Field Guide to the End of the World is Almost Here! Plus The Writer’s Chronicle, End of Summer Anxiety, Socializing as Good Medicine
- At August 27, 2016
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
- 4
A few days ago I received a small box containing ten official Advance Review Copies (or ARCs) of Field Guide to the End of the World. So exciting! I still have a few left if you want a review copy. Mike, one of the editors at Moon City Press, may have a few more copies left as well; you can contact him at mczyzniejewski at missouristate dot edu. Pretty soon the actual books will be here!
If you get The Writer’s Chronicle magazine, you may notice the brand new September issue has a great interview in it with poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil, who talks a bit about one of my favorite poetry topics: persona poetry. Check it out, it’s definitely worth reading (and there may be a little quote from me hiding in there someplace 😉
My life has been: working on getting unpacked and the house set up, doing myriad pain-in-the-butt cancer tests, and doing book stuff. These usually have separate days associated with them because I can’t really do anything useful on days I’m spending in doctor’s offices, and setting up the house occupies a different brain space than writing up an author interview or essay. We finally got a handywoman (a writer friend, even) to come help Glenn finish up some projects – tiling the guest bath, drywalling the huge holes in the wall from putting in kitchen venting, and doing the kitchen backsplash. It was great to have the help, and we feel 25 percent more finished. Still cardboard everywhere, but…fewer holes in the walls!
I will say one good thing about the new house – I’ve already done more entertaining in it in the last few weeks, despite it being in construction mode almost every day and still having piles of plastic and cardboard containers in every corner, than I did in the same number of months in the last place. This week it was my amazing British artist friend Jacqui, who brought me a beautiful hand-made-dyed silk scarf (she makes these art works with crushed flowers, fruits, vegetables from the farmer’s markets and grasses – this one is gray and lavender, just gorgeous!) I love hanging out with visual artists – they always have such different energy from writers. The other good thing is we’re just a two minute’s drive from lots of nice walks, a Barnes and Nobles (hey, we don’t have any other bookstores on the East side, so…), a nice-ish grocery store, and of course, all the wineries and an Arabian horse farm. I love looking at the fancy horses. I’m pretty sure their barns are nicer than our new house. Even after the renovations!
End of August always brings on a strange end-of-summer anxiety with it, you feel the need to try to cram everything you want to do outside – because it rains for the next nine months straight. So, we took a (not so quick) jaunt out to Tacoma’s Point Defiance Zoo to see its three baby clouded leopards, a baby muskox, and my beloved red wolves and arctic fox, among others. I’d run to the San Juans if I could and maybe back to Snoqualmie Falls. It’s been in the nineties which just makes me want to nap, but we got to see the tall ships at Carillon Point last night at sunset (when it was still 84!) And of course the kitten has really been trying to help me write some new poems.
I think the cancer testing stuff and the house transition and the upcoming book launch which I feel I’m totally behind on just have sort of upped the usual August anxiety a bit. I haven’t sent out book cards yet, which I usually try to do a month ahead of time. I’m still finding important things are missing – hidden or lost, possibly, in moving boxes. I’m trying to focus on having perspective, breathing, staying in the moment, appreciating hummingbirds and hot air balloons at sunset. I’m trying to remember that no matter what I do – or not – in terms of my fifth book, I have to hope it finds its readers. As I unpack and fill my bookshelves, I notice how many of the poetry – and fiction! – books I’m shelving aren’t by strangers anymore, but by friends. Tonight I’ll be going to an open house at Open Books, our all-poetry bookstore, to celebrate its transition and to reconnect with my poetry self. I need to keep reminding myself of the good.
Jan Priddy
Yes please! P.O. Box 1442, Cannon Beach, OR 97110
I promise to Goodreads, blog, and FB my review.
Jeannine Hall Gailey
Jan, I’ll pack one up for you!
Jan Priddy
Whoopee! On another note. I must tell you that in my tiny mind you represent the “real writer” that so many of us admire and have striven to become. It is not merely your publications (which are wonderful) but that you have built a life, a balanced existence, around your writing—not as if nothing else matters, but with writing as an integral component of a real life. I fear I am not being clear. But perhaps you will understand that I mean to honor that pattern and complexity and beauty.
Jeannine
Thank you, Jan!