Review and Smokelong, respectively, and are also collected in Curio.

2)Next year I will be on the Top 50 team, along with Ravi Mangla and Greg Gerke, and the new guest ed. (I know who it is, but it doesn't look like Scott has made a formal announcement yet). Being part of the team means that I have been handed a massive list of sites to follow and pick through.

3) Though I didn't make the Top 50 this year, stories I selected for Everyday Genius and helped select for Prick of the Spindle did:

Roxane Gay's "Boys in Drag"

Barry Graham's "13 ways of looking at a roadtrip"

Simon Smith's "Things I've Eaten That I'm Not Proud Of"

Valerie Vogrin's "Apologies"

4) (takes big breath) Plus others I selected/helped select made the long list:

Erin Fitzgerald's "At Grayfield Keep"

Jen Michalski's "The Turn of Things"

John Minichillo's "Working Halloween for Christmas Money"

Cami Park's "When You Heard"

Congratulations everyone--it was a pleasure working with you!

Well alrighty. Galleys ahoy

Looks like the publisher approves the revisions, has completed the line edit, and is rushing the copy off to the galley printers by the weekend. I get passed by this go-round because we're a tad behind schedule, but that's fine with me. There'll still be time to work with the galleys.

Actually, they really liked the revisions, to the point of using four exclamation points to say so, and this makes me very happy.

Keep an eye out for Donna D. Vittucci's cameo appearance as a very friendly French Quarter waitress.

Hope no one was expecting me to get any work done this weekend

Because I may be getting the pre-lim galley copy this weekend. To be sent on to the galley printers next weekend.

Gulp

Plus, we just started a weight loss program. Mainly in preparation for the book tour. How doomed are we?

The main character of Death Wishing is a guy who is trying to lose weight in New Orleans.

beelines & pinballs

Looking forward to a weekend at the cabin where I don't have to talk to anyone but Dean. I'm still talk-tired from last weekend's admissions event where not only were we swamped by potential English majors and their fams, but engineering and business and everyone else, because we're offering a new writing and rhetoric minor. They'd beeline to the communications table then pinball over to us--I sure did get the impression our program looked hot.

Then there was the 17 year old who stopped by to show us her new book (quite pretty) and to let us know she's convinced the campus B&N to stock it. I hope she was 17. She mighta been 16.

Last weekend was also Conversations & Connections weekend. It was very cool, and sort of by design an indie-first event. I talked to Dave Housley about it at Plumb, and Rae Bryant did a great break down over at the Patasola Press [Caper Books] site.

All the sessions I attended tended to come back to addressing the meaningful use of social media, or meaningful promotion in general. Interesting as hell, and a philosphy we should see in action, soon--these concerns are at the heart of The Lit Pub, LLC enterprise to be formally launched late spring/early summer.

Death Wishing listed on Amazon.

So my friend's mom asked her to check out Amazon to see if my book was listed yet, and it was so she posted it to Facebook. Which is how I found out.

Yes, that is THE Dorothy Allison blurbing me.

I'm buzzy and my ears are hot.

The cover art is awesome, check out the wee little rats in the background.

Purring

Writer Tim Dicks said a couple sweet things about Curio in an interview over at Flash Fiction Chronicles. But he also talks about writing flash every day, which should drive you over to his blog where you'll see his "Story every Day" project unfolding. Really interesting stuff, and it looks like he's up to #160.

People should be talking about this project. I'll try to get to work on that.

Over at Plumb, my latest post is about trippy pinball machines. Yes, I left off Orbitor1 and Cirqus Voltaire. But those are a little on-the-nosey, aren't they?

Still not sure what Plumb's identity is. It's fun to write for, but there's a lotta WHITE DUDES on staff, and they like WHITE DUDE stuff. It's not clear where I fit in, tone-wise.