book news

So you remember my collection of stories, The Book of Broken Hymns? I thought you might.

I have some NEWS about it.

As you may recall, the print version of the book was available as a limited edition, most of which have now sold out. However, because there are still people who want a copy, I am introducing the eBook version this month.

At this moment, you can buy The Book of Broken Hymns from the iBookstore for your Apple Product. It should be available at Lulu.com as an eBook also, and is pending at the Nook store and on Google eBooks (which excites me, because once they’ve processed it, my collection will be available as an eBook from your favorite independent bookstores – I will provide links when they become available).

I hope you’ll go get it – it’s a nice little collection, and I think you might enjoy it.

Thank you for your support, you people.

theoretical me

A few weeks ago, upon the publication of Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation with my little snippet included, one of my favorite people was all, “Yay, now you are a published gender theorist!”

This has been bothering me ever since.  I don’t want to be bothered, because he was so genuinely thrilled for me, but…

Folks, I am NOT a gender theorist.  I don’t read gender theory because I find it unbelievably boring.  I’m glad many of you do read it, because it’s important to understand what is or is not gender, and ways in which our current world is terrible for people of any or all genders.  But I don’t want to read it.  And I REALLY don’t want to write it.

Also, while I often write about characters who are transgender (including, sometimes, myself), I am not writing theory.  I am writing reality (even for made up characters in poems or fiction).  I also write about kittens, pirates, long road trips, family dynamics, swamps, the Civil War, magic, alligators, AIDS, snow, faith, Rilke, dogs, coffee, blow jobs, diner food, lions, and many other topics.  Nobody has yet suggested that I am, say, a published coffee theorist (although that would be AWESOME).  Nobody has suggested that I am a kitten theorist, although I may in fact be.

Dear dear friend, I hope you read this, even though it will annoy you.  You need to understand the difference between my view on gender and your view on gender, because performativity and reality do not always overlap (go read Julia Serrano’s essay in Gender Outlaws).

And I can’t wait for the day that you, dear friend, ARE a published gender theorist.  I am all prepared to toast you.

(cross posted to Pony)

December? Seriously?

How did it get to be the end of term already? I have finished one final project (a ridiculous story SORTOF in the vein of Salman Rushdie, but mostly in the vein of too much caffeine and desperation) and am now supposed to be working on the other (a volume of my poems, original AND revised versions, from this semester). And what a semester it’s been! Although I have accomplished almost zero on things I was “supposed to” be doing (e.g. Tammer), I wrote several very good poems, a bunch of very interesting story fragments, and a nice little essay about a rat.

One of these days I will post more of those things here – for now, I just want to take a moment to breathe, and to thank those of who you have read through my variety of sloggings, offered your comments and ideas, and been generally extremely helpful.

Now back to the poems, and then the weirdly difficult task of figuring out what the hell I’m going to read tomorrow night at the MFA open mic. Usually this would be easier – I would only have one thing short enough – but this year I have all these poems, and all these pieces of other stuff…. It’s a little weird and a lot overwhelming. Wish me luck!

writing, school, etc

Tonight at school I had a story workshopped.  This is a weird story for me because I wrote it too fast, and because I was listening to the wrong music when I wrote it, with the result that it ended up conflating a real life thing from my history into the story.  Of course everyone was all, This is pretty good, except for this character who seems idealized and false and is not convincing at all.  I should know better than that — just because it happens in real life doesn’t mean it can be useful (or believable) in fiction.  Doh!

So now I am trying to fix it.  And yet the same music still works so well for writing this particular story.  Nickel Creek, The Wreckers, Tori Amos, Two Nice Girls, etc.  Sigh.

Meanwhile, the lit journal at school has accepted my poem “trans(lation)” for publication this May.  I haven’t had a poem published since I was seven years old, so this is somewhat bewildering.  I spend half my time, it seems, wondering whether I am going to be a poet or a fiction writer when I grow up.  I remain unconvinced that they are mutually exclusive, although the example that keeps coming to mind is Michael Ondaatje, about whom I hear rumors of snarkiness beyond even MY standards. BUT despite the snarkiness, Michael Ondaatje brings us The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, which is pretty much exactly the kind of thing I want to do, except about the boys in my stories (Wyatt, Shawn, Luke).

I dunno.

So I am trying to figure too many things out these days.  Fiction or Poetry?  Pagan or Xian?  Gay or [sortof] Straight?

I need to go get more ink.  It won’t solve anything, but it will help for a while.  It will give me something else at which to worry and scratch instead of the other (more important) things that are bothering me.

Plus I need more ocean.  Sigh.

Tonight’s listenings:  “What Kind of Mouse Am I?” from Bear in the Big Blue House.

Tonight’s readings:  Confessions, Matthew Fox; Fire to Fire, Mark Doty.