Okay, so....
Okay, so... since I last posted here at TLC, I have done a number of things. As follows:
1. Turned in what, Vishnu and all other deities willing, is the final draft of my fourth novel, Valley of Ashes.
Yes, this is Ganesh. He would be among the other deities I hope are willing.
2. As I was also getting evicted--a month or so early from my temporary rental in Brooklyn, with two days' warning (douchey landlords, long explanation)--I ended up turning in the last 150 pages two days late. Well, okay, technically three days late, since I turned it in three minutes after midnight of the day it was due. Well, okay, ALSO, technically I think the original contractual due date was in January of 1823, so it was actually over a century late in real life, but that's the way I roll and hey, some other stuff that was kind of overwhelming also happened, so I am trying not to swoon with guilt. Which is difficult for me.
3. Got the proposed cover art, which I think is really, really cool:
(Those are like, REAL ashes and stuff. Like they burned things to make them. Which I am touched by.) Also, Tana French is awesome, right?
4. Also, I got the cover art for my first novel in Spanish, which I think is pretty damn awesome, too:
I think the next time I introduce myself, I am going to mention that I am maliciosamente pervertida.
5. After being a homeless orphan for about five days,
which involved Vermont and Rhinebeck--because I am a homeless orphan to whom people are very, very kind--I found a place to crash until I find a real grownup apartment for myself, with my friend Muffin. Muffin is awesome. Here is my favorite coffee mug at her house:
6. I got to go to a descendants' reception at Prospect Cemetery in Jamaica, Queens, that was hosted by my distant cousin Cate Ludlam, at which two portraits of our mutual Ludlam (okay, Ludlum, because they were what Cate refers to as "spawn of Obadiah," who changed the spelling) were being installed. There were really good sandwiches and this wonderful soprano performed music popular during the lifetime of these Ludlums, who built the Chapel of the Sisters in which we were sitting--named in honor of the three daughters they lost to disease in their youth, one of whom was named Cornelia.
Cate and Prospect figure heavily in my third novel, because she is a lovely and generous woman, and also a really great cousin. This is Cate, doing an intro for the evening with light streaming in through the stained glass windows she had restored.
7. After that I got to have drinks with Denise Mina and Laura Lippman and a really wonderful editor named Reagan Arthur, at a groovy bar in mid-town. They are awesome women and I was deeply, deeply happy to get to hang out with them. Also, Denise has amazing hair.
So do Laura and Reagan, but Denise's is really having a most excellent party on her head. Which I think is way cool.
8. I found an apartment yesterday. It is really, really wonderful, especially because it is a two-bedroom in Manhattan with a dishwasher and a view of trees and it is going to cost me under $1700 a month, if I pass the credit check.
Of course, it is almost in the middle of Spuyten Duyvil Creek (meaning way, way north), and it is a five-floor walkup, but hey... my ass is going to look fantastic.
And this is the view from the kitchen at sunset:
Over the rooftops toward Inwood Hill Park, which is the last 200 acres of untouched forest in all of Manhattan, and where Peter Minuit bought the island from the Lenape tribe.
Here is where my great-great uncles built a house in the 1800s, when the neighborhood was still farmland:
This is now about five blocks north of where I'll be living, and filled with apartment buildings I can't quite afford to rent in, but still. I'm a block east of Seaman Avenue, so I feel kind of cool about being there.
The view from the old house was once described as follows:
Looking north can be seen Spuyten Duyvil creek and the rich and fertile acres which it washes; the Harlem river with its torturous course winding like a snake through the tall grass and thick shrubs; a section of the Hudson shining like a lake of molten silver, and tinged with crimson by the setting sun; the misty hills rising from the valley and just perceptible through the haze, the weird glens, the weather beaten crags and torpid mountains. A scene like this is but a portion of what strikes the eye at every point; and this sublime panoramic view has been gazed upon by many eminent Europeans, who declare that nothing equals it in the Old World.
Spuyten Duyvil is "spitting devil" in Dutch.
This is what it looked like when the place was occupied by the British:
These days, the neighborhood looks more like this:
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But there is still quite a lot of this:
And this:
And this:
Still, I am really glad I didn't find a rental here, because it would get really tiresome to explain, I think:
Yesterday, I think I rode the subway about 500 blocks. Literally. Today I am back in Vermont.
Life is good. I would like it to slow down a little bit now, though.
How's your week been?
