From the Hammock to the Desk

I spent a week at Tybee Island off the coast of Georgia (near the gorgeous city of Savannah)-- and I'm just getting back to work. Although-- this was a first-- the beach house was wireless, so I kept up with email between watching the shore birds and wading out to watch the dolphins.

I'm in the middle of Susan Choi's A Person of Interest. I'll have more to say about this wonderful novel when I've read the last page. All I can say now: Choi is a writer of enormous talent.

I finished reading Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors and Dry. Scissors especially is one of those fascinating memoirs you tear through, thinking, how did this kid survive his family? Dark, funny, honest, shocking. Not since Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle, have I been so absorbed in a harrowing life story.

More later this week. Got lots of writing and revising to do. Not to mention a harvest of tomatoes and peppers to gather and a new batch of weeds to thin.

The Zen of Writing

I'm guest blogging about the Zen of Writing over at A Good Blog Is Hard to Find. Come on over.

When you're in the zone, you're not even YOU, you're watching this story reveal itself (in hard glimmering icy plinks or long, luxurious warm rains-- the story is fickle as the weather), and, then, somehow, you're writing it.

The raindance worked

And our parched red clay earth finally got some rain. Scenes from the garden:

Tomatoes blushing here (hiding there in the foliage) while the sunflowers chortle--they're so gregarious, such flirts.



Meanwhile, the bedroom windowbox is thrillin' and spillin':

Good News and Good Book

Here's the latest good read I just devoured over the weekend:
The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta is a real page-turner. I loved Little Children for its social satire, and the novel's appealing (and conflicted) characters, and I'm happy to say the Abstinence Teacher is a terrific follow-up, with humorous send-ups of suburban soccer moms (and dads), a born-again restless post-80's rocker, and a sex ed teacher who can't bring herself to cheerfully spout a new "abstinence" curriculum. As usual, Perrotta's tale crackles with inside jokes and laugh-out-loud moments, but his send-ups never lack heart, and his characters' internal struggles and conflicts with each other--make for a fascinating read.

Oh, and here's some good news I'm honored to share:

SC Arts Commission
Names 2008-2009 Artist Fellowships

The South Carolina Arts Commission Board of Commissioners has approved the 2008-2009 Individual Artist Fellowship Award recipients. This year, the Arts Commission is presenting awards totaling $30,000 to six South Carolina artists — two each in the categories of prose and poetry, and one each in music performance and music composition. Fellows each receive $5,000 in recognition of their superior artistic merit. Panelists named alternates in all categories.

The 2008-2009 fellows and alternates are:

Prose:	Julia E. Elliott, Lexington County Mindy Friddle, Greenville County
	Alternates: Jonathan Sanchez, Charleston County Stephanie Young, Greenville County

And I'd personally like to send out a big thank you to the " Out-of-State Panelist" for Prose, Mako Yoshikawa.

• A scholar and novelist, Mako Yoshikawa is an assistant professor at Emerson College in Boston, Mass. She has an A.B.D. from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in philosophy from Oxford University and a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University. Her first novel, “One Hundred and One Ways,” was published by Bantam in 1999. A bestseller in the U.S., it has been translated into six languages. Her second novel, “Once Removed,” also published by Bantam, came out in 2003. She has received numerous honors, including fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, N.H.

Garden Gargoyles

This one we call Guardian of the Menstrual Hut:

The Third Angel

I just finished reading The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman...a real treat. Hoffman's storytelling is, as always, whimsical and compelling. The novel is divided into three narratives--three characters in three different decades, yet the characters are connected through a London hotel, ill-fated lovers, and each other (although they don't always see how--the reader does, thanks to the capable omniscient narrator). It's an appealing, effective structure (think The Hours and Three Junes).

Here's to hope, salvation, and long looks

A shotglass of oaky wisdom from Flannery O'Conner:

"...people without hope do not write novels. Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality, and it's very shocking to the system. If the novelist is not sustained by a hope of money, then he must be sustained by a hope of salvation, or he simply won't survive the ordeal. People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them. They don't take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is the refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience."--Mystery and Manners

This Really Burns My Biscuit

Say it ain't so. While Lily moving from Knoxville? It's the best flour and corn meal on the planet. Heavenly flakey biscuits.

Don't touch it, Smuckers!

I went right out and bought three huge brand new bags (flour and corn meal) at my local grocer's after reading this article in the NYT:

FOR generations of Southern bakers, the secret to weightless biscuits has been one simple ingredient passed from grandmother to mother to child: White Lily all-purpose flour...But at the end of June, the mill, with its shiny wood floors, turquoise and red grinders and jiggling armoire-size sifters, will shut its doors. The J. M. Smucker Company, which bought the brand a year ago, has already begun producing White Lily at two plants in the Midwest, causing ripples of anxiety that Southern biscuits will never be the same.

Yesterday in the mail: my copy of the unabridged recording of A Garden Angel from Recorded Books. Nine cassettes. Ten-plus hours. Available in libraries, etc...or for purchase for 100 bucks or so.

It's a thrill, listening to one's novel being read by a professional.

I've Got a Thing for Statues

In NYC recently, I found myself snapping photos of statues (and those really cool gargoyles on buildings).

I love this statue of Gandhi






Here's Mike at the NY Botanical Garden, "cracking up."






My favorite, from Union Square, perhaps because he's pointing like the statue that figures in the opening line of novel two, Secret Keepers:

The town had moved the Confederate monument from the square to the gates of Springforth Cemetery some twenty years after the war of Northern Aggression, and General Robert E. Lee--who stood atop the mossy marble with a scowl--had never quite recovered. The general was listing, slowly sinking in the boggy soil, his finger pointing no longer at the ghostly Union brigade ahead, but just down and to the left, toward the new Ideal Laundry Factory, as if to demand extra starch.

I

Back to Work

I'm back from the Big Apple. I spent a week there, on business and pleasure. Pleasurable business, actually. It's one of my favorite places on earth.

Went to the Flatiron Building to meet with St. Martin's and Picador people, which was great fun, and involved lunch at an Italian place, and also a view from that gorgeous building.

Had to make the the NY Botanical Garden's Darwin exhibit in the Bronx.













Returning home, found the garden flourishing, thanks to my loved ones' meticulous watering--we're in a sever drought down here-- with the pumpkin vine jumping the fence and the zucchini and cucumbers ready for harvesting.
My sister said the zucchini I'm holding--here-- looked "happier" than the cukes maybe because it's bigger. Which strikes me as Freudian. Not going there.