Tag: delancey book
June 27
Friday! It’s rainy here in Seattle, as it often is in June. I don’t mind, but I also wouldn’t mind being in a car on the road between Rome and who knows where in Italy, as I was on this day three years ago, when I went over for Luisa’s wedding.*
Let’s go there for a minute.
Maybe to a beach on the Adriatic. Ah.
Earlier this week, I drove to Spokane and back, which is absolutely nothing like a beach in Italy but is still beautiful in its way, and because I was driving alone, I listened to Girl Talk “All Day” very, very loud and did a lot of “dancing,” by which I mean flapping my elbows wildly while attempting not to swerve out of my lane. I also listened to The New Yorker Out Loud podcast, which is terrific. Not only did the hours fly by, but I was so fired up by it that found myself attempting to jot notes on an old dry cleaning receipt that I found in the console, and despite the fact that jotting notes on old dry cleaning receipts is not an intelligent thing to do while driving, it felt great to have my brain throw off sparks like that. If your summers, like mine, often involve a decent amount of driving to various getaways (or book signings in Spokane), I highly recommend:
This episode on the rise of vegetarianism.
Or this episode on the Great American Novel.
Or this episode with Jeremy Denk on Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which made me itch to listen to Glenn Gould’s performance when I got home.
In other news, I think I will now be a regular reader of Maria Konnikova’s blog.
Also on my list: as soon as it stops raining and the weather gets its act together and the mornings get too hot for hot coffee, I plan to try these two versions of a Shakerato.
I will also soon be making a batch of last summer’s staple: Rachel’s Zucchini with olive oil, garlic, and basil. I might even make it tonight.
I will also be trying to wrap my head around the fact that Delancey was chosen as one of the Amazon Editors’ Top 20 Best Books of the Year So Far. WHAAAAAAT
Last but not at all least, do you remember my mentioning that night in April when a group of bookish musicians called the Bushwick Book Club performed original songs inspired by A Homemade Life? It felt a little weird, I’ll admit, and also wonderful. I wound up grinning so long and so hard that I got a headache. The songs were brilliant, and I’m thrilled to report that my two favorites were later recorded – and that I get to share them with you. The first, “Slow Roast My Tomatoes,” was written and performed by Debbie Miller, and the second, “Bread and Wine,” was written and performed by Nick Foster and Jazmarae Beebe. I hope you like them as much as I do.
Happy weekend.
* For some reason, some of the photos in my post about Luisa’s wedding look low-res and blurry. They didn’t look that way when I uploaded them three years ago. No idea.
Run with it
It is 12:26 pm on June 23. I’m sitting at my desk in the window, which, if you were considering it, is a bad place to put a desk. What a person needs behind a desk is something sturdy, galvanizing, like a wall. Otherwise you’ll wind up spending your time as I am today: watching the world’s most subtle breeze blow through the branches of the neighbors’ tulip magnolia, wishing I were eating a cheeseburger. I’m slowly emerging from New Book Insanity. I am so relieved, so glad to have this book behind me and out in the world, and also so, so, so tired. Elated! Tired! Dead! (But hey, Spokane: I’m going to be in your town tomorrow night,…
Read moreCome on down
Hello from a plane somewhere between Minneapolis and San Francisco! I’ve been trying to write this post for a couple of days now, on trains and planes and more trains and planes, but then I wind up staring out the window or admiring the spectacularly bedazzled manicure job on the woman next to me or reading an entire Us Weekly over someone’s shoulder before passing out and suddenly coming to three hours later in a new city. Today, I will persevere! I will only read half of an Us Weekly over someone’s shoulder. I’m eight days into nearly two consecutive weeks on the road for Delancey. It’s hard to explain what it’s like to be on book tour, even now that I’ve been…
Read moreOur people
I’m typing this post from my cousin’s kitchen table in Oakland, California, where June and I are visiting for a family baby shower and have stayed long enough to eat four slices of red velvet cake, get stuck twice in rush hour traffic on I-80, and sniff every single rose in Rockridge while out walking the neighborhood at 6:49 in the morning, killing time before the rest of the family wakes up. We fly home tomorrow, and then, on Tuesday, I leap into that heady, unnerving thing called Publication Day, otherwise known The Day Your Copy of Delancey Will Finally Ship, If You Pre-Ordered It, or, The Day You Can Find It In Your Local Bookstore, If You Didn’t. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!…
Read moreHousekeeping, and you will now have Hole songs stuck in your head
My publisher tells me that finished copies of Delancey, hot off the presses, are due to arrive in their offices early next week. (!) I have a lot of feelings about this, both of the excited and terrified varieties, because it means that the book will finally be done, donedoneDONE, but also that it’s too late to change anything about it, make it better, or otherwise obsess over it. It means that it’s no longer mine, in a sense. But on the upside, it soon will be yours! It also means that you should grab a pencil and get out your calendar, because I’m taking this show on the road. I’ll be traveling around, doing readings and signings – regrettably, not karaoke’ing…
Read moreBook update, housekeeping, la la la
It is with pleasure, great relief, and even greater trepidation that I can FINALLY say that Delancey, my second book, will be published in three months and one day. Right! Three months and one day sounds like an eternity. An age. But we’re closer than we were a month ago! Look at it that way. That’s the way I look at it in my better moments, the ones when I’m not staring at the clock. In the meantime, I get to present to you the book trailer, or video, or whatever you call it, for Delancey. My publisher and the video team did a beautiful job! Granted, I am not exactly what one would call at ease in front of…
Read moreNine
I am typing this post from the back office at Delancey, where I’m holed up, working on a deadline, while Brandon and Co. prepare a five-course meal for forty-five in celebration of a gorgeous new book. Deadline: I will destroy you. In more ways than one. But I had to take a break to pop into this space, and to send up a cheer – if you can, in fact, hear me from back here behind the Essex walk-in – that it has been nine years today since this site was born. Nine! I was a delinquent graduate student then, giddy to be creating a space to write about things other than Michel Foucault and discourse analysis and anything described…
Read moreA rare benefit
I’ve started this post four different times now, on five different days. I’m already tired of it, and I still haven’t figured out how to start. Does that ever happen to you? Do you do what I do and take a “break” to raid the walk-in at Delancey for chocolate chip cookie dough? Do you tell yourself, What harm could it really do if I listened to Freedom ’90 again? Do you ever wonder if you’ve missed your chance to be a dancer in a Janet Jackson video? Shall we start this thing already? First, I want to tell you that I was elated by your response to Delancey. Totally elated. Ecstatic. Even slightly stoned. I’m still coming down from it. Thank you so very, very…
Read moreThis thing is on
Maybe you will remember a day, more than two years ago now, when I announced that I was writing a new book, and that, if all went according to plan, it would be out in the spring of 2013? And then maybe you will also remember that nothing went according to plan, in ways that were hard and good-but-hard and then great and really, really great, and here we are, with no book, in July of 2013. Maybe you will join me, then, in heaving a giant sigh of relief – more than that: a great wind, a hurricane-force gust – that Delancey is not only done, donedonedone, but that it now has a cover. A cover! This thing is ON. I will tell you…
Read moreYou know me well
My manuscript is due on June 1. Hello from the Cave – or, as I first typed, “Hell from the Cave,” which has a nice slasher-movie ring to it. Hi. For those keeping track, no, you are not crazy: the book was supposed to be due in March. I had to ask for an extension, unfortunately, because of the small human under my shirt who makes me very tired, and because there’s been a difficult health situation in my family. 2012 came in roaring, and though I wish it would settle down and start acting its age, I doubt it’s going to. I am, however, going to FINISH THIS BOOK. If I can stay awake long enough. Each night, when…
Read moreThe best part of the job
I am supposed to be writing a manuscript, not baking rye crumble bars. No more rye crumble bars no more rye crumble bars no more rye crumble bars no more rye crumble bars no more rye crumble bars. When I found out that I was pregnant, I asked my publisher to extend my deadline, which was supposed to be March 1. I wasn’t sure how ill I would feel, but I’d heard plenty of pregnant lady horror stories, and I thought it was best to plan for the worst. Happily, I wasn’t very ill, but I was very unproductive. I was very, very tired. One morning, when the alarm was going off and I showed no signs of movement, Brandon…
Read moreDear World,
I am writing to you, once again, from my friend Ben’s dining room. When I was here last August, writing my brains out, I had a hunch that a return visit might be helpful before my manuscript deadline. Turns out, that was correct. In Ohio, there are no Brandons to distract me, no Delanceys to worry about, no Jacks or Alices to bark suddenly at absolutely nothing and, boom, scare the organs out of my body. In Ohio, there is just a Ben and his nearly empty house, and a twin bed under the eaves with my name on it, next to a window onto which the previous tenant’s child stuck two butterfly decals. My first day in town turned out…
Read moreIn my better moments
About three weeks ago, I printed out all the drafts I’ve written so far for my next book, and then I spent three weeks avoiding reading them. I finally got up the courage on Sunday night. I poured myself a beer, sat down at the dining room table, and read through all of it. Afterward, I wanted to stab myself in the eye. But that didn’t seem like it would make the manuscript any better, so I went to bed. I woke up at five the next morning. While I lay there in the dark, thinking about the injustice of being awake at such an hour on my day off, I remembered how rough and horrible my drafts were, and…
Read moreOhio
I am writing to you today from my friend Ben’s dining room. If you’ve been around for a while, you might remember that he used to live in Seattle, where he was like a Kramer to us, but he moved away for a job. Now he’s in Ohio, and for a week, so am I. I needed to get some work done on Book 2, and I missed my friend, so I rolled the two into one and called it a writing retreat. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but turns out, it’s like summer camp – only there are no counselors to keep us down, and instead of doing archery and riding horses and gathering around the campfire…
Read moreIt’s still at it
I had a recipe post all ready to go for today, and then I woke up this morning and realized that there was something more pressing to say. That book proposal that I was working on a couple of months ago, it did its job. Because of it, I get to write a second book(!!). I’m so excited about it that my eye started twitching uncontrollably this morning, and several hours later, it’s still at it. I can hardly see straight. When a Paul Simon song came on the radio over lunch, my eye actually twitched in time to the music. This is how excitement feels: like my face is falling apart. Yes, the official announcement came today, in Publishers…
Read moreThis one does something interesting
In the days since we last spoke, I’ve flown to Oklahoma and back. I’ve introduced my mother to 24. I’ve made Cafe Lago meatballs with my mother, braised a pan of endive and serrano ham with my mother, and put away a couple of Negronis, also with my mother. I’ve baked a coffee cake using a tin of baking powder from my mother’s cabinet that, you know, it turns out, expired in 2006. I’ve thrown away a coffee cake. I’ve filed and paid our 2010 income taxes! I’ve had a toothache! I’ve sent off my book proposal! I’m using a lot of exclamation points! And because of this second-to-last item, because you’ve been such cheerful, cheering, much-needed companions in Book…
Read moreJanuary 30
Greetings from Book Proposal Land. I lied. That isn’t really what Book Proposal Land looks like. Not in the winter, anyway. (Only in the summer, from a ferry.) It’s quiet here. The nightlife isn’t much to write home about. Socks and slippers, mostly. There’s not a lot of sensible eating here in Book Proposal Land. Almost no vegetables. Just pancakes and coffee. Cereal. Girl Talk. Some John Mellencamp, when I have a sweet tooth. But last night, my friend Sam called, and then there was yellow curry and rice. And a cocktail with Aperol, white wine, and grapefruit juice. Okay, two cocktails with Aperol, white wine, and grapefruit juice. I’m going back in. See you in a few.
Read more