The Happy Booker

Guest Blogger — Patricia Storms

Our guest Patricia Storms is a cartoonist, illustrator, and lively blogger who lives in Toronto, Canada. You can marvel at her creative work creative work here.

From Patricia Storms:
I'm very pleased (and bitterly jealous!) that The Happy Booker is finally getting a much deserved vacation, and I do hope she comes back with lots of gifts for me.

I'm thrilled to get to help out The Happy Booker, and honoured to be surrounded by some very talented guest bloggers. I thought I'd give a plug in this post for the lighter side of fiction – namely picture books and gift books, both of which I adore, and not just because that's one of the areas where I earn my keep.

Hail to the wondrous picture book! Sure words are fun and all, but let's not forget those entertaining pictures that (hopefully) entice that young reader to explore what's inside. If you've been fretting over what picture book to buy the little ones in your life, why not take a boo (pardon the pun!) at my illustrated Halloween book, '13 Ghosts of Halloween', written by Canadian author Robin Muller and published by Scholastic Canada. It's coming out this
August, so don't miss it!

So now that you've dealt with the young'uns, don't forget those seniors, either! Know any grandmothers? Are they sweet and traditional or wild and crazy? Either way, they'll love my illustrated gift book 'Good Granny/Bad Granny' written by Mary McHugh, and published by Chronicle Books. Also coming out this August, and sure to entertain the grannies out there, good or bad.

There's always room on every bookshelf for fun and frolic, I say!

Guest Blogger — Mary Kay Zuravleff

Guest blogger and tour guide Mary Kay Zuravleff  is the author of two novels, The Frequency of Souls and The Bowl Is Already Broken.

Around DC with Mary Kay Zuravleff

Summer is tourist time in DC. It’s also memoir time. Combining these two summer staples, we like to offer guests the “MKZ Does D.C.” tour. Today’s highly edited version starts off at the stately National Cathedral, location of St. Albans School for Boys. I moved to our Nation’s Capitol to be the first writer-in-residence at St. Albans, and they put me up at the College of Preachers. Eerily, I was lived alone in that echoey building; when my then-boyfriend (now husband) visited on wintry Sundays, we’d build a fire in the library’s massive fireplace and roast ourselves some Hebrew National Franks. There’s loads to see on the grounds, whether or not you’re a preacher or a boy.

Next stop is Kramerbooks, that wacky independent bookstore at Dupont Circle. Years after the Summer of MKZ, Kramers fought Kenneth Starr’s legal request to disclose Monica Lewinsky’s book purchases. The store is open 24 hours a day; there’s a café in the back; and they once had the distinction of selling more books per square foot than any other bookstore in America. My distinction was being called June Cleaver by the waitstaff.

Time to head further downtown, to the corner of 7th & D. This curved glass corner had been home to Kresge’s, a five and dime store and eventually the Washington Project for the Arts. I used to unlock the place at 7 a.m. back when artists actually had studios in Gallery Place, which is to say the neighborhood wasn’t what it is now. Now, this spot is Jaleo’s, so enjoy the tapas and, if it’s after dinner, the flamenco dancers. Olsson’s, another great D.C. independent bookstore, is a few doors down. Maybe there’s a reading going on.

Finally, time to hit the Smithsonian. The oft-renamed American Art Museum is up across F Street, which has been reclaimed from the paved public square we affectionately called PeePee Plaza. When I worked at the museum, G Street Fabrics was on G Street, the 9:30 Club was on the other side of 9th at 930 F Street, and we’d eat lunch next to the House Where Lincoln Died on 10th Street.

Last stop is the Mall, where you can enjoy the Freer and Sackler Galleries. I did for years, even after they discontinued our 40% shop discount and the lavish staff lunches prepared by our museum chef. Don’t miss the Peacock Room, where Whistler’s O.C.D. is on full display. Now, that man could paint a dining room!

OK, tour’s over. Next time around, you may want to pick Libraries We Have Known or the heart-pounding Coffee Shops We Over-Frequent.

Guest Blogger—Liam Callanan

Guest blogger Liam Callanan is the author of The Cloud Atlas and All Saints. He directs the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His favorite words about baseball are Bart Giamatti's: "It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone."

Summer Reading

Summer is time for reading, my daughters’ teachers reminded me as school closed: “it expands their vocabulary.”

Yes, but, I wanted to say in my own articulate way. Because I’ve found that children’s books can expand vocabulary in relatively baroque ways. In our house, for example, the beat-up rummage sale bike trailer my kids ride in has only ever been called a “coach.” And when we headed out the door to the governor’s inaugural ball earlier this year (quick clarification: I live in Wisconsin; everyone goes to the ball), the parting words of our daughters (4 and 7) were, “Let us know who he picks for a wife!”

Which brings me to Barry Bonds. My 7-year-old tomboy has taken up Little League this year, throwing aside soccer with all the fervor of a convert. Last year, she would spend the majority of her time at Miller Park crawling around the elaborate toddler habitrail the Brewers have thoughtfully installed in the family section.

This year, she sat through all nine innings, studying every pitch, taking note of every sight, every sound.

“Why are they booing?”

What was I to say? They’re booing Barry Bonds because he’s approaching the home run record that Hank Aaron set in this very city? Isn’t that something great?

“Because he cheated,” I tell her, but this buys me nothing.

“How?”

How do you talk steroids with a kid, especially one who’s just awoken to the glory of baseball, of watching it, playing it? How do you tell her that home runs—at least, home runs hit by this man—are a bad thing? Home runs at Miller Park involve fireworks and the mutton-chopped Bernie Brewer mascot sliding down a two story slide in left field.

How do you make something worldly and evil easy to swallow—while at the same time making it seem evil?

You use a magic potion. “He took a magic potion to make him big and strong,” I said, “so he could hit more home runs.”

“Oh,” replied my daughter, nodding thoughtfully. Then she stood up and joined her row-mates in booing, flashing two thumbs-down as he did. Happily ever after.

And yet: later that night: hours past bedtime (we sat in the parking lot watching Charlotte’s Web, waiting for traffic to clear), she had a question.

“What do you think the magic potion tasted like?”

Guest blogger— Carole Burns

Guest blogger Carole Burns is the host of "Off the Page" on washingtonpost.com and has written about her experience: Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings and Everything in Between. She has written for The New York Times and The Washington Post. A lecturer in creative writing at the University of Winchester in England, she is writing her first novel.

Novel Writing 101

I broke the sound barrier on my novel again today.  This is how it feels when I come back to it after too long a time: there’s a wall between me and it, invisible, as the strongest walls often are, but impossible to break through, or so it seems.  What if I can’t this time? 

That is always the biggest fear.

Unlike Chuck Yeager, I can’t run at it as fast as possible.  I need to walk around it a while.  Give it time.  I may have to sneak up to it, find a side route in. 
   
And so here is how the first day of my “Summer log 2007” reads:
Monday June 18 – Looked at Janus photos; scribbled;
Page count at start: 114
At end: 118
Work on Russ in Chicago chapter
Read History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Checked on Off the Page blurbs

I named this file before I knew I’d be writing a summer blog, for Wendi. But here are all the things I want to write about: my novel, writing, reading, my book coming out, what I hope to accomplish this summer, why I write.

I didn’t read all of Nicole Krauss’s novel on June 18. With a book such as The History of Love, I don’t mind.  I want to savor it. On the train into London this week, I caught myself giggling as I read a chapter in the voice of the cantankerous, wise, regretful Leo Gursky, and then crying.  (My boyfriend said he should have been with me so he could point and say, “She’s American,” which in England explains pretty much everything about me.)

Before breaking the sound barrier, though, I was ready to kill Nicole Krauss.  She knows how to write, I thought.  I don’t.

I keep at it.

Which brings me to the book I have finished.  In 2003, I began an online show at washingtonpost.com called “Off the Page,” in which I interview writers, usually about their latest book. 

And now, I’ve made it into a book, coming out in December with Norton, called Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings and Everything in Between. And they do.  Martin Amis talked about sex in fiction; A.S. Byatt said she begins her novels with color. 
It’s not made up of transcripts – you can find interview transcripts online – but of chapters about character, place, the writing life, with quotes from the many authors. 

Guest Blogger—Chris Meeks

Christopher Meeks's short story collection, "The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea," came out last year to great reviews in the Los Angeles Times and Entertainment Weekly ("A collection so stunning...that I could not help but move on to the next story.')'  To read about this book and another, "Who Lives," visit his website.

THE FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld once said,  "According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy."

It's true. I became a fiction writer just so I wouldn't have to speak.  Little did I know one day I'd be asked to read in front of people. In grad school at USC, when I had to speak standing in front of my eight classmates, though I knew them well, my knees would become weak, my voice would squeak, and I could not talk loudly enough.  "Louder," they'd say. I was only a few feet away. I could chat with them easily before class, but if it were an official presentation, I'd be aquiver as if before the Great Wizard of Oz.

Then in the mid-nineties, right after the huge Los Angeles earthquake when a section of freeway fell down six blocks from my house, I volunteered to teach a creative writing class at CalArts—and my proposition was accepted.  Long story short, it took two years of teaching, but I overcame the fear of public speaking.

A few weeks ago, I was scheduled to read in front of 200 people with other UCLA writing instructors at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles.  Yes, I had a little anxiety, but far from the old days. A little anxiety keeps you sharp. I was going to be on stage in less than an hour, and Los Angeles rush hour traffic was murder.  What normally took thirty minutes was taking ninety. I was almost there when my cell phone rang. My wife, Ann, said straight away, "There's been an accident but Scruffle seems to be alright.  There's a lot of blood."

Guest Blogger—Laurel Snyder

Guest blogger Laurel Snyder is the author of "Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains OR The Search for a Suitable Princess" (Random House Children's, 2008) and "Inside the Slidy Diner" (Tricycle Books, 2008) as well as a book of poems, "The Myth of the Simple Machines" (No Tell Books, 2007).  She blogs often here and here.

Dispatch from the Cupcake Ghetto

I’m not sure whether I started writing books for children because deep down I wanted to have a baby, or if maybe I actually decided to have a baby because I started writing kids’ books.  But either way I find myself in a funny place now.  Surrounded by babies and book deals.  But with a cloudy sense of myself as a writer.

Because nobody I know seems to have much respect for children’s books. 

Of course, nobody I know has children either.

Until a few years ago, I was a poet. And I knew what that meant—that I’d spend years waiting tables and adjuncting, and that maybe someday I’d publish a slim collection of poems and land a teaching job at a small college in the middle of nowhere.  And that was fine by me.  Really. 

Because I never considered that I might be able to write work I felt good about and get paid for it.  I never considered what a gift it would be to continue writing, and also stay home with my family full time. 

After all, I didn’t have a family—yet.

But then I began to tell my boyfriend a little bedtime story, which turned into a prose-poem about a milkmaid.  And then the poem turned into something else, something longer.

Guest Blogger—Dan Vera

Guest blogger Dan Vera is a poet and editor living in Washington, DC.  He's the editor of White Crane runs the Brookland Area Writers and Artists, and is a co-conspirator in VRZHU Press .  For more on Dan click here.

Miss Belinda Blurb

So, I've been asked to read a manuscript and write a book jacket blurb.  Actually I was asked a few weeks ago and have just now begun to sit with the manuscript after a few cursory gazings.  This is the first request I've received for a blurb and it made me a bit nervous at first.  I know the poet's work and have enjoyed it but what if I didn't like this manuscript?     Do I write the truth?  Do I just pull myself out of the situation by stating my inability to review the book.  Yeah, yeah.  Chickening out perhaps, but better than giving a negative review?  What would the New York Times Ethicist say about this?

Fortunately for me and for the poet, I like the manuscript very much.  I can only imagine that he asked because of the magazine I edit and the poetry books I'm helping to put out there.  Perhaps for my penchant for rapturously going to bat for books I love.

I've had the chance to review a number of books in my role as an editor of White Crane, a  gay culture magazine.  But what are the differences between a review and a blurb?  There certainly are elements of a review in a blurb.  But a blurb is weightier than a review because it's actually strongly endorsing the book in question.  Has a writer ever included negative blurbs on the cover of their book?

Where'd the word blurb come from anyway?  A little digging on the web pegs the word as an American original.  Coined in 1907 by the humorist Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) to mock excessive praise printed on book jackets.  Apparently Burgess said the copy on the book jacket of one of his books was the work of a "Miss. Belinda Blurb."  And thus was the blurb born.  Burgess was quite a character in his time.  He was a writer of humorous verse including infamous "The Purple Cow."  He was also an illustrator and engineer who taught at the University of California, Berkeley until he was fired for toppling over statues he considered eyesores.

Burgess is credited with these two bon mots:

"If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead." Gelett Burgess (1866-1951)

"I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like." Gelett Burgess (1866-1951)

Anyway, so it appears a "blurb" has always been treated with some skepticism.  I'm not sure it's dealt with the same way today.  I know of many people who send out draft copies of books looking for a blurb.  Fitting that a word like "blurb" would be created by a poet.  What goes into a good blurb?  How many adjectives?  I think a blurb can die of excess if it's too over the top.  A blurb should be honest but not completely devoid of any integrity.  Seeing as how blurbs are usually on the cover of a book, it should at the very least cause you to open the book and take a good long look.

Guest Blogger—Kate Blackwell

Guest blogger Kate Blackwell’s collection of stories, you won’t remember this, was published in June by Southern Methodist University Press. Catch her Wednesday, July 11, at 7 p.m. at Quail Ridge Books & Music, Raleigh, NC; Thursday, July 12, at 7 p.m. - Barnes & Noble, Greensboro, NC; Friday, July 13, noon: interview with Frank Stasio on "The State of Things" WUNC - 91.5 FM; Sunday, July 15, at 5 p.m. - Politics & Prose Bookstore, Washington, DC

Tomorrow I’m driving South on I-95, a road I’ve virtually memorized over the years, heading down to see my family in North Carolina. This time is different. Tomorrow night, in Raleigh, I’ll be giving a reading from my new story collection, my first book of fiction. A good part of the audience will be related to me: fifteen or twenty cousins live in the area. We’re a close clan and there’s a party afterward, so I imagine most of them will show. These are people who’ve known me all my life—or all theirs—and will recognize the stories’ topography. Some will recognize themselves, or think they do. They will surely get a good look at me.

I’ve been dithering all morning about what to read. There’s not a story in the book that isn’t at least partly drawn from memory, memory transformed, but these people won’t be fooled. In some cases, the memory was theirs in the first place. Shameful to say, my stories are usually about things that happened to other people, often someone in my family. I’m the onlooker, the thief of other people’s secrets. That’s been okay as long as I was publishing in lit mags where almost nobody I knew read them, certainly nobody kin to me. Now the book is out; they’ll know I’ve been spilling the beans.

I think of my closest cousin, a woman a few years older than I—still for me the shy, musical girl I idolized in childhood. She’s a widow now. Twenty years ago her husband died without warning, dropping in the driveway of their house while she was away playing music. Now he dies again, in exactly the same way, on a page in my book. When the collection was accepted by a publisher, I thought about her immediately. How would she feel when she read that story? How would I?

We all have this worry, to the extent that we write about people we know, invading their lives and laying them out for all to see—for them to see, which may be worse. The issue is always coming up in workshops. Never mind, I say to worriers. Write it! Who am I kidding? It’s not so easy to resolve this issue and frankly I’m afraid to try. I can’t do without memory in my fiction. I start with a character wholly unknown to me; pretty soon I’m stuck; then suddenly he’s got my father’s neck and a major disappointment that rules his life, and I’m cooking. Or a mother pushes back the messy hair over her daughter’s forehead and exposes a wasteland of acne; the daughter winces, my mother’s hand drops. Now my character and I share a memory, and I can write about her. I never know what image will spring from memory to help me out, especially the evocative images from childhood, those that make me want to stop the car when I think of one and pull out a pen and write.

Open Letter from Potomac Review

Dear Happy Booker loyal readers,

It is hot and hazy outside, but inside The Potomac Review is cooking, well
on the way to its issue #42 which will launch September. Look out for the
poetry — it is terrific this issue. The fiction will feature some wonderful
familiar faces like Susan Land and Mark Farrington and also brand new
writers like Laura Albritton and Michelle Brafman.

The big news, before issue #42, is the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story contest. Open to residents of DC, MD and VA, the deadline is July 13th. Grand prize is $1000 and publication in The Potomac Review. We're delighted our judge this year is one of our favorite literary lights, Richard Peabody. Visit our website for contest guidelines.

The F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference, set for Oct. 13th, will have a different look and feel this year as we bring in new faces for the writing workshops including Alix Ohlin for short story, Carly Sachs for poetry, and Leslie Pietrzyk for novel. We are adding several new offerings like Mystery, Sports Writing, and How to work with a writing coach. One workshop is a brand new blending of genres —"From the Street to the Page-hiphop's voice emerging as fiction." Our new pal, Courttia Newland, will be dropping in from England to lead that
workshop. He writes and tells great stories. Email us here at the Potomac Review (potomacrevieweditor@montgomerycollege.edu) to get on the mailing list.

So while the Happy Booker is off enjoying French food, wine, and sunshine, we should not be envious but rather curl up and read a good book. Even better, read your favorite literary journal.

Stay cool.
Julie Wakeman-Linn
Editor, Potomac Review

Guest Blogger—C.M. Mayo

Guest blogger C.M. Mayo is the author of Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California just released in paperback by Milkweed Editions, and Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion, a collection of Mexican fiction and literary prose. Her most recent travel writing, "From Mexico to Miramar or, Across the Lake of Oblivion", an essay in Massachusetts Review about a journey to the Emperor of Mexico's castle in Italy, won the 2007 Washington Prize for Personal Essay.

Around the World with Madam Mayo

Bon voyage, feliz viaje, and how do you say that in Icelandic? Speaking of which, one of my favorite travel memoirs, perfect for whiling away lazy afternoons in a deckchair, is Charles Fergus's Summer at Little Lava: A Season at the Edge of the World, about his mid-life stay at Litla Hraun in western Iceland.

For some reason, though my own writing tends to focus on Mexico, most of my favorite travel books are about the far north--- Farley Mowat's dirge-like Walking on the Land (about Canada's Ilhalmiut people); Gretel Ehrlich's low-altitude, vegetable-free romp, This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland; and for sheer wierdness (wierd to me, anyway), Gontran de Poncins' cult classic, Kabloona. But I certainly do read books on Mexico. My all-time favorite is Frances Calderon de la Barca's 1842 Life in Mexico--- not so much a seamless narrative as a patchwork quilt of vivid, often comic scenes. Two new ones well worth reading: Jeff Biggers's In the Sierra Madre, and Sam Quinones's Antonio's Gun and Delphino's Dream, a rollicking collection which includes chapters about the black velvet paintings, opera in Tijuana, and--- that's right--- Mennonite narcotraffickers.

On Southeast Asia, I've yet to read anything that beats the drama and haunting poetry of war correspondent Jon Swain's River of Time. For Francophiles: Sara Mansfield Taber's Bread of Three Rivers, in which the story of the best loaf of French bread rises to become the story of the whole world. For Italophiles, subspecies Venetophile: Judith Martin's hot-off-the-presses No Vulgar Hotel. Jog a bit around the Adriatic for Jan Morris's Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere, a meditation on this most un-Italian of Italian cities, with denizens as unlikely as Mexico's Emperor, Maximilian, and James Joyce. Oops, that's eleven. Ciao for now. I'm going to California.