21 Proms

I keep forgetting to mention that I have a story in a new anthology out now–21 PROMS. They are, shockingly, stories about prom. And there are 21 of them. Yes, we like to keep you on your toes with our mysterious ways.

You’ll also find stories by Holly Black, Rachel Cohn, John Green, E. Lockhart, Cecily Von Ziegesar, Jacqueline Woodson, Melissa de la Cruz,. Elizabeth Craft, Sarah Mlynowski, Aimee Friedman, Daniel Ehrenhaft, David Levithan, Jodi Lynn Anderson, Leslie Margolis, Brent Hartinger, Lisa Ann Sandell, Will Leitch, Adrienne Maria Vrettos, Ned Vizzini, and Billy Merrell. Good people, all.

I’m looking forward to promming it this week. Yep, I’m going to sit near the book and say, meaningfully, “Wow, prom is coming up. (pause) Yeppers. Next week. (pause) I don’t have a date yet. (whistle) Oh, you’re going with Tina Landry, she of the enormous…shoes. No, sounds great, sounds great. Me? When I said I didn’t have a date yet what I meant was…I didn’t have a date yet for…this thing–no, this OTHER thing that I totally have to attend. What? I’m, a, uh, um, I’m developing a third eye. Yeah, it’s a new program, very intensive, gonna require lots and lots and lots of attention, no time to have shoes died to match my dress, but thanks for asking.”

I’m going to put baby’s breath in my hair at odd angles so that it makes me look like Princess Leia after rolling down a flowery hill. I’m going to wear uncomfortable shoes, sit on the sidelines of my house with other (imaginary) girls and guys I do not know, smiling uncomfortably, watching people slow dance. I’m going to imagine some terrible cover band is playing, “Celebrate,” urging us to “get down!” before seguing into one of the worst power ballads of all time with a singer who also does Thursday happy hours at the Holiday Inn bar. She wears a lot of frosted blue eyeshadow and polyester. I’m going to smell Binaca breath spray mixed with drugstore perfume and the overly generous use of After Shave. I’m going to pretend that at least one guy makes the party horns with his thumb, forefinger and pinkie, while saying, very cleverly, “Party!!!” I’m going to imagine the chemistry teacher flirting with the just-out-of-student-teaching biology teacher, her playing with her perfectly feathered hair, and the choir director prosletizying for the First Baptist youth group while serving punch that is a color not found in nature. I’m going to imagine several guys using Visine as they come out of the bathroom, and at least one girl lurching drunkenly toward us saying, “Oh my god, y’all, I’m so drunk,” as if I have lost the powers of observation and smell.

And once the mood is appropriately set, I am going to read every single story. I will be grateful that there is such a thing as a prom and that I never, ever have to go again. And I will be especially grateful to get to read cool stories by cool writers I really like.

I did not get asked to my senior prom. In fact, I could barely get arrested in high school in terms of dating. (Lots of guy friends. Lot of guy friends who often asked me who they should take to prom. Oh, it’s all so John Hughes, isn’t it?)

But my friend Maria, whose parents were quite strict, could only go to prom if she doube-dated. I believe her opener in the girls’ bathroom was, “Libba, you don’t have a date for prom, do you?” Why no. No, I don’t. Thanks for assuming. So she arranged a date for me with a guy from the Jesuit school in Dallas. The guy turned out to be someone I went to middle school with, a really cool guy who showed up in a tux…and red hightop sneakers. And I thought, yeah, this’ll work.

There was no pressure, and we had a great time. The only two things I remember are all of us who were into new wave rushing the dance floor when they played the B-52’s “Rock Lobster,” and scaring the bejesus out of the Hall & Oates/Van Halen/”Endless Love” crowd who thought we were freaks for creating a sort of prom mosh pit and ending up on the floor. They were probably right, but it’s a fond memory. The other thing I remember is going to somebody’s house for a senior breakfast and hearing the Tom-Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” for the first time and loving it. And yes, there was baby’s breath (oh, the burning shame) and the dress was peach taffeta. Peach. Taffeta. Take a moment. I know I need one. One match and I could have reenacted “The Wicker Man.” Now, THAT would have been a prom.

So–21 PROMS. On sale now. Check it out. Take a date or go stag. Baby’s breath optional.

You say it’s your birthday. Well, it’s my birthday, too, yeah.

Today is my birthday.

Woke up and it was sunny and about 55 degrees and I said, “Oh yeah, baby.” The universe, she is good.

The husband, boy, and I went to have brunch in the city. We tried to go to The Clinton Baking Shop on the Lower East Side, but it was slammed with an hour wait, and I can wait for a lot of things, but food isn’t one of them. So we went to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in the West Village, and I was made enormously happy by cheese grits and biscuits on steroids (size of a toddler’s head!) and lots and lots of coffee. Comfort food. Food you can caulk your insides with. Food that hours later, you’ll still be going, “No, man, I’m good. Please don’t say the word ‘food’ to me anymore, please?”

I used to go to Cowgirl all the time when I first moved to NYC and worked at Penguin publishing down the street. It was that little touch of Texas in the big city. Lots of nice memories. After brunch, we did what I love to do probably more than just about anything else outside of daydreaming–we wandered. No agenda. No destination in mind. Just walking the streets of New York, stopping in little places that looked interesting (a crafts store, Li-Lac Chocolates for fudge in case I change my mind about never being hungry ever again, Books of Wonder, Forbidden Planet for comics and some graphic novels. And then we splurged and took a cab ride home over the Brooklyn Bridge, and I was reminded of how much I love this city and spring and birthdays and wandering and being alive and having a past and being able to look behind me and see some of it through dirty cab windows.

And then I remembered how incredibly car sick I get in moving vehicles.

So I spent the rest of the cab ride with my head resting on the open window, begging the universe, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, the pavement, and any diety who might actually exist and want to help out, not to let me barf. And then my kid said, “Hey, Mommy, want some fudge?”

Moan.

I’m so jealous of people who don’t get motion sick. And people who can read in moving vehicles? Do not speak to me of them. (It bears mentioning that if someone said to me, “You can lose a limb forever or vomit once,” I’d answer, “Hold on, let me think about it…”)

I didn’t lose my bday breakfast, fortunately. We came home, and I read, “You born today” which seemed to be pretty hopeful, though I stopped placing stock in horoscopes after I found out I share a birthday with Rupert Murdoch and Antonin Scalia. AAAHHHHHHH!!!! Scary. Although, apparently, it’s also Douglas Adams’ bday today, and I will wholeheartedly claim him for my team. Well, he’s dead now, sadly, but I don’t care–he’s still on my bday team! We must fight the forces of bday evil, mwahahahahaha!!!!

On Thursday, I turned in the first 779 pages of THE SWEET FAR THING. I turned in another 140 pages on Friday. And I should turn in the last 100 pages tomorrow. So, basically, I’ve written the page equivalent of Bill Clinton’s MY LIFE. Ay yi yi. I see many cuts in my future. Many, many cuts. Also, I’m not sure that any of it makes sense, but hey, there’s atmosphere! Lots and lots of…atmosphere!

Oh, I won’t think about that today. Spring is in the air. I’m a whole year older. And there’s fudge in my kitchen.

I said I couldn’t eat it? I lied.

Happy spring.

Of books, Britney, and being pissed off

It’s been a tough week and not just for me.

After several 14-hour writing days tacked onto two months of marathon writing, I hit the wall Monday. I could not physically make myself write another word. It wasn’t just the exhaustion. The lagging self-confidence. The conviction that I was writing a shit combination of The Victorian “O.C.” and the world’s longest and worst emo song. I’d just hit it. Total burn out. So long and thanks for all the fish.

The knowledge that I would not make this new deadline induced a complete panic in me. I was consumed with self-loathing and guilt, the terrible feeling that I was letting everyone down. And that, in turn, produced a writing paralysis which didn’t help anything.

And then this amazing thing happened on Monday night.

I got pissed off. I mean really snarling, middle finger salute to the world, you-and-what-army, Peter Finch in “Network,” Pete Townsend-guitar solo-side four-of-“Quadrophenia” pissed off. The kind of pissed off that makes me feel as if I have finally passed from the resigned end of a French New Wave film–all grainy film and trenchoated ennui–into a late 1970’s dystopian England, broken beer bottle in my hand and a punk war cry on my lips. And you know what? It really, really helped. It wasn’t a specific pissed off, just a I “wow, I really needed that” thing.

I made the “click” that I was missing that from the work as well. There was no real anger or blood in the work. I was missing the fist of it all. The you-think-you-can-tell-me-how-to-live-in-this-world-well-you’re-bloody-mistaken-chum cri de coeur that girls/women are often denied. (I’m sure there is, quite rightly, the argument to be made that boys/men are denied the cultural right to their tears and doubts. But that can be somebody else’s Friday blog.) I allowed myself to just scream, “FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK!!!” at the top of my lungs, and the next day, the writing was a dream.

Which brings me to Britney Spears. Britney needs some serious scream time.

As I live on the planet earth, I haven’t been able to tune out the ongoing Britney saga. I’d open Safari and there she’d be on CNN.com–lost, vacant-eyed, her head newly shaved, a little girl staring back at the camera. Yes, I know there have been the countless panty-free shots of Ms. S splashed over the Internet, but there was something so much more naked about these photos. It’s the sort of rawness it’s difficult to really look at–or look away from unscathed. At least for me it is.

I was reminded of how incredibly screwed up I was at 18, 19, 20…well, you get the picture. How that inability to get good and angry, to feel entitled to a good, “FUCK YOU!” at the top of my lungs meant that I could only implode. Self-destruct. Self-destroy. If I hadn’t had a journal and a pen and some bit of wild hardwiring in me that owes more to Iggy Pop than the good southern girl I’d been trained to be, I might have succeeded in that.
It struck me that Britney had taken out her rage on the wrong person. Instead of shearing herself bald and inking her body with tattoos that I’m guessing were not well thought out in advance (sort of Christian Bratz themed), I wish she could have flipped off the world, gone home, grabbed her journal and started writing the sort of album that is as raw and naked as her head. Maybe she still will. I hope so.

Meanwhile, my editor, who is one of the world’s loveliest people, and I have worked out a schedule that works which satisfies all. It will be tight, but the book will be out on time. It will be something that I have fought for, something I have put marrow into, and that is a good feeling.

Uh, did I say the 15th?

Heh, heh. Yeah. About that deadline. Got an extension–till Tuesday the 20th.

I feel like I am in an unholy merger of “Project Runway” and “Supersize Me.” Like I’m running through Mood Fabrics with the clock ticking and the only thing I’ve ingested are coffee and whatever bread products they sell at Tea Lounge so I don’t have to leave. My liver probably looks like beef jerky by now. (In a funny aside, I actually saw Morgan Spurlock in here one day, and I thought it might be a sign from the universe that I needed to eat a vegetable. I didn’t actually eat a vegetable, but I thought about it. Doesn’t that count for something?)

The current page count on the book is 674 pages, but that’s because it’s in a neat, tidy Times Roman. (cheating) When I put it into Courier 12-pt. like I’m supposed to, it’s gonna clock in at well over 700. AAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Mood Fabrics! The chiffon or the leopard print! Make it work, people! Models to makeup! I’ll have fries with that! Supersize Me–SUPERSIZE ME!!!!

Yesterday (and the day before that…and the day before…well you get the idea) I sat at Tea Lounge from 8:30 until 6:30. My husband tried to make conversation with me last night and I just stared at him blankly. Sorry, all my words have been used up. It was like a game of charades. I was actually reduced to using my fingers to talk. “Where’s the…you know…that fuzzy who lives here…we feed her…whiskers, tail…” “Cat?” “Riiiight. Cat.”

I put the bag with the milk on the table and the bag with my gloves in the refrigerator. I made the mistake of having three cup of coffee which made me as paranoid as Al Pacino in “Scarface.” I was convinced I had given myself brain damage. (See how fun I am at the end of deadline? So, so fun. Big party in my brain. All the time.)

Okay, I left Gemma and Kartik in the middle of an argument. I should probably go back and see what happens. Wow, this bagel is good. Sorry, liver, but I must.

Thanks for all the well wishes–they really help. 🙂

And just think, next week I can discuss really important issues…like the new season of “American Idol.” I swore to myself I would not get sucked in this year. I lied. Sweet Jesus, I lied.

Holy crap, it’s still not finished

It’s February 1st, and this is a quick update.

In early January, when it became clear to me that I would never in a gazillion years finish my revisions by January 15th, I called my lovely, long-suffering editor, Wendy, and made a new deadline: February 15th. Yeah, Happy Valentine’s Day.

So, I’ve basically been under house arrest since Christmas. No fun for me. I don’t even know what’s going on on “Heroes.” Oh, the humanity. (P.S. DON’T TELL ME! I DVR’d all new episodes. Yes, I know DVR is not a verb. It is now.)

My orphans file? The one where I stick the stuff I’ve written but realize won’t make the final cut? It is now 398 pages. Granted, a lot of that is duplicate. But I’m guessing there’s about 200 pages of cuts. The page count for the manuscript is 587 pages and climbing daily.

(Why am I telling you this? Why? Good God, it’s so freaking boring! I’ve become like those new parents who want to discuss the consistency of their kid’s projectile spit-up because that’s all they live and they have become virtual zombies. I have become a writing zombie. I am going to be that person at parties standing too close to somebody, not blinking, and speaking in a scary monotone about my book while they smile uncomfortably and look for the exits: “Oh, multiple plot lines…yeah, sounds tough…I, um, just remembered I need to have a liver transplant but it was nice talking to you…”) Even the scene that appears as a preview in the paperback of REBEL ANGELS has been cut. So, consider it a rare B-side.

In other news, I was sad to see that one of my favorite Texas women died yesterday–political columnist Molly Ivins. If you’ve never read Molly, I highly recommend that you do. My favorite is MOLLY IVINS CAN’T SAY THAT, CAN SHE? She was a dame who kicked butt and took names and she was hilarious, too.

Alright. The realms await. See everyone on the 16th.

Electric Pikachu wishes you a Happy New Year

This should be an interesting post. It’s 7:57 a.m. I’ve been up since 5:00 obsessing/freaking out about the book. (I didn’t actually get out of bed at that hour, mind you, but instead I stared at my ceiling and chewed my lower lip and silently implored my cat to please stop making biscuits on my stomach, that I would feed her at a decent hour.) And now, I’m trying to write a journal entry while my son watches “Pokemon” and gives me running commentary, sort of an 8-year-old’s DVD extras.

Living with an 8-year-old boy is sort of like living with someone who has Tourrette’s, and the tics take the form of arcane information about Pokemon, Star Wars, and various Gameboy games. I’ve long since realized that my job is to be the straight man. The sidekick on the late night talk show that is his life. “No, I didn’t know that.” “I’d love to know what kind of Pokemon.” “Fire powers! Really? Wowee.” “Yes, Mace Windu is cool. Very cool.” Occasionally, you will be thrown by a question like, Who would you rather be, an Aerodactyl or Pikachu? Roman Legonnaires or a Grimnak? This is a fool’s errand, because whatever answer you give will be the wrong one and you will be drawn into a protracted discussion of which powers you could have had if you had chosen differently.

Today, the power I would like to have is the power to finish this book. I was up until midnight last night trying to make sense of it all. Kind of like when you pull everything out of your drawers and cabinets to clean and pare down, but all you can see is crap covering every surface of your home, and you wonder how you will ever get it together. I know I’m on the right track now, but it is such a sloooow process. And painful. I realized that every time I sit down to write a book, I think I can avoid the painful, through-the-fire part. And every time, I get my ass handed to me on a platter. There is no avoiding the pain. The work. The frustration. The uncomfortable, wow-being-a-human-being-ain’t-easy discoveries you make on one page or another. But it’s necessary. Otherwise, you end up with processed cheese food product novel. (of course, this novel could still suck big time so it could all be for naught.)

(My son has just interrupted to say that eventually he’s going to get an Electric Pikachu in his game. Eventually. When I murmured, “Right. Electric Pikachu,” he looked at me like I was the stupidest person in the world: “No, Mommy. Electric is the TYPE of Pikachu.” Right. God, I’m a moron. I HAVE AN ENTIRE NOVEL SPREAD OUT ON THE FLOOR OF MY HEAD! GIVE YOUR MOM A BREAK, KID!)

I am about to be wrangled into a game of Heroscape and I’m only on my first cup of coffee. Doesn’t the Geneva Convention forbid this?

I’m getting the Grimnak this time. Just see if I don’t. And I will have massive powers of attack and lay waste to everything in my path. Mwahahahahaha!!!

I’ve had no time to make resolutions this year, so please feel free to post your top resolutions here so I can borrow. What was the best part of 2006 for you? The worst? What do you hope for in 2007?

I hope everyone has a Happy New Year.

Oh, and I plan to get back to answering posts after the novel’s turned in. Honest. Unless the Grimnak eats me. 🙂

What do we want? Procrastination! When do we want it? Later!

Top Ten List of Procrastination Techniques While on Deadline for Novel

10. Floss
9. Do Google search for various disease symptoms. Become convinced you have every single one. Freak out. Consider booking colonoscopy/barium swallow/MRI/bone density test/fasting blood sugar STAT. Remember you don’t have time. Try to write…since you have so little time left on this planet.
8. Eat chocolate chips straight out of bag. Use several to make semi-sweet morsel replica of Stonehenge.
7. Clean perma-grunge from bottom shelf of fridge.
6. Stage tabletop EQUUS using Star Wars figurines and creepy plastic unicorn. Feel wrong. Watch half-hour of “What Not to Wear” to cleanse brain.
5. Fluff pillows. Twice.
4. Take existing scene from novel and rewrite it as “Dr. Who” mini-episode: “Daleks Come to Spence.”
3. Open fridge. Close fridge. Open fridge. Close fridge.
2. Try to interest cat in dangling sock. Endure feline rejection.
1. Discover new Apple Photo Booth option. Take self-portraits using comic book, fish-eye lens, pop art, and thermal camera options. Take pictures up nose. With turtleneck pulled over head. Posing plastic unicorn perched on glasses. Avoid “normal” setting at all costs.

They put a bonnet on my head.

I was reading an earlier draft of The Sweet Far Thing in my Orphans file when I came across a passage where Kartik explains to Gemma what’s going down with the Rakshana. He says, “They put a bounty on my head.” Except that I read it as, “They put a BONNET on my head.” And now, I can’t quite get the image of Kartik, all broody and steamy, with a lace doily on his head, out of my mind. Just. So. Wrong.

I had a grand time in Montreal last weekend at the Jewish Public Library. It was such a lovely event, and there was a lot of chcolate. Also, I met some really great people. That’s one of the best perks of my job–meeting new, very cool people. I don’t care how Hallmark Cards Sensitive Moments that sounds, it’s true. Canada cooperated very nicely with us by not dipping into the Holy Crap How Do You People Live Here in January???? cold zone. I also discovered that my limited college French is still very limited. The concierge asked me my name twice, and after smiling maniacally, I answered that I was fine, how was she? Sad, sad, sad. Did I mention that I drove my college French teacher to drink?

(There’s a guy on the couch across from me reading Raymond Carver’s CATHEDRAL. Amazing short stories. I’m not worthy. Go forth and read them.)

Tuesday night, still plane-bleary, I went to the Teen Video Book Awards. It’s such a cool idea: filmmakers do 15-second movie trailers for books. The three books in question were THE BOOK THIEF by Marcus Zusak (I’m not worthy, Part II), HOW I LIVE NOW (Printz winner and a must-read), and A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY. I thought all of the trailers were terrific. And I loved meeting Katie K. (sorry, she has a very long last name and I don’t have the spelling available…will correct later.) who directed BEAUTY. She was talented and terrific.

I was so, so happy to see my pal Cecil Castellucci in last Sunday’s NYTimes piece about DC Comics launch of a new line of comics aimed at teen girls. Whoohoo! ‘Bout freakin’ time. Cecil, the author of the fabulous Boy Proof and The Queen of Cool, has written a comic called P.L.A.I.N. JANES, and it is crazy good. So when it comes out, check it out. Support your local feminist comic book writer. Or we’ll put a bonnet on your heads. (Sorry. I just can’t stop.)

Okay, I have to go write some blood and gore to get the image of Kartik in Little Bo Peep gear out of my mind. And then I must watch my Dallas Cowboys annihilate the New York Giants. And then all will be well in the universe.

Freebasing the frosting

I’m sitting at Tea Lounge borrowing their unpredictable WiFi to post an entry. For almost two weeks, I’ve had no internet/email connection. I thought it was the modem, but according to the guy from Time Effing Warner Cable (my pet name for them) who came out and tested the line, it’s “working fine.” Yeah, kind of like my government’s working fine. The hell? DUDE, I CANNOT CONNECT TO THE INTERNET! NO EMAIL! NO ONLINE BROWSING OF ARCANE FACTOIDS THAT HAVE NO RELEVANCE TO MY LIFE AT ALL SAVE TO HELP ME PROCRASTINATE! No early morning reading of Broadsheet in Salon.com. No accidental wanderings to web pages of creepy information and even creepier socks. I can’t even order refrigerator magnets. And really, you can never have too many magnets.

Grumble.

The kind and technologically sound husband has gone in search of a new router. I hope this fixes the problem. Wish I could just order a new router in my brain to help me through the rewrite. I’ve pretty much decided to scrap about, um, 2/3rds of my novel and start over. I would be caught in a vortex of doom, despair, and vomit-worthy panic except for one thing: Denial. Yes, denial is the way of my people, and as a coping mechanism, it doesn’t completely suck. Denial allows you to say things like, “But I always throw away a lot of my novels.” (You say this while smiling through tears and stirring your coffee very, very deliberately as if it is the only thing tethering you to the earth, which it is, but that’s another matter.) Denial stands with you in the kitchen at 10 pm while you’re feverishly baking roughly 1,487 cupcakes for your son’s combo birthday party/school Thanksgiving luncheon and says, “Hey, plenty of time to get that novel knocked out. Oooh, let’s do sprinkles! Pretty, pretty sprinkles!” Denial is the little voice in your ear that whispers, “Novels with plots are so yesterday. How about just 600 pages of free association? And line drawings of your navel dressed as a pirate or Queen Elizabeth I.” Denial allows you to slip out one evening and watch “Borat.” Denial will never tell you that the novel you’re writing makes you look fat.

Then there’s Denial’s evil twin, Reality. Occasionally, as you’re staring at your blank screen, eating leftover Halloween candy gone to seed and stealing glances at that really hot picture of Jamie Bamber in People’s Sexiest Men Alive issue (have mercy!), Reality will sneak up behind you and karate-chop your ass. Then, as you’re lying on the floor, cringing in terror and pain, Reality will say, “Have you been freebasing the frosting on those cupcakes, bitch? Can I just mention that you have TWO MONTHS. TO COMPLETELY. REVISE. A 600-PAGE. MANUSCRIPT? You don’t know what time it is with the big, bad Winterlands creatures! You need to write the origin story for the Tree of All Souls! You need to figure out the whole Wilhemina Wyatt angle! What’s up with the Order and the Rakshana and Lily Trimble and Circe and Tom and Dad and Pippa/Felicity/Ann/Gemma/Kartik/Gorgon/Philon and that creepy spider-like guy who keeps popping up in the Borderlands? Focus! And FYI? if I have to listen to a moody iPod playlist of Roxy Music, Sigur Ros, and Echo and the Bunnymen ONE MORE TIME, I will go insane! Download some Stooges or Fishbone. Sheesh.”

If Denial is Rachel Ray, Reality is Samuel L. Jackson. And I think you should always put your money on Mr. Jackson and whatever’s in that briefcase.

On Sunday, when I’d reached a point of sweetly pirouetting about the house while singing the phrase, “I am so f—-d” to various showtunes, Holly Black, Cassie Clare and Emily Lauer staged an intervention. Or maybe they’d gotten sick of hearing me whine via email. They met me at Tea Lounge North where we took over one end of an absurdly long table directly under the world’s loudest speakers, and they proceeded to grill me on magic, origin stories, and that troublesome ending (the phrase, “BATTLEHANDS!” brings me a giggle even as I type this). I think we were there for four hours and I ingested enough coffee to make me as fidgety as a toddler. But the ending came into glorious view. Thank God for the generosity of other writers. I’m really lucky to know such brilliant, talented people. Thanks, ladies. Dinner on me.

Slowly, slowly it’s starting to take shape. I’m still panicked but I’m also having those tingly moments where I go, “Oh. OH! Right! Got it!” Revision is not for the faint of heart. And let me tell, when this sucker is turned in sometime in January (my editor, who is probably reading this and wondering how I dare to take time from the furious writing to post, is smiling and going, “Nice try, Lib. January 15th, baby. Mark it in red.” My editor is lovely and kind and gracious. The best editor in the whole wide world. And I will be ducking her calls all day on the 15th.) I’m going to do nothing but stare at my ceiling and chew Double Bubble and maybe make a replica of the David out of the chewed pieces. I think I may take a suggestion from folks on this list and post some of the scenes that won’t make it into the book as soon as I know what’s hitting the cutting room floor.

***SHOUT OUT TO MY FRIENDS IN MONTREAL: I will be speaking at the Jewish Public Library on Monday, November 27th in beautiful Montreal, Canada. I think it’s at 7pm? If you’re nearby and so inclined, come on down. I’d love to see you there.

And to the American side, Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Angels in the subway

What a strange morning.

Around 9:00 I was taking the F into Manhattan from Brooklyn. I managed to score a seat by the window. (Already the unusual begins…) In my rush, I’d forgotten to bring a book, so I decided to tune out to my iPod. It’s the usual New York rush hour mix: a Moby-looking, bespectacled guy reading a book of interviews with Jello Biafra, Henry Rollins, and other underground punk luminaries (I was trying to read over his shoulder without being obvious, but he was much taller than I was, which made it tough.) A woman with a broken compact trying to put on her mascara. (Hey, it’s all fun and games till someone loses an eye.) Lots of people with their New York Times under their arms, fingers moving in a flurry of text messaging. Some moms on their way to work dropping off kids at daycare first. Tourists with their maps written in various languages trying to navigate our less-than-user-friendly transportation system. (“Is Macy’s at 34th Street and 8th Avenue or 34th Street and 6th Avenue and how would I know this?”). And one of New York’s finest who seemed all of about fifteen and looked incredibly bored. Or maybe when you have a gun holster strapped to you, you adopt that stance out of habit.

So it’s me and the teeming mass of commuters. I’m zoning out to “Anywhere on this Road” by Lhasa Del Sala. It’s a very haunting song that Rachel Cohn turned me on to. Lhasa has a deep, husky, seductive-yet-oddly-emotionally-disconnected voice. In my head I’m thinking about the graphic novel I want to work on when I’ve finished with prior commitments. Something dark and urban and spooky. The train’s jostling along. And just as Lhasa sings, “If I can stand up to angels and men, I’ll never be swallowed by darkness again…” something shiny in the deep tunnel shadows catches my eye. It takes me a second to process what I’m seeing. There, in one of the filthy hollows of the subway tunnels under a bare bulb sits a young blonde woman. She’s sitting cross-legged and wearing what looks like a white straitjacket, her arms not visible. She’s got her head down-asleep? nodding out? dead?–and the light’s making her hair into a halo of white fire blown about by the subway’s fierce breath. I just stared at her, trying to determine whether she was really there or not. I wanted to turn to Moby Guy and say, “Hey, do you see that woman down there…?” And then the train pushed on, past fat silver graffitti letters and dark, concrete pylons and into the bleach-bright lights of the Jay St./Borough Hall subway station lined two deep with people waiting impatiently to get where they were going. I couldn’t help thinking of Holly Black’s VALIANT, which, if you haven’t read, you must.

Then we get to W. 4th Street, and there on the platform is a pair of men’s sneakers, one on its side, surrounded by many scraps of paper and what looks like ashes or lint or something, as if some dude was standing there and just self-combusted, leaving his shoes behind. And I thought, man oh man, it’s going to be a weird, weird day.

So I came home and ate lunch and changed my shoes. Because if I self-combust, I want to go out in my favorites.