NEWSFLASH!!! I've just been invited to interview none other than America's very own sexpert, pro-sex, freespeech firebrand Susie Bright at the upcoming Los Angeles Times Book Festival! I'll be doing an hour-long one-on-one interview/conversation with Ms. Bright on Saturday, April 24th from 12:30pm to 1:30pm at the Fowler Museum. Check the Times for more details.
Susie just published the first erotica story ("Man and Woman: A Study in Black and White") I ever wrote specifically for an erotica publication (thanks to the nudging of wondrous editor Cara Bruce) in the latest Best American Erotica 2004, the popular series Bright edits. Susie's also written tons of books, from classics like FULL EXPOSURE: OPENING UP TO YOUR SEXUAL CREATIVITY & EROTIC EXPRESSION to THE SEXUAL STATE OF THE UNION to SUSIE SEXPERT'S LESBIAN SEX WORLD. And her latest, MOMMIE'S LITTLE GIRL: SUSIE BRIGHT ON MOTHERHOOD, SEX, PORN AND CHERRY PIE. Check out her website at www.susiebright.com.
If any of you are fans of Susie's and have particular questions you'd like me to ask, fire away. I'd like to come up with sharp, fresh thoughts, things that haven't already been asked, if possible. Like, tying into current topics, events, phenoms, questions. Hope to see you all there!
______________________________________________________
PUBLICATIONS, CURRENT AND UPCOMING:
Last update I told you about the new bicoastal lit mag SWINK publishing my first India essay, "Death is Not Ping-Pong," in their premiere issue. That issue's launch was delayed, but it is now upon us. On the evening of April 18th, the L.A. launch will go down in Silverlake, and ravishing editor Leelila Strogov has invited me to read. The mag is already getting tons of buzz. Leelila said she mailed out copies to contributors just this past week. Will keep you posted. Meanwhile, she and Swink have hooked up with none other than benchmark modern lit mag TIN HOUSE at the annual AWP conference that happens this coming week in Chi-town. Some of you know I have a long affiliation with Tin House mag, having contributed to their premiere issue, acting as consulting editor on the special Hollywood issue, and serving now as a contributing editor. So keep your eyes peeled and stripped and propped with toothpicks for the newly born mag Swink!
Speaking of newborn mags, yet another makes it debut: the legendary amazing fantabulous writer Steve Erickson, a fellow Topanga Canyonite, dreamed up and is editing a way cool new lit mag BLACK CLOCK, out of CalArts. Black Clock just had its launch party this past Wednesday, March 17th, at Disney Halls' radical Redcat Theater. Knockout writers like the loverly Aimee Bender to Heidi Julavits (very pregnant) to her hubbie Ben Marcus to Geoff Dyer (also in Swink with me, I think he even has the other "Peregrinations" essay) all read. I missed it because I taught, but was there in spirit. The always hysterical and darkly funny, bright and saucy Bruce Bauman, also an editor at Black Clock, was there with his talented painter wife Suzan Woodrfuff, stirring the party. The mag's available, so go out and snag one! Support a real live L.A. lit mag, born and raised here. Do not miss Bruce's brilliant and spicy novel excerpt set in India, Steve Erickson's extraordinary interview with Samuel R. Delany, another legend; and many others. When I was researching for the erotic book publishing gig, I read Sam Delaney's memoir from the late 60's in Greenwich Village, THE MOTION OF LIGHT IN WATER, about going to Bronx Science, growing up black, homosexual, marrying poet Marilyn Hacker, writing sci-fi, anonymous liasons in the twilit docks, and all kinds of other intense, groovy things. I could not put this book down.
Last September, the Los Angeles Times published an essay I wrote for the "Where I Live" series for the new Home section. Editor Barbara King invited me to write something else, so I pitched her an article about clutter. See, my landlords have been busting on me for, I blush to admit, years, to get rid of this pile of stuff in the garage. I couldn't. So I pitched the article, and the Times sent out a professional Zen Organizer to help me kickstart the process. As usual, Dylan Landis, the writer I've mentioned to you who's got a whole lotta buzz around her, the Tin House mag who's got a stunning story in Dave Eggers' Best American Non-Required Reading collection, and just finished her first novel, FLOORWORK! which we can't wait to see on the shelves!!! inspired me vis a vis clutter, and supplied the ending for the entire piece with the concept for a book she once meant to write. But I won't spoil it for you. The Times took Before pics. This week they will take After pics -- so piece should run soon. Will keep you posted.
WAKE-UP CALL: THREE DAYS OF BUKIDO F.I.S.T TRAINING
I've also pitched another story to the Los Angeles Times, on a very intense self-defense course called F.I.S.T. training via the Bukido way. Check out www.bukido.com. This would be for the Calendar section. I already participated -- and barely survived! -- the grueling three-day course. Taught by muy intenso ex-Navy SEAL/sniper/hand-to-hand combat specialist (read: killer) with a penchant for multiple aggressors (!!! I saw him dispense with a slew of seasoned and superior fight veterans, whether military or karate or krav maga-trained -- didn't matter; he tossed them all as if they were flimsy leaves of salad), Richard Machowicz, author of UNLEASH THE WARRIOR WITHIN, (who's also interestingly training to be a Zen priest!), this course kicked my ass. I made the mistake of trying to be super-honest on the screen-out questionnaire. When asked if I'd gotten in a physical fight, I said something like, naw, but I'm surprised I haven't 'cuz sometimes I shoot my mouth off, I probably have some anger issues...so yeah. So that first early EARLY morning, Machowicz says, Well, instead of picking the biggest, roughest guy for this demonstration, Rachel, you said some stuff in your answers that indicate you should be the one. Would you like to get choked? I guess I said yes, 'cuz they have it on video. It was before 8am -- I shouldn't be held accountable! But you can't choose when you're getting attacked, right? Imagine. Er, hold off, Mr. Attacker, wouldja? I need to catch my breath, okay? Can you put that gun away? Anyway, talk about a wake-up call. Damn. I always wanted to know what I'd do if attacked; got my answer. F*ck-all. Not when it's a creepy scary Navy SEAL bearing down with Mask of Gargoyle, Speed of Superhero and Glowing Maniac Killer Eyes -- nope. I checked out! Panicked. For those crucial first few ticking seconds -- the last ones you have to do anything. And by the time I recovered enough to gouge a deep bloody scratch from edge of eye to ear of shaved cranium -- I would've been dead. Well on the path to Dead. After I croaked "Uncle," my face ground into the mat and body twisted like a deformed pretzel, and he let me up, I got what felt like instant swollen glands. Machowicz was not kidding around. He choked me pretty damn good. Had to yell the rest of the three days as the voice is one of the most powerful weapons, and that yelling, in conjuction with delightful neck choke, left me literally speechless once the course was over for few days. In more ways than one, as the course was one of the most profound things I've done to date -- and that's saying a lot, let me tell you, hellhound that I am. But believe you me, on the third and final day when Machowicz asked, "So, Rachel, you'd know what to do now if I choked you, right?" And before I could say no, there he was again, on me, eyes burning holes through my flesh, iron fingers throttling my throat. That time I stared him in the eye, didn't lose it, waited a beat, then roared like a goddamn pissed-off tiger and slashed right for his eyes, as he'd taught us. That's just a taste of this life-changing course. The whole three-day thing was no-let-up heavy wildness, with a fascinating group of people -- six guys and one other woman besides myself. There were many breakdowns, tears, howls, bruises, many epiphanies and revelations, incredible displays of courage and fear and moxie. And I love that the whole thing went down in the nearby Santa Monica Zen Center! Can't wait to write it up, but am waiting on the official contract from the Calendar editor. Will keep you posted. Only problem is going to be choosing what material to keep in. Course my good friend the spectacularly stunning and talented fiery redheaded salsa queen Samantha Dunn (author of countless articles for Men's Fitness, Glamour, etc., and of stellar books NOT BY ACCIDENT: RECONSTRUCTING A CARELESS LIFE and FAILING PARIS) turned me on to this odyssey, as Machowicz is her ex! Chew on that why don'tcha!!! I've now adopted Machowicz's fierce motto: Not dead, can't quit! Talk about altered states.
THE DICTIONARY OF FAILED RELATIONSHIPS (Three Rivers Press), edited by Meredith Broussard, is out and selling like gangbusters. "'M' Is For 'Muay Thai'" is the piece that appears there, and is excerpted from this second novel-in-progress.
STUDENT NEWS
After teaching at UCLA, and Antioch, Chapman, various private workshops for the last five plus years -- I've got a bunch of former students who are making the news with their publishing, MFA'ing, or general antics! PLEASE SEND IN NEWS TO ME IF YOU ARE A FORMER STUDENT, OR KNOW OF NEWS OF ONE! And click on back issues to see earlier news.
Aaron Jacobs, founding editor of forthcoming Los Angeles mag Quench, had a story come out in the excellent Surfer's Path mag out of London. Here's the link where you can get a salt-tang taste of his story, "Living With Water": The Surfer's Path: "Living With Water" Aaron's now working on a documentary about African-American surfers. Turns out these guys get their hair cut at the same place as Aaron.
Mindi Combs, one of my excellent workshop members from the O.C. and Chapman program, has a balls-out essay forthcoming in an anthology, put out by Seal Press. The essay's about hunting, and her father. More info as it comes.
Wes Alderson, long-time workshop member, had a story called "Parking Structure Three" that he worked on in its squawling infant stages in a long-ago UCLA CLASS, come out in an antho TRAFFIC LIFE: PASSIONATE TALES AND EXIT STRATEGIES (Wandering Soliton Publications) alongside such sci-fi luminaries as Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison!
Annie Soininen, who's hard at work on her first smash novel though she keeps reworking the first chapter -- every time a new way, and equally enthralling! is now writing a witty, insightful daily column for the online publication Women's Wall Street Journal called DAILY CENTS.
March 21, 2004
Dear all,
Time's playing tricks, unravelling faster, spinning like a shiny silver disco ball refracting into nether dimensions. There was Seoul & Shanghai, an Asiatic interlude; a trip to New York to hustle the next book -- a psycho-sexual thriller crossed with detective stories and diaries of secrets and shame -- ; and various other Topanga adventures.
Seoul & Shanghai were polar opposites. Thanksgiving in Shanghai. Not too shabby. I made sure to get massaged by a blind man in Shanghai. It's traditional that blind men do massage there in China. Seoul seemed like a more American city than any American city, until you dug a little deeper. Luckily I got to infiltrate the vibrant theater scene, catching stunning performances by playwrights and directors like Oh-Tae-Sok, Asia's Bertold Brecht, and intrepretations of one of my favorite plays, "Woyzeck" by George Buchner by mime specialists trained in Paris. Visiting the DMZ put things in perspective, and opened up the foundation beneath the teeming urbanscape -- a wonder considering the devastation from the war of only fifty or so years ago, when the place was condemned to be primitive and backward, and donkeys still roamed the streets. It's cleaner and more high-powered than any American city I know. A miracle.
But Shanghai was far more exotic. The air was thick as stew, stung the eyes; the buildings were out of a mad sci-fi book, colossal, changing and morphing daily, from deco insanity to avant-mod skyscrapers, Jetson towers to Communist block-building. Only four days, including Thanksgiving dinner in a smoke-filled room packed with modern-day Chinese gangsters and their satin-decked molls in Suzie Wongs with thigh-high slits, a scattering of off-duty plate-spinning acrobats -- all of us surrounded by a veritable burbling aquarium fashioned out of stacked tanks filled with every manner of sea creature from humongous goldfish to shark to turtle to spiny urchin, which you would point at and then devour. Giving everything a watery, smoky, otherwordly feeling which the MSG buzzzzzzzzz and toxic air, massaged limbs only exaggerated. I could've stayed there for months, and can't wait to go back.
There is more news, but this is my first newsy stab, my inital jousting acknowledgment of springtime, rebirth, resurrection of the irreverent.
Peace,
Rachel
Click to get back issues of updates -- more gossip, ranting!
Falling Into Winter Into Spring Renaissance: Nov. 2003 - Feb. 2004, With Scent of India
September 2003: Lusty Divorcees!!! A Different Drumbeat -- LA Times essay on Topanga
May & Summer 2003: R.I.P. Eddie Little
December-February 2003: India! White Tigers, Cremations, Maharajas & A One-Legged Sadhus from Texas
Winter 2002 -- Back-to-Back Black Book Covers -- All Things Cusackian & "Meant Work"
Summer Splash 2002: Entering Beckworld and Other Self-Tanning Adventures in Scribbling
December 2001-January 2002: General Holidaze, & The Erotic Side of the Flu
September-November 2001 -- the 9.11 Spread, This New World Of Ours
September 2nd Update: Loss of Lima, and, other ramblings from the days before The World Changed
June-August 2001: Off the Rails at Track 16 Gallery & Other Tales
April/May 2001: Second Pick-of-the-Litter Winners! plus Snap and trash from Tin House bash
December/January 2001: Happy Kwanzaa Send-Off, Holidazing
November 2000 Update: Seven Deadly Sins Contest! Plus Bonus Political Rant
June 2000 Update: Hell's Angels, Rocking the Tin House, and More!
February 2000 Update: My Bloody Valentine