Moving On

I am ignoring my child to update my live journal. Some day he will talk about this in therapy.

I turned in the the final-final draft of REBEL ANGELS yesterday. I have not been so happy since I discovered that my local bakery makes honkin’ big cinnamon buns with icing AND they play Cake on the iPod stereo while serving. (Oh, the delicious irony of it all.)

So, now what?

Well, I’m taking a break from Victorian England. Yeah, I know I have one more book to go in this trilogy, but I have to surface for a while. So I’m working on a completely different, total 180 of a novel that I’ve been wanting to work on for some time, and whenever I have down time, I add a little more to it. It’s weird and wonky and every time I tell people the idea they get that glazed look accompanied by an uncertain smile that says, “Oh my god, I trusted you with my digital camera and house keys.” They often say things like, “You’re kidding, right?” and “Well, that’s…different.” But it’s a novel that speaks to my soul, and we have to write what speaks to us. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. The other thing I tell myself is that no one will read it, unless they have a thing for cows, Don Quixote, road trips, insanity, Disneyworld, dwarves, the absurdity of teen marketing, New Orleans, and a few other things that are probably only funny/meaningful to me.

But hey, I’ve already made up the iPod playlist, so I guess it’s a go. Here’s the playlist thus far:

Orange Sky, Alexi Murdoch
Theologians, Wilco
My Mother’s Son, Jonathan Rice
Stay at Home, Jonathan Rice
How Come, Ray LaMontagne
Trouble, Ray LaMontagne
Company in my Back, Wilco
Sometimes, James
Across the Wire, Blue States
You Can’t Always Get What You Want, The Rolling Stones
Solsbury Hill, Peter Gabriel
Don’t Be Shy, Cat Stevens
Joy, Apollo 100

If any songs scream, “Cows and Road Trips!” to you, feel free to post them. I can add them to the playlist.

I’ve got a trip to New Orleans planned at the end of the month. I’m really eager to get back there. The summer I was eighteen, I went to stay with a friend. She had to work during the day, so I just wandered around the French Quarter by myself. I was growing out an unfortunate self-administered haircut that was sort of an unholy mix of mullet and mild Mohawk, and I actually wore cut-off tights under these little t-shirt dresses that I belted with a low-slung studded belt that made me look like I was auditioning for a Robert Rodriguez movie. (Hey, it was the eighties…) I must have been quite a sight. But I loved the freedom of taking a trip all by myself, discovering things on my own. One day, it started to rain, and I ducked into an antiques shop run by a psychic. He offered to read my palm for ten bucks, so I said what the hell. He peered at my hand and announced, “You’re going to be a writer.” I had dreams of being, in no particular order, an actress, a filmmaker, a rock star’s moll, and maybe a bassist for an artsy new wave band. Writer wasn’t even on the list. “Are you sure about that?” I asked. “You wanna look again.” “No,” he said with finality. “You are a writer. There’s no escaping it.”

Wish I could find him now.

I am being pressed into playing “Red Light, Green Light.” It’s the least I can do for having been given these twenty minutes of peace.