Terena Scott's Blog, page 27

Jennifer Blowdryer and Matthue Roth reading from Punk Anthology

Live anywhere near New York City? Then head over to Book Thug Nation for a reading with Punk Rock Saved My Ass writers Jennifer Blowdryer, Matthue Roth, and others. Here's the link to Jennifer's blog for more info:



Reading with Jennifer Blowdryer



8pm – 10pm

Book Thug Nation

100 North 3rd Street, Williamsburg between Berry and White.  Close to Bedford.



There will also be a San Francisco reading at Dog Eared Books on October 14th at Dog Eared Books with Jennifer Blowdryer and Jane Mackay. 8...

Terena reading the intro to Punk Rock Save My Ass on Flying Monkey Radio

Remember the post I wrote (if link doesn't appear, scroll down) about using my iPhone and iTunes to record myself reading the intro to the punk anthology? Well the reading is now up on Flying Monkey Radio/410 Media. Click the link and then look for "Punk Rock Saved My Ass" in the topics section.



Flying Monkey Radio 



(for some reason the links haven't been showing up on my posts, so here's the link you can copy and paste:  http://410media.com/_/index.php?optio......

What Burning Man taught me about art

For the past several days I've been cleaning the playa dust from costumes and camping gear, doing endless loads of laundry, vacuuming, and wiping. Absolutely everything, even the clean underwear I kept sealed tightly in a plastic bin, was covered in dust. Playa dust isn't like ordinary house dust. It's closer to talcum powder so it blows everywhere, and once wet turns into the consistency of thick water-color paint. I'm beginning to realize I'll never clean it all up.



My muse seems to like...

Burning Man - Wow

Not very coherent or poetic, but WOW is the closest word to describe how I feel. The entire experience felt like a dream, even when I was standing on the playa in the middle of a howling dust storm with the desert sun and salt-alkali in the soil sucking the moisture from my skin. At night, the desert calmed and the sky cleared to show a million stars. Thousands of beautiful lights sparkled throughout the city and the blackness of the playa was pierced by stunning displays of neon, laser, an...

Watching a city rise from the dust - Burning Man

 

(image from Google Earth Blog      )



My muse went to Burning Man last week because she couldn't resist watching people build the city. "Imagine watching a city being built by a thousand artists on a lake that's been dead for ten thousand years, with the sun and the alkali sucking the moisture out of their bones as they work." She sighed loudly, as if she were starving and had just smelled a fresh blackberry pie.



I smiled. "It sounds almost sacrificial. Must be an amazing sight."



"And at...

Using iPhone Voice Memo ap to record your reading

 (image from Metro Technologies)



Several months ago, I was asked by 410 Media to record a reading from Punk Rock Saved My Ass to post on their website. Between finishing my classes and a hectic summer, it never got done. This Tuesday, I decided I'd put it off long enough. Grabbing my copy of the book, I turned to the introduction I wrote and started practicing reading it out loud. The intro tells my own punk rock story and explains what inspired the anthology, so it felt like a good piece f...

The cure for "resting" manuscripts

Writers are notorious for hiding in their bedrooms, surrounded by books written by other people, while working endlessly on their manuscripts. The story never feels polished enough for other people's eyes. They'll work and work, then decide to "let it rest" by setting the manuscript aside to work on something else that's been "resting." After a while, a writer can stack up a lot of "resting" projects.



Or is that just me?



I have eight manuscripts resting right now: 3 plays, 2 novels, 1 essay...

Finding the Source

My muse stood on the edge of the bluff, the ocean crashing and rolling far below her. The wind whipped the snakes in her hair; I could heard them hissing with glee as they crashed into each other like a slithering mosh pit. When I stood beside her, my muse looked at me and grinned.



"Can you feel it?" she asked.



"What?"



"The roar of the world."



She turned back to face the sea, transfixed by the tug and flow of the tide. "It's all here, everything you need to create."



I nodded. "I feel it....

I need a new bookkeeping system

After spending several frustrating and confusing hours organizing a year's worth of invoices, I realized I need a new system. The paperwork had piled up because of the massive time suck called grad-school, but that's not the biggest reason I need a new system. Going through all the sales for the last tax year (July 2009 - June 2010), I see that I'm not getting the information I need from my records. I created my system to track one book, Traveling Blind: Life Lessons from Unlikely Teachers, a...

Who let all this press business pile up?

Oh yeah, that would be me. Sigh...



Grad school has been bad for business.



There is a mountain of Medusa's Muse business that has been needing my attention for at least three months, and now that school is over and I'm supposedly on vacation (what's that?), I am spending all my free time doing really fun things like updating inventories. Plus, it's time to pay sales tax again (before the end of the month, people. Don't forget). But before I can do that I have to finalize all the data on sale...