My son is WAY more excited about the New Year than you. It’s a fact. Allow me to illustrate:
2015 is the year of hoverboards, power laces and flying cars. Or, in my kid’s mind, the year it all becomes POSSIBLE. So cross your fingers that the designers of sneakers make a knock-off cheap kid-size replica of those multi-thousand dollar power laces they HAVE promised.
There are plenty of “best of” lists of this and that, so I’m just going to skip it and do a pimp recap post of things I’m writerly happy about from 2014 and link ’em all here. Because I’m ready for 2015, too, so let’s just skip the nostalgia for 2014 (of which I’ll have none) and get one with the new! Shiny clothes and dehydrated pizza for everyone!
Offerings:
Radium Girls
My firstborn! Full of cicadas, mental institutions and beauty.
Coming April 2015, but there’s a Goodreads giveaway going on this very moment to win one of ten free Advanced Reading Copies! (This story isn’t in Radium Girls, either!)
Author interview site, sister site, home of my nosy alter ego Alice. Author interviews that have nothing to do with writing. The schedule is erratic, but recently there’ve been interviews with everyone from Karen Abbott (Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy) to Ben Whitmer (Cry Father). No money necessary, it’s merely collected anecdotes and gorgeous information.
Robb and Liv were crazy enough to have me on THREE TIMES this year – once to talk about Radium Girls, and twice for holiday specials with my fellow space cadet, Jesse Lawrence. The Radium Girls review/interview is the only episode of these three I can recommend if you’re under 18, related to me, or know me through my son. The holiday specials are full of horrifying language and subject matter, extremely fun, and rated a strong R leaning towards NC-17. Free entertainment!! Booked., I love you….
the video!!! took forever to get this mess uploaded. i realize it’s an hour long, but at least stick around long enough for the church fire anecdote… plus i read a story. mainly i ramble. but i think it turned out pretty well!
So close now I can almost smell the pages…and they smell of fresh peonies, and rose water, and shoeboxes of old photographs and crumbling newspaper clippings, and stale cigarette smoke, and mothballs, and lavender sachets, and spearmint gum, and the gold tube of lipstick rolled all the way to the back of a drawer you were sure was empty – when you twist it it’s bright red and only half used up….
ooooh, things are getting fun. Mike and i compiled the final list of stories for the collection (and no one even threw a punch! negotiations on the list went really smooooth) and the acceptances/rejections have been sent. i feel really good about all of it. weird to get so many stories – not to mention so many COOL stories – from such a specific prompt. so we’re on our way!
next is artwork, contracts, proofreading….
but still, pretty early in the New Year.
i feel super-important. like i need a special hat that says “EDITOR” on the brim, and i should keep a clip-on tie nearby at all times so when i read/discuss/work on anything involving the Cipher Sister stuff i can grab my hat and tie and immediately look professional and efficient. the hat would cover my hair-horns and the tie would cover (or at least neutralize) the stick-on tattoo i currently have on my neck.
here’s a quick synopsis of what the collection will be like, pulled from Thunderdome:
CIPHER SISTER follows a simple premise inspired by a true story:
“The sheriff’s department in El Dorado County broke protocol this week and released the names of two deceased residents without notifying their relatives.
The problem is they can’t find any relatives of the twin sisters who were found dead inside their South Lake Tahoe home last week.
The bodies were discovered on Feb. 27, according to the sheriff’s department. Authorities say they most likely died within a short time of one another of natural causes.
The sheriffs haven’t been able to locate the next of kin of the women. Apparently throughout their lives, they always listed each other on all official forms.”
Their names are Lucy and Darcy.
We’re putting their lives back together in imperfect fragments.
A collected history based purely on hearsay and conjecture. We know when they were born. We know when and where and how they died. What happened in between?
or, if you’re more into a visual representation of the tone, here’s the pinterest page i cobbled together:
it’s essentially a bunch of stories about the lives of two very, very mysterious ladies. no Black Dahlia, no true crime – just peeking through eighteen different keyholes at eighteen imaginary moments….
Ryan Wilson – “American Trash”
Stuart Gibbel – “Break on Through”
Craig Clevenger – “Obsolescence”
Nik Korpon – “South of Thirteen”
Dennis Cruz – “Smile Now, Cry Later”
Pela Via – “Bathhouse”
Stephen Conley – “Don’t Feed the Animals”
Grigori Black – “This Was Heaven”
Doc O’Donnell – “Your Personal Apocalypse”
Nikki Guerlain – “Sick Ticket”
Patrick Verhagen – “Swim”
Craig Wallwork – “El Bordello Alexandra”
Nicholas Merlin Karpuk – “Ahm’s Bay”
Nik Houser – “Subtitles for a Silent Film”
H.R. Tardiff – “Walls in the Sand”
Richard Thomas – “The Jenny Store”
Bob Pastorella – “Alexandra”
Simon West-Bulford – “Project Asmodeus”
Jay Slayton-Joslin – “The Fantasy of California vs. The Reality of London”
Amanda Gowin – “Gilded Bones”
Chris Deal – “Padre Nuestro”
Boden Steiner – “Here”
Gordon Highland – “Fry Girl”
edward j rathke – “All the Dreams You Dreamt Retold”
Michael Paul Gonzalez – “Tidal”
Victor Bengtsson – “Venice, Forever”
that’s right. it’s almost here. like, think near Thanksgiving. it’ll be available through amazon and the thundadome site. it will feature 26 incredible stories by 26 incredible authors, each of those stories in some way about L.A., each of those stories exactly 1,000 words long. and overflowing with incredible photographs by the editor himself, one Mr. Michael Gonzalez. so, this holiday season you now have something else to be thankful for: a picture book with awesome stories. here’s a sneak peek photo:
i’m not even going to name-drop on the authors included. that will come soon enough. for now, i give you just this one photo, and the imagined sound of me dancing in my socks on linoleum while singing (poorly) ‘Hold On’ by Wilson Phillips…
Miss Ohio 