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I’m reading at the Watertown Library! (And not silent reading like when I used to do my homework there.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that I will be doing my very first reading in just a little less than two weeks at the Watertown Library in Watertown, Connecticut.

This reading, which will take place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday March 28, will be very special because Watertown is kind of my hometown.* Also special? My mother worked for the library when I was growing up. She worked at the Oakville branch of the library and did all the story hours there for years. So I spent most of my time there during grade school and middle school. I shelved books and did my homework and occasionally had to be told off for being too rowdy.

And that may be what happens again, because I’m hoping to draw a big crowd to the Watertown Library’s main branch on the evening of March 28.

Here’s the deal: Watertown Library included e-books in their collection on the first of March. Because my book is an e-book, I’m going to give a talk about my experience publishing an e-book and then do some reading. And then? We party. Responsibly, and in a literary fashion, of course. I have no idea where people go to party on a Wednesday night in Watertown these days. If I’m honest, I didn’t even know where to party in Watertown when I was living there. But no worries, we’ll figure something out.

Warning: Parents of young children, my book has language in it. Not language, but language. Also, it has situations in it, which cannot be bleeped out the way language can. I will do my best to read responsibly, but my book contains adult material and I don’t recommend bringing the kids to hear me read.

Hope to see you all there!

*Actually I’m from Oakville, which is a big neighborhood/”census-designated place” in Watertown, but to people who aren’t from there, it’s basically the same thing as being from Watertown.

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Fabulous book news!

Last week I spoke to my editor at Vagabondage Press and she delivered some fabulous news: Beware the Hawk is coming to print on March 20!

This won’t come as a surprise to the people who follow my Facebook author page; they hear just about all my news just about as soon as it happens, thanks to my raging social media addiction and my possession of a smartphone. (Just another reason to “like” my author page, or stay the hell away from it.)

Beware The Hawk novellaI’m pretty excited. Beware the Hawk was planned as an e-book and an e-book only, so it’s exciting that a print edition is being released. Since it’s a novelette, it will be a pretty slim volume, but it will be fabulous to have it, to be able to do real book signings as well as virtual signings, to carry a bunch of books around in the trunk of my car so that I can peddle them.

Even better, it will be nice to have a copy of my book accessible to the folks who can’t read it on an e-reader, or who prefer not to. There are, actually, quite a few people who have approached me and said some variation of “I’d like to buy your book, but I don’t have an e-reader.” Well folks, save the date. On March 20, physical copies of Beware the Hawk will become available.

Another announcement: I will be doing my first actual event in my hometown, Watertown, Connecticut, at the Watertown Library. The date has changed from my original announcement. I will provide more information soon.

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Book post – “Flesh” by Hollis Seamon

Two weeks ago, we went camping in the Berkshires with a group of friends. Since I’d just graduated, it was the first time I’d been on this camping trip without a book I had to read. So I picked up a book that I’d been meaning to read for a year: Flesh, by Hollis Seamon, who was my mentor during my final semester at grad school.

Now, as a student, I’ve worked with four authors as mentors, and I’ve worked with many other authors during the residencies but, to my shame, I haven’t read all their books. I’ve bought many, many of those books, which is probably half the battle, since professors need to make money and eat and whatever else it is that published authors do. I’ve had the professors sign those books, or my Kindle, if I bought the electronic edition. I have two or three shelves in a bookcase dedicated to profs’ books, but I’ve just not been able to read them. So I thought I’d start with the books written by my mentors and move on from there. Because Hollis spent so much time on my own novel, I decided to start with hers.

I loved it. And I’m not just saying this because Hollis held my hand as I struggled to end my novel this spring. Flesh is billed as a mystery, and it is, sort of. There is a murder at the beginning, there’s a list of suspects and a cop and a protagonist who becomes an unlikely sleuth. But more than that, it’s a character-driven novel featuring Suzanne Brown a.k.a. Suzanne LaFleshe, “the sexiest fat person in New York.”

It is Suzanne, more than the suspense, that kept me reading voraciously through to the end. “Voracious,” by the way, is a word of which Suzanne would approve. She is a woman of many intriguing appetites. She loves food, and makes desserts like key lime pie in the middle of January, just for the hell of it. She loves sex, and leaves her door unlocked so that her many lovers can drop in for a tryst. She loves academia, and is struggling to complete a dissertation on cannibalism in English literature.

The themes of fat and food and cannibalism and hunger are explored throughout the novel. And if that sounds grisly, it can be, sometimes. But the symbolic theme of hunger was fascinating to me. And the fact that Hollis writes with a wicked sense of humor just made the whole thing even better.

There is some tragedy associated with this book, and I don’t mean the murder that kicks off the plot. As soon as Flesh came out in 2005, the small press that published it went out of business. So although I hear rumors of other Suzanne LaFleshe manuscripts, there will be no more Suzanne LaFleshe books, and that is a sadness.

The strangest thing about reading a book written by your most recent mentor is what happens when you’re sitting in a camp chair for hours and the dust jacket starts riding up on the book:

I may have graduated, but Hollis still appears to be watching me.

Next up will be a novel by Rachel Basch, when I finish reading that.

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Revision day.

Today is the day I get down to business. Today is the day I make all adjustments and revisions to my manuscript before sending it off to my faculty mentor.

Revisions = arts and crafts. Those things on the floor are orphaned scenes.

This is a task I’ve been putting off, because it horrifies me. The first draft of this novel is not finished. Revising feels like going backwards. I don’t particularly want to read what I wrote in the first chapters. I hate having to put scenes in order when not all the scenes are written yet. I really hate the idea of making cuts to the manuscript this early in the game.
But since this is for a structured academic program, that’s what I’m going to have to do. And let’s face it: my mentor is probably going to want to read a draft with as few misspellings and typos as possible, so I have no choice but to make the manuscript presentable now.

The good thing is this: By the end of the day, I’ll have a very good idea about the shape of the story I’m trying to tell, and all of my scenes will be, roughly, in order.

So let’s do this thing – no Facebook, no Twitter, no email until I am done revising. I may have my husband unplug our router.

Clean manuscript or bust.

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A world-class event.

This won’t be a long post, nor will it be filled with my usual embarrassing personal revelations.  All I have to say here is that not only did the student reading last night go well, but I am in awe of my colleagues from the Fairfield University MFA program.

From the new student, who got up to read his work even though he’s never set foot on Enders, to the poet who riffed on Gertrude Stein like he was performing a guitar solo, to the memoirists who put their most private moments out there for us to see – you all rock. Hard.

Also rockstars? The students who didn’t read but showed up to support us, even though they have jobs, families and lives. And the student rep who organized the whole event, and who chose not to read, even though we would have welcomed a reading from her.

It’s really cool to be a part of this group of people.

Now, before this post gets cloying, I’m going to put an end to it. Just as  my colleague Steve Otfinoski put an end to some adorable sacrificial bunnies in his reading last night.

Update: This post is titled “A world class event” because that’s how we were described by the store manager during his in-store announcement. I thought I’d written that into this post but I must have edited it out. Whoops.

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Deep breaths.

This Wednesday brings the fall semester student reading for my MFA program. I’m one of the readers, which is very cool, because I’m going to be trotting out my new novel. Still it’s terrifying, because I never know how I’m going to react when I get to that podium.

As I was explaining to a fellow student over the weekend, it all depends on the space.

I once did a reading with such a loud rushing in my ears that I couldn’t even hear my own voice. I was so relieved to get away from the podium that I left a pile of important papers on it, and only remembered them hours later. But then again, I did a reading this summer and I was fine. Granted, I had a drink in me before I got up to read, but I don’t actually think I needed the drink. That reading was in a smallish crowded room. The first, terrifying reading? That was done from the pulpit of a church.

Wednesday’s reading is being held in a Borders. And while I’ve spent many hours happily shopping in that space, I don’t know how I’ll feel reading there. I guess we will see.

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