I've been spending most of my evening free time with a new man. He's been dead for four centuries, but what's that to stop a good love affair?

I'm determined to make it through Michel de Montaigne's Complete Essays this year, and I'm about halfway through.  Though it's taken me some four months to read these 600 pages, that's no reflection on the quality of the material (obviously).  I'm astonished and captivated by this French nobleman's ability to flay himself on the page.  He admits his lusts, his weaknesses, and his strengths.

That's him, Michel de Montaigne. Not bad, eh? Ok, not great.

What are we doing with our time, he argues, if not exploring ourselves first?  What can we know, if we don't know ourselves?  How can we understand what lays beyond our fingertips if we do not first come to terms with the limits of our grasp?

It's daunting stuff, even for a writer who spends a lot of time in her own head.  (Maybe particularly?  Do we writers doubt ourselves even more, for having explored those murky interior depths and gotten lost more often?)  So sometimes, it makes for slow reading.

But the point of this blog post is to recommend the other books I've been reading.  Here were some I loved:

The Tiger Queens by Stephanie Thornton.  This is a rich, nuanced book about some of the women surrounding Genghis Khan.  Totally transportive and convincing, plus heart-breaking.

The Sun and Other Stars by Brigid Pasulka.  You might think you're not interested in a soccer-obsessed town on the coast of Italy, but these charming characters will prove you utterly wrong.

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose.  The glamour and danger of pre-war and Nazi-occupied Paris will give you shivers in this beautiful novel by a true master.

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones.  Two half-sisters, one a secret daughter by a clandestine second marriage split this novel of love and yearning.  Just what does it mean to love, Jones asks, and how much will you sacrifice?

It finally feels like fall is coming! Fall is my favorite season, with its combination of new beginnings (school starting, even if I'm now years out of any regular class schedule) and gentle farewells. To say nothing of bright foliage, pumpkin pie, fresh apples, and the smell of fallen leaves. And did I mention pumpkin pie?

Fall is also great for reading (though what season isn't?) -- best with a mug of hot apple cider and a light blanket over your knees as you face a window or sit on the porch. It's also a great time to celebrate reading, with lots of book festivals, like the National Book Festival or Fall for the Book (Sept 22-27 in Fairfax). On a more intimate scale, a local DC author will be reading from and signing her novel I Am Venus on Sept 19. Ok, not technically fall, but close! I reviewed the novel for the Washington Independent and very much enjoyed it.

Wherever you are, I hope you have a fall to enjoy (or spring if you're in the Southern Hemisphere!) and books to relish it with.

Quick update

I've been spending a lot of time on other projects and so haven't blogged much. I'm shifting my book reviewing largely over to the Washington Independent Review of Books, a great site that publishes tremendous content every day of the workweek. It constantly makes me wish I had more time to read. And I've also started work on my next novel manuscript. So add in a toddler, a house, and a dinner to cook, and there's not much time. Yeah, yeah, the story of the internet.

My latest review for WIROB is of Matt Bell's In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods.

Have a great summer, all!

Weave Magazine Issue 8 is available!

The beautiful eighth issue of Weave Magazine is now available for purchase! I have a short story included, and I'm honored to be in such good company. Thanks to the editors for all their hard work! Check it out here.

Gettysburg Review - Spring 2013

My husband and I just bought a house, an old one with the sort of mysterious insulation and basement tile that just might be asbestos. We did our walk through this week and, while looking at the suspicious golden-colored puffs of insulation poking out in the attic, I couldn't stop thinking about Victor Reusch's story, "Sweet Miseries," in the latest issue of The Gettysburg Review. Reusch's narrator substitutes his fear of asbestos poisoning for a deeper existential anxiety. I could imagine, as the narrator did, those strange fibers percolating down into my lungs and making a nest. And then what? That's what the story is about.

This issue of the Review with its eerie art is filled, of course, with moving stories, essays, and poems. Perhaps my favorite is Gina Troisi's "Wrapped Up in Skin, Hidden behind Eyes," a heart-breaking account of her childhood with her horror-movie addicted stepmother and her self-absorbed father. Troisi circles around and around, uncovering the pain of a child living in fear of rejection or injury, and we wonder what other dark depths lurk beneath the attractive facades of those around us.

As is their custom, the editors of The Gettysburg Review don't label their essays or stories, except in the table of contents. Maybe I'm too narrow-minded about this, but knowing if I'm reading fiction or non-fiction affects the way I interact with a piece, and so I find it irksome to have to flip back to the table of contents each time I reach a new entry. But, that's a minor quibble. The collection is, as always, beautiful and haunting. Check it out!

Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel

When death is a foregone conclusion, when one is merely counting the meals, minutes, and breaths before dying, what does it mean to be alive? We know from the start of Bring Up the Bodies that Anne Boleyn is destined to die, and soon. But rather than dulling our interest this knowledge brings a macabre frisson to Mantel's story. Anne flirts, plots, rages, and dines in innocence, and we are left to bite our nails and watch her agonizing decline. King Henry's honor necessitates that she bring a number of gentlemen down with her and these, the bodies of the title, are also dead long before the headsman brings down the axe.

The novel's hero, or anti-hero perhaps, is the often-reviled Thomas Cromwell. Even casual students of Tudor history know that Cromwell himself will, eventually, suffer the King's justice. So he too is a walking corpse, even though his death is still years away. He has begun to fear his enemies but still, he lives and thrives. The reader's foreknowledge is difficult to bear when we find ourselves rooting for Cromwell while knowing his immutable end. But Mantel is reminding us that we are all, ultimately, sentenced to death. Anne's and Thomas's tragedies are our own.

Mantel brings Cromwell into focus with deft skill and heart. He is a bold, ambitious man who dares to bring down queens, but he loves his son and his friends, and offers mercy where he can. As in Wolf Hall, Mantel pulls the narrative focus in tight, getting as close to Cromwell as third person narration can, but in this second book in her trilogy she gives the reader a little more help with comprehending her style. We're grateful, and the book reads like the prize-winner it is. The plot gathers speed and tension as Cromwell uncovers suspicions and then evidence, however specious, of Anne's treason. Meanwhile the reader, just like Henry's bewildered courtiers, becomes caught up in the drama, beauty, and horror of this famous, yet uniquely told, story.

[Full disclosure: I am an unabashed Hilary Mantel fan. But you should be too. :)]

On Death and Cats (both the house and tiger varieties)

The nice people at Floodwall Magazine have recently published my short story, "A Certain Way of Alone." Check it out, along with the awesome stories I'm honored to be published next to. You'll encounter existentialist cats (are there any other kind?), philandering photographers, a menacing bear, and other curious creatures.

Beautiful cover art!

I'm a bit behind the times here, but I just saw that Weave Magazine has posted the cover art for their next issue. I'm extremely lucky to be included in the contributors for Issue 08 and can't believe how gorgeous the art is! This lovely lady will be available Jan 2013. Mark your calendars!

Times like these I wish I was a poet

This morning the bus driver had an altercation with a young woman. I couldn't hear what they were discussing, but she seemed to be asking for some sort of apology. Their voices rose, he kept the bus idling at the green light, and soon everyone on the bus was looking at them. Then she got off and, as we pulled away, I saw her hands covering her face as she sobbed.

Another woman on the bus gently told the bus driver, "You know, sometimes you just have to say, 'I'm sorry. Have a nice day.'" This sparked a lively debate between that woman and another rider, which lasted a few heated blocks until they all got off. All along, the woman staunchly defended the weeping lady - just because her feelings had been hurt.

I wish I could have told the young woman what had happened once the bus pulled away. She stood on the curb sobbing, brushing the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand like a lost child. That was the start to her day. She'll never know that half the bus looked on in sympathy as we pulled away, and that a brave woman defended her. All she had was the confusion and hurt.

It's a small thing, that woman's unconsoled pain. I know that. But still, the world seemed just a little out of balance when the consolation, the empathy she seemed to need, drove away without her knowing it. That's what poetry is for, I think. To try to nudge the world back into balance by snatching at those sparks of life that we might otherwise miss and breathing them into flame for us to see. I wish I could give that woman a poem.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A little bit of fairy dust can go a long way. The Shakespeare Theatre's latest rendering of the classic A Midsummer Night's Dream is full of magic, and the audience, like the lost lovers of the play, is better off for being caught in that star-dusted wood. This iteration is staged on, well, an old dusty stage, reminding us that not only is there a play within a play, but that all of life's adventures can be seen as theatre. When we dress, what costumes are we putting on? And when we love, what roles are we playing? The message is not intended to accuse us of artifice, but rather to suggest that life is a role, and we play it as best we can. It was a beautiful production, and if you're in the DC area, I strongly recommend it!

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell

I can't even attempt to be measured in this review. I LOVED this book. Loved it so much that when I was finished reading I walked around hugging it to my chest, like a toddler with her teddy bear. Loved it so much that I was trembling as I read the final pages. Loved it so much that I will have to buy the hardcover edition so I have a more permanent record.

The novel is the story of Dutchman Jacob de Zoet, a Dutch East Indies clerk at the turn of the 19th century. Jacob travels to the Dutch trading enclave off the coast of Nagasaki, at a time when Japan is still closed to foreigners and deeply protective of its isolation. We know, from the vantage point of the 21st century, that Japan's sealed borders will not last more than another half century, but at the time, the country is struggling to balance the temptation of trade with the fear of change. Jacob is, in a way, a bridge between those two tendencies - an honorable representative of one of the world's most powerful commercial enterprises, and a sympathetic force for transformation, however private and localized those changes may appear to be.

Jacob's story starts off slowly. He has been sent to Japan to clean up the Company's books, or so we are told. But as he finds himself immersed in the politics of both the Company and, gradually, Nagasaki, his story takes on greater menace and import. Ultimately, Jacob finds himself confronted with an evil that is nearly incomprehensible. But his desire to counter that evil is shackled by the limitations of a closed Japan and the multiple competing dangers facing Jacob and his friends.

The story is gripping and, most importantly, tremendously moving and thought-provoking. There are a lot of characters and the story is not for inattentive readers. But those willing to stick around will be amply rewarded. The only other thing I can do from here is to gush, so I'll close by saying that David Mitchell exceeded my expectations and then blew me out of the water with his beautiful writing and humane, complicated characters.

John Saturnall's Feast, by Lawrence Norfolk

In this abundant age, eating has, perhaps, never been more fraught with meaning. Local or organic? Meat or vegetable? Head-to-tail or choice cuts? On a molecular level, we are what we eat, but there is now more to it than that. Ethical and even spiritual paths are open to us: we can eat how we live.

Lawrence Norfolk's latest novel might appear to be a run-of-the-mill upstairs-downstairs romance girded with the agony of superstition and bigotry. But he elevates John Saturnall's Feast, a seventeenth century tale, with a sprinkling of food mysticism and a generous helping of lyrical writing. The result is a mundane plot with some thoughtful themes, much like a hearty, yet bland, rice pudding studded with the occasional currant.

We meet John as a young boy, vulnerable and hungry. His mother is gone, and somehow his village's narrow-minded superstition is to blame. Through flashbacks, John reveals a painful yet beautiful childhood, gilded with awe at his mother's wisdom and mysteries. She was a healer and midwife but, as we learn, she was also a keeper of the Feast.

Norfolk never makes it clear exactly what he means by the Feast, but this ambiguity saves the book from the plot conventions that otherwise hamper it. His seventeenth century kitchen is alive with detail and rich, period dishes, and his characters' hard-scrabble lives are convincing. Their emotions seem sometimes forced by the necessities of the plot, but their appetites for both food and love are what keep us turning the pages. And in the end we ask ourselves, for whom do I keep the Feast? John Saturnall finds his answer. Now it's our turn.

Details, a Time-Traveling Drain, and the Short Story

We were all seated around a rough-hewn picnic table with our various drafts strewn in front of us when the topic of details came up. My writers group had reviewed one member's fascinating, inventive story, but it was missing a bit of life somehow. Perhaps details could infuse the piece with that spark of animation that it needed?

I had recently read a short story by Tania James, the second of hers that had come into my grubby hands. Both her stories glowed with emotion made vivid by detail. As it happened, another member of the group had a journal that held a third James story and, sure enough, the first paragraph was ripe with interesting minutiae.

How does detail help? Well, I should note that it's a matter of preference and style - some writers have written powerful stories that lack detail but rely instead on muscular verbs or fast-moving narratives. That works too. But for me, nothing gets my heart racing like a closely-observed detail. Something that the story could do without, but it would lose some of its spark. Sort of like how color on a living room wall really makes the room pop.

In her short story "Ethnic Ken," published in the most recent edition of Five Points, James starts off with an intriguing detail. She writes, "My grandfather believed that the guest bathroom drain was a portal for time travel." This grabs our attention with its weirdness but also has a delicate specificity that holds our attention. She continues a few paragraphs later, "My grandfather wore house slippers with pom poms at the toes. He could slice and de-seed an apple in the palm of his hand. He believed that he was trapped somewhere in 1929, with the nine-year old version of his wife, Ammu."

James could easily write her story without the pom poms or the apples. But we might not be sitting there with her gazing into it, mouths agape, with quite such intensity.

Reading! It can be done, even with baby.

Happily, even with an eight-month-old skootching around the house, I am able to get more reading done than just Caps for Sale and Goodnight Moon. I just haven't had time to write about it! Here's a quick run-down of some recent books I've enjoyed (and one I didn't).

What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman
It's been years since I've read a mystery and this was a fun one to use to reacquaint myself with the genre. Lippman is a local author, writing from and often about Baltimore, and it was exciting to see some local scenery in this book. The story isn't a typical murder-mystery whodunnit but rather a circuitous tale of secret identity. Two little girls disappeared decades ago, leaving a tragic, life-destroying wake in their absence. But when a woman appears claiming to be one of the girls, do the inconsistencies in her story line up? I didn't find the end very surprising, but it was a gripping read nonetheless.

Tinkers by Paul Harding
A man is dying and his mind spins back through his own life and then into his father's life. Time itself seems to come undone in this beautiful, essentially plot-less novel.

Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth

This book really deserves its own entry but in case I don't have time for that, I'll say now that the novel is amazing. A slaveship departs England in the 18th century carrying hope and despair in equal measure. What happens to the ship and its crew as they barrel through lives along the African coast and then beyond is an epic and heartbreaking tale.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
I'm not usually a quitter when it comes to books. I tend to push through no matter what. But I HATED this book and finally gave up on page 300 of 500+. Franzen writes a heartless story about characters that are no more than caricatures. They whine and drug their way through their painful, upper middle-class lives, and are incapable of trusting or seeing love.

I'd love to hear what other people are reading! And I'd especially love to have someone argue with me about why The Corrections is worth reading.

Tutorial: Tracking your short story submissions

The most recently visited website on my browser isn't my email account or the New York Times, even though I check those multiple times a day. The site that occupies top honors on my computer is Duotrope, and I'm here to spread the gospel.

Duotrope is a free site that offers an extensive database of literary markets (primarily journals, magazines and zines) that publish fiction, poetry and (in beta) non-fiction. Duotrope lists information about each market and - here's where my obsession comes in - tracks data from users about submissions. Have you sent a poem to Tin House? You can see how many other users have sent poems in the past twelve months, what Tin House's acceptance rate is, how long responses take (for acceptances and rejections), what percentage of submissions receive form rejections as opposed to personal ones, and how recently users have reported responses. Among other neat data points. But enough telling - let me show you some of the awesome.

Let's say you want to search for a journal that publishes sci fi short stories in paper medium only, and you want to submit your story electronically. Here's what that would look like:

I didn't make this selection, but you can order your search in a few ways, including from most to least accepting, and in terms of response time (in case you're in a rush).

The real (obsessive) fun starts once you've found a journal to submit your story to. Let's say we're going to try to be the first Duotroper to publish a story with One Story. I'll go to Search, Find by Title, and pull up the listing for One Story. (They're currently temporarily closed to submissions, so let's time travel here and pretend it's September 2012). When I log in with my account, I see that Duotrope has received 507 reports from users regarding submissions to One Story over the past year. None have yet been accepted. But that's ok, we'll be the first one! On the right side of the page, we click "Report Submission/Response." The image below shows the submission page, where we note the date we submitted our story, the status ("Pending Response"), the title of the story, and how we submitted. Wait, the title? First, we have to make an entry in Duotrope for our story - that's so you can tell which story (or poem or essay) you've submitted where. So click "I need to add a piece to my list" (second arrow below) and go ahead.



Once you've reported your submission, Duotrope starts its magic. You can tell how many days your story has been out for submission, and you can track how your wait compares to the average response times. You can even check out a publication's entry to see when the last recorded response was, and the most recent date of a submission that's recorded a response. (So, for our One Story submission that we sent on September 12, 2012, in November 2012 we see that the latest response was October 31 and that they have sent responses for stories submitted as recently as September 1. So that might suggest they haven't gotten to our story yet.)

Here's my submission tracker, for example. You can see some of the stories I have submitted and how many days out they are.


There are more features than I can go over in a short post, but I'm happy to answer any questions. It's really an amazing site - very empowering for writers, and hopefully useful for publishers, who can see how their response times stack up against their peers. So, go forth and submit!

Farewell to a stupendous writer

This is a sad note to re-start my blogging with, but I think it's an important one. The tremendously talented Barry Unsworth has passed away, at the august age of 81. The Washington Post has a nice obituary for him here, though I warn you that about half way through the article reveals plot points that don't come up at least fifty percent into his Booker-prize-winning novel, Sacred Hunger.

Coincidentally (obviously, I suppose, since it's not like I knew he was going to die), I'm reading Sacred Hunger right now. It is, thus far, a moving novel that shoves your face in the gross inhumanity of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Given the role of that trade in our history, and the commonalities of spirit between that age and ours, I think it's a necessary lesson. I hope the second half of the book is as gripping as the first.

One-handed reading

Per my previous post, my life has changed pretty radically recently! I am enthralled by my adorable baby girl, Aria. But even she can't keep me from reading. I've managed to read a few books so far, including the moving Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett and Madame Bovary, which I thought I had read already but apparently hadn't. Now I'm in the midst of 1Q84 (happily loaded on my new e-reader so I don't have to balance its bulk with a 2-month-old baby in the other arm), as well as Momma Zen by Karen Maezen Miller. I'd heard some quotes from Momma Zen and her other book in my yoga class, but now that motherhood has descended full force, I wanted to read the whole thing. I'm enjoying it so far and trying to take to heart the idea of being gentle with myself. There are no mistakes, only life.

I'm curious if anyone else out there has read or is reading 1Q84. It's compelling and interesting, and I'd love to hear what other people think (without spoilers). Even better, are there any other moms, or other folks, balancing a book in one hand and the treasure of their lives in the other? (And do you ever find time to write??)

And here is a baby picture because I can't resist :)

Hiatus, for a good reason

I won't be posting much in the coming weeks ... But I think I have a good excuse. Her name is Aria.

Sixteenth Century Thought Experiments and Kittens

We're lucky today to count Death as an infrequent visitor, but in the 16th century, Europeans had a much closer familiarity with such loss. Infant mortality was extremely high, life expectancy over all was less than half what Americans can look forward to today, and illness or accident could slay anyone at the slightest glance. Thus Michel de Montaigne found himself in his mid-30s and mourning the death of his best friend, his first-born infant daughter, his younger brother, and his father, all while expecting his own life to end within a few years. Such a cacophony of loss drove him to retire to his Bordeaux estate and resolve to steel his will with stoicism, the reigning philosophy of the day.

But this late Renaissance humanist found that he uncovered not stillness but endless curiosity when left alone with his mind. He turned to experimenting with the world - having himself woken while in a deep sleep so as to try to know slumber, traveling across Europe to "polish" his mind through contact with others, and musing about the meaning of his cat's play. These trials he turned to essays, from the French verb "essayer," to try or taste. And the result was a tremendous contribution to Western thought and literature.

In When I am Playing With My Cat, How do I know That She is Not Playing With Me? by Saul Frampton, we learn about both Montaigne's life and his essays. I've never read the originals, so I can't speak to Frampton's scholarship, but the story his writes is both compelling and edifying. Montaigne, at least by Frampton's account, is a charmingly human man, eager to learn about himself and his fellows through close contact and observation. He's also intellectually daring and honest with himself, and comes to some conclusions quite different from the mainstream of his time. I really enjoyed this book - devoured it in just over a day - and now look forward to trying (tasting, as Montaigne might put it), the original essays.

By the way, Montaigne lived during a fascinating period of French history, including the religious civil wars and the death of Henry II. Does anyone know of a good novel about him and his life? I'd love to read it. If it's not out there though, maybe I'll add that to my long list of projects I'd like to write some day!

Cover image from World Literature and Philosophy Rochester Public Library blog. Once again, what a neat cover, no?

The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise, by Julia Stuart

It is, contrary to this visitor's expectation, a little difficult to feel the full weight of history when visiting the Tower of London. Maybe it's the conveyor belt they make you stand on to see the Crown Jewels, or maybe it's the hordes of other tourists blandly staring at yet another suit of armor. The complex can feel just a bit silly, belying its almost millennium of weighty history.

So perhaps it is appropriate that Julia Stuart's novel is quite silly, filled with a frolicking bearded pig, a tail-less centenarian tortoise, and an erotica-writing clergyman, among other oddities, but still drenched with history and emotion. Stuart takes us into the almost-cloistered lives of the Beefeaters who care for the tower and its ghosts, where we meet Balthazar Jones, a Beefeater stumbling through a thick depression after the death of his only child. Balthazar lives with his beloved wife and Mrs. Cook, a family heirloom who claims descent from Captain Cook's own tortoise and carries her home with her as she makes her slow trek across the Tower Grounds.

None of the Tower's inhabitants seem to have life figured out. Balthazar and his wife Hebe Jones are each drowning alone in their grief. The owner of the Tower's occupants-only pub suspects that she earned more than just a disappointed heart from her fling with a Spaniard. The chapel's reverend fears he will never free his dwelling from the evil occupation of yellow-toothed rats. And, worst of all, the Queen worries that visitor numbers at the Tower are down, just as she is in need of a new location for her personal menagerie.

The juxtaposition of tragedy and comedy is one of Stuart's greatest strengths here, and the result is a touching, if light, novel. She also sprinkles in fun bits of history - like the story of Ranulf Flambard, the Tower's first notable occupant and first escapee. This is certainly an enjoyable and charming read, particularly if you're a fan of British history and quirks.

Isn't the cover just adorable? Image lifted from Book Covers Anonymous, where you can also see the UK cover.