BEND, OR-

Don’t ever agree to your book being published if you have a fear of public speaking. I can say that, over the past five months, I have almost completely conquered this fear. I have beaten it out of myself. My husband has stood by, helplessly watching the self-berating, doling out the necessary Kleenex and gelato cups, weighing in on every outfit I’ve tried on. My vain (in more ways than one) attempt at looking just the right combination of serious literary writer and hot-ass bitch has culminated in committing the worst of sins: I bought a black T-shirt from the Gap.

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BEND, OR-

I have learned many things over the past few months of book touring. Number one, grabbing a book-buying audience’s attention in the summer months is like convincing me that Dan Brown, or Stephen King, is a good writer. Number two, if you read in a venue where they make maple-bacon doughnuts, they will come. Number three, there is no other bookstore like Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon. (more…)

BEND, OR-

This book-pimping thing has brought both extreme highs and lows during the first month, as Misfits and Other Heroes has made its way into the world. I have cried and eaten one too many donuts, been routed to an Internet porn site when I Googled myself and been told by a local bookstore owner, “We don’t carry books about unicorns,” when I tried to explain how my short stories hover around the genre of magic realism.

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BEND, OR-

“Now the fun begins!” one of my publishers, Dan Wickett of Dzanc Books, told me on the phone this afternoon. My debut collection of short stories, Misfits and Other Heroes, is on its way to me, priority mail from Michigan to Oregon. Tonight we went out to celebrate, half high-end with a dinner of farmer’s market vegetable risotto, half low-end (My favorite half. To steal from Nabokov, “my sin, my soul.”) with a heartburn-inducing, gut-busting Shari’s Turtle Sundae.

I have to admit I am in a minor state of shock. Expecting this surreal feeling to turn to bliss, I am experiencing the sort of an…tici…pation I haven’t felt since my teens, being patted down by the burly security guard before my first Cure concert in Seattle or in my twenties on the eve of my first Dead show.  There is something musical in the air around me.

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BEND, OR-

I just licked that big, all-consuming yellow envelope that holds, in its hopefully safe confines, my newest poetry manuscript. To be sent to an interested publisher in New York, a land almost as far, far away as Paris.

These are the first poems I’ve written in seven years. The first poems I’ve written that seem like grown-up, adult poems. (No, not adult in that way.)

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BEND, OR-

It’s been a crazy month. I am working right now on a new novel, a poetry manuscript about Paris, freelancing for the local arts paper and co-writing a script about the Thai sex trade. I turned 36, watched the complete season of American Idol (fell in love with Adam, finally, when he wore that gorgeous outfit of Kiss boots and metal wings), sold a few poetry books, took a class on baking with chocolate, went on a ghost hunt in rural Eastern Oregon and watched a handsome waiter in my favorite local restaurant bring me a piece of pecan pie with a candle on top. (more…)

BEND, OR.-

Boxers don’t walk. Boxers don’t strut. Boxers glide, eyes forward, their profiles reminiscent of Dick Tracy, strong and dashing, with a hint of vulnerability that belies the ballet of brutality to come.

Noted author Joyce Carol Oates refers to boxing as, “the lost religion of masculinity,” and the horde that gathered on Friday night in the Middle Sister Building of the Deschutes County Fairgrounds in our neighboring town of Redmond for the preliminary bouts of the Oregon State Golden Gloves championship came to re-christen this loss. (more…)

BEND, OR.-

I have been off-line lately. My computer crashed about a month ago. It was sudden. I was printing out something of great importance, like a new recipe for tiramisu or the lyrics for the Prince song “Kiss,” when up popped what my computer genius friend refers to as “the blue screen of death.” Not a little peeplet from the damn machine since.

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BEND, OR.-

With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, I am sitting here with a frown stretching the corners of my mouth, realizing that I have an inherent distrust of people, especially women, who shun sugar. Those who know me know my obsession with baked goods. And no, I am not sedentary. I love to workout just as much as I love to eat M&M’s. I am not lonely, fat or “unstable” unless you count my weekly reading of The National Enquirer, my weekly viewing of VH1’s Sober House (Did Shifty really go into cardiac arrest, and who knew Andy Dick was actually a sensitive and thoughtful man?) and my illicit trips to Wal-Mart to buy laundry soap and light bulbs. What I want to know is when sugar became taboo.

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BEND, OR.-

Big towns are all alike; every small town is small in its own way.

In 1980, Bend, Oregon, was a town large enough for two Albertson’s grocery stores but small enough to host the annual cow chip bingo at Vince Genna stadium. Big enough for two high schools but small enough for one fine-dining restaurant, the Beef and Brew, locally famous for the individual loaves of bread delivered to each table on polished cutting boards.

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BEND, OR.-

Last December I found myself the substitute player at a Bunco party where every one of the thirteen women was a former high school cheerleader. Me, the person who skipped any high school assembly remotely promoting “spirit” to drink coffee at Denny’s, the classic dichotomy of us vs. them, the jocks vs. the Goths, intense as gang warfare. When I received the invitation, a cheery call from my sister-in-law, a twinge of post-angst nostalgia ground beneath my thirty-five-year-old bones. Through familial obligation and social politeness, I was coerced to befriend the enemy.

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