Carissa Halston's Blog, page 10

In the midst of touring and hosting and reading…

I am having more fun than I feel is really warranted. My apartment is under siege (we recently adopted a very well-behaved cat who fell down the stairs last night, but is now sleeping soundly through the noisy installation of windows in the apartment above ours), I have books to sign and mail, and a hometown reading to prepare for with Jill McDonough (!) at Brookline Booksmith (!!) this evening. (7pm. Coolidge Corner. I expect to see you there.) I met a slew of wonderful people last night at Literary Firsts (and saw some wonderful, familiar faces too).

And, on top of that, the second print annual of apt was reviewed in New Pages today. The following text is from Sarah Carson’s review:

The issue accomplishes something few literary journals do: it begs you to come back and re-read it. And not just once or twice. This is the kind of journal you want to keep around.

The collection is filled from cover to cover with strong, daring pieces, which makes it hard to pick any favorites. I call them “pieces” because the editors of the issue have been intentional to blur the lines between prose and poetry. Though it’s hard to be quite sure which you’re reading at a given time, it doesn’t matter. Nearly every piece is filled with fierce narratives and clever surprises. There’s not a single selection in the issue that fades into the background.

Take, for example, Breonna Krafft’s “I Have Been Thinking about the Ocean.” The poem spans eleven pages, using punctuation to create the effect of waves. Beyond the clever visual arrangement, though, Krafft’s meditation on water is thoughtful and prophetic. She confidently spans topics as diverse as family, tsunamis, pollution, funerals, coral reef as used in bone grafts, and the gigantic heart of the Blue Whale. The effect is a contemplation that seems to unfold as easily as waves lapping at the shore.

Or there’s Thomas Nowak’s “The Teen Years for Jesus.” It’s not only irreverent. It’s hilarious, imaginative, and, probably, spot-on:

Jesus went from job to job

and his bosses would tell him

to clean himself up. Maybe shave.

He eventually started playing guitar

Next to the train station. No one

gave him money, but they smiled

at his cover of “Wonderwall.”

The issue is filled with moments like this that make you giggle, gasp, and think. Another good example is Russ Woods’s “Murder the sun.” in which a narrator emphatically tells the reader that “There is a sun out there and it needs to be murdered. By you.”

In Lindsay Coleman’s “Last Party,” an eight-year-old doesn’t want the other kids at her birthday party to think the game of bobbing for apples is rigged: “I can already hear the conspiracy theories from the other kids swarming above me. I’m not out of breath yet so I stay down.”

Or Thomas Mundt’s “Let’s Play Bomb Scare” in which a couple decides to make their lives a bit more exciting by pretending the empty baby car seat in the back of their “Certified Pre-Owned Civic” is “a knapsack bomb, like the one that sad, sunburned white man was accused of planting in that pedestrian mall during the ’96 Atlanta Olympics.”

In the editors’ note, the apt team points out how they have intentionally arranged the pieces in the issue to cross the borders of genre and style and to let each narrative lead you into the next. The effect is a collection of work that is fun and eclectic. Having already read it twice, I’ll still be carrying this issue around for a while.

I don’t deserve such kind words, but our contributors do. Sarah Carson, thank you for your graciousness.

Today and every day, I’m so thankful for this life.

Work and links and reminders about tour dates

Lori Hettler, the driving force behind The Next Best Book Club, had these kind words for The Mere Weight of Words: “Carissa Halston writes in a voice that is so pure, that speaks so straight to the life of this woman Mere, that I constantly had to remind myself it was a work of fiction.” You can read her full review here.

In case you don’t already know, Lori is a huge supporter of independent/small press fiction, which means she reads like a house on fire and knows her stuff, so I’m really excited about being reviewed at TNBBC. Also, I recently recorded an excerpt from Mere which will be up for an audio feature Lori’s running. More info on that when it’s ready for your aural pleasure.

Speaking of excerpts, I just found out there will be one last text excerpt (text-cerpt?) from Mere in The Good Men Project. Matthew Salesses is fiction editor for GMP and is currently talking about revision this month while he’s Writer-in-Residence at Necessary Fiction, so until I’ve got more words to show you, go check out his and a slew of other great writers he’s tapped for tips on revision. I particularly like the tricks people are suggesting to make you read your work like it’s someone else’s. Pretty clever.

And lastly, I’m really excited because I’m still touring!

On July 14 (this Saturday!), I’ll be at the Moravian Bookshop in Bethlehem, PA reading and signing. This is a particularly sentimental reading/signing because I used to be a bookseller at MBS and it’s a real honor to be there as an author. I used to write stories and plays during my lunch breaks. I wrote part of my first novel in their greenhouse. Just in case you’ve never been to the shop, yes, they have a greenhouse.

So, if you’re in the Lehigh Valley on Saturday, I’ll be there from 1-3. Reading, then signing. Stop by and say hello!

Also, for those of you at home (in Boston), Monday, July 16 is the next Literary Firsts and on Tuesday, July 17, I’ll be reading with Jill McDonough at Brookline Booksmith! There’s so much going on! Be there!

My last also (for this post), I found out earlier this week that Mere is on WORD’s bestseller list for June! They were so kind to host my book launch party, so if you’re in Brooklyn, go buy a book from them and tell them that I sent you and that I said thanks and that I think they’re great.

Transition

More often than not, I’m acutely aware of time. It’s largely due to my mistaken assumption that I am operating in a different month than everyone else. This is leagues beyond the normal I-wish-it-were-summertime yearning. Though it’s frequently spurred on by weather or holidays, I spend much of the year writing the wrong months. On June 4th, I’ll write something like 3/19. Then I’ll have to scribble it out and wonder what, exactly, keeps my mindset perennially unseasonable. It’s not weather. I live in New England. There’s no such thing as seasonable weather. It could be 70 degrees and sunny or 40 degrees and damp. Both are regular occurrences in June. And it’s not just June that upends me. It’s all year long. I’ll say things like, “How is it April already?” and “It doesn’t really feel like Arbor Day.”

I feel attached to time as an abstraction while wanting to recognize its concrete signals. Maybe time knows that. Maybe that’s why time frequently rejects my advances. Maybe that’s why it races ahead or slows down exactly when I’d rather it didn’t. For example, today is July 4 and I’m not in the mood for fireworks.

DISCLAIMER: I love fireworks. I smile with my mouth open and laugh like a maniac through the entirety of the Big Boston Fireworks Production every single year. Honestly. I wail from delight over the proximity of explosions.

And yet, at the idea of having to walk over to Back Bay to see what are, year after year, hands down, the best fireworks of my life, my immediate reaction is: “I have too much to do. Can’t we postpone the fireworks? I’ll make time for them tomorrow. Or better yet, next week.” Except I’m going to PA next week. There’s no good time for postponing anything. Reschedule an event and I’ll refill my schedule. Guaranteed.

It doesn’t help that holidays always make me think of every person I’ve ever spent them with. People that are far away. People that I no longer speak to. People that have since died. I don’t understand how entire years pass and those details don’t get easier or feel any further away. They simply remain factual.

A friend that I lost this year told me in 2010 about the fireworks in his hometown. He talked about it with such affection that I went home and wrote about it (because I was and still am writing a book about America) and thought, when this book is finished someday, I’ll send it to him and point to that passage and tell him, “I wrote that because of you.”

But now I won’t get to do that. Being an atheist (and given that he was one too), I don’t believe that he’s floating around somewhere, waiting for me to finish my book. But that doesn’t stop me from wishing he were still here. He was smart and funny and a great deal of fun to have around.

I’m at a loss for him and for how to get past his absence. When I sever ties from someone, it’s easier. It’s usually a long time coming and I feel better for having done it. But when someone dies, it’s emphatically different. I keep thinking of Bernard Slade’s play, Tribute. Scott Templeton (Jack Lemmon) is dying and trying to accept that. He says, “When a friend dies, you lose a friend. But when you die, you lose all your friends.”

A review for The Mere Weight of Words

Every step of writing for publication is difficult in its way.

It’s so relieving to finish a book. You’ve done it. It’s alive.

But then it’s scary to send it out. It’s nervewracking waiting to hear back from publishers. It’s disheartening to receive rejections.

But then it’s bliss to receive acceptance.

But then it’s incredibly hard work to go back to that book you thought was done and then take it up again before publication. It’s grueling to ask for blurbs. It’s time-consuming to promote. It’s agony waiting for reviews.

But then…then…you get reviewed.

And sometimes, you get a reviewer who understands why you wrote what you wrote.

“The Mere Weight of Words is literary fiction written with a muscularity of prose that exercises the talents of the writer and the expectations of the reader. It is therefore exactly what literary fiction should be or should at least aspire to. … This is a novella in Technicolor and HD and 3D all at once. It has a Cubist blending of past and present that reflects the true movements of the mind and the leaps between the different phases are done in such a way that Virginia Woolf cannot be excluded from Halston’s influences. With its full-bodied rendering of character and bold writing style The Mere Weight of Words will leave a lasting legacy in the mind of the reader.” — Jessica Maybury, The Rumpus

Read the full review here.

Brooklyn and words and the birth of a book

Photo credit: Meredith Conti, whose first name I stole for fiction

Last night, I saw friends I hadn’t seen since September of 2009. Translation: I saw people I hadn’t seen since the last time I toured. It’s amazing how quickly time passes.

Speaking of time, every time I tour, I have problems with the actual travel. When I toured for Portraiture, the bus from Boston to New York, which should have arrived an hour before the show was to begin, got in fifteen minutes before I had to be at the theatre. The bus we were supposed to take from New York to Philadelphia moved their location and neglected to notify us, so we had twenty minutes to get from Chinatown to midtown. We missed our flight from St Louis to Toronto because security was so backed up in the airport, but somehow, I got to all the venues just in time.

Similarly, last night, we left Bushwick for Greenpoint at 6:15. At 6:45, we were waiting at Lorimer for the G. I think that touring is meant to be stressful because, if it weren’t for the travel, which exhausts me, and the near-lateness, which invariably catches me offguard, I would be on tour all the time. I get to see friends and cities that are normally so far away. But I also understand that if my whole life were touring, I’d never write and touring wouldn’t be as exciting. To quote Stephen Sondheim, “Oh, if life were made of moments–even now and then a bad one!–but if life were only moments, then you’d never know you had one.”

So here were my favorite moments from last night:

- Meeting Jenn, the events coordinator at WORD, who did so much for this event, and who gave me such a warm introduction.

- Getting to read from my book, a thing I agonized over, because it’s about linguistics and emotional and physical paralysis and imposter syndrome, which are sad things, but there are also funny parts of the book and I want those parts to come across.

- Seeing so many friends. Talking about books and publishing and reading and life and being with so many friends. Signing little notes in books to them. Reminding them that, even though I’m far away, I think about them often and even though I don’t miss New York, I do miss them.

- Especially, especially seeing my friend, Stef, who I hadn’t seen in more than three years and who I miss and wish I could see more often, but also, who I’m always glad to see, regardless of how much time has passed.

- Opening the copy of Mere recently purchased by my friend, John, who I love, who waited in line with everyone who wanted their books signed, and seeing that he already signed the book (I think the inscription was something like, Have a great summer!). He immediately slapped his hand down on the book and said, “HA. BEAT YOU TO IT.” He did it because he’s hilarious and because he knew I would love it.

- Answering questions about the book, some of which ranged from “Do your characters have ages?” (Yes. They do indeed.) to “Did you try to write in dialect to communicate Mere’s paralysis?” (No. But I did try some other things in early, early drafts and those things didn’t work nearly as well as just having her talk to the reader about being paralyzed) to “Is this book autobiographical/Where did the idea for this book come from?” (It is autobiographical in that I’m estranged from my parents, but it’s not autobiographical because my estrangement is nothing like Mere’s. The idea came from thinking about a person who would name herself after a not very flattering adjective and what that would mean about her character. It came from my frequent interest in how words sound. It came from the knowledge that something you cannot control–like a disease–can affect your career, your life, and your relationships with everyone, including yourself. I’m not sure I said this as succinctly last night. I’ve since had time to think it over.).

I have two and a half weeks off until the next reading, which will be a crazy, crazy weekend (reading at Moravian Bookshop in Pennsylvania on July 14, Literary Firsts on July 16, reading at Brookline Booksmith in Boston with Jill McDonough on July 17), but I’m already excited about it. And two weeks after that, I’ll be in Virginia reading with Gillian Devereux (which is actually one month from today). So, there will be more posts like this one on their way. Until then, here’s a video from last night’s reading. If you read the recent interview-in-excerpts that I did at The Collagist, you’ll recognize the passage that begins, “I hate cake.”

If you were there last night, thank you. If you’re coming to one of the events in the future, thanks in advance. And if you’ve pre-ordered the book or you’re reading it now, I’m looking forward to hearing what you think.

Only a few more days

Image taken from the purveyors of fine literature at The Collagist

My book launch is only three days away!

Please join me at WORD on Tuesday, June 26 at 7pm when I’ll read from and talk about and sign copies of The Mere Weight of Words. I’m thrilled and anxious and (honestly) really hyper about this event. WORD is an awesome bookstore run by awesome people and I’m honored to be reading there.

For those of you who might need convincing about coming to hear me read from a book that’s not out yet, you might be swayed by this review from Shelf Unbound that got picked up by Flavorwire this week. There are also quite a few excerpts available to read online, thanks to editors at The Collagist. The first is long and representative of the “serious” parts of the book. The others are much shorter and some of them represent the “lighter” parts of the book.

What I’m trying to say is that there’s something for everyone–the funny, the sad; the abstract, the concrete; the wordy, the silent.

So I hope to see you at WORD on Tuesday night.

And just in case you’re not in Brooklyn, you might be in some of these other places where I will also be, fairly soon:

7/14/2012 at 1pm – Bethlehem, PA – Moravian Bookshop

7/17/2012 at 7pm – Brookline, MA – Brookline Booksmith (with Jill McDonough)

7/27/2012 at 7:30pm – Manassas, VA – Zabb (with Gillian Devereux)

9/29/2012 – Baltimore, MD – Baltimore Book Festival (part of 510 Reading Series)

If you’re not in those places, but you’d like me to read where you are, let me know! I’m also available for online readings/chats if that’s your preference.

Also, just in case you want to read the book before the events, you can pre-order your own copy of TMWW right here, signed copies available through June 30.

An Excerpt in The Collagist

As Carissa promised earlier this week, I (Randolph) am writing a guest post for her while she’s off writing, and talking about writing, and writing some more at Wesleyan.

Most people who read Carissa’s blog or see her Facebook and Twitter updates already know that she has a new book, The Mere Weight of Words, coming out at the end of the month. If you’d like to get a sneak peek at the book, you can read an excerpt that was published today at The Collagist. After reading it and getting excited about the book, you can join Carissa at one of her upcoming readings. The dates and locations are listed under “Tour” just a little above and to the left of these words. Unless, of course, you’re reading this on tumblr, in which case there’s probably a picture of a cat above and to the left of these words. Sorry. There’s only so much I can control.

So much!

I want to extrapolate on these things, but I have to run and catch a bus.

So, instead, I give you a list:

1/My short story, “Hera,” is going to be in the fall issue of Curbside Splendor! I’m particularly excited about this because the story takes place in Chicago and CS is based in Chicago. Also, they routinely publish good work, so that’s always heartening.

2/My short story, “On Tender Hooks,” is going to be in The Massachusetts Review this fall. I am thrilled and shocked and can’t articulate well enough my levels of excitement. As an aside, this story is the first (though last published) section of “The Daughters.” The second and third sections were published earlier this year, in Consequence and Precipitate, respectively.

3/An excerpt from The Mere Weight of Words is going to be in The Collagist on Friday! Huge thanks to Matt Bell for accepting it and the whole crew at TC for making it look pretty.

4/However, I won’t be here on Friday to tell you about it! That said, I do have a guest poster lined up. Wait and see.

5/I’m off to the Wesleyan Writers Conference. No computer. No distraction. See you Sunday.

A new story, more tour info, and the first review for Mere

Lots of exciting news today, in no particular order:

“Extensions,” my short story “about phone lines and blood lines” is up at Little Fiction. Little Fiction is an ebook publisher out of Vancouver, run by Troy Palmer, who designs every book with tender care and then formats them for mobile devices and tablets and e-readers*. I’m really thrilled with how he designed “Extensions.” You can download your preferred version (or just read it in your browser) and let me know what you think.

Also, I’ve added another date to the Mere tour. For those of you in or around the Baltimore area, I’ll be reading at the Baltimore Book Festival on Saturday, September 29, with the 510 Reading Series. I’m thrilled to be part of a line-up with Michael Kimball, Elissa Schappell, and Robb Todd.

And my last bit of news is particularly thrilling because it’s making me hyper about my book. The latest issue of Shelf Unbound came out yesterday and, in it, Marc Schuster had done a write-up on novellas for Novella Month. The Mere Weight of Words was among them. Here’s what he had to say, “With smart, inventive wordplay, Halston explores the veracity of language, and ultimately, of love. More, please, Carissa Halston.” You can read the entire issue here. And, as a gentle reminder, you can pre-order copies of Mere directly through the publisher (signed copies will be available only during pre-order) or attend any of the tour events, where I’ll be happy to sign a copy for you in person.

* – The word e-reader always makes me think that the reader (i.e., the person reading the book) is electronic. Or that the little device audibly reads to you while you silently follow along. That might be nice.

As mentioned elsewhere

I looked at the main AP site earlier and realized we hadn’t posted anything in five months. Between Literary Firsts, apt, and this site, I sometimes forget that there’s a main page that people visit.

So, I left a little update there, which you should look at because it mentions all the things that Robin, Randolph, J.F., and I are doing, such as:

A few weeks ago, Robin put a mini-comic together for MoCCA Art Fest called Shadowland. And, as one would expect, it’s just lovely. Check it out here (and, while you’re there, look at the new stuff she’s working on involving a hybrid of traditional illustration work and her shattered style).

Also, J.F. recently finished a new drawing–a 13′ drawing. It’s called The Distance between Memories, it’s larger than Randolph standing on my shoulders, and it’s beautiful. You can see it next weekend at Bushwick Open Studios.

And three of Randolph’s video poems were part of an event hosted by The Destroyer and Trickhouse!

And–the thing that I’ve been working on in fits and starts for what feels like months, but has actually been years (!)–my novella, The Mere Weight of Words, is now available for pre-order. You can order a signed copy which will be sent from the publisher to me, then signed by me, then mailed to you (by me!). Then you can read it and, while you do so, I’ll wait here in nervous agony, hoping you like it (and me), hoping you’ll e-mail me to tell me what you think.

While we’re both waiting (you for your copy of Mere, me for your e-mail), let’s watch the book trailer.

Also, if you live in/near these places:

Brooklyn (any of the 5 boroughs, really)

Bethlehem, PA (all of the Lehigh Valley)

Brookline (which is surrounded on all sides by Boston and is just across the river from Cambridge)

Manassas, VA (so close to DC, it’s crazy!)

You could come hear me read from the book in person.

That’s right. Tour dates. Join me, readers. Join me.