News, publications and blog for the author of AM/PM (Featherproof Books) and Museum of the Weird (FC2).
THREATS is here. Ask for it in your local bookstore (Word in LA is that it’s already on the shelf at Skylight) or order online at Powell’s, Amazon, iTunes (where it’s a Book of the Week!) or Barnes & Noble. If you’re going to AWP, come say hello and pick up a copy at the Featherproof table. THREATS! THREATS.
(Here’s some love from Austin, Books Matter, Entertainment Weekly and BookPeople.)
Golly, things move fast around here. I’ve been wanting to blog about how I adopted this horrible three-legged cat and I haven’t had time to even speak of him. (I will say briefly: his name is Hopper. I have no fewer than five band-aids on my person currently.)
Orders of business: I’m putting together a tour calendar. You will find it under the “Calendar” tab on this page. Also, please see the gorgeous new site header, designed by Zach Dodson.
THREATS is officially on sale Feb 28. The proper way to write THREATS is to put it in all caps, thusly: THREATS. It’s not an acronym. It’s just a word in capital letters. I decided that because Threats doesn’t look good and all the actual threats are in capital letters. (They are not acronyms, either. There are plenty of other secrets in that book to find; don’t worry about acronyms anymore.) The book has gotten very nice pre-publication reviews from San Diego CityBeat, Untoward, Kirkus, etc. Booklist said, “her first novel proves she has stamina for the long form.” Publishers Weekly said, “This is an innovative debut novel featuring a most unreliable (and compelling) narrator.” So ends my pre-publication paragraph. Well, one more thing: I’ve been living with and working on this book for years and I hope you like it.
Los Angeles is teeming with creative energy. Everyone is working on something, thinking about working on something, showing me what they’re working on. I feel annoyed that I have to do things like eat and buy band-aids and get quarters for laundry when I could be working, working, working. I’m overdue calling my parents. I grind my teeth in my sleep. I’m eating a lot of things I find in trees. The cats and I posse up and roam the streets at night. My fingernails have sharpened to killer points. My eyes are turning orange.
Check out an excerpt of THREATS in Vice. THREATS will be out in March! Sorry, you must wait. I wish I could beam it into your brain beforehand. Wait a second, I’ll try.
Did that work?
I’m not very good at this.
A day of links! In writing news, I have a new story, “Device,” up at Dear Navigator, and no news is good news over at Robert Lopez’s blog. In women’s health news, the state straight-up defunded Planned Parenthood’s downtown clinic in Austin, and they must now rely on donations. In fire news, I’m in no personal fire danger but KVUE suggests plenty of ways to help those affected across Central Texas. BookPeople is donating a portion of its sales online and in-person all week to help and if you buy one of my books, let me know about it — I’ll send you a present.
In THREATS news, the cover is in:
Cover by Charlotte Strick
Check out some stills from some short videos Mary Hamilton and I shot for No Perch, a reading series putting writers in strange places (“outdoors”):
That’s Angeline Gragasin making her personal perch on the back of a moped and Aaron Plasek in the superstar helmet.
I turned in the final draft of the novel. Now it goes through copy edits and design and through a huge device and will emerge as a book called THREATS in March of the year 2012.
FSG HQ
The house seems quieter. I have the freedom to work on other projects now, write some insane short stories that have been curled up in my spine, but all I want to do is stand silently at the window and watch the manuscript with its friends at the bus stop, trying to ignore me standing at the window, watching it, pressing my nose to the glass, watching.
I found a store yesterday full of bath fizzes and cosmetic products and mud masks and handmade soaps and claims that I will smell exactly like some manner of strawberry milk after bathing in a certain product, or like a bowl of candy corn after putting something in my hair, and none of it makes too much sense but my eyes get a little glazed over and I start putting things in my basket. I tried to interact with the ladies in the store but I had trouble modulating the volume of my voice or forming complete sentences, so excited was I to smell like an avocado at my leisure.
Apropos of nothing: I had a chance to read Heather Palmer’s chapbook Mere Tragedies and I was very charmed by it. There is love and sweetness and funny stuff in there. It felt like eating a piece of ginger. Heather lives in Chicago. The PDF is $1.50 through Girls With Insurance and I recommend it. Heather is a new voice.
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