I am happy to announce that my third book, a novel, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Working title: THREATS. Publication date: Spring 2012. Details: Editor is Emily Bell at FSG, agent is Claudia Ballard at William Morris Endeavor. I started writing the book in November 2009 or so and am currently deep in edits. I am excited to make it a thing.Monthly Archive for January, 2011
I am happy to announce that my third book, a novel, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Working title: THREATS. Publication date: Spring 2012. Details: Editor is Emily Bell at FSG, agent is Claudia Ballard at William Morris Endeavor. I started writing the book in November 2009 or so and am currently deep in edits. I am excited to make it a thing.Today’s the day to roast a butternut squash. Museum of the Weird
If you’re going to AWP, you should polish your polishable parts and go to the HTMLGIANT party on Friday night.
If you missed my radio interview, you can listen to it here. After the show I went to get a cheeseburger from Cherrywood Coffee and when I asked for extra pickles, they gave me two little ramekins of pickles and more on the sandwich, and I ate the pickles until my gums felt acidic and stripped. It was the best day.
I realized I’ve never been in the very-cold. I was interested to hear Elizabeth and Aaron talk about it in Ann Arbor and I was asking my friend Ralph about it yesterday. As a desert girl, I am intrigued. It got down to feels-like-25 here last night and it seemed to be the coldest I’ve ever experienced. Ralph says that it can get cold enough in Chicago that you get a headache, like your brain is de-icing through your skull.
Museum of the Weird got a starred review at Publishers Weekly:
Cannibalism, serial killing, a snake farm, and medical oddities are among the topics covered in Gray’s (AM/PM) award-winning second collection. Resisting conventional advice as to what should serve as legitimate fuel for fiction, Gray allows taboos and curiosities (including animals conversing in a bar) to hold court with viscerally affecting scenarios that rival Ripley’s Believe-it-or-Not. A delicious taste for the absurd (a man who marries a bag of frozen tilapia; a woman who births a child per day over the course of several days) results in an accomplished take on the increasingly popular flash fiction form. Gray’s 24 tales go well beyond the amuse-bouche, presenting eclectic personas with a macabre wit, challenging readers to suspend their disbelief, and mining deep emotional reserves beneath initially eye-catching material. What could be mistaken for sameness is instead a purposeful vision, relentless in its inquisitive march along the fringes of human solitude. A veteran of the small presses (having published stories in American Short Fiction, McSweeney’s online, Guernica, and many others), Gray deserves greater recognition. (Sept.)
Despite making a number of inappropriate John Denver jokes, I got home safely. I love that Chicago-Austin nonstop. I love buying the internet access and then smiling at my row-mate. I am the Marie Antoinette of the skies.
My row-mate was an older woman who chatted with me pleasantly in line and wore a beautiful gold and olive cardigan with a lovely accent scarf and I was about to compliment her on it as she was putting her suitcase in the overhead when she bucked back and hit her head hard on the compartment behind her. I said, “Are you okay?” and reached forward without thinking and touched the back of her head, her hair and her skull, I guess because I thought she was bleeding and I’d need to apply pressure, and she said she was fine and then didn’t look at me for the rest of the trip, and I decided that touching the skull of a stranger in public was maybe Not The Right Thing To Do.
It’s cold here but I’ll be happy inside, working all weekend on a number of deadlines. I made a big grocery trip and bought proteins and vegetables to get me through. I got a veggie BBQ beef riblet in honor of Lindsay Hunter and three cartons of Mootopia.
I was in Ann Arbor this weekend. It was the first time in years that I’ve seen more than a few inches of the snow on the ground, and a sparkling feather kind of snow instead of the Texas turds I’m used to. The last time I remember snow anything like this was during winters at my grandparents’ place in Oklahoma, some fifteen years ago at least. I’ve been writing about snow recently, so it was good to experience it in my mittens.
I was looking out at the snow and thinking about the word hinterland when I learned that my little hometown made the national news for the first time in a long time, maybe since before I ever looked at snow. I called my parents and friends. My heart hurts for everyone who had to be there and see that and be involved. I think of Tucsonans as a generally kind and innocent people. I hope Giffords gets to keep everything that man tried to take.
A sad stain on what’s otherwise been a nice trip. It’s good to see old friends and make new ones. I got to spend quality time with Elizabeth Ellen and Aaron Burch in Ann Arbor, reading at EE’s excellent series there and putting up a good fight at poker later (Jess Walter cleaned up). Mary Hamilton and Lindsay Hunter and I drove through a snowstorm and went directly to Hoosier Momma, where I ordered the pork-apple-sage and finished it before we got to Lindsay’s. It was real nice to curl up on the couch and watch junk TV and eat orange wedges. Lindsay and her husband Ben have this calming interaction with one another that I can’t even really talk about without looking into middle distance. Well so, I’m reading at Quickies on Tuesday. Looking forward to seeing folks.
and then home
Last night, Susan and I went to have some beers at the honky-tonk down the street. The lead guitar was a dead ringer for Ron Carlson. I danced a two-step and a country waltz with a geophysicist.
I’m heading to my Midwest spirit-roots this weekend:
Ann Arbor, MI: On Saturday, January 8 · 7:00pm – 9:00pm, I’ll be reading with Jess Walter, Lindsay Hunter, Aaron Burch and Mary Hamilton at Elizabeth Ellen’s Great Lakes, Great Times series.
Chicago, IL: On Tuesday, January 11 · 7:30pm – 10:30pm, I’ll be reading with Simon Smith, Steve Tartaglione, Allison Gruber, Lauryn Allison Lewis, Anthony Luebbert, Stephen Tully Dierks, Natalie Edwards and Samantha Irby at Lindsay Hunter’s & Mary Hamilton’s Quickies.
See you there or see you square.
I’m late to note it, but Museum of the Weird got some kind year-end nods from Kyle Minor, Matt Bell, Amber Sparks and Dennis Cooper, for which I am honored and thankful. Online at Corium Magazine, you will find “Sisters,” a story I wrote with Lindsay Hunter.
It feels good to spend the first day of 2011 napping and navel-gazing about the past year. Winter’s the time for us to all have more or less thematically similar experiences and sit around and talk about those experiences with the same dumb reverence that we use to talk about our own dreams.
Earlier, I stood on this bed to dust the ceiling fan. I’m trying to keep my bedroom from turning into a storage site, but there are two piles that need to go to Goodwill and two for Buffalo Exchange and one for an ex-boyfriend, plus a number of unorganized socks, and ultimately this room is kind of depressing, even though I bought new curtain rods.
I’m fine with being unpaired. At first, I only wanted to bake and talk about baking and say rosy stupid things like “I am taking myself on a date tonight” and whatever. Now it seems just fine, like being lost in a city when you have nowhere you need to be. I’ve done this plenty of times before. Anyway, I’m too busy to go on any dates and I don’t want to.
(Look at me, stamping my little foot.)
I’ve started tracking macronutrients again. I haven’t done this since I was writing AM/PM. Paying such close attention to the grams of protein in an uncured turkey dog is kind of unsettling. I recognize this.
A friend is 39 weeks pregnant, so I’ve been hearing things about bone-softening hormones and mucus plugs and rings of fire. I like to know about the strange things that not only can happen to a body, but are natural and even necessary if we want to keep traffic on the highway. I dunno if I want to have a child, or if I want to want to have a child, or if I want to have built a home, or if I want to have an experience of building a home, or if I want to want to, etc.
I went to a party for New Year’s. The crowd was strongly skewed towards Communications graduate students. Everyone was easy to talk to. I was asked to do a better job posing for pictures, which is something I am not good at doing while I am tracking my macronutrients. Still, it was a good party. Friends kissed friends when the ball dropped on 2011, and even though Susan Q declared that she had given everyone her chest cold, it seemed worth it then and still.
I feel content at the day-to-day. Mornings are easy. There is so much work to be done. And so time passes.
