My Last Reading as Redmond’s Poet Laureate, and other news

It’s been wet and stormy here, precluding much in the way of going out and enjoying the fall (no apple picking or sunflower hunting in floods and thunderstorms, I’m afraid.) I’m feeling physically like getting out and active more than I have in a long time, so I hope we get a break with the weather soon. Wettest September in Seattle on record!!!

However, as a true adopted daughter of the Pacific Northwest, it hasn’t prevented me from getting out and about for readings. First, I went down to Open Books a few nights ago to see a reading that kicked off Washington’s LitFure event, with Dorianne Laux, Joe Millar, and Chad and Jennifer Sweeney (though I think everyone reading was exhausted, as they had just flown in from the East Coast and it was 11 PM their time. Whew!) It was still a pleasure to see everyone, and had a lot of friends in the crowd I hadn’t seen a while, too, which is always one of the nice side benefits of going to readings. Dorianne read a great poem involving crime scene investigation that has inspired me to try my hand at a CSI-type poem as some point.

And, the next night, I had my final Redmond reading as Redmond Poet Laureate, as part of RASP’s Jack Straw Writers Program. There was a nice open mike and I read with two other Jack Straw writers, Daemond and Chelsea. It was a convivial evening and a nice way to close my season of Poet Laureate-ing, the crowd was healthy-sized and I even got some cheers and, I believe, some “wooting.”

So, I have to admit, after all the readings and activities lately, I am a bit ready to go into hibernation mode and get back to writing and submitting and the regular business of being a writer, rather than being an ambassador/community organizer/outreach of poetry-type person. I like that stuff, but it also took a fair amount of energy and time, maybe more than I was planning on. Of course, I still have the ArtsCrush program on October 9th and Geek Girl Con on the 19th to do before I can take the time to rest and recover (and, in the meantime, I’m having a lot of overdue dental work done! Fun!) Yes, it’s a glamorous life, all right.

The stormy weather seemed just right for the final episode of Breaking Bad (loved the “Wicked Felina” reference) and for catching up on book reviews (Robert Lee Brewer’s Solving the World’s Problems and Carrie Olivia Adams’ Forty-One Jane Doe’s for Crab Creek Review‘s first issue of 2014, and Raymond McDaniel’s Special Powers and Abilities for The Rumpus. I’m going to get into Midge Raymond’s Everyday Book Marketing next. I still can learn new tricks about book promotion, and Lord knows, as a poet, I need all the help I can get promoting my books!

A Few Upcoming Events – Jack Straw and Arts Crush Girls on Fire, Dentists, and Hummingbirds

It’s starting to get cold at night, and that causes hummingbirds to puff up in adorable fashion. Here is one in front of our feeder.

While you are distracted by adorable hummingbird pictures… I spent much of this week in dentist chairs, and let me say this – interviewing doctors has nothing on auditioning dentists. The bad ones are really bad and that leads to inevitable pain. The good ones might still lead to experiencing pain, but at least you trust that they’re doing it for the right reasons. Trying to explain multiple dental-related allergies (latex, novocaine, painkillers) and a rare bleeding disorder and trying to gauge whether or not they know how to treat someone with TMJ – and not all dentists do – led to me feeling a little depressed about how weird I am. I guess the more you talk about your allergies and disorders and such, it reminds you – hey, you’re not like everyone else. You’re trouble – difficult – hard to explain. Sigh. I had to medicate myself with some serious comfort television (Pilot of Community, Pilot of Futurama, some BBC Jane Austen) in the aftermath, but I think I finally found a good one (she let me use my previous x-rays, researched my bleeding disorder and allergies before I walked in the door, and answered all my questions with cheerful directness without blowing sunshine, and did a great job detecting slight variances in the teeth that prevented me from getting unnecessary dental work. Perfect.) Anyway, it reminded me how the medical stuff I take for granted is actually pretty unusual, and a lot of medical professionals just don’t want to deal with someone outside the bell curve.

On the up side – Margaret Atwood will be in Seattle Oct. 4, and I’ve got tickets to see her read! I’m so excited! And onto other more cheerful news!

Part II of Post: Upcoming Events!

This Friday, September 27, you can find me (along with fellow Jack Straw Writers Daemond Arrindell and Chelsea Werner-Jatzke) reading with the RASP reading series – one of my final East side readings for the year (except for the one I describe below. But seriously, none after that!) It should be fun!

And October 9th from 6-8 PM, poet Kelly Davio, myself, and artist Michaela Eaves will be presenting Girls on Fire collaborative art and poetry as part of ArtsCrush at VALA in Redmond. This picture is of us a few days ago plotting our event – interactive poetry and art activities, snacks, and a reading/art display. And here is some art work that Michaela did for the event. Notice who she left out of the picture? Herself! But she will be there, and her art work!

Fall Begins…A Harvest Moon, A Concert, Snoqualmie Falls and a Driver’s License

So, in the last few days we’ve been busy getting everything that needed to get done this summer done.

My driver’s license had expired in July (!!) and I hadn’t had time to renew it, what with poetry events, doctor’s appointments, other works, etc…so we decided to drive up to North Bend and get it renewed, taking a quick stop at Snoqualmie Falls along the way. The DMV was as painless and friendly and efficient as could be hoped for. The Salish Lodge in the background (which you may recognize from the opening credits of Twin Peaks) now has its own honeybees and makes honey-caramel popcorn and honey ale and all kinds of cool stuff, so check in out if you visit. The falls are about 45 minutes north of Microsoft, if you use that landmark.

Then we took in an evening concert at the park – something that we like to do in the summer, those concerts at the park, I mean, what else is the last of summertime for? So we saw The Lumineers at Marymoor Park. The concert was mellow (the highlight was a cover of Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues) and the weather was more pleasant than expected – a cool 60 degrees all night before the storm came in. But the real star of the night was the yellow Harvest moon. Sorry the picture of the concert is all smoke and chandeliers – the band was barely visible even in real life with all the smoke.

And all this is to say – goodbye summertime, hello cold rain! Today the cold and rain swept in – a high expected of something like 56 degrees! In the spirit of fall, I wrote a new poem, sent out a couple of submissions, wrestled with cover art ideas (more on that in a later post) and started work on my Geek Girl Con presentation and ArtsCrush event planning. I’ve got a busy couple of weeks coming up, but I’m looking forward to fall – I always seem to write more and I’m one of those weird people who has much more energy in the sparkling early autumn cold than the summer heat. I’m built for the Pacific Northwest’s weather, I suppose. My tenure as Poet Laureate is about to end, and I have to say that I’m looking forward to having a bit more time to write!

Another fall ritual? My copy of the new 2014 Poet’s Market! It had a bunch of useful articles in it on how a writer should use a blog, how to write a cover letter, how to give a reading…and of course a ton of new poetry markets to think about, and state grants and that sort of thing. (Two articles and a poem from me in there, if you’re looking 🙂

Interview with Jason Mott, Superstar Author of The Returned

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jason Mott at his book tour stop in Seattle last night at Greenwood Library, sponsored by Elliott Bay. (Cool idea, right – a partnership between a library and bookstore? There should be more of those.) It was a wonderful reading, a great and lively crowd, and a pleasure to see Jason work his magic in person.

Jason is living pretty much every writer’s dream right now. I met Jason through correspondence about comic book poetry some year back, and now he is a New York Times bestselling author (for “The Returned”) with a show coming out on ABC called “The Resurrection” in March 2014. (Oh, and did I mentioned it was optioned by Brad Pitt’s production company?) Jason is a fine poet as well, his Hide Behind Me is one of my favorite superhero poetry books, in case you’re interested. He’s a really nice person, as well, the kind of person you’re really glad good things have happened for. Really. He spent a ton of time answering questions from the audience about how he landed his agent, his editor, how he got his book on television – he was generous and gracious.

Jason Mott, author of The Returned and Hide Behind Me, Q&A

JHG: I’ve heard your work described variously as magical realism, speculative, and genre – how would you classify your book? And, to follow up, who was the greater influence – Stephen King or Haruki Murakami (you can also choose your writer-or-influencer-of-choice here!)

JM: I think that magical realism best describes my work. But speculative and literary fiction also do a pretty good job of putting a label on it. My greatest writer-of-influence is probably John Gardner. His book Grendel and October Light are two of my biggest influences by far. Grendel was the book that really started me off as a writer, so pretty much everything I’ve done stems from that.

JHG: When we first started corresponding, it was because of our mutual love of comic book poetry. After writing two books of poetry, including the excellent “Hide Behind Me,” how did you approach a book of fiction? Was it a totally different kind of writing experience?

JM: Writing fiction was fairly different, but not as different as people might suppose. I actually started in fiction, so poetry was the divergence that came later in life. But my poetry tends to be fairly narrative driven (thanks to a childhood love of epic poetic classics such as The Odyssey and Beowulf). So, for me, when I shift back to fiction it’s not as far of a shift as one might imagine. And the poetry background helps me conquer some fiction hurdles. If I’ve got a place where I need to have something “big” happen in a small amount of space, the poetic background helps make that happen thanks to the precision of language required in poetry.

JHG: Your book is being turned into a television series called “The Resurrection” for ABC. How did it feel when you watched your work being adapted for the screen?

JM: Both surreal and wonderful at the same time. I never expected it, so it caught me completely off guard when those things began happening. And the production team, the cast, basically everyone involved with creating the show has been simply wonderful. All in all, it’s been terrific and I’m eager to see what they create.

JHG: The subject matter – the return of unexpected people from the dead – is dealt with in your book in a humanistic, heart-felt way. Why did you choose to go with a small town in the South, with a kind of stripped-down approach, rather than the bang and zoom of zombies or something more “sensational?”

JM: This whole project began with a dream I had about my mother. She passed away in 2001 and in 2010, I had a dream that I came home from work and found her at my kitchen table, waiting for me. We sat and talked for hours about everything that had happened in my life since her passing, and it was one of the warmest, most cathartic dreams I’ve ever had. And that was the feeling I wanted to “bottle” with The Returned. I’ve got nothing against the zombie genre—I actually rather enjoy a good zombie movie—but that wasn’t what I was going for. I didn’t want to scare people, I wanted to create a book that spoke about the connections we all make with one another over a lifetime. And, hopefully, readers will feel that I achieved that.

Dreaming of New Things…Presses, Bookstores, and a next book

I’ll admit, with all the health challenges in the last few years, it hasn’t been easy to adjust my personality (driven, accomplishment-oriented, and extroverted) to fit my new limitations and expectations. I went from working a 90-hour-a-week job at a tech company to taking a couple of years to get my MFA and then spent the next few years working part-time – adjunct teaching, running workshops, editing manuscripts, and writing freelance all while trying to manage the health stuff, write some poems, sell some books, do readings. Oh, and on a more limited budget (thanks, recession!) Now I’m ready to dream bigger – suddenly, with this new diagnosis, I feel like – why not do the things now that I’ve always wanted?

My ultimate dream would be running a small press and a bookstore. I know bookstores seem hopelessly out of date but I predict that cozy, focused independents will make a comeback after everything has gone all-Amazon-and-Walmart, and that’s exactly the kind of place I’d like to run. Maybe get a cup of coffee, buy a pillow or a throw, see a reading or even a cooking demonstration – you know, a place that might help a neighborhood feel like more of a community. I can see going out and getting a small business loan to do that someday. And the press – that’s probably in the nearer future for me, now. I’m looking around and thinking of people I’d like to work with, the money I’d have to put in. Would I do my own e-books, or farm that out? Would I need to hire a book designer? Would I do regular press runs or POD or some combination? (probably the latter.) Would I go after a good distributor – or would I need to wait on a step like that? Would I be an open submission press or run a contest? (probably the former.) Would I be non-profit or not? (Probably not – I hate paperwork.) But I’m finally tinkering with near-term ideas rather than five-years-in-the-future. And after working as my city’s Poet Laureate for the last year and a half, it would be nice to feel like I was a giving back to the community, but in a different way.

As you may have guessed from some things I’ve been saying, my fourth book is looking closer and closer to becoming a real thing. (Thanks for your help with the author photos – I’ve narrowed it down to two!) I’m thinking of how to work smarter this time around, how to give the book the support it needs in the right places. What strategies worked in the past and what didn’t? How do I make a maximum splash with minimal obnoxious factor and cost? I’m trying to think more like a publisher, and less like a hapless, dreamy poet these days, in terms of books…So, do any of you have advice on this? Any thoughts on any of these dreams? Am I nuts?