News
I have been away from Florida (Dear God, I almost wrote "home") for over a month now and used the time away for one of my mental health sabbaticals from the Interweb. The trip started with my husband's family's celebration of a mighty 80-year old grandfather in Tahoe, then the munchie and I flew to Cooperstown.
Sort of. Because, after twelve hours there, I left Beck with grandparents so doting they didn't know I was gone, and spritzed off to London like a mad jetsetter to see my sister compete in the London Triathlon (by all accounts, one of the first Olympic build-up races). Sarah is my hero; I watched gape-jawed with awe as she placed tenth. Considering that in March she broke her sacrum (which, previously, I had thought only existed in yogacabulary, like the mythical "sitz bones"), and that she has been in screaming pain for most of the season, and that she and most of the other pros were able to pull out a sub-six-minute-mile-ten-kilometer-run after swimming and cycling, tenth felt pretty miraculous to me. Tenth on a foot that had been caught in someone else's wheel coming out of T2 and that sported a black and blue stripe so swollen and tender-looking that I was absolutely positive it was broken--my sister is ridiculous. I'm a closet triathlon superfan, so being within sneezing distance of the people I know mythically, through splits and transitions, made me feel giddy--the way I still feel when I get a book signed by a favorite writer. We ate lots. I gave my sister the flu, bounty of intercontinental travel. She hobbled one-legged around London because she was too nice to say I didn't know where I was going. We watched a play starring a fake horse that was the best actor in the show. It was grand but too quick--I didn't even get the chance to see my UK publishers.
Then home. Sort of. Because we were mostly gone. I had a splendid reading at the Green Toad in Oneonta (a very great indie, and one that people should visit often), saw my new niece Ingrid in Hanover, New Hampshire (six weeks old and succulent as a strawberry), interviewed the magnificent writer Kathryn Davis at her house in Vermont as the first in a series of question and answers, saw Tosca at Glimmerglass (Cavaradossi took my breath away; Tosca was a shrinking violet when she should have been a fiery juggernaut), took a day with my 90-year-old grandfather (who still works 12-hour days in his greenhouses) to videotape him returning to the Pennsylvania places where he lived in the first quarter of his life, and ended up, somehow, on the Jersey shore with Snookie (Island Heights is pretty highfalutin, actually). Now, home.
And today was Beck's first day of school. Well: preschool. But it IS Montessori and you better believe that stuff is serious. Of course, he wasn't the one who was crying in the parking lot. It means the end of the summer and the end of his babyhood and I suppose I was a little bit in mourning for the grand, glorious days of being someone's sun and earth and galaxy all in one. But when an almost-two-year-old has more composure than a 32-year-old, let's be honest, someone has to take a cold, hard look at herself and make some changes.
But. On to the the News, which is the (ostensible!) reason why I'm here. In Cooperstown, I found out that my next novel, Arcadia, will be delayed until January 2012. At first, this gave me a fainting fit of Victorian proportions. Stays loosed; salts smelled. Soon, though, I was converted to the wisdom of my publisher, editor, and agent. The publishing world has changed more in the last six months than it has in the entire time my publisher has been in publishing, and it'll be good to sit it out and see what we can do. We can get more momentum behind the book this way and edit it to shining, solid-gold glory. It will be better for the book, and better for sanity, and better for me, provided the Gulf Spill doesn't grow a nervous system and become a person-gobbling blob from the deep, though I'd be the first to admit that we deserve it. So: not bad news. Good news! Given in this space in an overly chatty way, true. But good.
On, now, to the mega-edit. I solemnly swear that sentences will be tighter than harp-strings and there won't be a split infinitive in the whole shebang.
Sort of. Because, after twelve hours there, I left Beck with grandparents so doting they didn't know I was gone, and spritzed off to London like a mad jetsetter to see my sister compete in the London Triathlon (by all accounts, one of the first Olympic build-up races). Sarah is my hero; I watched gape-jawed with awe as she placed tenth. Considering that in March she broke her sacrum (which, previously, I had thought only existed in yogacabulary, like the mythical "sitz bones"), and that she has been in screaming pain for most of the season, and that she and most of the other pros were able to pull out a sub-six-minute-mile-ten-kilometer-run after swimming and cycling, tenth felt pretty miraculous to me. Tenth on a foot that had been caught in someone else's wheel coming out of T2 and that sported a black and blue stripe so swollen and tender-looking that I was absolutely positive it was broken--my sister is ridiculous. I'm a closet triathlon superfan, so being within sneezing distance of the people I know mythically, through splits and transitions, made me feel giddy--the way I still feel when I get a book signed by a favorite writer. We ate lots. I gave my sister the flu, bounty of intercontinental travel. She hobbled one-legged around London because she was too nice to say I didn't know where I was going. We watched a play starring a fake horse that was the best actor in the show. It was grand but too quick--I didn't even get the chance to see my UK publishers.
Then home. Sort of. Because we were mostly gone. I had a splendid reading at the Green Toad in Oneonta (a very great indie, and one that people should visit often), saw my new niece Ingrid in Hanover, New Hampshire (six weeks old and succulent as a strawberry), interviewed the magnificent writer Kathryn Davis at her house in Vermont as the first in a series of question and answers, saw Tosca at Glimmerglass (Cavaradossi took my breath away; Tosca was a shrinking violet when she should have been a fiery juggernaut), took a day with my 90-year-old grandfather (who still works 12-hour days in his greenhouses) to videotape him returning to the Pennsylvania places where he lived in the first quarter of his life, and ended up, somehow, on the Jersey shore with Snookie (Island Heights is pretty highfalutin, actually). Now, home.
And today was Beck's first day of school. Well: preschool. But it IS Montessori and you better believe that stuff is serious. Of course, he wasn't the one who was crying in the parking lot. It means the end of the summer and the end of his babyhood and I suppose I was a little bit in mourning for the grand, glorious days of being someone's sun and earth and galaxy all in one. But when an almost-two-year-old has more composure than a 32-year-old, let's be honest, someone has to take a cold, hard look at herself and make some changes.
But. On to the the News, which is the (ostensible!) reason why I'm here. In Cooperstown, I found out that my next novel, Arcadia, will be delayed until January 2012. At first, this gave me a fainting fit of Victorian proportions. Stays loosed; salts smelled. Soon, though, I was converted to the wisdom of my publisher, editor, and agent. The publishing world has changed more in the last six months than it has in the entire time my publisher has been in publishing, and it'll be good to sit it out and see what we can do. We can get more momentum behind the book this way and edit it to shining, solid-gold glory. It will be better for the book, and better for sanity, and better for me, provided the Gulf Spill doesn't grow a nervous system and become a person-gobbling blob from the deep, though I'd be the first to admit that we deserve it. So: not bad news. Good news! Given in this space in an overly chatty way, true. But good.
On, now, to the mega-edit. I solemnly swear that sentences will be tighter than harp-strings and there won't be a split infinitive in the whole shebang.
Reading tonight in Oneonta (2010-08-05)
I'm on a visit to my parents in Cooperstown, and will do a reading and signing and talk tonight at the wondrous bookstore, the Green Toad, in Oneonta at 7. Come one, come all. I'd love not to have to read to just my parents again.
I'm breaking up with you, "News" (2010-06-06)
Let's just face it: I'm pretty bad at whatever this is, News. I had kept you around for a while because I couldn't resist tossing up random little bits every once in a while in my more teenyboppery moments, treating you like the full-force blog that you never really pretended to be, but the problem is that I would always look back at you the next morning and cringe a little. In broad daylight, your face smeary on the pillow, you were neither as clever nor as interesting as I had dreamed when I posted you the night before. I thought of you with a constant, low-burning level of shame, which was totally justified, because a lot of the time you were pretty dang embarrassing. I could blame my change of heart on oh so many things: the oilspill growing bloblike toward us only ninety miles away, causing a feeling of dread in me like a low-level migraine; my way overextended life; my real writing, which is (I'm sorry--I know this will cause you pain) extremely serious to me, and which I treat very soberly (not as in "dourly"; as in "not drunkenly"). But, really, News, it's not me; it's you. True, I couldn't give you the time you needed, but the real truth is that you sure didn't reflect well on me, at all. I'm sorry. It had to be said. This isn't to say that I don't love you. I do. Well--a little. But that's something!
Let's just stay friends, shall we? The next time we meet, we will talk with grave restraint that may manifest itself as stiffness, and I will inform you, with cleanness and precision, what is going on in my writing life.
Let's smooch (whoa! cheeks only!).
Thank you for understanding.
It's not "goodbye," you know.
It's "adieu."
Let's just stay friends, shall we? The next time we meet, we will talk with grave restraint that may manifest itself as stiffness, and I will inform you, with cleanness and precision, what is going on in my writing life.
Let's smooch (whoa! cheeks only!).
Thank you for understanding.
It's not "goodbye," you know.
It's "adieu."