Open Letter to the White Van Parked on 38th St. and Granby

Dear Large White Van Parked on 38th Street and Granby,

The van is on the north side of 38th, hidden by that building. 

Since moving to my neighborhood, I have driven past you countless times in anger. I have often shaken my head while flattening my lips into a resentful line. You have been parked there... let me see... let’s call it forever.

I understand: what you are doing is legal. There is a parking space on this street, and you are inside it. But you are the biggest vehicle in the world, parked nearly *on* the paint lines, the farthest possible distance from the curb and the closest possible proximity to the intersection.

You know that every honest citizen making a turn at this traffic light feels compelled to slow almost to a stop, worrying if they can make it past. You see them nudge their bumpers into oncoming traffic, causing drivers in the oncoming traffic lane to swerve away and honk. It’s a narrow street. The lanes are not marked. People get anxious.

There is shattered glass around your rear bumper, leaking out of the parking space and into the street. Your wheels are sunken. Whether they deflated from belligerence or despair I do not know. I don’t know whether that shattered glass is from an actual accident or whether it is the large white van equivalent of a middle finger, extending into the traffic lane. Drivers shy away, and there’s really not room for that, on this busy city street.

Until today, I dreaded going past you, wished you would just pack up your spacious running boards and go. I fumed over why your owner wouldn’t just move you twelve inches toward the curb. Or sweep the glass. Something. Why leave this gross abruption in the swift flow of traffic in our lives? It just seemed so inexplicable, and so wrong. I grumbled, and festered, and nudged my bumper into oncoming traffic, and honked, and ground my teeth.

Then today I realized what you are, you decayed, inconvenient old mess. You are Hemingway’s island in the stream. You are Olson’s stone in the shoe. You are Kierkegaard’s imperfection in everything human. Yes, large white van, that is you.

Contemporary author Charles Baxter wrote, “When all the details fit in perfectly, something is probably wrong with the story.” Well the story of 38th Street and Granby, an intersection through which I pass on a daily basis, is insanely disrupted by one magnificently ill-fitting detail: a large white van, tires deflating, bathing in a sea of broken glass, parked in the most inconvenient quadrant of the parking space, grinding traffic inexorably through its maw.

I’m writing now to let you know: Van, I capitulate. I won’t grapple with you. I won’t stab at you, from hell’s heart, or spit at you with my last breath. We don’t need another sensible intersection flanked by tidily parked compact cars. We don’t need another smoothly turning gear in the machine. You are the clunking sound in the apparatus. You are the hesitation in the march, the blip on the graph, the gap in the data.

Your end will come. You will be washed away eventually. Every island in the stream is always eroding. But until that happens, grind on, white van. Grind on.

Love,
LYDIA

The Difficult Second Novel

First book. Done.

It's sitting there in a neat pile by my desk. My first novel, Shine Shine Shine, in glittering, glowing advance reader copies. The blurbs are in, the cover is designed, the thing has been revised fifty thousand times, and its pages contain everything I wanted to say about humanity, love, death, motherhood, and fear. Every word has been analyzed, moved, changed, tweaked, and every line is purposeful. And I like it.

It's sitting there in a file on my computer. My second novel, as yet untitled. It is a first draft, which means it hulks and skitters across the page. It is unfinished, which means I don't know all its secret agendas and devious little plans yet. It might change. It's full of stupidly repeated words. It's got place-holder dialogue and language, like "Describe the institute lobby here, fool, if you can." And I'm a little afraid of it.

In my imagination, the first book addresses the second:

Second book. Not done.

"What's up, noob? Hey, you got some pie filling on your collar. Or is that self-indulgent interior monologue? Dang, you're going to need to revise that, honey!"

Smartypants first book is not very tolerant of the second book's growing pains. Like an older sibling that pokes a baby and says, "Can it play yet?" Really, I want to love them both. But the first book is just so charming. Second book looks monstrous in comparison.

If I were a potter this would be easy.

I like a nice chili bowl. (Credit)

The first book is like a glazed, finished bowl. It's microwave-safe. Its motif is well defined. It's symmetrical. You can eat chili out of it and not die of lead poisoning. You can put it on your shelf and admire it. You can say to your neighbor: "I made that" and your neighbor will not back away in terror.

This is actual clay mined by me.

The second book is like a lump of clay you just dug up out of the yard. It has rocks in it, and streaks of dirt, and it's as symmetrical as a brain tumor, and if you tried to eat chili out of it... well, you would never try to do that. Because who eats chili out of a hideous lump of clay? Who would EVER want to do THAT?

"No one," whispers the first book. "Because it's just so hideous!"

The difficult second novel (or album). Is this really a thing? Oh yes, it's such a common problem that there are blogs and bands named after it. Stephen Fry explained it like this:

"The problem with a second novel is that it takes almost no time to write compared with a first novel. If I write my first novel in a month at the age of 23, and my second novel takes me two years, which have I written more quickly? The second of course. The first took 23 years, and contains all the experience, pain, stored-up artistry, anger, love, hope, comic invention and despair of that lifetime. The second is an act of professional writing. That is why it is so much more difficult."

Is that why it's so difficult? I'm not sure. Maybe there are other reasons. Here's my list:

1. It's always hard to draft. Writing through the drafting stage while the first novel is sitting there winking at you, fully edited and polished, takes a lot of fortitude. It's hard to remember your first book was once this difficult, that it once sat in tatters as you completely rearranged the timeline, that it used to be three main characters instead of one, that there was a really pretentious and unlikable stock trader in it, that it once had a line in it where one woman held the other woman's entire husband in her mouth, like a cat. It's hard to remember that the first novel used to be bad, used to be rough, used to be just like this.

2. The second novel sends you in a definite direction. The first novel is a point on a graph. The second novel is another point on the graph. But in between these points, something very significant is formed -- a vector. And the vector points to your future as a writer, and where your career will go. With one novel under your belt, and a second in the works, it feels like you could put the second point anywhere.

Darker, or lighter. More romantic, less. More literary, more commercial. More about cats, more about dogs. More hope, more despair. But ALL of those choices seem dangerous. If I write another book about artichokes, does that mean that all my future books must be about artichokes? Conversely if I write my second book about pears, will all the artichoke fanatics who bought my first book be disappointed and upset? Or is elliptical produce too limiting entirely -- maybe my second book should be about wristwatches.

3. There's not a lot of time to focus on it. This is why kid #1 gets a baby book elaborately filled in and packed with keepsakes. Kid #2 gets a "firsts" journal maybe, and by the time you get to kid #4, he's lucky to show up as a blur in the background of an aunt's snapshot.

4. You feel like you've already said everything. We writers are not in the business of holding back. We put it all out there, as much as we can, in every single chapter, and we don't save back reserves to get us through next year, when there is a long, wide feasting table to be piled with everything in the pantry, right now. At least I don't. So when I had finally finished the eleventeenth revision of Shine Shine Shine, I felt that not only was I done with it, but that I was done with saying things in general, because everything I wanted to say was in that book. Everything important to me was represented. It felt complete.

Of course, that was dumb. Of course I have more to say. There are huge stones yet to turn over and an entire weird universe of questions to pry open. Now that I'm locked into wrestling with my new book, I'm urgent about its new ideas. As for not having a lot of time, hey, kid #2 might not get the elaborate baby book that #1 is so proud of, but kid #2 is going to get all the benefit of my "first time" experience. I'm a better writer now than I was when I started. That helps! And yes, my second novel will send me in a direction. But the reality is that I was already going in a direction. The second book is as inevitable as one breath follows the next, and the idea that I could set that second point down anywhere on the graph -- that is actually the illusion. I'm going to write the book I have to write, and do the best job I can, and what comes out will set a vector, yes. But that vector was pre-determined by the mess in my brain, not by some decision I think I've made to send myself down this or that career path.

Which brings us back to the act of drafting. The act of sticking one's hands into the lump of clay, while the glazed and finished bowl sits gleaming on the shelf (full of chili, I hope). And that, my friends, is just going to be hard. But fortunately, I'm in it up to my elbows, and my characters have grabbed me by the throat, and I'm not washing my hands until this thing looks like a plate. See you in the kiln!

Twooshes On My Mind

I like to make twooshes. A Twoosh is a combination of "tweet" and "swoosh" and it means a tweet that is exactly 140 characters.

My current novel-in-progress is on its third draft. When I was writing the first draft of it, back in 2003, I got very neurotic about how it looked on the page. Paragraphs had to be mathematically precise. If I deleted a word, I had to add a word. Hours were spent deliberating over the choice of a preposition. In the whole draft, there was not one line of dialogue, because it looked weird to me, physically. I couldn't let it into my manuscript. Eventually I scrapped that attempt and forced myself to write it as a screenplay, to get over my twitching. It worked -- I mostly scrapped the screenplay too, but I can now write the book with dialogue and it doesn't bother me too much.

Other authors have said that they like the 140 character limit on Twitter because it forces them to think about word choice and be thrifty about language. I like that too. I also like hitting that 140 character limit exactly -- it's like ringing a bell. It satisfies my need to be picky-picky with words without ruining my manuscript. I like twooshing for this reason. I've done it 330 times.

This is my Twitter cloud for the last five years, in alphabetical order (generated by Tweet Stats -- they can also tell you how many times you've twooshed). My Twitter handle is @lostcheerio. Should we really be following each other?

#fb #litchat #nanowrimo actually @andreakinnear author away awesome bad bed benny best better big bike blog book books @campcreek @celeritycycling chapter check child children come coming cool dan day @deadwhiteguys dear did didnt does doesnt dog doing eating @emilygatlin favorite feel finished getting girl glad going @gonavy1994 good great guy happy hard having head heh hes hey home hope hot house @hubcitybookshop husband @iamsusannah idea @joshilynjackson kids kind know @lbardugo let life liked list little long look looking looks @lostcheerio lot love lydia make makes making maybe mean minutes mom morning movie need new night novel oh okay old people person post pretty race read reading real really @rebeccaschinsky review right rt sadie said say shine song stop story sure tell thank thanks thats theres theyre thing things think thought time times today tomorrow tonight @tossedinmylap trying tweet twitter use violin virginia wait want watch watching way week whats @wileycash win word words work world wow write writing wrong www yay yeah year yes youre



 

Dear Reader,

Dear Reader,

My novel is released today. Let's pretend you've bought it. Let's pretend you're holding it in your hands. I know what it feels like. 

Visible Woman by Perry Vasquez

The novel you are about to read has been with me for over a decade. Like all authors I’ve tried to put into it everything I have to say about life, just in case I never get a chance to do this book thing again. So what you’re holding is my best attempt at downloading everything I have in my head that matters.

I’ve been asked what pieces of this novel are from real life and which are pure invention. The truth is that nothing here is a direct representation of anything in “real life.” At the same time, everything here is very real to me, and all of my most important pieces: my kids, my husband, my mother, and even my robot fixation, are present. This book is a treatise; it’s what I believe. And that means true love and merciless death and mechanical evolution and happy motherhood and mortal fear. There’s some weird stuff, some serious stuff, some goofy stuff. Some of it is pretty dark.

Publishing a novel is, I am finding, a very personal public act. In the book, I expose my self – dark and light, good and bad – and when you have read it, you will know me better than I will probably ever get the chance to know you. I am so grateful that I have this way to explain myself, this book-sized opening in my head. And I am so grateful to you that you are willing to listen, to hear this story, and to understand.

In other words, I have waited a long time to meet you, and I’m so happy that you are finally here.

Love,
LYDIA

Family Portrait

Marriage Post Aftermath

Well, this has been exciting. My post on marriage by the numbers so far:

On this blog: 250,000 views

Reprinted on the Huffington Post: 16,000 Likes, 4300 Facebook shares, 90 Tweets, 1400 emailed links, and 350 comments.

I've gotten a lot of really wonderful emails in addition to some really vile, hideous ones, which were also somehow awesome. A lot of requests for advice, which I tried to answer or ignored based on whether I thought the person only wanted to be told they were right, or really wanted to work on their marriage.

My big fear that we would immediately break up or murder each other the day after I apparently set myself up as some sort of expert on marriage was not realized. WHEW. We're happily married even after almost a month of me marching around the internet boasting on us, which in retrospect could be seen as not only tempting fate but shaking my ass in fate's face and laying down a double dog dare. I attribute our marriage to Dan. Most of the "rules" I stole off him anyway. He's a good guy.

The most fun thing that happened was that I got to go on the radio here in Virginia and talk about marriage on a rock and roll morning show. Here I am doing it:

And here's a video that includes an edited audio file from my interview with Chuck Doud and Woo-Woo on 94.9 The Point. 

15 Ways to Stay Married for 15 Years

Today is my fifteenth wedding anniversary. I really love Dan, and I am proud of how awesome our marriage is. We certainly haven’t killed each other yet. Hell, we haven’t even maimed each other. We have not always been perfect, but we have made two cool kids, and we have always kept it interesting. For two people as weird and intense as Dan and I are, staying together this long is a big accomplishment. I know some people are surprised.

Here we are going in to our reception. I had a big bow on the back of my dress. This is where we met.

When Dan and I got married, we were 25 years old. Now, we’re staring down the barrel of 40. Looking back I’m surprised we didn’t, as 25 year olds, self-destruct just for the heck of it. Now that we are older, we are perhaps surprisingly also wiser. Here are the things we have learned over the years, that helped us stay married and even happy for fifteen years. (Beyond that, you’re on your own. I can’t promise another 15.) Our list does not resemble the one you will find in Cosmo or Ladies’ Home Journal. We have never had a regular date night, nor do we prioritize “communication” or play sex games or see a therapist. He doesn’t bring me flowers every Thursday, I don’t cook his favorite food very often. But we do have some other ideas.

1. Go to bed mad.

The old maxim that you shouldn’t go to bed mad is stupid. Sometimes you need to just go to freakin’ bed. “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath” is prefaced in the Bible by the phrase “Be angry and sin not.” So, who’s to say it doesn’t mean “Stay angry, bitches. Don’t let the sun go down on that awesome fierce wrath of yours.” Seriously. Whoever interpreted this to mean that you should stay up after midnight, tear-stained and petulant, trying to iron out some kind of overtired and breathy accord -- was stupid. Shut up, go to bed, let your husband get some sleep. In the morning, eat some pancakes. Everything will seem better, I swear.

2. Laugh if you can.

In any fight, there is one person who is really mad, and one person who isn’t that mad. That person should deflect the fight. Make a joke, do something stupid or corny, make the other person laugh. If the fight is very serious for you and you feel like you really want to plant your flag and die on this hill, fine. Do it. But if you’re fighting for entertainment, or because you’re just reacting, then you be the one to deflect. Fights are bad. Deflecting a fight whenever possible is a good idea. When you’re the one who’s being pissy and raw, and the other person helps you get out of it and brings about peace, that feels fantastic. This was a hard lesson to learn, for me. Letting Dan deflect a fight is the best thing, now. He does it really well.

3. Don’t criticize. Ever.

Here is a fact: Whatever critical thing that you are about to say to your wife is already being loudly articulated in her head. And if it’s true, she already feels like crap about it. Assuming you married someone intelligent enough to like you and sane enough to let you put a ring on it, trust that they are self-aware enough to know when they screwed up. It may feel good to you in that moment to say the critical thing, let it go ringing through the air in all its sonorous correctness, but it will feel awful to hear it. The only, only way it’s beneficial to give your wife criticism of any kind is if you’re absolutely positive she is completely unaware. And you better find the nicest, kindest way possible to tell her. And even then, good luck convincing her. Their recognition of the thing you are helpfully trying to point out will be INHIBITED, not facilitated, by your criticism. And then you’re the asshole. So be careful.

4. Be the mirror.

Your husband is the mirror in which you see yourself. And the things you say to him give him an image of himself too, which he will believe. You want him to believe it, so make it good. Be a mirror that reflects something positive: you’re smart, you’re successful, you’re fantastic in the sack, you’re a great provider, you’re the best. Can you MAKE him any of these things just by telling him he is? I don’t know, but consider this: the alternative really sucks. The things my husband says to me are 1000 times more convincing than anyone else’s opinion on earth. Don’t think he won’t believe you because you’re married and you’re contractually obligated to say nice things. He’ll believe the shitty, insulting things you say, and the gloriously positive things. Listen to Nico, girls:



5. Be proud and brag.

Let your spouse hear you talking about them in glowing terms to other people. Be foolish. Be obvious. It will mean everything. You will stay married forever.

6. Do your own thing.

Dan races bicycles. I write books. I don’t race bicycles or have any desire to race bicycles. He doesn’t write books, nor does he even read the books that I write. Seriously. And I don’t care. My opinion is that he’s the fastest, coolest most awesome bike racer ever. His opinion is that I’m the bestest, coolest writer ever. We don’t have to know all about cycling or writing in order to form these opinions -- in fact knowledge of literature or actually reading my book might damage Dan’s opinion of me as “best writer since the dawn of time.” We can still support each other without being all up in the other person’s stuff. Doing your own thing, having your own friends, being completely insanely passionate about something that the other person has no idea, really, about, is awesome. It allows your spouse to be your cheerleader, uncomplicated by knowledge or personal investment. And it means you’ll always have stuff to talk about, because you’re not overlapping all the time. You don’t have to read the same books either. You don’t have to have the same friends.

7. Have kids.

Kids stop you from being as crazy as you want to be. Because when you have kids, you can’t be that crazy.

For example, when I had kids, I stopped smoking. Left to right = Susannah, Joshilyn, Dan, Me. 

8. Get really good at sex.

You’ve got all the time in the world to get really really good, not just at sex in general, but at having sex with your one particular husband. You should make it your life’s mission to become the perfect sex machine exactly for him. And he for you. There is no reason to hold back, or be embarrassed, or not ask questions, and get everything working properly. There’s absolutely no excuse for letting years drag on without becoming fully skilled, gifted sex partners for each other. It makes everything so much better. Does talking about this make you uncomfortable? How uncomfortable would it make you to know that your spouse is secretly, silently “just okay” with your sexual performance? Yeah. You want to last fifteen years, remember? That’s a long time to be mildly happy.

9. Move.

Live in different houses. In different parts of the country. Travel. Make it so that you can look back and divide up your life into the years you spent in different cities, or different houses. If you’re feeling stuck geographically or physically, you can confuse yourself into thinking you’re stuck romantically. See your husband in different places, in different contexts, in different countries even. Try it. Take him to a mountaintop and give him another look. Pretty sexy. Take him to a new city and check out his profile. Along the same lines, don’t be afraid to change personally, or let your wife change as a person. Don’t worry about “growing apart.” Be brave and evolve. Become completely different. Don’t gather moss. Stagnation is unattractive.

10. Stop thinking temporarily.

Marriage is not conditional. It is permanent. Your husband will be with you until you die. That is a given. It sounds obvious, but really making it a given is hard. You tend to think in “ifs” and “thens” even when you’ve publicly committed to forever. If he does this, I won’t tolerate it. If I do this, he’ll leave me. If I get fat. If I change jobs. If he says mean things. If he doesn’t pay more attention. It’s natural, especially in the beginning of your marriage, to keep those doubts in your head. But the sooner you can get go of the idea that marriage is temporary, and will end if certain awful conditions are met, the sooner you will let go of all kinds of conflict and stress. Yes, you may find yourself in a horrible situation where it’s absolutely necessary to get a divorce. But going into it with divorce in the back of your mind, even in the way way way back of your mind, is going to cause a lot of unnecessary angst. Accept that you’re going to stay with him. He’s going to stay with you. Inhabit that and figure out how to make THAT work, instead of living with the “what if”s and “in case of”s.

11. Do not put yourself in trouble’s way.

Leave your ex boyfriends and girlfriends alone. I’m sure you’re very trustworthy. Aren’t we all? The thing is, there’s absolutely no reason to test it. Your husband and your marriage are more valuable than any friendship. Any friendship that troubles the marriage should be over immediately. Protect it with knives and teeth, not because it’s fragile but because it’s precious. Don’t ass around with a “hall pass” or a “harmless flirtation.” Adultery isn’t an event, it’s a process with an event at the end. Don’t put your feet on a path that could lead someplace bad.

12. Make a husband pact with your friends.

The husband pact says this: I promise to listen to you complain about your husband even in the most dire terms, without it affecting my good opinion of him. I will agree with your harshest criticism, accept your gloomiest predictions. I will nod and furrow my brow and sigh when you describe him as a hideous ogre. Then when your fight is over and love shines again like a beautiful sunbeam in your life, I promise to forget everything you said and regard him as the most charming of princes once more. The husband pact is very useful because you want to be able to vent to your friend without having her actually start hating your husband. Because you don’t really mean all those things you say. And she, the swearer of the pact, knows this.

13. Bitch to his mother, not yours.

This is one I did read somewhere in a magazine, and it’s totally true. His mother will forgive him. Yours never will. If you’re a man, bitch to your friends. They expect it.

14. Be loyal.

All the crap you read in magazines about honesty, sense of humor, communication, sensitivity, date nights, couples weekends, blah blah blah can be trumped by one word: loyalty. You and your spouse are a team of two. It is you against the world. No one else is allowed on the team, and no one else will ever understand the team’s rules. This is okay. The team is not adversarial, the team does not tear its members down, the team does not sabotage the team’s success. Teammates work constantly to help and better their teammates. Loyalty means you put the other person in your marriage first all the time, and you let them put you first. Loyalty means subverting your whims or desires of the moment to better meet your spouse’s whims or desires, with the full understanding and expectation that they will be doing the same. This is the heart of everything, and it is a tricky balance. Sometimes it sways one way and some the other. Sometimes he gets to be crazy, sometimes it’s your turn. Sometimes she’s in the spotlight, sometimes you. Ups and downs, ultimately, don’t matter because the team endures.

15. Trust the person you married.

For two people who are trying to help each other, it can almost be harder to let the other person help you than it is to be the one who’s helping. It can be harder to let the other person deflect the fight than to be the one deflecting. It can be harder to believe that your husband is fully committed to a lifetime of marriage than to commit yourself. Harder to change yourself than to let the other person change. Harder to be loved than to love. Weird, but true. I’m saying this to everyone who’s newly married, and to myself: trust that person. Love them completely and let them love you. If it all goes to seed, it’s going to hurt either way. Better to have gone into it full throttle. Full throttle marriage is a thrilling ride.

Believe me when I tell you: I love this dude.

What about you? How long do you want to stay married? Do you have any good tips for staying together? Any of the above that you disagree with? Tell me.

If you like this post, you'll love my novel, Shine Shine Shine, published by St. Martin's Press. It's a love story!
The New York Times called it "A stellar debut," The Boston Globe called it "Luminous" and it was a People Magazine "People's Pick" of the week. Find out more at any of the links above, or buy it here:

Buy my book on Amazon | Buy on B&N | Buy @ Indiebound

The Future of Publishing: A Meditation on the Purging of VHS Tapes

Recently we moved.

Goodbye, friends. Imma download you.

Instead of wisely and slowly sifting through our possessions first, and taking only what we wanted to keep, we paid movers to pack everything into boxes and bring it here, to the new house, where we would dutifully sort as we unpacked. We moved in a hurry. Living in that old house after our new one was bought seemed like continuing to live with that guy you've broken up with already, just because you had a lease together. And moving things bit by bit in an orderly fashion to the new house was like surreptitiously trying to date someone new at the same time you're still living with that guy. Even though it's not really cheating, you still sneak. And because you're not Jennifer Aniston and he's not Vince Vaughn, you don't end up falling back in love, you just move out at the end of the lease, and it's not funny, it's just awkward. And you forget everything that was in the bathroom, and you don't go back for it.

Anyway, we moved.

In the mountain of stuff we no longer want that is now sitting grumpily in our new house, there are a mazillion VHS tapes. These are objects that should have been purged years ago. We haven't watched any of them since we moved the last time. We don't even have a VCR connected to our TV. If we did hook up a VCR, and managed to remember what the button "Rewind" does, I guarantee the tapes would look awful in 1080 resolution. It's at a point with these VHS tapes that I don't even think the Salvation Army wants them. I don't think anyone wants them. But every time we began to hustle them into bags to push them out the door, we got all oogly about it. Here's our copy of "The Long Kiss Goodnight," which we watched and rewound several times. Here's "Household Saints," one of the first movies I ever owned. "Welcome Home Roxy Carmichael." "Go." "Four Rooms." "Sweetie." Here's that copy of "City of Lost Children" that was almost impossible to get. "Evita." Shut up, I have the whole thing memorized. I have a romantic attachment to these objects -- they remind me of when we were younger, poorer, and dumber, when I was working at a 1/2 porn video store during graduate school, when our TV was small and given to fits of rage instead of large and austere and firmly in control of itself.

So I put them, all, ruthlessly in the trash. I kept the ultrasound videos from my kids. I kept a couple of other personal things. But anything that I can get on DVD or download, I tossed.

Then I had a horrifying thought. AM I DOING THAT THING THAT PEOPLE DO WHEN THEY ARE LIKE, "OH, WHATEVER, BOOKS ARE PASSE, I HAVE MY WHOLE LIBRARY RIGHT HERE IN THIS ELECTRONIC THINGER." Shudder.

This was not the cover.
But I wish it had been.
Because this cover's badass.

I have a romantic attachment to my books too. But I don't need to tell you that. You know I have the first paperback edition of Moby Dick I read in high school, with all my scrawled little teenaged marginal notes. You know I have the Candide I got in college, the used Italo Calvino I got in Milan, all my signed copies of friends' books, including stuff you can't hardly find ever like My Horse and Other Stories by Stacey Levine and You're a Bad Man Aren't You by Susannah Breslin. I like books. I have a lot. And I will never, ever, ever get rid of them. EVER.

But will my children? Will their children? Will publishing really change forever like everyone is saying it will, so that we'll all be walking around in future times with retinal projectors that allow us to store small libraries behind our ear drums and books will seem dumb like VCRs and twisty knobs on televisions, and jello molds? If I throw away these tapes, will I tomorrow throw away my Gormenghast novels? With the same reckless abandon? Will I?

Moment of panic. Moment of almost pulling those VHS tapes back out of the trash. Then, relief.

Here's what I realized. Books are not like VHS. They're not like DVDs or film canisters or analog recordings or vinyl. You can't say "Well, I can get my books on my Kindle" just like you can say "Well, I can get my songs on my iPod." They're not like that. Here's what they're really like: Theater. Live concerts. You can make them work just with your eyes. You can make all the parts function just by looking at them. It's not a product, it's an entertainment. It's not an object, it's an experience. An experience you can collect, and keep in pretty rows, and share, and and have again and again. And then I felt much better.

I felt better because not only did I NOT have to keep all those VHS tapes, and not only did I NOT have to get rid of all my books and start buying up eBooks on Google, but this: publishers are going to be okay. They really are. Call me Pollyanna or a crack addict or in denial or call me ignorant but here's what I'm saying: Books aren't going anywhere. 

Things may change, in publishing. E-books rise. Paperbacks fall. Publishers will try fetishizing, and niche marketing, and different production models. Fine. But people will still go to the theater. People will still go to live music shows. And people are still going to have books, want books, read books, hoard books, dive into books, and love books. Believe it.

Some of my favorite books.

A Visit from Joshilyn Jackson

My excellent friend and NYT bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson was in town this weekend for a visit and some book events promoting her awesome new book, A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty! We have been friends since graduate school, but since we normally go away together to hole up in the mountains and write, we have not seen each other's children in forever. It was very nice to have her here and witness my actual life when I'm not stuffing sticks into my hair and foaming at the mouth in the middle of novel production. The children loved her. The dog loved her. She saw my new house. She saw my old house. And there was rejoicing.

We started out in Richmond at The Woman's Club. Joshilyn did a talk and Q&A hosted by Fountain Bookstore. Here she is talking:

Here we are in the bathroom, wondering what's in that abandoned glass on the counter:

Here's Joshilyn with fantastic bookseller Kelly Justice from Fountain Bookstore:

And here we are afterward at the British pub around the corner, eating sausage rolles, Cornish pasties, and absolutely dreadful fish that was full of bones and fail:

Finally, here's Joshilyn at her reading at Prince Books in Norfolk. This morning she rolled out in her orange car to travel back to Atlanta. I miss her already!