Everything else I haven't mentioned yet (much of it in parentheses) (for some reason)

March 22, 2006 by Wendy

The flight back on Monday night was delayed three hours, because I guess Newark is always like that. I like that it was long enough to justify spending seven bucks on aiport WiFi so I could upload the last batch of photos. I didn’t like getting in so late that Chris and I had to scrap our plans to watch The Warriors and pretend that we recognized the subway stops.

It was a good trip. We spent more on Metrocards than on cabs. We went to that place where that one guy makes pizzas all by himself and everyone stands around watching sadly until they get a slice. I got to make devious plans for the new book. (I’ll show you the cover soon.) I went to see the Girlbomb reading and I bought the book and read the whole thing (and you should, too, and then check out Janice’s old journal entries, which will quietly blow your mind). We went to the Museum of Television and Radio and watched many old things, though I was a little disappointed that they didn’t have the episode of Fantasy Island that scared the crap out of me when I was a kid (the one I described in paragraph 3 of this old TWoP recap). I suppose I was also a little relieved.

Two final questions about New York, both animal-related, one of them hypothetical: 1.) Are there really that many pugs in the West Village, or do people bring them from other parts of the city just to walk them there? 2.) Say you’re waiting on a mostly empty subway platform and you look over and see a rat across the tracks, skittering around happily on its own deserted stretch of platform, and then you see a very nicely dressed woman coming down the stairs and choosing not to stand at the busier end of the platform and instead striding over to the empty end, into rat territory. Do you try to shout across the tracks and warn her? (Okay, maybe this is not hypothetical.) (And no, I wasn’t on the rat side of the tracks.) (And yes, there are rats in Chicago, too, and they come with their own dramatic possibilties.)

And finally finally: come to the reading in Oakbrook on Thursday. Which, by the time you read this, will be tonight.

Various updates

October 18, 2005 by Wendy

This Thursday’s Chicago reading: will be a benefit for Literacy Works and not some other organization, despite what you may have read on a couple of events listings somewhere. Literacy Works does all kinds of fantastically swell stuff like train ESL teachers and volunteer tutors to help adults learn to read, and while presumably the other organization is devoted to good things as well and not, say, into playing cruel literacy-related tricks such as hiding rubber cockroaches in books, tearing out the final pages of mystery novels, and recommending House of Leaves, they are nonetheless not the same organization as Literacy Works, on whose behalf I am reading on Thursday. So come to Hyde Park! And bring ten dollars! Or more!

(It’s hard not to be nervous about the attendance. For most readings, having a lousy turnout simply means that I’m pathetic. When it comes to this reading, a lousy turnout means that PEOPLE WILL BE DENIED THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE THROUGH READING, and that I’m pathetic. So do what you can.)

Last Thursday’s New Jersey reading: was fine, except for all the apocalyptic rain. From my rental car along the Garden State Parkway, New Jersey looked very, er… smeary, though I’m sure it’s way nicer when it’s dry. This state has lovely radio stations, which are great to listen to while you’re trying to find a place to turn around on the highway.

My cold: is much better, thank you. You needn’t have worried at all.

The Beeping Thingy ceased its daily beeping two days after I wrote about it and I KNEW THAT WOULD HAPPEN. I still have no idea what the hell it was.

We did, however, catch a squirrel in my office building today, after the thing came down through the ceiling this weekend and ate some of the office M&M’s. Working for a children’s book publisher means you are always surrounded by enchanted animals. And by “enchanted” I mean “awesomely freaked out on sugar.”

Bootsy the Fish: Still alive after a year and three months. Sort of. He seems to have swim bladder disorder. (Look it up.) From what I’ve read this won’t kill him, but it’s killing me to see him lying listlessly at the bottom of the tank like a junkie, flopping his semi-useless fins around like a thalidomide baby Smurf. I mean, you can’t have a fish “put down,” can you? Something dignified and fast. A tiny harpoon I can shoot into him, maybe.

Weight Watchers: Oh, you shouldn’t ask right now. I’m only mentioning it because I know you want to know, which is my own damn fault for telling you I was doing it again in the first place. You get where I’m going with this? Yeah? There you go. (And this may not be up for discussion, inasmuch as I can control that.)

But never mind that. Most everything else is good.

Get out my business, my biznass

October 7, 2005 by Wendy

I like reading Miss Snark’s agent blog, because she writes aboout slogging through manuscript submissions, and since I do that for a living too, I feel very productive reading her every morning, even when I’m actually not slogging through submissions and editing half a dozen picture books and two novels in varying stages of production at that particular moment. (Though for the most part I have been doing those things, which is why you haven’t read much here lately.) And I especially like Miss Snark when she addresses some wee itchy little tiny dustmite of a detail about writing or publishing or submissions etiquette that has always bothered me. Like business cards, and whether writers should give them to editors and agents, and vice versa. No, really, this preoccupies me way too much. Cards are swell and cards are dumb. And what the hell kind of opinion is that? Oh, I’LL TELL YOU.

[Read more…]

One of those book meme thingies that I keep meaning to do

August 22, 2005 by Wendy

Because Kevin Smokler tagged me. And because I went to the lakefront after work instead of writing a real update.

1. How many books I own: I just counted; I have about 400. This doesn’t include my books at work, though most of those are editorial copies that I wouldn’t necessarily claim as my own. And do perfect-bound lit magazines count as books? I didn’t include those, either, though I suppose one could claim that anything with a flat spine is technically a book. But that’s dumb, because then the IKEA catalog counts as a book. Okay, never mind.

2.) The last book I bought: Paradise by A.L. Kennedy. I don’t have it yet. I just ordered it. I couldn’t say which book I bought before that, because it’s a gift, so Paradise by A.L. Kennedy is totally my beard. Plus I really want to read it.

3.) The last book I read: That I finished? And that I wasn’t paid to read? I think it’s The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank.

4.) Five books that mean a lot to me:
   1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brönte
   2. The Dream Songs by John Berryman
   3. Short Talks by Anne Carson
   4. Metamorphoses by Ovid
   5. A foreign edition of Richard Scarry’s Best Word Book Ever with words in English, Hungarian and German. It belonged to my grandmother. It’s how I know “szalonna” means “bacon,” “szállítókocsi” means “delivery van” and “robot” means “robot.”

5.) Five people I’ve tagged: (Assuming they haven’t been tagged already.)
   Marianne
   Pinky
   Dana
   Pamie
   Tara

Hello from hiatusville

July 15, 2005 by Wendy

Pulling myself out from this little online hiatus is to some extent a matter of digging myself out from under a couple hundred backlogged manuscripts at work (including YOURS, probably, but don’t ask), but I’m getting to the point where my office is normal office colors again and not caste in a queasy yellow-beige light from so many manila envelopes. I seem to be making some progress.

If you’re in Chicago, you might wanna hit Sulzer library Monday night to see me at this thing. More later…