Ethel Rohan's Blog, page 21
July 6, 2011
Three Lovelies
Three recent unusual and imaginative stories I enjoyed. Congratulations, All:
From Aubrey Hirsch's "Certainty" at PANK:
"Right from the start, Cris was pretty certain she could get me pregnant. It started on our honeymoon—a six day trip to Vegas where we stayed at the Venetian, ate at the Paris and drank all night at New York, New York. We took a gondola ride to the elevators and made out like high school kids. In our room, Cris slid her soft hands under my cotton skirt. She rubbed against me, her leg between my legs.
"Let's make a baby," she whispered.
My breathless laugh came out like a moan. "What?" I asked.
"Let's make a baby," she said again. "Right now. Tonight."
She rubbed her cheek against my cheek and I played along. "Okay," I said. "Knock me up."
When we were finished, she put her hand on my abdomen, traced a ring around my belly button.
"Do you think we did it?"
I turned to look at her. Her eyes were wide and hopeful. "Are you joking?" I asked. "You know you can't actually get me pregnant."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I took a biology class. In third grade."
"Sometimes unexpected things happen," she said."
From Roxanne Carter's "Beyond This Point Are Monsters" at Dark Sky Magazine:
"her soft eye available for intimacy. an anxiety about whether the phone will ring: she'll flush, try to say hello. try not to seem like she's uncertain, pale and ugly in her distress. a rose blooming where her forearm meets her elbow, a stain on the underside, otherwise like a lizard's cold belly.
darling says, i did not loose track. she points out where the waves were moving, her hand dropping as she realizes the futility of her actions and the impossibility of capturing her reflection in the water.
the cat at the bottom of the stairs awaits dissolution.
darling complains that the ocean is no longer there. she will have to go alone, knocking the bushes and treacle out of her way, reciting against a contrary wind. she imagines it will work: she will be useful. it will end happily. she is no longer impressed by the dark."
From Otessa Moshfegh's "The Chaperone" in Guernica Magazine:
"The next morning she sings "Pick Me Up Jonnie." It's the martin's and my least favorite song. "Pish," it says, and regurgitates a silk worm, poor bird. I'm in the bath. I'm on the balcony. I'm reading, in bed. A snakey layer of tan has already sloughed off on the sheets, leaving my arms raw and blotchy. The martin tugs a loose strand of skin from my forearm. I pretend it hurts. It hops off the bed and flutters to the sill of the window, turning its neck around, head cocked resentfully, ashamed.
"Come let's go catch a game of tennis then get our nails done."
It's Mamie. She puts on white socks, a stretchy skin-colored bra. I pull up the blanket and grit my larynx, grumble: "You go on. I'm going to sleep this bug off."
It is true that I don't feel well. Mamie's thudding steps across the floor, her loud, so wet, cheese-flavored breathing have made me sick. Slackened thighs flashing white and wrinkly through her open robe as she thuds across the floor, yes. Her big-toothed, hot, lip-licking mouth still haunted with Roquefort—"What's this stuff!"—it ails me. I know how to describe her. It's Mamie sitting on the floor at her open suitcase: phlegm-fogged, babbling, wide-eyed, curls bouncing, thighs astride, lion-like, lifting her tennis shoes up by the strings going "oooh" and everything, really everything so soaked already with the scent of her—"What?"—birthday-cake-flavored body creams, that nasty sweat of hers. Sweat that'd make a dog gag.
"See, I should just throw all these dresses out," she's saying. "Or give them to the needy. Do you want them?"
I gag a bit just then.
"If you get me sick I'll be so mad," Mamie says covering her mouth with one hand. "You know how sick I was in Switzerland? Those stupid nuns just kept splashing water on my face. I could have killed them.'"
July 1, 2011
This is No Ordinary Video: LIVE Drawing for $100 Gift Certificate for THE LIT PUB
Those lovelies entered in the draw:
JEFFREY H. MACLACHLAN
BRETT ELIZABETH
KENNY MOONEY
EDWARD J. RATHKE
EMILY LACKEY
KRISTINA BORN
MEGAN FINK
DAWN WEST
RICHARD THOMAS
ELIZABETH, FROM DENVER
D. J. BERNDT
JEN GANN
JACOB S. KNABB
ROXANE GAY
EM
DK
RYAN BRADLEY
STEVE HIMMER
OFELIA HUNT
XTX
MIKE YOUNG
KIMBERLEY SOUTHWICK
JEN DREW
NORA NADJARIAN
And the Winner is …
June 30, 2011
Last Day To Enter
Herewith endeth Cut Through the Bone's reign at The Lit Pub (tissues, please.)
I'm excited to see what books The Lit Pub will feature in July!
Since my last post, Christopher Newgent, bless him, added three more posts to The Lit Pub:
Everyone else who comments in response to Christopher Newgent's posts at The Lit Pub through midnight PST, June 30th, with be entered in a LIVE draw tomorrow to receive a $100 gift certificate to spend at The Lit Pub and purchase from the great and growing titles in their library. This gift certificate expires December 31st, 2011. I'm sorry, all previous winners this month are excepted from entry.
Good luck, everyone, and thanks for participating.
June 23, 2011
Seattle, Here I Come
I read tonight at Elliott Bay Books, Seattle, at 7 pm, from Cut Through the Bone. If you have any Seattle peeps you could share this information with, I'd be very grateful.
At last I get to meet my Seattle-based publisher, Kevin Murphy, and book cover artist, Siolo Thompson. Matthew Simmons is also coming along to the reading.
My husband and I are going to make this a rare getaway without our daughters. Dear friends are going to help out so we can play tourist in Seattle through Saturday.
Wish me luck tonight, friends, I'm both excited and terrified.
And please don't forget about this:
Everyone who comments in response to Christopher Newgent's posts at The Lit Pub today through June 30th with be entered in a LIVE draw to receive a $100 gift certificate to spend at The Lit Pub and purchase from the great and growing titles in their library. This gift certificate expires December 31st, 2011. I'm sorry, all previous winners this month are excepted from entry.
Thanks.
June 20, 2011
Something Different
I believe in The Lit Pub and I'm grateful for and humbled by everything they're doing throughout June for me and my first book, Cut Through the Bone.
Christopher Newgent of Vouched Books is doing an outstanding and Herculean job of posting three insightful essays a week over at The Lit Pub with in-depth looks at some of the stories in the collection and at the collection as a whole. Here's the latest post. His threads have generated some excellent discussions and deservedly so. But I'd like to see him and The Lit Pub get more support and exposure.
In the hopes I can harness my spending dollars and better support The Lit Pub and indie publishing as a whole I'm going to shift from my usual book giveaway and do something different.
Everyone who comments in response to Christopher Newgent's posts at The Lit Pub today through June 30th with be entered in a LIVE draw to receive a $100 gift certificate to spend at The Lit Pub and purchase from the great and growing titles in their library. This gift certificate expires December 31st, 2011. I'm sorry, all previous winners this month are excepted from entry.
I believe in The Lit Pub. I believe in indie publishing. I believe in our power as readers and book buyers to reinvigorate and reimagine the publishing industry.
Please help me spread the word.
As always, my deep thanks.
June 15, 2011
Woman At Play
I'm slacking today and don't have much to say.
It's my husband's birthday.
I read in Healdsburg last night with Lauren Becker and Stefanie Freele at the Healdsburg Literary Cafe and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
My husband and I stayed over in Healdsburg last night, slept-in, lounged by the pool, and went wine-tasting. We're back in the city and soon our family is going to get together with friends for dinner, cake and poker. Life is good, friends.
I've never been busier with an impossible 'to-do' list and yet I'm slacking. It's the right thing for me to do right now. I'm finding the fun again, had gone so long without fun I'd forgotten I'd ever lost it. For too long, I wore myself inside-out.
Some Housekeeping here though before I don a disguise, bite down on a cigar, and buy stacks of poker chips:
The winner of the following books:
Norman Lock's Grim Tales, mud luscious press
Marcy Dermansky's novel, Bad Marie, Harper Perennial
My Hard to Say, PANK (signed).
IS:
Jordan Blum!
Christopher Newgent brings the poignant and thoughtful again at The Lit Pub today with his latest post "Story Focus: More Than Gone." You know the drill. Leave a comment in the discussion thread here and you're automatically entered in my draw to win the following books:
Kim Chinquee's OH BABY, Flash Fictions & Prose Poems, Ravenna Press
David Mamet's, Glengarry Glen Ross, A Play, Grove Press (Winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama)
My just released, Hard to Say (signed), PANK
Good Luck, Everyone.
June 13, 2011
An Orange Tree Grows in Sacramento
I went to Sacramento with our two daughters this past weekend. Two of my dearest friends and their children also joined us. The eight of us enjoyed sunshine, the swimming pool, and Mary Poppins, to name just three highlights. We three mothers most enjoyed seeing our children so happy and connected. We overdid the tempura asparagus fries. I read, rarely checked my email, and didn't surf Cyberville or write. I usually write every single day. However, it felt good to switch off and be outdoors and in the sun for so long, to lounge and laugh, and give more time and quality attention to my daughters.
Mary Poppins (I admit I'd never seen the movie) was a wonderful spectacle of music, singing, and dancing. It's a mix of the cautionary and inspiring and champions children. Mostly, it's about freedom. Freedom to be, to imagine, to let. At a recent high school graduation party, I enjoyed a wonderful conversation and good laugh with a delightfully eccentric Irish man we'll call J. When I asked J. how he was he said, "Fabulous." And I teased his positivity, saying there must be hardly any Irish left in him. He told me about a neighbor of his back in Ireland who liked to say "ah we'll pay for this yet."
"Grand day, thank God."
"Ah we'll pay for this yet."
My whole life, I've felt afraid to fully enjoy the 'good times,' always waiting with dread for the wheel to turn. 'Ah I'll pay for this yet.' Ask me how I am and the most I'll dare admit is 'good' for fear of a kick to the head from life if I give voice to anything more positive.
This past week alone, I've had three 'large' disappointments with regard to my writing and my writing career. The disappointment hurt a great deal.
"If you'll let it" was repeated often throughout Mary Poppins. I've decided to let my life: let fabulous, let happy, let success, let hopes, let dreams, and on and on. I'm going to let the undesirable too: let fear, let disappointment, let sadness, let worry, let grief, let depression, and on and on. I'm going to let and take one day at a time, instead of worry about what might be around the corner, what price I'll pay for the 'good.' And what relief I'll take from the bad because it's most familiar and where I'm most comfortable.
I didn't know one of my favorite lines was from Mary Poppins, "Get out of your own way." Everything I want is also everything I'm afraid of: love, worthiness, success, to know I'm enough and for my true self to be known. I saw an orange tree in Sacramento. An orange tree. Oranges capture my imagination. I had no idea oranges grew in California, and certainly not Northern California.
Did you see the Tony Awards last night and that great acceptance speech from Nikki M. James, taker of the 'Best Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical' for her role in The Book of Mormon? Nikki said anatomically bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly. She believes bumblebees fly because no one ever told them they couldn't. Maybe no one told that orange tree it couldn't grow in Sacramento. For much too long, I've told myself all the things I couldn't do, not in any freeing way, but in a damning way.
I don't want to fly like bumblebees or to take root and bear oranges in Sacramento, but I do want to be the best woman and writer I can be. And I'm going to stop putting limits on myself. I'm going to reach ever higher and believe I can get there. I'm going to get out of my own way. I'm going to let me be that best woman and writer. I"m going to break out of the prison of fear and stop telling myself 'ah I'll pay for this yet.'
Watch this space.
In Other News:
Thank again to Laura Adamczyk for her guest post over at The Lit Put here. The goodness giveaway up for grabs for those who commented on Laura's post:
Gary Lutz's, Stories in the Worst Way, Calamari Press
Shane Jones's, A Cake Appeared, Scrambler Books
Ethel Rohan's Hard to Say (signed), PANK
Those entered in the draw for this giveaway are:
MW Wittle
Erika Moya
Books Personally
Jordan Blum
Doug Paul Case
And the Winner Is: Erika Moya.
Congratulations, Erika. Please email me your address through my contacts page on the site. I don't want to give my email out again in posts because of the spam invading my account.
And yes it's Monday and there's another new and thought-provoking post from Christopher Newgent titled "Story Focus: The Big Top" on clowns but not clowns and lies. Clowns I'm ambivalent to. Lies torment and haunt me. And yes I'm doing another giveaway and if that interests you or bores you at this point I'm also going to let that be.
The books up for grabs in today's goodness giveaway are:
Norman Lock's Grim Tales, elimae
Marcy Dermansky's novel, Bad Marie, Harper Perennial
My Hard to Say, PANK (signed).
All comments on Chris Newgent's post, "Story Focus: The Big Top" through midnight, tomorrow Tuesday, June 14 will be entered in this free draw.
Good Luck, everyone.
June 10, 2011
The Lit Pub's Bright & Shiny
The goodness continues at The Lit Pub and I remain humbled and delighted by the wonderful attention Christopher Newgent is giving this month to Cut Through the Bone. Thank you, Christopher!
The discussion threads at The Lit Pub continue to be lively, engaging and fruitful, thank you to every visitor and participant. Which brings me to my latest giveaway.
In the running today to win a copy of xTx's Normally Special, Shome Dasgupta's i am here And You Are Gone, and a signed copy of my Hard to Say are:
Thom
Cook
And the WINNER is: Susan Rukeyser
Congratulations, Susan! Please email me your address at ethel@ethelrohan.com and I'll get your books to you soonest.
Laura Adamczyk has a wonderful, moving guest post over at The Lit Put today which you can read here. Thank you, Laura. Laura has bared her heart and I'd love you to visit and comment. And if you do, yes, yes, YES, there's another book giveaway. Sick of me yet? The goodness up for grabs this time around:
Gary Lutz's, Stories in the Worst Way, Calamari Press
Shane Jones's, A Cake Appeared, Scrambler Books
Ethel Rohan's Hard to Say (signed), PANK
Everyone who comments on Laura's post through midnight PST on Sunday, June 12 will be entered in this free draw and books mailed out same-day. Thank you.
Lastly, on this lovely Friday, I reviewed Irish author, Bernie McGill's, first novel, The Butterfly Cabinet, over at PANK.
June 8, 2011
You Know You Want …
– xTx's Normally Special, Tiny Hardcore Press
– Shome Dasgupta's i am here And You Are Gone, Winner of the 2010 Outsider Writers Chapbook contest.
– A signed copy of my just released, Hard to Say, (PANK)
How to get all three books FREE?
Go to Chris Newgent's latest, moving and excellent post at The Lit Pub and share your thoughts. Everyone who leaves a comment today through midnight PST Thursday will be entered in this free draw.
Winner announced Friday and books mailed out same-day.
Good luck everyone and thanks for participating.
To quote from one of Lidia Yuknavitch's comments at The Lit Pub, 'We ARE the readers and the buyers.' Let's seize our power.
June 7, 2011
And the Winner Is
Thanks to everyone who visited The Lit Pub and in particular those who participated in the discussion thread that follows Christopher Newgent's most recent excellent post "What Is a Man's Literature?"
I entered everyone who left a comment in response to the above post yesterday into the drawing to win a copy of Lindsay Hunter's excellent Daddy's and a signed copy of my Hard to Say just released from PANK.
The list of the fine folks who raised their voice follow:
And the Winner, chosen at random by my blindfolded, spun-three-times, dizzy husband, Is:
Congratulations, Victoria, I'll get both books in the mail to you today. Please email me at ethel@ethelrohan.com with your address. Thanks again to everyone who participated. And stay tuned throughout June for more giveaways that relate to the remarkable work happening at The Lit Pub.
