It's HEEEERE!
Hooray! BLEAK HOUSES comes out this Thursday August 3 from Raw Dog Screaming Press! It’s been such a delight to work with them and I was extra excited to find out that my friend L. Marie Wood has written the next terrifying and beautiful novella in the series! I can’t wait until you all read Lisa’s book— it is totally immersive, terrifying but also left me with a lump in my throat. The best kind of horror writing does that. Here is a picture of me with our marvelous editor, RJ Joseph (aka Rhonda Jackson Garcia), L. Marie Wood, Sonora Taylor whose book had just gotten picked up for the series. There’s a lot of grinning going on because I was so happy to see Lisa when I ran into her in the lobby and she was brimming with the news but couldn’t tell me until the moment you see right here at Raw Dog Screaming Press’s party! I’m so happy to be a part of this team. Sonora, Lisa and I went out for a phenomenal fully immersive crab dinner after this. I’d have to say it was the height of publication joy.
Back to Bleak Houses. I’m most excited and grateful that author P.L. McMillan volunteered to host my virtual book launch on release date this Thursday August 3rd! It will be 5pm PST and 8pm EST and you are more than welcome to join! Click on the link below and you can register (for free). There will be giveaways and readings and from what I hear from my compatriots at Raw Dog Screaming (some not announced yet) it will be a fabulous good time!
It’s been a bit mad these past few months, in the best way. I came home from StokerCon and revised my next horror novel The Collective which is due out from Writ Large Press early next year! It will be released as a serial so I broke the novel down into tasty bites which of course, had me rewriting quite a bit. I love revision. Nothing shows where a novel slows than finding a bite of it less than tasty, but I was really happy to see those characters again. Although terrible things happen to them (it is horror), I do like them. I realized that it is a period book, 2016, because too much happened after that to make the story make sense to modern times. It had me thinking a lot about these past eight years and what we’ve learned. I wouldn’t have thought 2016 was a long ago era, but it feels like very specific now.
Then the edit came in for Alterations, my realist novel that comes out in late 2024 from Running Wild Press. It’s so nice to work with an editor (Aimee Hardy!) who dives in on a sentence level—my favorite space to work. I love this book so much and haven’t spent time in it for awhile. You end up missing your characters when you put a book down for a spell, but I ended up getting choked up at the end of this one. It’s a book I wrote long enough ago that both my parents read it and talked to me about it. It made the whole journey of going through it again a bit more emotional. This book started because of two different stories I was writing and smashed together, so that is where our writing exercise will start from today. Making old things new again and using your own creativity in your files to make a new energy.
So hooray! Onward! I went from a period where I felt I wasn’t writing enough (last semester blew by with nary a line written outside of teaching class) to be drowning in writing which is a really really nice place to be for the summer. If you are in a dry spell writingwise, I’m living proof they aren’t there forever (don’t even talk to me about 2020). So eat up the life that’s around you and later, when you are drowning in writing you can’t even imagine right now, it will all come in handy!
Read.
I was so excited to get this book in the mail. I adore graphic novels and the advance reviews were great, and I’m also quite fond of my friend Samuel Sattin and his writing, so I knew it was coming from the best place. I burned through this book so quickly. It’s one of those graphic novels that feels like a consummate collaboration. Sattin managed to capture his own very real path traveling with OCD with a concept that will make people feel seen, and also clue in folks who just don’t get it. Isaac’s intrusive and negative thoughts are portayed as bees, whispering negative things in his ear. The illustrator captures Isaac’s day, with the world going on around him, the bees retreating or flocking based on how things are going. We feel his constant sense of anxiety, we feel distracted with him, we get excited with him and when the bees are absent, in exhilarating moments we can feel that exhilaration more clearly. Fortunately Isaac finds refuge in wonderful geeky friends and walks that uncertain balance of adolescence, when our parents are still making decisions for us as if we are small. I think this story will resonate with any human on the spectrum dealing with overprotective parents.
As the class reject in seventh grade and as a neurotypical person who was constantly called “weird,” the story made me feel seen as well. It’s a beautiful book full of moments of joy and I highly recommend it for anyone in your life who ever felt misunderstood.
Write.
So as I mentioned above, my novel Alterations came to me when I was pushing some unfinished writing around on my desktop. They were kernels of ideas: one a grandkid goes to stay with his grandmother and they rent old movies from Blockbuster (that’ll tell you how long ago I started it) and watch them together. Tons of warm fuzzy feelings and lovely characters but zero story. The other piece was the beginning of a novel that came to me: a woman waking up after a one night stand only it turns out she’s out of a job and living on her sister’s sleeping porch which makes the cold light of morning even harsher. I had loosely been casting about trying for a novel set in 1930s Hollywood, my favorite era for RomComs (and oddly more feminist than the 80s crap I was familiar with) because my friend Toni Ann Johnson said, “You know so much about old movies why don’t you write about that?” To feed the wisp of an idea I read biographies of my faves, Cary Grant and Barbara Stanwyck. All of these ideas separately were dead on the page. But once I started making them speak to each other. Who was this grandmother from my short story when she was young? What if she worked in the movies in the 1930s? Why is her grandkid a boy anyway, why not a girl? Why does the kid have to live with her grandmother? Who is this woman on the sleeping porch and how is she related? What if she’s actually related? The pieces started speaking to each other and fizzing and popping and slowly in fits and starts a larger intergenerational family story started emerging. I had zero idea where it would go but I followed it for two years into a clumsy first draft, then rewrote, rearranged and refashioned it for two years after that.
SO! This month’s writing exercise. Go through your folders. You know you have them. And find the stories that died on the page. Think of them not as single stories to solve but as prompts, or improv pieces? Open the most useless of them up and read them through. Then cast them about your head, like cards and see if any of them speak to each other. Are some of these characters related? Do they live in the same neighborhood? Did they go through the same world event together? Are they going on the same space journey? Are they haunted by the same ghost? do they simply work together? You had a tiny bit of an idea at one point and maybe it couldn’t carry itself, but together you may be creating something entirely knew. Think of it as playing Exquisite Corpse with yourself. Unfold those pieces and see what the whole imaginary animal looks like. And report back if it becomes something.
Exquisite corpse by Jake and Dinos Chapman, Tate Museum 2000
Cook.
I asked my daughter what to put for this month’s recipe. We are both in a heatwave, her in the Bronx, me in LA, and she replied instantly, “Spicy Thai noodles.” Here I share an internet recipe I always use because I am most certainly not Thai. That said this delicious recipe is served warm to cold and I’ll include a few variations you can sue. It’s great leftover, although we rarely have enough left for leftovers. This recipe is from the Hot Thai Kitchen website. If you follow that link there is a useful video to follow if that’s your thing. This is the best meal when it’s too hot to think about eating, but dinner has to happen. It’s delicious and spicy.
Yum Woon Sen Thai Glass Noodle Salad
Dry glass noodles (bean threads)—in a pinch we’ve made it with rice noodles, or pad thai noodles, very tasty.
Dried shrimp found in packets in most spice sections of the supermarket. at least in LA
Garlic
Cilantro, stems and leaves separated
Thai chilies, to taste if your store doesn’t carry them, serranos or any other intense chili can be used
Palm sugar, finely chopped, packed
Fish sauce
Fresh lime juice
Tomato, cut into wedges
Julienned onion we always use red onion for a mellow flavor
Chinese celery or 2 inner small stalks and leaves of regular celery we haven’t used celery
Ground pork
Shrimp when out of shrimp, just pork is still pretty tasty
Roasted peanuts
I always add scallions sliced thinly as well for extra flavor.
Soak noodles in room temperature water for 7-10 minutes until soft and pliable. Drain, then cut the noodles with scissors 2-3 times to shorten them.
Place dried shrimp in a small heatproof bowl, cover with hot water and let sit for 3-4 minutes to soften. You can also cover the shrimp with room temp water then microwave for 1 minute, then let it sit for a few more minutes. (If you’re using large dried shrimp, they will take longer to soften).
Place tomato, onion and Chinese celery into a large mixing bowl. When the dried shrimp are ready, drain and pound them in a mortar and pestle until they are broken into smaller pieces. Alternately you can chop them roughly. Add dried shrimp to the mixing bowl.
Cut cilantro stems into small chunks and place in the mortar and pestle along with garlic and chilies; pound into a paste. Add palm sugar and pound until dissolved. Add 2 tablespoon of the fish sauce and lime juice and stir to mix.
Bring a pot of water to a boil, add glass noodles and cook for 2 minutes. Remove from the water with tongs (you want to keep the water) and place into a strainer to drain excess water; set aside.
Add fresh shrimp into the remaining liquid and cook for 30-45 seconds or until they are done. Place the shrimp into the mixing bowl.
Pour out the cooking water, leaving just enough water to cover the bottom, and return the pot back on the stove. Once the water boils, add the pork along with 1 teaspoon of fish sauce and stir until fully cooked.
Use a slotted spoon to remove the pork from the liquid and place into the mixing bowl. Then add about 1 tablespoon of the pork cooking liquid into the mixing bowl as well.
Add noodles into the mixing bowl, pour the dressing over and quickly toss to combine.
Toss in cilantro leaves and plate. Sprinkle with peanuts and serve immediately!
I hope you enjoy! It pairs nicely with a salad and white wine if you want to impress friends on a hot night.