Margo Orlando Littell's Blog, page 5

The Gallery of Strangers

 It all started with the sad hat girl. She’s troubling, don’t you think? So much sadness amid so many pretty hats. Something--desire, heartbreak, pity--drove someone to paint her, but no one felt enough, or felt deeply enough, to keep her. She was stacked at a church rummage sale with all the other discarded household art--inspirational Bible quotes, so many shorelines and sunsets, posters from museum exhibitions long past--until I brought her home. She was the first. My intentions at the time

The Danger of Old Dreams

  There are benefits to being sentimental (which, please note, is entirely different from being a hoarder). For example, the other day I was thinking about the stories I wrote as a kid, and I was able to locate a gem from fourth grade--I took a picture for this post. I’m pretty sure it’s my earliest existing short story, a typed, staple-bound fourth-grade project titled “Heart to Heart, Mind to Mind.” It’s about ESP, interplanetary travel, and tiny monsters. I got an A on the story and remember

Pre-Order Sale & Giveaway!

Seven weeks till pub day! Have you pre-ordered your copy of Each Vagabond By Name? If you have, thank you! If you haven’t, why wait? You can pre-order through any online bookseller, but, starting now, you’ll get a 20% discount if you order directly from UNO Press. The first 50 readers who order will receive a signed, custom-designed bookplate directly from me. I’ll send your bookplate in a hand-lined envelope featuring Vagabond’s beautiful artwork.    Travel on over to UNO Press's dedicated site

Vagabond's Debut

  Last week, I flew to New Orleans for Vagabond’s early-release event, part of the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival. It was a big trip for my little book. You’ve all seen pictures of Each Vagabond By Name, and if you live near me or have visited, I’ve undoubtedly pressed the review version into your hands to admire. The cover has, quite literally, taken over my own image on Facebook. Still, all this is personal. I’ve talked about the book publicly a couple of times so far, but it still felt

This I Know

In lieu of a traditional post today, I’m pulling back the curtain of my novel a bit and posting a very short story featuring my two main characters, Ramsy and Stella. I adapted this story from one of my darlings--a scene I dearly loved even when it became clear that it wasn’t progressing the story of my novel. I kept it in, draft after draft, until I finally did what I had to do--kill it. But it lives on in the short story that follows.   This I Know            The ground had thawed. In the air

Writing My Way Home

  I was never able to write about southwestern PA until I left it. My earliest attempts at fiction, in my teens and early twenties, were always set in some vaguely imagined suburbia, never in a small town like mine. When I was that young, all I really knew about my town was that it was a place I was expected to leave. This unspoken assumption took root, signalling to me that a successful life was one lived away from home. I was never explicitly encouraged to do anything in particular, and I grew

What I Did to Stella

Much of my writing of Vagabond occurred when I was newly pregnant with my second daughter, which was instrumental in my deepening of Stella’s character. I had a very difficult pregnancy, winding up on hospital bedrest at 34 weeks. And though, as the mother of a two-year-old, I’d occasionally fantasized about required bedrest and all the amazingly productive things I’d be able to do if I were medically mandated to not parent, the reality did not live up to the fantasy, and I spent my days missing

The Birth of Ramsy

With Each Vagabond By Name nearing publication, I find myself searching for scraps of its infancy. The truth is, I don’t remember in any clear detail how the idea for this story came about. It’s a reasonable question, one I feel I should be able to answer. Yet the first scribblings happened so long ago--fifteen years--that identifying what inspired them is all but impossible. How did I get the idea? Despite being the author of this story, I do not know.   Well, that isn’t entirely true. There

Nice to Meet You. Have You Heard About My Book?

I’ve done a full 180. Until September, when I learned my novel would be published by the University of New Orleans Press, I rarely talked about being a writer. If I did mention it, I downplayed it. Now, with my novel’s June launch approaching, I find myself in the position of needing to talk about it all the time. I want everyone I know--and don’t know--to know about my book. I wrote it; it’s being published; but that next step--selling it--is on my shoulders. I have a starkly clear

Good Luck, Good Book, St. Jude

When my novel Each Vagabond By Name won the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize, it was like leaping from a familiar pond into a clear, sparkling new sea. I’d been close to contest-winning, and the subsequent publication, before--many times, in fact. My novel was a veteran bridesmaid, accustomed to standing by in her ill-fitting dress while yet another lovely bride said “I do.” I’d come to expect how it would all pan out: submission, finalist, *thisclose*, and then another door closed