Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 89
February 26, 2011
Immersive journalism done wrong
Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back Again by Norah Vincent My rating: 2 of 5 stars Full disclosure: I've cross-dressed once. I passed. I didn't change any of my mannerisms or jewelry. I wore my regular glasses and my regular jeans. People see what they expect to see. Wish I could upload the photo so you could see it too.In regard to Norah Vincent's Self-Made Man, let's begin ...
The best kind of travel writing
Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists by Tony Perrottet My rating: 5 of 5 stars Faced with an impending travel moratorium (his girlfriend became pregnant), Tony Perrottet took the family-to-be on the road to explore the route laid out by the original adventure travelers. The results are sometimes poignant, often very funny, and always backed by fascinating research. I can't ...
February 18, 2011
Traveling to Cemeteries & Outer Space
I haven't been blogging much here lately, which is good and bad. I've just turned in the first five chapters of The Dangerous Type to my agent. Now I've started revising the rest of the novel, in case she's interested in representing it. It's exciting work, since I think the novel is really fun. It's completely unlike anything else I've written: a Hong Kong-style kung fu revenge space ...
February 5, 2011
Gone, baby, gone
There are so many things that happened when we were kids that I would love to forget. Instead, I remember the night we drove out into the country roads to sit in the car and drink (Bud for him, cheap wine for me) and talk about our future. I wanted out: out of Flushing, out of Michigan, as far away as I could get. I thought I would go to Manhattan, get a tiny apartment with a bathtub in ...
January 21, 2011
Harry Potter & the 7-year-old girl
Early in October, my daughter came home from a sleepover with a stuffed owl and a homemade wand. She and the other girls had had a Harry Potter-themed treasure hunt. All the while, the hostess wore her Hogwarts robe. She was going to be Hermione at Halloween. Needless to say, my daughter came home with questions.We tested the waters by sitting down to watch Harry Potter and the Sorceror's ...
January 15, 2011
Early morning, Avon Walk
Yellow Cab picked me up at 5:30, as planned. The fog was so low that the cab's wheels kept spinning out every time a light changed. I worried about doing a marathon with wet shoes and no raincoat -- not even a spare garbage bag to keep me dry. The driver didn't know his way around the park, so we got lost on the way to Speedway Meadow, but I jumped out when the meter hit $20 and walked ...
January 7, 2011
So much time, so little to do
Strike that. Reverse it.I'm trying out a site called Workflowy. Silly name. Let's see if it can help me keep things straight. How do you manage your to-do lists?
January 6, 2011
The Roar of the Crowd
Something made me curious about the number of readings I've given: not the number of readings I've hosted, which is a whole different issue, but the number of times I've gotten up in public to read my own or a friend's work. I used to absolutely dread getting up in front of strangers, my little story quaking in my hand, and try to make my voice work while people stared at me. Reading in ...
December 31, 2010
Another chance to get it right
I like to make resolutions each new year. They provide a snapshot of my mindset at the brink of a new year and give me something to laugh about at each year's end. Did I really think I was going to get all my old photos into binders? Was I really intending to clean out the filing cabinet full of cemetery clippings and ephemera? Did I honestly think I could get myself to finally make out a ...
December 13, 2010
Never Enough, 2010
I try to sit down at the end of each year to figure out how much writing I've accomplished. The header, which stays the same from year to year, tells you how I feel about it. Here's this year's list of projects:Wish You Were HereI finished this manuscript of cemetery travel essays in March and did a couple of drafts of the proposal, which is in my agent's hands now. Hope she finds a ...
