In Which My Mother Blurbs TRIP THROUGH YOUR WIRES via text message

What I love about this endorsement:

1.) That it is from my mother.

2.) That she would like to keep reading but must pause. Because chores.

3.) That Mom is reppin' that Midwestern work ethic.

4.) That this took place on my birthday.

5.) That the conversation quickly and necessarily shifts to pizza.

Finished paperbacks!

This is what the "finished paperback" of TRIP THROUGH YOUR WIRES looks like. The official release date is March 17, St. Patrick's Day. Events surrounding the book can be found at my website.

Photo op: I'd set it on the dining room table for better lighting, and saw our Mexico map placemat was nearby. Perfect. The capital city of Guanajuato on the left, and "United States Citizens Visiting Mexico" at the top: I've begun to think of my characters as actual U.S. citizens and Mexican citizens. They feel real to me. 

The little spot of spaghetti sauce on the bottom margin of the map lends an air of authenticity to the semi-controlled chaos of our house.

Reading @ The Vonnegut Library tonight

This is my second month in a row reading at The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in downtown Indy. Going to angle to become their cabaret reader. Maybe the others in tonight's lineup -- James Figy, Georgia Arnett, David Blomenberg, and Justin Heckert -- would be willing to join me. December's wide open, once the papers get graded and gifts get bought and fruitcakes get baked. Does one bake a fruitcake? I've never known.

The reading happens at 6 p.m. It's called Beyond Words. Planned and coordinated by UIndy students, who clearly rock the house. They made this poster:

A moment from my last reading at the Vonnegut, a gorgeous space:

Not part of the Twitter caption: "...points with her freakishly long finger..." It's like a Swiffer duster extender and twice as crooked. #VballMiddleBlocker4Lyfe

I'm planning to read from my debut novel, TRIP THROUGH YOUR WIRES, out in February from Engine Books. The advance review copies are out, so for the first time, I'll be reading from an actual book instead of manuscript pages.

If you're a reviewer and would like an ARC, by the way, you can contact me or Victoria Barrett at Engine Books. Here are the books from another angle:

Indy Author Fair

If you're reading this on Friday, the Indy Author Fair is tomorrow, Oct. 25, and I'll be leading a session on Blogging for Writers, which is a thing I'm doing right now, blogging, though only for a moment. We're closing on two houses and moving this weekend and life is all about boxes.

I dream of boxes. These are, admittedly, boring dreams, but it's an adrenaline rush to score free ones. To retail and grocery stores I go, asking and asking. Sometimes they want to keep the boxes for themselves, which is understandable. I mean, maybe they are moving. Or hoarding magazines, as I've apparently been doing, unintentionally, over the last ten years. Bye bye, magazines. Thanks for hanging out in the basement for a decade.

 

If you're reading this on Saturday, perhaps you're already at the event at the gorgeous Central Library, a place I haven't visited in awhile. Remember the last Author Fair I attended? Let's hope for better health this year. Maybe you're even in my session, 1:45-3:15 p.m., and we're in the middle of talking about why writers might want to blog, what sort of platform to choose, how to connect with others, finding your material, audience, and scads of other things.

Scads: that's a word you don't hear every day. When I am unpacked, I'm going to hunt down the etymology of that word. Beyond Wikipedia, I mean. Like Oxford English Dictionary cross referencing. I love being a word nerd.

Maybe you're reading this on Sunday, or beyond, and the event is over. Where are you? What are you doing? I imagine that I am surrounded by boxes just like now except in a different house. At the old place, the dust bunnies have been swept and the doors have been locked and the keys handed over. The walls are bare of the art we spent years arranging and rearranging, taken down in an hour.

The empty house would echo if anyone were inside. But it won't be us. We'll be walking through a different door.

Pod(cast) People

New to the world of recording podcasts, I showed up to the Indiana Writers Center last Thursday with a bottle of water, a notebook, and little else. Brad King, of The Geeky Press and The Downtown Writers Jam, took care of the rest. Microphones upon microphones. A sound board that lit up like Christmas whenever we spoke. I'm a stereo geek, so this was super cool to me.

In the podcast, we spend more than an hour chatting about books we loved growing up, what shapes us as writers, and much, much more. He asks great questions about my novel, TRIP THROUGH YOUR WIRES, out in early 2015. As usual, I bring up other writers and mangle a quote or two and laugh about being a mangler. We also talk about fakers -- mayhaps I had a tendency to be a faker as a child -- and being an authentic person in an age of online representation. One of my fave topics. Pixels and all that. 

Listen to our conversation here.

Were I savvy like Brad, I would embed the podcast. Alas, I am not savvy like Brad. But perhaps someday he will teach me. I think he's read this blog. See the part of the podcast in which we joke about light stalking, which is one element of the novel and also something most humans engage in, while online.

Late last night (Sunday night, it should be noted), my editor, Victoria Barrett, sent me the galley for TRIP THROUGH YOUR WIRES. She has long told me that looking at the copyright page is when the novel really feels official. She's right.

Seven lines in seven minutes

1. My oldest son turned four yesterday, and his birthday party was the last big event we'll have in the house where we have lived for ten years.

2. We listen to music in the morning, and he and his younger brother have three favorite tracks on the new Counting Crows album, "Somewhere Under Wonderland": Earthquake Driver, Scarecrow, and Elvis Went to Hollywood.

3. "Is Elvis a he or a she?" asked the older boy.

4. On Mondays, I miss them the most.

5. On rainy Mondays, daycare dropoff is dreary; I am reminded that Tuesday is almost always better, no matter the weather.

6.  When my husband and I bought this house, we thought it was a little small but still workable for the two of us.

7. Now there are four of us, and we're moving to a bigger space; I will always remember how cozy we are in this little bungalow, and how I can hear them calling, from any room in the house, "Mom?"

Writer Night with Second Story

 Saturday, 9/13, 7 p.m. Looking forward to reading with the crew pictured above. Free snacks! Beer & wine for sale. Proceeds/donations go to Second Story, a great organization in Indy.

You will want to go. I will see you there. 1043 Virginia Ave., Fountain Square, which is home to the duckpin bowling alley where I celebrated my 16th birthday and my wedding rehearsal after-party. (Many years apart, should it need to be said.)

My Writing Process blog tour

Thanks so much to the wonderful Sarah Yaw, who asked me to be part of the My Writing Process blog tour. Her debut novel, YOU ARE FREE TO GO, will be released by Engine Books* in September. Sarah lives in Central New York, where I lived for a decade. Over email, we discovered that we have a CNY friend in common. His name is Greg. If you're reading this, Greg, Hello!  
It's great to have an excuse to think about the writing process. I struggle with mine often, and I appreciate reading about how others go about their own work. And reflecting on process, as I so often tell my students, can be a means of understanding the work in a new way. Time to practice what I preach. 

Up next week are Andrew Scott and Barbara Shoup (see below for their bios). If you're a participant in this blog tour, I'm happy to link to your post here or in the comments. 

Away we go...

1) What are you working on? 

I'm in a waiting period on two projects: the release of my first novel, TRIP THROUGH YOUR WIRES, by Engine Books in Feb. 2015, and I've been querying agents for my YA novel, LAST SEASON. So in the interim, I've been revisiting short stories, working on revising them to put together as a collection. I've been writing very short pieces of fiction and some poetry, practicing compactness. (And, to be honest, the form appeals because I'm working within short stretches of time.) My back-burner project is a new novel; I've completed a first draft and plan to work on the second draft in the fall. I'm probably another full draft away from talking much about it. (See Question 4.)  

2) How does your work differ from others of its genre? 

It took me awhile to learn that my writing shouldn't necessarily fit into a category -- literary, commercial, mystery, or fill-in-the-blank. If it does, fine. But when I try to write toward a particular genre, then I'm not being true to the story and where it leads me. TRIP THROUGH YOUR WIRES could be thought of as literary, commercial, a mystery. But it's not truly a mystery novel -- only a mystery in that we can think that we know a person, when in fact they are a mystery to us. Often, we are a mystery to ourselves. Those are the kinds of books I like and strive to write: ones that may defy conventions, even as they pay close attention to language and character.     

3) Why do you write what you do? 

I write about what sticks in my mind and doesn't easily fade. The things I wonder about and want to know more about. Big questions or little ones that I don't have answers to -- I write toward those answers, even if I never find them. Sometimes I write because an image lurks in my consciousness and my subconsciousness needs to process it. I've always been fascinated by reading stories, and as I've gotten older, I've become fascinated about why we tell stories in the first place. It's such a common act of humanity, the kind of thing that truly binds us together. The need to understand our own experiences by describing what those experiences are like. And only we can tell others what the view is like through our particular windshield, as it were. I want to share my view. And when I read I want to look through other windshields.  

4) How does your writing process work?

Slow-fast-slow, alone-collaborate-alone. I start in semi-isolation, feeling out a story by taking notes, jotting ideas, writing lines and sketches and scenes. Then I write in big bursts and get the thing down relatively quickly. Then I revise, slowly, sometimes over the course of years. I tend not to talk about what I'm working on until I have a pretty solid draft finished. Keeping the story's energy close to me in the initial drafts has been useful, though I always want and need feedback later. But early on, letting the story sink in and grow and become whatever it's supposed to be is a necessary part of my process. I think it's possible to get too much input too soon, and instead of listening to the story, you're listening to feedback that could potentially derail it. I'm talking early-early. Once I'm a couple drafts in, I find it almost impossible to revise without feedback from trusted readers. Other people can see your work objectively, whereas you cannot. I say you, but I mean I. And you. We two.  

Coming up next week, these wonderful Indianapolis-based writers:  

Andrew Scott is the author of Naked Summer, a story collection, and the editor of 24 Bar Blues: Two Dozen Tales of Bars, Booze, and the Blues. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Esquire, Ninth Letter, The Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, Glimmer Train Stories, The Writer’s Chronicle, and other outlets. He is an editor at Engine Books and Lacewing Books.

Barbara Shoup is the author seven novels, including four for young adults, and the co-author of Novel Ideas: Contemporary Authors Share the Creative Process and Story Matters. She is the Executive Director of the Indiana Writers Center. A new YA novel, Looking for Jack Kerouac, is forthcoming from Lacewing Books in August, 2014.

*Engine Books seeks support for its Big Dream. Love literature? Want to see more great books in the world? Check it out and consider donating.  

This is it

The apocalypse, that is. In several steps:

The sky tonight was not quite a tornado sky but a butter yellow plus haze (butter smoldering in a pan, smoking but not burnt), along with pink and purple and navy blue. You are supposed to take pictures of these things to post and later to send to local news outlets who need footage, especially if it IS a tornado or pre-tornado and not just murky butter-sky. Instead I stood on the sidewalk and turned 360 degrees to take in the whole sky and wondered if the man driving by in the Jeep with tinted windows was someone I knew, wondering why I was spinning in a circle.

Today I was compelled to get a password reminder so I could log on to MYSPACE, which is a post-apocalyptic scene replete with desert and industrial smog. Some of you were there, un(re)touched since 2007, filterless, showing your eternal love of Death Cab for Cutie. I'm right there with you. I remembered when my profile photo was taken: we'd gone to the Purdue campus for a day trip to take our minds off of fertility treatments. We drank root beer floats at Triple XXX and walked through air so humid you could practically see the water droplets. We were about a week away from finding out those treatments didn't work, that I wasn't pregnant. The day the photo was taken was the same day Michael Jackson died. (Context clue to signal late June 2009, specific date I cannot recall and do not feel like researching, because that was not my particular apocalypse.) I still have the purple tank top I wore in the picture, but not the brown one layered underneath. I ought to delete the profile but it stands like a monument, and history exists whether we delete it or not.

Now we have two kids, almost 4 and almost 2. The things you think will sink you wind up not, sometimes. Now it is the day-to-day. The stress and hustle. The full moon behavior when there isn't a full moon at all. I could tell you stories, but I hesitate: these are their stories, not mine. My desire to protect is stronger than my desire to disclose. I will say that the oldest has taken to doing a very funny routine in which he imitates my husband and me telling a story in which we imitate the baby's speech and actions. We told this story several times recently to several people, and Big Brother is Watching. Hears all, sees all. Takeaway from the comedy routine: my husband and I say "like" a lot. Like, a lot. Now we can tell a story about our son imitating us imitating his brother. And then he can tell the story. Let the circle be unbroken. 

Minor apocalypse: a contractor's coming by tomorrow during a specific window. I've received a reminder message EVERY DAY for a week about this appointment, this window. Tonight the phone rang. I joked that it was the company, thinking, No. It is not really the company, not again. But yes. One last appointment reminder. Unless I get another one tomorrow morning. Unless the world ends before then, on account of the burning butter sky.

This is it:

Hedgehogs & Foxes

The overtired 3.75 yr. old is unexpectedly napping! At the same time as little bro, 22 months old this week! I am so shocked by this turn of events that I don't know what to do with myself. I'd planned...uh, nothing. Low expectations. (And then crazy high expectations for the two days a week they're in daycare during the summer. 'Tis my way.) This morning we went to Target and the library. The boys are doing a summer reading program where they get points for books, then prizes for points, as the 3.75 yr. old explained to the charmed Target cashier. He told her he was going to read a book and get a hedgehog. As you do.

Turned out the hedgehog he's had his eye on was really a lip gloss in disguise. Another mother pointed that out -- one of her girls was getting the hedgehog lip gloss. My kid still wanted it. I like to think that I will be OK if my boys want to wear lip gloss, but for one, they're too young for makeup, and two, I think they should wait until they're past the temptation to eat it. For me, that was age thirteen. I mean are you aware of Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers products? Delicious. The boys also are big on smearing messy things across non-messy surfaces, and as we prep to put our house on the market, this is pretty super and very helpful. Part of the Target errand was for those magic eraser things that take stains off the walls. Anyway, kiddo opted for a squishy globe instead. He helped little bro pick out a squirty fish for the bathtub.  

Everyone's still catching up from our 2000-mile road trip. My cousin and his lovely bride were married at Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, MA. We stayed in a neat house on a cliff and climbed some rocks at the beach. I sat in the yard and re-read Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple and at one point looked up and found myself staring at a gray fox. This was shortly after reading Bernadette's last name, which is Fox. The gray fox stared back and then we both gasped and ran in opposite directions, which means neither of us is likely to have rabies. Good thing, considering my dog bite in March.

And now the little one's up. As mentioned previously, he doesn't really wake easily. He howls. I mean screams. I mean really gets his point across loudly and his point is displeasure at remaining in his crib for a second longer than he'd like. Wait. Is quiet again. Maybe I can go out on the porch and read more Lydia Davis? Maybe? Please? (Said rudely while signing "please", a slap across the chest, toddler-style, which takes something away from the politeness element?) 

Would've mentioned Lydia Davis as a favorite writer in my earlier WordLab interview, had I been deeper into her collected stories at the time. Good gravy. Why haven't I been reading her all along? WHY DIDN'T YOU PEOPLE TELL ME? Had a really great time at WordLab, too, recapped here, thanks to Metonymy Media and Theresa Beckhusen. Next up is the fantastic David Blomenberg, on July 7 at 7 p.m. 7/7 at 7.

Now trending: the number seven. And foxes. Which, by the by, is my favorite superlative for an attractive person. The band Fleet Foxes ain't bad, either, and could be a compliment for an attractive and gracefully quick person. Go out on your porch -- ours is newly painted! buy our house! -- and read some Lydia Davis. Or something else. Reader's choice.