Work so far!

Okay, well, I finished part I of the magical realism novella much faster than I thought I would. My friend who is very picky about fiction she likes--and knows a lot about magical realism--read it and loved it. So that's a good sign! It's called The Beasts We Knew, and takes place from 1860s-1920s Spain and Connecticut, two quite different places. And there might be a short stop in England, but I'm not sure. So, I can send that off to Spiral on Monday. Alyssa's going to take a look at it, who has done lots of work in genre fiction, so that will be helpful, too.

Here's a little something from it (yes, I've been sucking at putting up excerpts lately, so I'm starting again):

I never believed any of those stories they told when I was younger, when I was intent on growing up, but suddenly, I was with child, and when I gave light to a baby boy, I knew that there was something within him that I could never let go. I was fifteen years old and being a mother had made me more beautiful. It doesn’t matter who the father was, only that I wasn’t one of those girls who made up stories about ghosts or gods. His father wasn’t human at all, and ghosts and gods as any Católica knows are very human, and that’s why people make them up, because all humanity wants is more and more of us. I never told anyone about his father, and whenever asked about it, I would give very human descriptions without giving any lies: big hands, strange smile, wouldn’t take no for an answer. They just smiled and looked at me like I was the monster.

Currently, I'm finishing up the short stories in the Los Angeles collection: Los Angeles, The Disease, and Sleeping with Scarlett. Today, Sleeping with Scarlett seems to be the biggest focus. I'm considering translating it into French (it takes place in Paris) for my conversation class, but, we'll see about that. It would be exciting to talk about Scarlett Johansson's body in French. Totallay. Duffy's great to listen to for working on this. Here's a little something from that, too:

“Oh,” she said in her low voice. “Oh,” she repeated. I couldn’t stand looking at her and walked away, fingering my pockets for a second cigarette. I was a cameraman. Moving things like this woman I walked away from shouldn’t be burning into my eyes the way she was. But the important thing is, that’s what she was doing. And that meant something. I headed for the doors as fast as I could and took a taxi home. The Paris sky, that meant something too.

I'm hoping to have all the Lost Angeles short story stuff finished by Sunday, so that I can start to focus on my new projects.

That is all!

Spiral, etc

Spiral submissions coming up--due in like a week. I've agreed to edit Alyssa's submissions, in return for her editing mine, even though, I'll still do it if she doesn't have the time to look at mine. I'm hoping I'll be finish part I of the novella, but I have a back-up submission if I'm not able to finish it (but I really, really, really want to !).

Writing's not going as quickly as I wish, considering the little amount of work I have presently in comparison to what I was working on before. But I can't write when I'm exhausted, and since I got back from the States, I can only write so much per sitting. Hopefully, some time today at Starbucks will change that. (Yes, there are Starbucks in Paris!)

I'm cleaning my place currently. That helps me think.

New projects:
-Putting together a story for a friend. Inter-war era Paris, perhaps New York too. Very glamorous happenings, despite economic depression in the states.
-Want to put SOAP in the 50s. Totally. Screenplay it up.
-Considering asking Harris Lapiroff if I can put one of his poems to a comic strip. His poems have a very youthful feel to them, which can be good or bad sometimes, but I think that as he gets older this youthful feel will be more and more appropriate--perhaps due to its feeling of nostalgia, or something. Here's the poem he wrote up that I like:

How I Long to be Found in a Time Beyond Love

November when air is warm with climate change,
I pray for nuclear winter, another ice age,
a snow that falls soft and lovely and enduring.

You and I wandering the streets of Albany
and out to the beach, flakes of aftermath
dropping one by one by one onto our limbs
weighing down until we move no longer but only
sleep compressed under thousands of pounds of powder,
found millennia later by excavators
with tinted goggles and laser drills.

Our pictures on the news,
us kept below zero in a block of ice
preserving our perfect bodies.

An archeologist leading a tour points and says
see their strange clothes, the way they wear their hair
see the way their eyes light up at one another
and the way their fingers twine.

Something I could totally never put together myself, but that I nevertheless enjoy. Am also reading a totally shallow book called Cliente in French by Josiane Balasko. It's about an escort boy and this older lady. Figured if I'm going to be reading in French, especially before a superserious private reading in January, I should read something superly awesome. Therefore the purchase as well of some French slam-poetry and Persepolis (ohgodIlovethisbook). I've read everything by Marjane Satrapi, but only in translation. I'm so excited to read her in the original! Oh...and I bought something by the Marquis de Sade.

Elisa

Books I'm A' Takin' To New York

La Tregua- Mario Benedetti
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao- Junot Diaz
Assymetries in Time- Paul Horwich
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov- Vladimir Nabokov
The Tropic of Cancer- Henry Miller

and, a random copy of Avery, a literary magazine, that I impulsively bought for $1 yesterday at a used bookstore, because Prof. Chaon's story was in it--I figured I'd do him the honor of reading him, since he's done the favor of reading me. (Alyssa said, "Oh, I hear he's actually good," so, I hope I'll enjoy it. It's also a good sign that his story is the last. They must have put it there for a reason.)



"NYC, just got here this morning, three bucks, two bags, one me!"