man flu

I think I have man flu. It’s the worse kind. More terrible than anything a woman or child could get. Tall Dark & Handsome has been rolling around with it for three days. Wondering if he’s going to live until tomorrow and “Will you get someone new when I’m gone”. I said I’d think about it. He asked me to marry him. I told him he was delirious. (He really was.) That was yesterday. Today I stayed home. Tried to write but couldn’t. Went for a walk. Nothing clears the mind these days like a frosty morning, James Blunt on the iPod and a warm winter coat. It gave me a head ache. Went into a gorgeous Victorian church across the way to photograph. My eyes hurt. Headed toward the Viper Lounge, a newish wine bar up the street, for something sauvignon. I couldn’t get the door opened. (closed?) Walked back to the flat. Went to bed. (duvet on the sofa). That was five hours ago. I think I’ll go back. I think I have man flu.

fat fat fat

Me: “Last week. I got stitches. In my groin.”
Reggie: “Sexy.”
Me: “You’d think. But no.”

Ive not been to the gym in a week. Tried an ‘upper body only’ day but couldnt stay off the rowing machine. I hate the rowing machine. I’m a glutton for punishment. My stitches bled. Ive had one day with my new trainer. She made me puke. She doesnt know this. But she did. She’s teeny and fit and looks like Nicole Ritchie. She told me about some diet drug the NHS is funding for really fat people.

“Not that youre fat,” she says, “Youre not endangering your health or anything like that.”

Nice. I cant lose weight. You should know this. Ive had my thyroid checked three times. I know. Dont say it.

My last trainer was too calm. Too balanced. She taught me to work that pilates ball like nobody’s business, and whittled away at my back fat until I could see a few muscles dance. She was ok. but.. I need someone to make me throw up in a ‘run and train until you fall over and vomit’ sort of way. Youve not pushed yourself hard enough if you dont throw up. I want that kind of trainer. I think I’ve got her.

king, cows and grammar

I’ve spent today trolling the Writer’s Market. Nothing new there. I’ve been flipping through the tome for the past two months. I prefer the online version but an ill-funded penchant for expensive handbags finds me, more often than not, at the virtual home of Nordies and Saks, when I should be studying the professional directory.

So I’m a book person, most of the time.

My current novel-research-text collection sits at twenty eight.

Hands down, the best: Stephen King’s “On Writing”.

I’ve not been a King fan since he scared the beegeezus out of me in broad daylight by a communal swimming pool with “The Stand”. But there is a reason the man is one of the most commercially successful writers of all time. I want to know what that reason is. I cant believe it’s all talent. I’ve seen too many wasters with boatloads of the stuff. That he debunks the myth of the pretentious artist, makes me like him all the more. Freaking brilliant. An old roommate of mine hates him. Her words: “He’s an overrated, superficial hack.”

To his critics, roommates included, I would just say : “Shut up and write something you bitter jealous cows.” To those interested in fine tuning their craft, grab the book at Amazon. Now! But don’t make a list of King pointers and show me over dinner. You’ll get slapped.

A fine little piece of work, and another 99p find, “How to be a Writer. Secrets from the Inside.” A handy dandy book of bullet points by Steward Ferris. Stocked full of tips that you should already know but for some reason never thought of. Pages (I dare not say chapters. The book is the size of your hand.) on networking and DIY marketing. My favourite bit: “Spend days and days on your first sentence: It’ll be worth it.” Erm…what about months and months??

When I was 12 an English teacher handed me a fly-swatter of a book. A good writer, she said, should never leave home without it. I carried it around until graduation and threw it out with the rest of my locker on the last day of school. I’ve bought four since then. The ubiquitous “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White. All the little rules you were too busy to pay attention to in grammar class, rolled into one boring, but necessary sidekick. I don’t care how much you think you known about grammar. You don’t know enough.

But first, go to Writer’s Market. Register. Hand over a few dollars. And get to reading. Word is its an absolute essential for I-aint-got-no-contacts freelancers. It’s also the definitive list of reputable agents and markets and, best of all, it will help delay the actual writing of your book for at least a month. I guarantee it.

what i saw. hathaway cottage.

Anne Hathaway Cottage, Stratford

Stratford-upon-Avon. I’ve been before, but not on a proper tour. Shakespeare’s birthplace is easy, because it’s on the high street. More or less. You have to take a wee bit of a drive if you want to visit the Hathaway Cottage. Home of the lovely Anne, before she became The Bard’s long-suffering wife. If there was ever anything more beautiful than this, ever anything to make me want to live my life in the country the way this does, I’ve not seen it.

ten things i hate about me

1. My right eyebrow has no arch.
2. I’m tone deaf.
3. Procrastination is my drug.
4. I think my teeth are too small.
5. I can’t stop eating hummus.
(That’s hummus. Not humans.)
6. I like Britney Spears.
7. I get distracted. Easy.
8. I’m indecisive.
9. I talk too much.
10. I’m afraid of monkfish.

Prologue

Death has a way of taking over a small town, where everyone knows everyone else, even when they don’t. Preachers come out and talk about God and the Devil and about how sometimes things just happen and they don’t know why. Men throw fists at the sky and sit alone in the dark behind four wheel drives to think and drink and try to understand. Women dish food in church halls because they don’t want to be alone and because gossiping isn’t really a sin if its done over the daily bread, amen.

The year we moved to Toler Mountain two children went missing.

The first was gone for months. The county and a helicopter came out to look for him. No one bothered about the second……they didn’t know….he was hardly gone at all.

Children from all over told ghost stories about one. About how a horse wouldn’t go past the pine grove where they found him; about a mysterious young playmate who sang Tom Dooley and the blues. No one said a word about the other. Or maybe they just didn’t say a word around me.

The first body was a mess. Everyone who saw it said so. A gassy bag of use-to-be boy with a towel wrapped around its head. The other looked just like he always did. People who had never seen him, and now never would, came to the funeral and talked about how beautiful he was.

I said he looked pure dead to me and what’s beautiful about that? No one told me I was too young to know. Or that it was a mean thing to say. But they wouldn’t, would they? Because we were the ones who found him. And we were the ones that knew who done it.

300 year old cakes

It seems a great pity they allowed her to die a natural death. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone. – Mark Twain

I’ve walked by a museum dedicated to the authoress a good umpteen times, but have never got around to going in. I suppose one day I will. Something to do and all…if it’s really cold out…and you’re a big ole bore….and you weren’t in one of the most unforgettable places in the world. Bath. I love it. When I am old and grey and tired of being tired, I want to live there. What am I saying? I want to live there now. I’m weighing up the very American side of me who wants to spend a few years on New York’s loveliest island before settling down; and the very British side of me (I was born to be British I think!) who wants to move to the Somerset countryside and frequent wine bars and Sally Lunns (circa 1483).

I love buildings. Did you know this? I like ‘em good and sturdy and old. When their builders were dead before America was born. Those are the best. Tudor masonry. Wren and his churches. The Victorians’ gilded lilies. Thats why I love this country. And why I love Bath. I love its Abbey. Its Roman Bath House and weirs on the Avon. Its Georgian stone crescents and 300 year old cake shops. I love its cobbled streets and everything old. I even love its Asylum for Teaching Young Females Household Work because, ain’t that the funniest thing you’ve ever seen.

I bring everyone here. When family and friends visit from America, after the obligatory ‘Big Bus’ ride around London, we visit Bath. Because it’s just that wonderful. Man, I’m cheesy.

you’ve been eating retard sandwiches again

Before life separated us I had four friends. Earl, Flynn, Jo and Chris.

Earl was a tall slim blonde who belched like a trucker and had a flowery feminine name that didn’t suit her. She had brains but wanted brawn. Her hobby was men. Get ‘er done. I bet she loves Larry. She once went eight days without bathing just to see if she could make herself stink. Married and divorced by 23. Someone told me she’s an accountant. I don’t believe it.

Flynn wasn’t a Flynn either. She did away with her given name because it wasn’t romantic enough. She was abrasive. She was a dreamer. She bordered at the homes of friends for years. She had cahoneys. (How do you spell cahoneys?) When she was 15 she swiped her stepdad’s credit card and went to Europe. Told her family she was staying with a friend around the corner. Phoned me at 4:30 one morning. “Ok, so I’m in London now. Saw a play last night. Woman in White. It was ok. You know anyone here who can put me up?” Yep. Six years later we were in the city together. I haven’t seen her since.

Jo, I ran over once. She dropped a cigarette in her lap and jumped out of the car – it was still moving. I have a vague recollection of Chris and I looking at the empty seat and wondering what the hell just happened. I slowed and Jo passed us in a spin. She looked like a giant popple. Chris and I just watched. “Did she just fall out of the car?” I asked. Chris looked at me. Like she couldn’t believe it “Yep. Think she did’. Jo just picked up her shoe, crossed the road, and got in the car. “You know you ran over my foot,” she said.

Chris, I still know. She’s an expert in international emergency sign language (see ‘Help me. I’m choking’). The funniest person I’ve ever met. Bar one. She’s short and annoying, the way most perfect people are. One day, in an effort to save time, she went into the bathroom and chopped her hair off to the bone. It still looked better than my $200 do. She’s witty. Intelligent. Gorgeous. Organized. And calm. All the things I try too hard to be. One day we’re going to write something hilarious. Because we can.

Winter 97/98. Best winter ever. We spent three months holed up in an old grey farm house. The kind with thirty six rooms and a fire place in every one of them. We went to class in the cold. In the snow. And came home to big woolly blankets, peach cobbler and cinnamon sticky biscuits. I stopped being afraid that winter and we watched Beautiful Girls.

We were they. Not the beautiful girls. Not a one of us looked like Uma Thurman or Mira Sorvino – except maybe Earl. We were the snow plow boys. We were Timothy Hutton.

Earl was easy. She was Kev. Kev was little and strange and seemed just the person earl should be if she couldn’t be Rosie O’. It was during her bathing strike and Kev looked dirty. He also drank a lot.

Flynn was Hutton’s under-achieving artist. The one who left and came back only to leave again. She would never be the one to stay. She would never be the one to be valued like she deserved.

Jo was Mo. Because it rhymed. It was that simple.

For Chris it went deeper. She wanted to be Tommy. But she wanted to DO Matt Dillon. She couldn’t do Dillon if she was Dillon. So she was Paul. He drove the plow with Kev just like Chris drove the Hooptie with Earl. Perfect.

That left me as as the Birdman. Just the way it should have been. I was the one who couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Getting kicked in the face by people who had my want when my need was some place else.

Yes. I am the Birdman.

its not that she’s obnoxious

Furla, I’ll call her Furla. I use to work with her. Imagine Sideshow Bob and Kyle’s Mom rolled into one big ball of fun.

She breathed on me yesterday. I thought my hair was going to fall out.

She never closes her legs. Ughh. Sits with ‘em wide open all day – in her shabby skirt and shabbier shoes. I know its weird but I cant help but stare. Im like Good grief Woman close your legs! Its awful.

“My IQ is 172.” She says in her Im-probably-not-a-man- but-you’ll-never-really-know voice. She took some Brains of Britain quiz on TV. “I was very impressed with myself.”

I bet she was.

She never combs her hair because there’s really no point. It extends in all directions like horrible red brillo. You know, those iron scrubby things you clean your pans with. Yep. Brillo.

It’s not that she’s obnoxious. I mean she is, but she’s more than that. She knows more than you do. About everything. And she’s rude. And she doesn’t let you speak. Unless you’re asking about her little pony. (My little pony, skinny and bony. Sing with me.)

She took a few weeks off last month. Someone asked her if it was because of Ramadan. She cried for an hour. She’s Jewish.

I felt sorry for her. Really did. But I couldn’t bring myself to hug her…all that cat hair…and her wide open legs…

She left a copy of the Da Vinci Code in her desk when they moved her into the pigeon loft. I brought it home and read it.

why i write

I always fancied myself a writer – the way most scribblers of teen-angst poetry and cheesy romance stories do. A dozen vinyl trapper-keepers, full of short stories and novellas, are stored at my mothers. They’re awful, but I cant bring myself to throw them away. Just in case I do something good one day and, well, there you are.

In high school I didn’t care about sports and pubescent dances; but I was a rocking essayist. In college/university I got excited over theses and dissertations. Couldn’t care less about the subject matter. I just loved research and writing. I have over a million words of academic discourse to my credit. Yes. I’ve counted.

Growing up I always wanted to be a writer – an author. But people didn’t really become authors. Authors were fantastical creatures. Most of them dead. I never thought of them as anything else until I read Salman Rushdie. The Satanic Verses was an assignment from my gifted professor – I was 12 and tried to get out of it, but when local teachers called for the professor’s dismissal on grounds of devil worshiping, (I’m not joking) it piqued my interest. (The lady also had a pet snake and brought in freeze-dried cats for dissection……it wasn’t all The Verses…but thats another story. )

So Rushdie was alive. But he had America’s then arch-enemy calling for his head – and who did that really happen to except Sylvester Stallone? Fantastical. Yep.

A few years later I read a John Grisham novel. Didn’t like it, but realised people still wrote – all was not lost with Mr Clemens.

A few years after that (bear with me) I found myself 18,000 words shy of a certain postgraduate paper. I was watching Carrie Bradshaw (don’t say it) strut her stuff in some fancy Louboutins, reading vogue and eating a cheese sandwich. If I could spit out 8,000 words a week on the criminal mind I could write a book. You know. A book. One of those things.

So I wrote.

Until a few months ago. I’m lazy. You should know this. I’m never in the mood to write what I have to write, but always in the mood. So I took Stephen King’s advice. A writer writes. I may not be able to roll out other novels and a collection of shorts like the science fiction behemoth, but I can roll out a blog. Write a little something every day. About Writing. See how horrible I am – in print. Maybe find out ways to make myself better. Detail the search for a progressive plot, characters that don’t go stale, and an agent who can make me heard. That sort of thing.

As a side, Ive included bits from my work in progress. A little something to remind me what I’m doing here. Doubtful you care; but if you do. Read it. Then tell me what you think. I can take it. I can take it.