THIS! 8/31/12

THIS! on August 31, 2012

1) Varassamy/Servomuto Collaboration

Varassamy is a French designer and Servomuto are a design duo that collaborate with artists to create vintage inspired lampshades. I want all of their work in my home.


2) Soak

Everyware is a group of computer artists in Seoul. They exhibit their interactive designs all over the world. Soak is a soft sculpture that starts as a blank canvas, as viewers touch it, color spreads from the touch points.


3) Dinosaur Train

Let's take two awesome things, dinosaurs and trains, and put them together in a show made by Jim Henson Co? YES, PLEASE.

Below is a full episode. You can go to the website to watch clips and other episodes.

There are TOYS!


4) Ancient Bugs

They found 230 million-year-old bugs inside small droplets of amber in northern Italy. They found three after searching through 70,000 amber drops. They are only 6 millimeters across.

Brains

Lately there has been a problem with my brains. They are not firing on all cylinders. Or some other metaphor for things working slightly off-kilter.

In general, I'm a lazy person. By that, I mean that I am not likely to shower or dress unless I have to. Unless I am going to work, and even then, I may wear dirty pants. I like my personal space. I sit and listen to music and read or write most days. When I'm not writing or reading I'm watching Jessica Fletcher kick crime's ass.

She'll kick your ass so hard you'll thank her.

Lately though, I've been so unmotivated that I'm starting to call it a block. A strange success block. Like I'm afraid of it.

I mentioned in Friday's post that I was looking for an agent. For the novel I wrote. And I sent to 12 agents in a burst of magnificent energy three weeks ago. It was beautiful, hopeful, I wrote a query letter and sent it. I got 4 rejections and the rest are ? for now.

Then I turned off.

I do this with submitting poetry. When asked about it I say things like 'I hate the game of it' or 'It's just so heartbreaking' and it is true that the game is sort stupid and I do find it soul-crushing/saddening.

But that is no excuse for not allowing myself to become the great American writer I know that I am. But I cannot seem to reignite the fire that I had when I was 22. When I was sending poems out all the time, by mail. Collecting a stack of rejections that I treasured with the utmost sincerity. They were markers on the road to something.

Today I cannot tell you where those letters are. The beautiful one Brenda Shaughnessy wrote me from Tin House. The terrible slip of laminated paper from Poetry. All gone.

What happened? When did I become someone less interested in this supposed writing career that I ran away from home at 18 to go get? Am I in danger of being one of those people who 'used to write'?

I hate rhetorical questions. That creepy hook of a ? hanging there on the car door of a sentence just inches from the young co-ed that is my thought process.

But that process has vanished for me. Right now I have a finished novel and hundreds of poems just taking up hard drive space and instead of sending to magazines or fighting for something more than the 100 or so page views a day I get here. I am thinking about a plan B.

And it isn't even because I don't have faith in the work.

Your poems are ho shit.

I love my poems. When they are good they will kick your poems asses and then tell them that they liked it. They pity da fool that is your iamb or whatever stupid shit you're working on these days because frankly they are just too damn good to care.

I just don't appear to have the ability to kick my own ass. So I need to figure that out. Suggestions?

Sellers : Sweet Talk

Sweet Talk

Author: Julie Garwood

Publisher: Dutton Adult (8/7/12)

368 pages

This is a novel about an FBI agent and an IRS lawyer falling in love while investigating a ponzi scheme.

And that is both set-up and punchline. Thank you, I'll be here all week.

Julie Garwood started out writing historical romance and has moved into modern romantic thrillers. She's had 24 New York Times Bestsellers and has written 30 novels.

This sort of 'ripped from the headlines' tale is the stuff of Law and Order episodes. It feels oddly easy and boring from a writing perspective. Take news story A and join with news story B, lather, repeat.

I'm not even talking about the romance genre. I have no problem with romance, they have their place. I feel like in the new post-50 Shades world we live in there will be many of these sort of suit and tie romance books tossed down the pike.


Sellers is my attempt to examine what books are topping the best-seller list and why. To talk about and understand the trends in popular writing.

THIS! 8/24/12

THIS! on August 24, 2012

1) Christopher Lee's Charlemagne

2) Dinosaurs

NASA discovered small dino tracks in their literal backyard. The Christian Science Monitor discusses it here. The feet in question belonged to a nodosaur.

Which was a giant spiked armadillo apparently.

Also, someone buy this blanket for me right this second. It's not my birthday or anything important, but really, I need it.


3) Racism

I really really hate Michael Chabon's new book. Like so much so that I may decide it isn't worth finishing. I really want to write a review but it's like totes not good y'all.

There is a LONG post about this that I am working on in my head about racism, white privilege, and the place of artistic licence in all of it but...it's questionable career-wise considering I have sent a query to his agent to rep my novel...

Yes, I just wrote that and meant it. Oh the pitfalls of the industry! Life is so hard! Le sigh.


4) Kaseem Reed

Dear Democrats, more of this please. Love Michael

I hurt my shoulder and am super lazy this week. SO take that rerun of a poem-a-day and I will post something great on Friday.

Also. I'm in DC this weekend, so posts may be a bit random the next few days, but they will show up on Friday and Monday, just not necessarily on time.

K?

K.

This poem first appeared on October 12, 2009.


Whirligig (10/12)

This pen winds up the world
clocks the birds and makes heaven tilt

On the back the key slowly spinning
A hole is an iris then an opening then a flower in bloom

Inside the world are springs
this language is making the universe darken
then lighten

It comes back on itself
this pen will write into a corner then invent
the corner and then make a door then invent
the opening of the door

This pen is its own key
it has teeth and eyes and knows

This pen is a deluge of piranha in your bathtub

Advanced

Publishers send out advanced copies of most books. They go to reviewers, famous people who may give a good cover blurb, booksellers, etc. An advance copy is usually privately published and distributed by the publishing house and is more than likely an uncorrected proof. Errors and all. The typesetting is odd, the print is large, the cover is not finished, but there is it. A book.

This is Michael Chabon's new book. It comes out September 11th. I bring this up because I have found myself in possession of an advance reader edition of it and have waded 50 or so pages in. It's alright so far, I'll review it sometime right before it comes out.

This isn't the first advanced copy I have fallen into.

Back in 2008 I stumbled on a copy of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book on the street about a month before it came out. The average advance copy is sent out up to 3 months prior to publication. This gives reviewers a huge window to get their reading/shredding of said reading done. So it isn't unusual to find these books at used-bookstores or on the street here in Brooklyn.

There are lots of editors/pretend editors in Brooklyn.

The final edition of Gaiman's book had lovely illustrations in it by Dave McKean.

My street-found edition does not. The page numbers don't match up to the final and the cover is missing the pretty silver foil effect on the words. But, the book is a magical read even in that rough form. Once I saw the illustrations there was a part of me that felt cheated, like I wanted to go out and buy the 'real' version but how can you trade in that great dog-eared free copy for a slick new one?

I also like the idea that the copy of the book I'm reading was read by someone 'important'. Someone, one of the luck 5,000 who receive advance copies, touched, read, and maybe reviewed this book I'm reading. And unlike great found books with marginalia and names scrawled in them, these advance reader books are nameless, blind. You have to imagine who read it.

That makes it so odd and fun.

Check out the shelves in the basement at The Strand or on eBay. You can find a trove of these things. Some become collectibles, so that's a plus to this hidden side of publishing.