i'm ready for my close-up, mister de mille...

This is my favorite photo of my book in a store.

Good lighting, good angle, good company.

Taken at Skylight Books, 1818 Vermont Ave, Los Angeles

June 4, 2006

an inside job

The original idea was to have started blogging months ago, so I'd have this great written record of my pre-pub time and all the starry-eyed anxiety-slash-excitement that happens in those magical months leading up to The Big Event.

But what I found is that the pre-pub months were very much like pregnancy or wedding planning, things that sound dreamy, things that you buy journals in which to document all the dreaminess, but then when they actually happen, you get so swept up into the minutae and exhaustion and reality of it that all the journals stay blank. And then you get to the end and go, OH. I should have written that down while it was happening. Or taken more pictures. Or something.

So I will try to reconstruct a little bit of what the "before" was like in the next few posts, taking comfort in knowing that I have saved every single email I have ever sent or received over the past several years, and that that will be my journal of sorts.

I have to say that I was recently visiting Rebecca Agiewich's website (http://rebecca.agiewich.net/blog/) -- I had the pleasure of meeting her on Monday at a Hugo House event, but more on that later -- and her leading-up-to-publication postings really say everything I would have said, down to the dates, as we are both from the Class of May 06. As do Martha O'Connor's blog (http://www.marthaoconnor.com) and Anne Lamott's chapter on Publication in her I-couldn't-have-gotten-this-far-without-it book Bird by Bird (if you are a writer, and do not have this book: why not? what is wrong with you? Good Lord. Go get it.)

Anyway. There was a bunch of really cool stuff leading up to this mythical Day Of Publication, and then a bunch more cool stuff, and now here I am, a month later, still thinking it's all really cool, but still wanting More (more sales, more reviews, more articles, more phone calls from the NY Times and Oprah and the Today Show) (or...any phone calls from them would be nice). Which means that no matter what is happening, I'm always looking for the "next." And I need to practice enjoying the "now." And not think things like "When____happens, then I'll be happy." It's just like Mme. Lamott said, when she's quoting the coach for the Jamaican Bobsled team in Cool Runnings (and I'm paraphrasing here): If you weren't okay before the gold medal, you won't be okay after the gold medal. Or when she writes about talking to her son's preschool priest about serenity and peace and that deep sense of self that she imagined would come after Being Published (again paraphrasing): "He said, The world can't give you that stuff--but by the same token, they can't take it away from you either."

That is to say, it's an inside job, and Being Published did not suddenly make my self-esteem skyrocket, alter my overall level of (in)sanity, etc. What it did do was give me the very fine, precious gift of being able to walk into a book store, point, and say, "That one's mine."

That's what it did.

But I have to admit, that little thing...it goes a long way.

welcome to my blog

I figured what with the book out and all, it might be good to have somewhere, aside from my website, to do some shameless self-promotion, keep people in the loop on various events & happenings, have discussions about writing and publishing and whatnot, and invite others to do the same.

What better place than a blog to do that?

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So about the book, briefly: It's called Beachglass. It came out May 20. And when I say "came out," I mean at your local B & N, Borders, cute Indie bookshop -- not like I'll be picking up my black-plastic-spiral-bound xeroxes at Kinko's. This is "a real book" -- hardcover, published by St. Martin's Press, with all the bells and whistles. Having grown up in LA, where everyone and their brother has a screenplay, I am used to people claiming to be writers who are really waiters (it's only one letter off, so it may be more a spelling issue than an inflated ego issue)...so I hate to say it, for fear of sounding phony and self-centered. And yet here I sit, a published author, with a hardcover book, some reviews and interviews and book signings, a radio spot here and there, and even the occasional fan mail!

"What's it about?" you may be asking (hopefully not aloud, since this not an actual conversation). It's about a girl's adventures in her recovery from addiction and her best friend who is dying of AIDS. But it's not depressing. It's even funny at times. Could say it's a coming-of-age story, but one of those 'coming-of-age in your twenties' things, not a 'coming-of-age as a young teen' thing. (People are coming of age later and later anymore.) Could also say it's a friendship story. It's an AA story. It takes place mostly in West Hollywood. There are drag queens and strippers and artists (oh my!). And it's fiction. Not the James Frey kind of "fiction," where I claim it's real and then get busted by the Smoking Gun and reamed by Oprah, but the intentional kind of fiction, where I made stuff up and then wrote it down.

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I’m hoping to post stuff at least a couple times a week. We’ll see how that goes.