Averil Dean's Blog, page 30

Galley

Two things happened last week: my galleys arrived, and I was invited to sign them at MPIBA next month in Denver.

First of all, holy shit, the book looks great. All laid out with pretty shards of broken glass at the chapter headings, the pages wrapped in their slick little galley cover with the marketing deets on the back. Amazing, all of this. I can’t get over it. Now I see why people have pages of thank yous at the end of their books: it’s what you feel like doing when you see it all come tog...

Debt

Tuesday morning at the cafe. My manuscript is marked throughout with notes saying {more here} in all the places where the shovel hit caliche. The {more here}s represent gaps in the dialogue, failed attempts at description or character reaction—places where I couldn’t think of a single damn thing to say. I’m always aware when I add a {more here} that I’ll owe myself the words at some point. Those little flags aren’t going to delete themselves.

So here we are. Seventy-five {more here}s, and me w...

Wolf

It’s 2:24 a.m. Are you asleep? Did you flip the pillow, settle your cheek, bliss out to the sound of your heartbeat in the down? Does your back hurt? Is your temple damp with tears? Are you fighting, fucking, necking, coming, sleep-jamming to Mr. Manning’s radio while the street lights wash your PJs white and red? Will anybody love you? Will you die before the dawn? Is it Mardi Gras in dreamland, all foil beads and thongs? Is a black hole forming in the space behind the morning, sucking your...

Couch

It’s football season and my Broncos are stomping. (We got your rematch, Baltimore.) My son isn’t into football, so he’s curled up on the couch with his e-reader. It’s hard to keep up with what he’s reading. The kid is voracious, and is one of those people who will carry on with a book until the bitter end, whether it has zombies in it or not. He reads as much as I do, and has taken to creeping up with his e-reader and a sheepish look on his face like he knows he’s getting carried away. Hey, a...

Blue Balls

I saw a movie today in which nothing happened. No build-up, no payoff, no shootout or car chase or first kiss or courtroom drama. No mystery, solved or lingering, no childhood romance or complicated family life, no dilemmas relating to career or parenting or religion or old-school morality. No glorious technicolor dreamcoat. No unintended leaks of laughter. No CGI. Or soulful interactions, or nuanced flicks of an eyelash. No blow jobs in the alley. No torch singer on a piano. No afterlife, or...

Wank

The gimmicks are starting to pile up. In addition to the candy dish and the coffee shops, the fine-point Pilot PreciseGrip pen and crappy spiral notebook, dog walks and Pinterest board and the down pillow under my special ass, I have decided I need a soundtrack. It’s not a recent decision, by the way—I always create a soundtrack, it’s part of my Process, dude—but it’s safe to say I’ve reached the obsessive point in putting this one together. I have mixed and burned seven CDs in the past two w...

Guest Post – Catherine McNamara

You may remember that I interviewed Catherine McNamara last year to talk about The Divorced Lady’s Companion to Living in Italy—a sexy little cannolo of a novel, about which I carried on to anyone who would listen. I’m so pleased to have her back again to talk about her new short story collection. And sex. You’ll be shocked to know that we’re talking about sex.

We’re just made that way.

~ Averil

SEX AND THE SHORT STORY

I like sex. I like language. I like stories. It’s very simple and it has alwa...

Passion Fruit

After an afternoon at the Hut, a plate of fried tofu and two pots of jasmine tea, I have 2,000 words, a big fresh scene, tea stains and sweet-and-sour splotches all over my pages, and three new pornographic doodlings. Tits and ass in the left margin, flaccid dick in the right. Never the twain shall meet.

The waitress brings another pot of jasmine tea. She never asks what I’m up to, never hurries me along, always remembers to ask if I want a cupcake before she brings the check. I wonder what he...

Hatter’s Hat

I am at the cafe with my stack of pages. I’ve decided that what my book needs is more. It needs riffs, and run-ons, and conversation, and twinkle lights. More threesomes. An excess of lovers. Amplification, illumination. More, more, more.

Two people take a table nearby. A lady is on her cell: This is Lauren—Lauren—and I need to reach the home office urgently. Please can you put me through? I need some advice on this deal, we’ve got to run a background check. . . .

I wish I had a home office. I...

Purple Syrup

I’m out for a walk around the neighborhood, and have come upon two women. They must be sisters, or mother and daughter, because they have the same high-hipped legginess, the same flat slope from neck to skull, and they carry their arms with the palms turned straight back, swinging in perfect synchrony. Because they are older I have overtaken them, and as I pass we exchange pleasantries which evolve into conversation. The beat of my stride is out of time, three for their two, but today I’m lon...