April Lindner's Blog, page 11

July Odds and Ends

Nothing says summer like iced coffee in Asbury Park.  Am I right?  

I haven't been very diligent about blogging lately, but I do have a few odds and ends to share.  A while back I mentioned that a poem of mine was making an appearance in American Arts Quarterly , a journal I love for its celebration of old and new representational painting.  My poem is now up on their website too.  Here it is.

tiger lilies in bloomAlso, I just wanted to mention one last time that it's not too late to register for my Young Adult fiction workshop at the fifth annual Nightsun Writer's Conference in lovely Frostburg, Maryland.  

The conference takes place from July 24th to the 27th, and also features workshops in poetry (led by Bruce Weigl), nonfiction (Marion Winik), fiction (Clint McCown), and sci-fi, fantasy, and horror (Brenda Clough).  

If you've been meaning to get started writing a young adult novel or you've got one in process, you might want to check it out.

And speaking of YA fiction, it won't be long until Catherine is out in paperback.  (August 19 to be precise.)


With the standoff between Amazon and Hachette, a lot of new books are getting lost in the shuffle, and I'm afraid Catherine might turn out to be one of them.  Because I'm a Hachette author, you can't pre-order Catherine (or her little sister Love, Lucy) at Amazon.  But both of them are up for pre-order at Barnes and Noble and BAM!  

basil from the garden: finally enough for pesto

Nico the Artful Dodger: A Midsummer Pupdate

Remember Nico, the little stray cockapoo we adopted back in November?

Seven and a half months later, he's adjusted very nicely to life with us.  On days when I write at home, he warms my feet while I work, and follows me from room to room with great interest in whatever I do or say.  He has even won over Reuben, our elder statesdog, who at first was a bit resistant to Nico's charms.

Chillin' on the deck--more fun with a friendThese days we can leave the house with Nico uncrated, and he mainly just sleeps on the bed or sits on the stairs for a better view out the front door.  And he's successfully trained us not to leave food in reach.

As much of a fixture as Nico has become in our lives, we still wonder about his backstory.  The terrible mats in his fur when he arrived at the shelter indicated that he had either lived on the street a good long time or had been seriously neglected by his previous owner.



We still look for clues to what his life used to be like.  His unusual love of vegetables?  I'm pretty sure he learned to like them when he lived on the streets.  I imagine office workers having lunch in a local park, stripping the lettuce and tomatoes from their sandwiches and throwing them to the little stray dog who came around to beg.

Nico meets red pepper
Nico's fear of some (but not all) men who come over for a visit?  We imagine he had an male owner who may have been unkind to him.

But the most curious of Nico's behavior is his wallet fetish.  If one of the boys leaves theirs within his reach, it's a pretty sure bet Nico will steal it and bring it to me or Andre--which leads us to believe that in Nico's past life he was the Artful Dodger, pinching wallets to bring to his owner Fagan.



One recent morning, I was just about the leave the house when Andre called.  Somehow he'd left for work without his wallet.  Could I find it?  He suggested places where it might be--near the desk, on the nightstand, in the driveway--but it was absolutely nowhere.  I looked a long while before we concluded that the wallet was gone for good.

Running late for my day's errands, I said goodbye, as usual, to the dogs.  Nico was in his usual spot, upstairs on our bed, on top of the covers.  I bent to kiss his curly head, but as I was leaving, something in his eyes told me--I swear--to look under those bedcovers.

Guess what was there!


I guess the mystery of Nico's wallet-loving past will never be solved.  And now I'm more interested in an even stranger mystery: just how exactly did he learn to plant thoughts in my mind?
The patented Nico Mind Meld

Joestock: The First Annual Rockland-Bergen Music Festival

Bassist Johnny Pisano at the first annual Rockland-Bergen Music FestivalWhen you're Jersey Shore musician, Stone Caravan frontman Joe D'Urso, you don't just throw a party on your fiftieth birthday.  You throw a music festival.


Birthday Boy Joe D'UrsoAnd when you're Joe--a longtime promoter of charitable causes--you make the day really count, collecting proceeds for Light of Day and WHYHunger and other worthy charities.   You outfit the German Masonic Park in Tappan, New York with two stages, offer free admission to anybody born in 1964, and invite your friends to come out and play.



Because your friends just happen to be legends of the New York/Jersey Shore/national music scene, word spreads among music fans, and enthusiastic concertgoers spread out blankets and lawn chairs under a perfect blue sky


The result? A perfect summer celebration of music and the folks who love it.


with Diane Lynn Gotaski Pastrick photo of Kiley Armstrong by Mitchell BilusThe festivities kick off with a set by talented newcomer Bobby Mahoney:


The day's musical riches include acoustic sets by Marshall Crenshaw, whose voice is still as honeyed as it was in the '80s, Anthony D'Amato, whom NPR has called "a modern folk gem," and the ever-entertaining songsmith John Eddie.

Plugged-in standouts included Jesse Malin, whose new album is mere days away from completion, and who as usual tears the place up:


And Willie Nile who closes out the day in hard-rocking, big hearted style.




At the end of the day, Willie's bassist Johnny Pisano--known to fans as Jumping Johnny Pi--defies gravity in ways his fans have come to look forward to:


photo by Diane Lynn Gotaski Pastrick
and in a way none of us quite expected:

Dreaming of Athens: The Greek Novel Revisited

Street sign in AthensYesterday, my agent sent me notes on my Greek novel--a list of things that are working well and other things that could be working better.  There's rewriting to be done--one key character in particular isn't quite coming across the way I meant him to--but the good news is that my agent thinks the novel's already in pretty good shape.  


Seen on the Acropolis
While I've waited for the notes, I've kept busy by doing some preliminary work on two other projects, both too tentative to say much about.  One of them is collaborative, so its fate is largely out of my hands.  The other's a solo effort, but a bit scarily different from anything I've done before. 


photo by Shawn Krahmer Heal
Both projects are so new that even as I've been typing away at them I've wondered whether they will ever amount to anything, whether my summer might be better spent lazing at the beach or chasing rock stars from venue to venue.  Maybe neither project will add up to anything but a summer's worth of lost hours.

But I felt the same doubt about the Greek novel as I was writing it.  And now I've learned that I was on something like the right track after all.    

At any rate, for a little while, I get to take a break from the scariest part of 
the writing process, the part in which I'm feeling my way through a darkened room waiting for my eyes to adjust.  

I get to revisit someplace sundrenched and bright, a place that has grown familiar--in this case, Greece.  I can enjoy a brief reunion with a handful of characters I've grown attached to.  Characters I've missed.

I get to tinker and polish a work that's already mostly on the page. I think I'll consider it a summer vacation within my summer vacation. 


Graffiti in Athens

Ain't Nothing But A House Party: Jesse Malin Live at Drew's

Jesse Malin and band, live at Drew'sThere's this guy named Drew Eckmann who lives on a lake in New Jersey and throws amazing rock and roll house parties.  The New Yorker has taken note of his series:

As has FUSE t.v.:

One of Drew's favorite acts is Jesse Malin; in fact, on a recent summer night Jesse narrowly beat out Graham Parker as the act who has played in Drew's concert series the second most often.  (Number one is the great Willie Nile.)  Andre and I were at the recent Jesse Malin show, because where else would we be?  
Jesse's set was full of new songs from his soon-to-be-released album, with a few old favorites sprinkled in.

Though Jesse always puts on a great show, there's something wonderfully intimate about a venue that just happens to be someone's living room.  The guests bring pot luck dishes, everyone gathers on the porch or in Drew's cozy house, and when the show begins, we're all a part of it.
The sound quality chez Drew's is amazing--clear and crisp but, somehow, not overwhelming.  Even when there's a horn section:

Though Drew is taking a mini-hiatus, his series will be back up and running at full speed before long.  If you live in driving range of northern New Jersey and you want to learn more, you can get on his mailing list here.
Not only are the shows great; you can't beat the view from Drew's back porch.

Roadtrip: A Weekend in Seneca Falls

In recent years it's become a tradition: one summer weekend I meet up with my dear college friends Dorothee, Bethany, and Sharon.  So far we've picked a different spot for each reunion and, admittedly, we've let a few years lapse since the last get together.  This time around, we chose a cabin in Seneca Falls, New York, complete with Adirondack chairs looking out over Lake Cayuga.


You know the kind of friends you can lose sight of for years at a time, and yet when you see them again it's like no time at all has passed since you were dancing to the Police and the B-52s in the upstairs lounge at Eaton House?


On Saturday morning, after a leisurely breakfast on the deck, we hopped into Sharon's convertible, popped in a CD of '80s New Wave music and drove to nearby Ithaca.  (The tunes were supplied by Sharon's husband Tommy.  The two of them co-own Get Down Tonight Entertainment, recently voted best of New Hampshire by Bride Magazine.)


Our goal was to wander around Ithaca and wind up at Moosewood, the locally-sourced restaurant whose cookbooks some of us have been cooking from for decades.


After a leisurely (and very fresh and delicious) lunch on the patio,


we zipped home by way of the region's gorgeous vineyards.


And there was still time to cook and eat a leisurely dinner and chat on the deck, catching up on each other's lives.  Despite the invigorating trivia game that got our hearts pounding right before bedtime, Sharon managed to rise early enough to catch the first rays of dawn.

Sunrise--photo by Sharon Dyson-DemersAll in all, the best kind of road trip.  

Feedback and Fellowship: A Visit with Lynn Levin, Poet

Every writer needs other writers, to commune with, to commiserate with, to read her work and provide feedback.  One of my trusted writer friends is poet and translator Lynn Levin, whose work I've known and admired for years.  We live on opposite sides of Philadelphia, but every once in a while I hop on the regional rail:


and meet up with Lynn in Center City for lunch and poetry.

Lynn's got a new book out, her translations of the Peruvian poet Odi Gonzales, about which Chad Sweeney has written, "Woven of Spanish Catholic and indigenous Quechua colors, these pages shimmer like angels in an Andean Eden."

As for Lynn's own poems, they too shimmer.  Here's one that I love for its own sake, and also because I saw it in an earlier draft at one of our poetry lunches a few years back:

Cicadas  
Odd to see a live oneup closeinstead of a crispy ghost clinging to a treeor to hear one so silent.
On the herringbone pattern of our patiothe cicada layonyx and ornate like a costume brooch fallen
from a lady’s coat.Blackness oiled its back. Lead camed            the pearly clear windows of its wings.
Not so pretty the bug eyes bulginground as the heads of map pinsred as indicator lights.
I feared the thing might crawl up my leg or buzz my facebut it didn't move. I bent to better see its armored plates.What made me gasp
was the cicada-killer waspswooping in to reconnoiter.She was big as a half-smoked cigar.Her long abdomen bore the black and yellow stripes of warning
then tapered to a smooth black stinger  the shape of a mortar shell.
She left.She circled back.
A bodiless foot in a ridiculous sockbusy wings the color of blood diluted with water. Maroon eyes ruled her facelike aviator goggles.
The wasp alighted on the frozen bug clamped it in her six red legsin what seemed a sexual hug
then rose like a chopper and carried her prizeacross our lawnand the neighbor’s after.
A sight to see them in that sickening rapturethe cicada in the straddle of legs,two giants lockeda doubled black rockheaded nowhere good
at least from where cicadas stood,a sandy-edged burrowby a sidewalk slab and much chewing.
Then the trees tambourined with cicada song:something wasplike urged the males on
Let us make more of usLet us make more of us
they cried: their automatic racketdelicious to their long-awaited brides.

photo by Dave Ellis/The Free Lance-Star/AP 
"Cicadas" was originally published in video form by Apiary.

Looking Forward to Nightsun: An Interview

This summer (July 24-27) I'll be teaching a young adult fiction workshop at the 2014 Nightsun Writers Conference in Frostburg, Maryland.  In anticipation of that gathering, the Conference's blog will be posting interviews with the faculty members--Bruce Weigl (poetry), Marion Winik (nonfiction), Clint McCown (fiction), and Brenda Clough (science fiction, fantasy, and horror).   The registration deadline is July 18, and there's still room to sign up and join us.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share my interview here with you.  

How has working with young adults as a college professor affected your writing of young adult literature?

One thing I love about my job is how it keeps me in touch with young adults.  I teach a class on the Young Adult novel in which half of what we do is read books together.  I learn a lot about the YA audience by seeing how my students react to books like Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, David Levithan's Every Day, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, and Sara Zarr's How to Save a Life.  Sometimes my students will fall in utter love with a book, but even so they are willing to ask themselves hard questions about how honest the book is, how believable--the kinds of questions that are useful for me to ask about my own work as I'm revising it.

The other half of what we do is write the first four chapters of our own novels and then, at the end of the semester, outline the rest.  There’s such a range of subject matter and style in the novels my students have produced for that class, and their work provides a window into their interests and worries, into how the world of teens and college students has changed since I was their age—and how it hasn’t.

Why does that target audience appeal to you? 
I fell into writing YA fiction accidentally by writing Jane , a book I thought was for adults but that wound up being marketed to a YA audience--and what a happy accident it's been.  



Young readers are unabashedly enthusiastic about reading about about books as physical objects.  For proof, check out some of the blogs about YA literature.  There are so many of them--some by adults and some by teens--and every one I've seen has been created out of a pure and wholehearted love of YA books.  I'm a fairly unironic soul myself--when I love a book or song or movie my love is deep and geeky--so I really appreciate and relate to the enthusiasm of devoted YA readers.
Also, Young Adult books tend to foreground plot in a way literary fiction often doesn’t, and I think that explains why so many adults are reading YA these days.  There’s a basic human hunger for story, and YA feed that hunger.  As someone who began my writing career as a poet precisely because conflict makes me uncomfortable and because I didn’t think I could write a plot to save my soul, writing YA has made me face those fears head on.  It’s given me a crash course in writing plot.


A writing workshop at NightsunYou have written two novels that are retellings of classic novels. Could you describe what it is like to rework another author's work and make it your own? Or, how do you make something that is distinctly someone else's yours?
I can only write about things that enthrall me, so novels I adore make a good starting point.  I begin by rereading a novel, even by listening to the audio book version while I fall asleep at night, so that I fully absorb the source material. I write a rough outline of the plot, and then I set the source material aside and let my imagination go to work.  My project so far has been to ask myself if the plot of a classic could work in the present day and, if so, how.  More than anything else, I try to stay true to what’s essential in the characters and to write from an understanding of and respect for the source material. 

That said, I can only make my characters come alive by finding bits of myself or people I know in them.  My own personal obsessions surface in each of my novels.  I’m a huge live music fan, and that particular passion fuels the plot of all three of my novels.  Nico Rathburn, the Mr. Rochester character in Jane is a rock star on the brink of a comeback.  Hence, the Heathcliff character in  Catherine , is a hungry aspiring musician inspired by punk rock. 


And Jesse, a key character in Love, Lucy is a footloose street musician.  As for my protagonists, Jane is a painter, Catherine’s a poet, Lucy’s an actress.   I’ve always been obsessed with the arts, so my characters are too.
  
Your forthcoming novel – Love, Lucy – is a love story like your previous novels. However, unlike the others, it is not a retelling of a classic novel. Where did you find the inspiration to write Love, Lucy? 



Actually, Love, Lucy was inspired by E. M. Forster’s A Room With a View—both the novel and the luminous 1985 Merchant-Ivory film version.  

A scene from A Room With a View
It also takes some overt inspiration from another of my favorite films, Roman Holiday.  



But most of all, the novel was inspired by my own travels in Europe, especially my very first backpacking trip when I was 22, fresh out of college, and traveling solo.  




That trip was a really formative moment for me—a real YA moment.  It showed me I could be self-sufficient and brave when I needed to be, and it awakened a voracious hunger to see the world and learn new languages.  I’ve been meaning to write about that experience ever since, and Forster’s novel helped me find a way back into that material.


Amore, sempre amore!How does your work as a literary critic influence the strategies you use in your own writing?
It doesn’t.  When I’m writing, I have to put that critical self on ice, at least for the first few drafts.  There’s nothing more writer’s-block-inducing than that inner critic who questions everything a writer sets on paper.  When I’m drafting a novel, I’m trying to build up an illusion for myself and my reader, and when I’m writing criticism, I’m analyzing--taking apart the illusion to see how it works.   These two urges are antithetical, at least until a strong first, second, or third draft is on the page. 



That said, when I take on a critical or editorial project, I always wind up reading more widely than I would if left to my own devices.  And reading widely—as well as deeply—can only make a writer stronger.    Workshopping at the Nightsun Conference: feedback, fun and fellowship

Just Like Starting Over: A Visit to NYC

Glimpsed at Union SquareOn the day of my studio visit with Jesse Malin, I made sure to get into New York City super early--and not just so I could avoid rush hour traffic.  I had to do a little preliminary research for a project so tentative that I don't dare reveal even the tiniest details about it.

My quest brought me first to the lower East Side and Strand Bookstore, where I browsed at length.  Then I wandered over to the Union Square Greenmarket, swooned over the produce, and annoyed pedestrians when I stopped to photograph it.

RadisheNext stop was the Upper West Side by way of Grand Central Station:


My destination?  Lincoln Center, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.


After that it was time to hurry back down to Flux Studios for the tour.  But on my way there I had to make a quick pit stop for the best bialys on the Lower East Side:


Of course once the research is done, the hard part begins: putting words down on paper.  That part starts tomorrow.  Wish me luck.

June Odds and Ends: Bedside Books and Microtrends

The nice folks at We Wanted To Be Writers invited me to write a guest post about my bedside books.  Check out the archives to find out what all your favorite writers are reading.

Also, I'm thrilled that Love, Lucy got a mention in this fun list of Young Adult Microtrends, up at one of my favorite blogs, Stacked.