"Take the attitude that you will discover the Truth today!
If you say, you are going to take a year off work to search for the Truth, it will take at least a year.
For, like this the mind has just been given a one-year visa to continue indulging in its antics."
I just ran across this Jamaican-born guru on Facebook, a Friend of a Friend, and thought his pictures alone were spirit-lifting (and I don't go for what I think of as blissed-out New Age smiles.)
And speaking of timing and words of wisdom, I'll be speaking on Playboy Radio at 3:30 this afternoon and then tonight on NC Now on UNC-TV about my sexy kundalini novel Cobalt Blue. I'm trying to wrap my head around this combo of shows in one day!
Books that fit into a genre usually attract more readers. Mystery? Romance? Paranormal romance? Paranormal teen romance?
Or steampunk, perhaps. Genres have lots of subgenres. From Urban Dictionary: "Steampunk is a subgenre of speculative fiction, usually set in an anachronistic Victorian or quasi-Victorian alternate history setting…." Which is cutting it pretty fine, in my view.
With so many subcategories, you'd think most any writer could find her or his proper bookshelf.
But I have yet to find mine. Or at least one that is recognized.
This wise young writer, Alec Greven, finished his book at the age of eight. Hit national TV with it at nine. And what he says makes good sense, for any age or gender. Also, he seems to be unspoiled by success.
Surely everyone who writes has had images of their perfect dust jacket photo: a candid shot, perhaps, showing a face that is artlessly come-hither, effortlessly intelligent and profound. With ocean or Irish mist or some other nature-y thing in the background. An ego reward off in the distance for finishing the damn book.
And yet some of these same people are the ones who are quick to say, "I hate having my picture taken."
I am not one of those retiring individuals. Even so, I am capable of feeling silly and stupid and dead-faced after the third or fourth click. This afternoon, a Raleigh News & Observer photographer dropped by my office to shoot a picture of me to accompany an essay of mine for the paper's new magazine Walter. I expected a five-minute snap; turned out to be a portrait session of over an hour.
My job was a lot easier than his. He, Robert Willett, made it fairly simple for me. Sit and grin. Turn this way and that way. Now a little bit pensive. And all the time he was chatting, telling me how terrific I was looking. I wound up feeling pretty terrific, however the pictures come out.
After the fact, I decided to check around and find out what advice I could for photo subjects who are not getting this kind of help from the photographer or who truly don't like strutting their stuff.
Here's some of the most entertaining:
From ivillage in the UK: Relax. No "artificial posing and pouting." Talk. "Strike a natural pose." Don't clench your fists or your hands will look gnarled. Avoid bright lighting and midday sun. Try lots of little body adjustments. Lower your expectations; remember that models pose a whole day to get a good shot. Wear something fabulous. Wear heels. Leave the baggy clothes at home.
And a description from photographer Neil Mackenzie Matthews of "The red carpet pose…Turn the body to one side. Position hips 45 degrees to the camera, point the front foot forwards to 12 o'clock, and keep the back foot at three o'clock.
Put the weight through your back leg, bend the front leg slightly at the knee and bring your shoulders round to the front (keeping everything else in position). This helps accentuate the waist and make hips look slimmer. Place one or both hands on hips, or in pockets, to add shape."
Simple?
When sitting, put the legs a bit to the side. "Facing straight to camera can make the bum and thighs look big…"
Tomorrow the East Coast launch of novel Cobalt Blue and of The Crazy Ladies Book Tour with sister novelist Carrie Knowles. My assignment is to bring to the bookstore (Quail Ridge in Raleigh, NC) a vat of cobalt blue punch.
Probably a vat will not be needed, since it's going to look like Windex.
Yesterday I spent more than an hour in the juice and beverage and water aisles of Target trying to figure out something that would look dark blue and taste okay. I posted a question on Facebook asking for recipes. I made phone calls from the store. I obsessed!
There was a drink called Mountain Dew Voltage that punches up the energy levels to seemingly frightening intensity. But having grown up in a retailing family, I know it's not ethical to drug the customers.
It took two stores and many consults and finally I have settled on something that no one recommended. A blend of blue Gatorade, Fresca, white grape juice, and blue food coloring. In nearly equal amounts. Will likely patent it.
I know it's going to be a hit. Wish me well. And come if you can. It's at 3 pm Sunday, April 28, Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh. With Carrie Knowles, author of the newly released Lillian's Garden. She's bringing home-made oatmeal cookies. Her main character bakes.
Today was the day I was (maybe) going to wear the cobalt blue sequinned one-shoulder very short outrageous dress, the cobalt blue cape, and the star-shaped blue sunglasses. Today was my panel at this huge L.A. book fair to talk about my novel Cobalt Blue. But getting ready to go to the USC campus, my nerve wobbled.
I had already put on a more demure outfit when I decided to call home and say good morning to Husband Bob. I told him I wasn't giving out book-cover cards in the crowd again today — it was too hard yesterday – and I wasn't wearing that outfit; it wouldn't go over well.
Somewhat to my surprise, he said, "You took it out there to wear it." But the other writers didn't seem to be doing any promoting of themselves and in fact many introduced themselves simply by first name. He said, "They're just being cool."
I asked, "Do you think I'm being a wuss."
He said, "You're just tired." Translate: wuss.
So I put on the whole shocking get-up and spent an hour or so giving out a couple of hundred cards to strangers in the crowd. And this time it was fun. I was in costume and somehow that made me comfortable. A few people even came to me and asked for the cards.
And then the biggest step: I entered the the Authors' Green Room where writers congregated and hung out, the place where others were being low-key and non-promotional. I immediately found that wearing an ice breaker makes a big difference. Today for me, it was a terrific party. It also helped that I was hanging out with my publicist Kim Dower of Kim-from-LA and her assistant Jessica Kubinec. They introduced me to folks. Other folks introduced themselves to me. I had a wonderful time.
And then off to the panel. Friends I hadn't seen in a long time turned up. And a pretty good crowd showed up, even though we were speaking at the same time as Anna Quindlen and Jamaica Kincaid. Having a mild-to-medium case of microphone fever, I enjoyed the panel discussion with novelists Jillian Lauren, Erica Bauermeister, and Teddy Wayne, and moderator Barbara DeMarco-Barrett.
Moral of the story: a touch of cobalt blue is not enough. Dive in!
I refer of course to L.A. and the L.A. Times Festival of Books which I'm in the midst of. My end-of-day weariness called to mind that hip hop song that won an Oscar 6 or so years ago, titled "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp." I think it was Jon Stewart who remarked that "it just got a lot easier" as they left the stage with the statuette.
I think of myself as a chatty introvert — or maybe a half-and-half intro-extra. In any event, gatherings of over 500 writers, famous and semi-famous and striving, can bring out the retiring part of my nature. And that was just the speakers at this affair. Crowd estimates for the attendance run about 75,000 a day.
I spent part of the day giving out cards — about 175 of them — to passing attendees. The cards have the cover of Cobalt Blue on one side and the time and place of the panel I'm on tomorrow on the other. It was easier to write the book than it was to approach 175 strangers, all the time remembering all the hawkers I've breezed by in my life. More than 90% of the people were downright gracious. Still I was glad I'd gotten rid of them. (And I'm probably the most brash of my writer friends.)
I still have a couple of hundred of these things to give out in the morning. At least I learned a few things: the more crowded the area, the fewer people would take a card.
I went to a couple of the panel discussions. At The Social Novel, which included Jonathan Lethem, I concluded that I was glad I wasn't assigned to that panel. Way too brainy. The word facticity was used; emphasis on the 2nd syllable, and problematic was put to work as a noun. The discussion was very interesting and the writers enormously well-read. But I also know that such discourse can bring out my inner hayseed. Good thing I was assigned to the panel called Fiction: Tangled Lives. Much better fit.
The rest of my time was in what's called the Green Room where the panelists can congregate and schmooze when not otherwise engaged. I expected a large classroom. It was a ballroom, see above, with massive crystal chandeliers and all-day ever-changing buffets. Lots of different kinds of cheesecakes for one thing.
One particularly nice Green Room conversation: I introduced myself to Ben Fountain, whose father I used to write about when I was reporting. He said we'd met. He had just started writing when my first novel Revelation came out. He attended a reading I did at the Cary, NC, public library and get this: he asked my advice after my talk. As I said to him this morning, I must have advised him very, very well. His novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, was a National Book Award finalist last year and won an L.A. Times Prize Friday night.
I always watch the Oscars, never before went to any book awards. So attending the 33rd Annual LA Times Book Prizes tonight, I was interested in the differences. Most notable: the thank you acceptance speeches from the writers were infinitely more interesting, witty, surprising. Also, much less emoting. No tears at all. And no one was inspired to ask the winners or nominees who they were wearing.
I'm here to talk on a panel Sunday at the LA Times Book Fair. But I'm here from beginning to end.
Barely skidded into town in time for this evening's ceremony. Had under ten minutes to change clothes at the airbandb hostelry I'm staying in, after driving rental car through LA Friday rush hour traffic to find the place. (This ranks high on my boldness scale.) And it was during this drive that I was listening to coverage of the capture of the second Boston bombing suspect. Somehow the LA freeway and the news conflated to the vivid visual memory of the OJ Simpson chase, which I also happened onto on TV in real time.
But back to books and book events. The awards show and the two-day fair are both held on the Univ. of Southern California campus. Tonight, walking from parking deck to auditoriun, I got to see the setup of rows and rows of white-tent-booths that will be full of writers and publishers tomorrow. Over 500 writers will be on panels; about 100 different panels.
Arrived at the Gothic-sanctuary-style auditorium in time to pause in the powder room. The woman beside me at the mirror said: "They tell you cocktail dress and then they expect you to wear a name tag."
Oh, dear.
I'd been surprised outside that all attending registered and got name tags. An interesting twist. And then to find out that this was a dressup affair. I hadn't gotten the word; I'd thought this was California. But never mind. I wasn't going to be on stage anyway.
The show itself was a mini-education. And fascinating. All the books nominated wrere given an intriguing little intro. It was book reviewing at its best. I wound up wanting to read most of them — and there were so many I hadn't known about.
I also cataloged my personal connections to the speakers. Pretty slim.
Richard Reeves: always agree with his columns, got a nice note from him about previous novel Sister India, had one of his very talented offspring in a fiction writing class I taught at Duke
Ben Fountain: used to interview his father regularly when he was head of community colleges in North Carolina and I was writing about education (Fountain also spoke with a very familiar accent)
Margaret Atwood: once in a cab in Manhattan, I made a comment to my friend about a publisher whose offices we were passing. The cab driver said, "You a writer?" I said, "Yeah." In slightly condescending tone, he said, "I've had Margaret Atwood in my cab." Oh, well.
Atwood won an award for being an innovator: a prize not limited to writers, but this year given to one. She made some nice jokes about her innovations, said that she'd written the only home ec opera, and had played in it as well; she'd played the part of Orlon. (And I recalled that a laundry scene in one of her novels had gotten me slightly interested in the domestic arts for the first time. I was in my 50s when I read it.)
The winners lingered for picture-taking as the audience milled and eddied up the aisles. I could have easily walked up and told Atwood my cab driver story. Just somehow didn't feel the need.
Here are the blurry winners, with Atwood scrunched down in center.
And then the tents awaiting the morrow. That Hero Complex sign over the boulevard is an interesting note, isn't it?
Metro Magazine has just come out with a story of mine on how going to sea has helped me both directly and seemingly magically with both writing and publishing.
I gave a very brief account of this phenomenon here last summer. In this Metro piece is the whole experience: complete with the particular mists and waves, the poached salmon and plum crumble — and of course the delights of the ship's library and its 180+ degree view of ocean. It begins:
"Almost anyone boarding the Queen Mary 2 in New York does so with high expectations. British accents. Brilliant dinners. Ceremonial bell men in livery. The high life on the high seas. Not everyone who boards expects a life-changing epiphany, however. I did, because I’d reached a dramatic turning point on a trans-Atlantic voyage 16 years earlier…"
Writing Books, Seeking God, Teaching Writing, and Coping with OCD
I’m a writer who dodged being a minister; I saw that my dharma, my calling, was instead to write about body and spirit, to explore in fiction my metaphysical questions. I’ve spent the past 35+ years as a freelancer, with 2 novels, 2 nonfiction books, magazine and newspaper articles from 25+ countries, a few seasons as a TV reporter, copy for ad agencies, a winter in India, and my manuscript and career consulting services for writers.
It’s not because I’m naturally lion-hearted that I’ve chosen the topic of bold living and bold writing. It’s because I aspire to living and writing with courage. I wrestle with these matters; I even have a touch of an anxiety disorder, specifically obsessive-compulsive disorder. You probably know the saying: we teach what we need to learn.
I post here about daily fears and triumphs, about writing and, if I ever get my courage up, about mysticism, the ultimate brazen act: direct experience of God. I hope you’ll leap into the wide-ranging conversation here and come back often. I hope you’ll find the talk here encouraging for your own adventures.
