Because every Halloween, you need The Shaggs!

Give a listen here, to New Hampshire's very own Dot, Betty, and Helen Wiggin, The Shaggs !

A little background can be found here.

They're awful. That's the point. Consider it outsider-rock. Or folk art. Or 1969 at its most earnest.

It's Halloween It's Halloween.

Make like a tree and leave. Make like a baby and head out...

I'm heading out again soon, for the St. Louis Jewish Book festival and then
the Queens University of Charlotte alumni program, and a reading in Charlotte to kick it off!

This means loading up the iPod with TED talks and new (to me) music. It means getting all my students' papers graded before I go. It means remembering that the gray tights look okay with the black and white dress, and not forgetting earplugs for hotel rooms.

Means calling my husband every twenty minutes and asking "whatcha doin?" Means him calling me every thirty minutes and asking "whatcha doin'?

And it means seeing old and new friends at author events. I hope you're one of them!

Check the calendar in the sidebar for event locations and dates!

Invisible Sisters on TV!

A pretty long talk about the book, to a terrific audience at the Breman Museum here in Atlanta, courtesy of PBS .

The writer's life

This writer's life, anyway. Wouldn't it be great IF I got the writer's draft of the novel done in time to read through over Thanksgiving, when I am full of food and wine and not full of papers to grade, so that I can shove all the scenes and pages around (because I am tactile that way) and find out, for real, what's missing, scene-wise?

How does character W. hustle the small-time reporter?
At what juncture does character L. realize, once and for all, that she has to turn her back on what she's doing?
What about the little brothers?
And character W(2), do we leave his exit ambiguous?
And does character A. ascend in L's place?

For the answer to these, and other questions... Remember "Love of Chair" from The Electric Company?

And.... what about Naomi?

Book clubs! I'm all about the book clubs this week and next week. One here, another in a midwestern place via the magic of the Interwebs and video. Thanks for having me, y'all. Book clubs are a great invention.

Walking Dead

M. and I went to the Oakland Cemetery Halloween walking tour last night, and the lines were endless, which is great news for fundraising for Oakland, which has been in Atlanta since 1850 and is a beautiful, park-like garden cemetery (think Mt. Auburn in Cambridge, MA, if you've been there.)

For me, it's historic Atlanta.

So, in the chill, we toured and stopped/started among six (or was it seven?) stops, and watched an actor tell the story of the person they represented; a governor, a woman lost at sea off of Florida, the most beautiful girl in Atlanta, a judge from up on Screamer Mountain...

And Oakland is gorgeous, as always, lit by torches in the night.

And how does this connect with writing? Experience your world, do new things, and oh, yeah, this in particular is period research. That's all I'm sayin'. :)

Some more music

For Jill, since she missed it, but we went, after a happy beer or three at the EAYC!

A Youtube clip of Os Mutantes recently at the Variety Playhouse. Beatles + b52s + the Jetsons + I don't know what all else. No fala Portoguese!

Thanks, YouTube person who posted this clip!

To Do list

1. Finish freelance article.

2. Grade papers.

3. Keep rain boots by back door.

4. Write the first pass of the last scenes of the novel, which has an almost-name.

5. Control excitement over the Queens University of Charlotte MFA alumni weekend, coming up soon!

Reading on the Train

My secret private moment of self-time lately?

Reading on the MARTA train. Yeah, I know people in cities with real public transit do it all the time - I do it when I'm in cities with real public transit. Here, mostly, I drive.

But sometimes I'm only going from point A to point B, which means I can take MARTA. Which means I get about 40 minutes to read, x 2. So that's like more than an hour.

Right now? "Motherless Brooklyn." Laughing out loud on the subway. I feel better already.

True Story!

All the stories read on this night are true. There will be show and tell. There may also be singing.

Be there. Kavarna, Oakhurst, Monday, 8pm.

Things Ed's not doing this weekend

This is Ed. He is not going to make it to the Atlanta Writers' Club this weekend for my talk about using research in memoir, and finding research tools you didn't know you had.

Poor Ed. He's also not going to Kavarna in Oakhurst on Monday night for the inaugural night of True Story!

Are you?

Note to the Weatherman

Dear Weather:

Please stop raining here. Or slow down a little. People in Atlanta tailgate on the freeway in a downpour. My plants are drowned. All this low-hanging gray sky is ominous, in a metaphorical way.

Please share the wealth and relocate to places that are not flooded.

Thank you.

Hello, Nashville!

So excited to be heading to Nashville this weekend for the Southern Festival of Books!

Neil White, author of "In the Sanctuary of Outcasts" and I will be talking about "The Watershed Moment" in memoir. We might read a little bit, too.

And there are so many amazing authors there, like Ron Rash (you've read "Serena" already, right?)

Here's the schedule for the whole shebang. Come on over to the Senate Chambers (oooh, so formal!) on Saturday at 1, and say hello!

Next week, when I get home from Nashville, I'll be hosting an author chat on LibraryThing's site. We can talk books, memoir writing, nonfiction, good recipes, animal care, weather... hey, I'm a chatty girl. It's free, so login and let's chat.

(Oh, the picture? Porter Waggoner's suit from the World-Famous Nudies. Did you know that Porter Waggoner & Dolly Parton used to advertise dishtowels from a soap company on TV when I was a kid? Yep.)

If I had as many limbs as she does...

... if I had as many limbs as she does, think of all I could get done!

(Golden Orb Spider, photo by me.)

Books and Pictures

A wonderful gift this week from one of my sister Sarah's childhood friends; now a wife and mother of two, and an author, living in Europe. I got a long email about her life with Sarah, things she remembered and I never knew,and things I knew and they didn't know I knew! (Sisters, we are evil.)

And a wonderful photo of this friend and Sarah as teenagers, dressed for Halloween as King Arthur and "Lady Gwen."

Photos I'd never seen. (I did know about the at-home ear piercing, though.)