Poppy Z. Brite's Blog, page 108

Melting Away

I'm home, have been home for a few days but haven't felt like posting, in part because I wasn't sure what I wanted to say about Grand Isle. We had not been down there since Hurricane Gustav made landfall very close by last September. Couldn't go for a while because the island was closed except to residents and service personnel; then you could drive onto the island but none of the hotels was back open yet; then the hotels began to reopen but Chris was unemployed and we were broke; then, finally,

Date in City Park

We started our vacation a little early with a date in City Park. (It's a photo set with captions that tell a little story, and it includes pictures of cool plants, Storyland, and the promised shot of my Archbishop's Papal Police T-shirt, which I just got crawfish etouffee on and must go wash.)

Another Look at Foie Gras

My palate has no conscience, so I don't need a justification to eat foie gras, but in case you've ever felt morally iffy about it, here's an excellent and informative article in its defense from Incanto Restaurant of San Francisco. My favorite bit:

Working to ban something that 99% of people never eat is not an act requiring great moral or physical courage in the same vein as was, say, the fight for civil rights in the U.S. or the fight for self rule in India. By comparison, the anti-foie gras mo

Poppty is Five

I just realized that lately I spend most of my days playing with dirt and plants, and most of my nights playing with paper, scissors, glue, glitter, jewels, and such. Obviously, I have achieved my near-lifelong ambition of regressing to age 5.

In other news, Peter Straub has selected my story "Pansu" for Fantastic Tales: American Stories of Terror and the Uncanny, which he's editing for the Library of America. The volume is due out in October 2009. (Because I am lazy, I just stole those two sente

The Sound of Building Coffins

No matter what stratum of New Orleans society you inhabit, trashing the Times-Picayune seems to be a "done thing." I won't deny that our daily newspaper has pissed me off a time or two (or ten or twenty), but it is an essential part of my morning -- my coffee, my paper, my easing gingerly into the day -- and most of the time I think it does a pretty damn good job of bringing many diverse bits of our city to our attention each day. One of my favorite things about the T-P is that, as long as books

The Blogalyzer Reveals ...

... that I am a self-centered hermaphrodite who lives primarily in the moment, but often maunders about the past. I doubt this will come as a surprise to most of you.

The Blogalyser reveals...

Your blog/web page text has an overall readability index of 14.

This suggests that your writing style is conventional
(to communicate well you should aim for a figure between 10 and 20).Your blog has 14 sentences per entry, which suggests your general message is distinguished by complexity
(writing for the we

Small Stuffed Toys for Orphans

A couple of days ago, jane_doe_ posted the following in neworleans:

I know this lady whose church goes on a mission trip to Guatemala every year, and she's looking for plush toys from Mardi Gras parades that anyone might not want. So, before you give that technicolor teddy bear to your dog to destroy in 15 seconds flat, think about giving it to me so I can get it to her. I've been to Guatemala, and I've seen the orphanages there. It's really sad--the kids in orphanages are there sometimes because

Second Line

Before I got up this morning, I lay in bed thinking about Paul Harvey, which led to thinking about Ray Stevens (there is a connection, though only my old chef at Cookies & Company in Athens is likely to get it), which led to thinking about Drawing Blood, because there was a piece of business in the novel about an employee of the Whirling Disk record store in Missing Mile who'd accidentally ordered something like fifty copies of Ray Stevens' Greatest Hits, and at the time this seemed hilarious to

Kind of Blue

That's me today. Post-Mardi Gras letdown. Missing my godfather. I wonder if it's ever possible to feel you did enough for a person you loved, spent enough time with him, appreciated him as much as you could have. I doubt it.

My current eBay auctions -- Guilty But Insane, a U.K. ARC of Swamp Foetus, and two badass Carnival-themed blank books -- end today. I know things are tough all over, but we are simultaneously trying to pay off a $600+ vet bill and start a restaurant, so please have a look if

Why I Am A Fanboy

Here's me presenting T. Jefferson Parker with the key to the city at Octavia Books last night:



TJP is one of my favorite modern writers, which caused me to do dorky things like call one of his novels by the wrong title (Where Serpents Lie; I called it The Shapes of Snakes, which is the title of a very different mystery by British author Minette Walter) and, after giving him my card, loudly announce "BUT I'M NOT TRYING TO HIT ON YOU!!!" He couldn't have been nicer, but I was still smacking myself