NEWSFLASH!!! December 1st deadline on a sharply distilled version of novella-in-progress for Steve Erickson and CalArts' BLACK CLOCK lit mag (see http://blackclock.org). This piece -- still Untitled -- a darkly comic tale of miscarriage set in India with a protagonist on assignment from a travel mag to seek tigers who along the way has many bizarre encounters -- will come out in Black Clock 3, along with heavy-hitters like Michael Chabon, Richard Powers & Joanna Scott. A real honor.
Big thanks to the legendary Steve, a fellow Topangan, and the groovy associate editor, Bruce Bauman (who has his first novel forthcoming -- AND THE WORD WAS -- Other Press/New York -- to be distributed by Norton this April 2005 -- the same ultracool press that puts out Arnon Grunberg of BLUE MONDAYS fame. Bruce has already gotten raves from hotshot writers from Rebecca Goldstein to Hope Edelman.)
This past November 7th, in the wake of the unspeakable abomination of recent elections, I read a short bit from the Black Clock piece-in-progress at the ever-gracious and down-to-earth tuxedoed Jim Ruland's irreverent reading series "Vermin on the Mount" at new reading hotspot the Mountain Bar in L.A.'s downtown Chinatown -- right across from the wishing well on walk street Gin Ling Way. Other readers included Xeni Jardin who mesmerized with her throaty rendition of a kickass essay called "Zero Gravity." Also totally charming readings by Scott O'Connor (AMONG WOLVES) and Sean Carswell (BARNEY'S CREW). Leelila Strogov of SWINK mag was there, along with groovy poets & writers Meghan Daum, legendary pugilist-of-no-bullshit-words Larry Fondation (recent hardhitting book COMMON CRIMINALS), Bett Williams (fellow St. Martin's writer with her knockout GIRL WALKING BACKWARDS), Tin House star Dylan Landis, ever sparkly poetess Kristin Herbert and others. Check out the heartbreaker February reading featuring bestselling novelist and non-fiction writer Meghan Daum and others. Catch more info at Jim's website: www.lazymick.com.
Heard from Bruce David at Hustler mag about maybe doing some writing for them. Saw the Blazing Advice Goddess, sexy Amy Alkon, has a piece in the recent issue How To Tell When Chicks Are Lying. Next up, she's writing a pro-porn piece. Should be tasty. Also, Susie Bright, who was the grooviest when we did the conversation at last April's L.A. Times Festival of Books, will have a piece dealing with porn, too. Maybe I should jump in the torrid mix. Will keep you posted.
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PUBLICATIONS, CURRENT AND UPCOMING:
BLACK BOOK MAGAZINE/JAN./DEC. RITUAL ISSUE on newsstands now: Hotcha interview with supertalented and supersexy Spanish starlet PAZ VEGA -- a real bullfighter's daughter and the warmest, lushest, most natural woman in person. We met at Asia de Cuba restaurant in the Mondrian hotel on October 9th. Just over a week later -- of All Paz Vega All The Time -- I banged out the piece and turned it in, after soaking in the heartwrenching sounds of Gypsy flamenco singer Manuel Torre, lighting votive candles and skimming back through Bataille's STORY OF THE EYE at the bullfight for moral and muse support.
LOS ANGELES TIMES' BUKIDO ARTICLE/ESSAY "UNLEASH THE WARRIOR WITHIN": On Thursday, November 11, 2004, the Bukido piece finally came out -- with Mack's psycho-screaming face splashed all over the cover of the Weekend pull-out Calendar section. I've gotten some great feedback. Seems people dug the portraits of participant's wake-up calls, from a searing breakthrough by Mormon Travis Healy to children's book writer Nancy Marks to Florida journalist Brian Hodges -- not to mention my own bookended chokefest. Talk about humiiation -- but also serious wake-up calls. I worked with editor Alice Short on this, and she is the sharpest, most level-headed, no-nonsense editor ever. Check out www.bukido.com. As for the article, I did send a copy to all Subscribers. I will also figure out how to do a link and post it here if you like. It's just under 2,000 words.
WOMEN ON THE EDGE: an anthology edited by none other than the Salsa Queen herself, Samantha Dunn (NOT BY ACCIDENT: RECONSTRUCTING A CARELESS LIFE and the forthcoming summer beachread phenom IN SEARCH OF CARLOS GOMEZ about the seriously steamy -- not seamy! no never! -- side of L.A. salsa.) WOMEN ON THE EDGE, forthcoming with the Toby Press/U.K. (www.tobypress.com for more info) includes other writers like: Lisa Teasley, Julianne Ortale (who wrote this amazing and darkly surreal story about a senior citizen who lactates), Mary Rakow and others with a foreward by the dancing Scorpionic goddess Janet Fitch (WHITE OLEANDER). Very cool company. There was a reference to it in a recent L.A. Times' article about L.A. writers where Sam was interviewed and quoted. The piece that appears here is another version, boiled down, of "Meat-Eaters of Marrakesh." Seems that thorny hallucinatory story fit right in with the general prickly, balls-out female writing Sam was aiming for. That's the third incarnation of "Meat-Eaters."
Here's the relevant bit from the L.A. Times' article (July 6th, 2004) by crack journalist Anne-Marie O'Connor: "Novelist Samantha Dunn thinks Los Angeles' more open-ended society makes it a good place for writers to take stylistic risks. Dunn, author of FAILING PARIS, is editing WOMEN ON THE EDGE, an anthology of female writers who she believes benefit from L.A.'s nonpuritancial culture. "These are women who have a daring view," she said of the writers she has selected. "Inside, something really wild is going on. It manifests itself in language.
Dunn is including Mary Rakow, author of the award-winning MEMORY ROOM, Anita Santiago and LIsa Teasley. There is Julianne Ortale's surrealist tale of a 60-year-old woman who begins to lactate and the edgy sexuality of Rachel Resnick in a story set in Marrakech."
There was also a piece on L.A. Lit mags by Lynell George that day, talking mostly about Swink, Black Clock, and the L.A. Review (recently guest-edited by the funkiest writing duo sexpot poet Gail Wronsky and prose-writing cowboy Chuck Rosenthal, also Topangans) -- and I got a mention with Swink. There's also been a N.Y. Times writer sniffing around L.A. looking for a story on the L.A. literary scene -- be interesting to see what she serves up as she investigates.
STUDENT NEWS
After teaching at UCLA, and Antioch, Chapman, mediabistro.com, & various workshops for the last ten or so 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 has a piece in the elite surf journal out of London, Surfer's Path, on the Melrose Ave. Barber Shop -- which turns out to be the centrigual force of black surfing. Upcoming, he's got a piece on chick surfers in Jamaica after the hurricane. Right now Aaron's in Barbados, along with Woody Lovell, owner of the Barber Shop, dodging nasty sea urchins with reef booties and tearing it up in Bathsheba.
Annie Soininen, hit a nerve when she wrote about a flight she took with her husband and son, and believed she shared the flight with some wannabe terrorists It was called, "Terror In The Skies," and ran in her daily column for the online publication Women's Wall Street Journal called DAILY CENTS. The first day there were a hundred hits. The next day a thousand. Then ten thousand. Annie wrote under the name Anne Jacobsen. Check out www.womenswallstreet.com for more info.
November 28, 2004
Dear all,
Welcome to the annual Bermuda Triangle of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year! Made it through the first one. And still alive. Disappeared myself briefly to Desert Hot Springs, floated like a wonton in a splurgey Jacuzzi suite and hid from screaming, brattish kids and Middle-Americans who voted for Bush out by poolside, and pretended there was no such thing never as Pilgrims. An oasis of calm in a hellish, Boschian fall recently plunged into more personal darkness. No details necessary, but let the darkness stir the creative cauldron -- or all's lost. As Flannery O'Connor said: Ain't no pleasure in life.
And yet. And yet. We're here. We live. We create, whether out of pain, disappointment, frustration, peace, ecstasy albeit brief -- or whatever. Always room for humor! Though a certain brand of humor perhaps more along the lines of Thomas Bernhard than David Sedaris, charming as he is -- the Christmas Elf maybe plays more aptly as the man who murdered his wheelchair-bound wife with the Mannlicher carbine that was strapped conveniently to the back of her wheelchair. But then, each to his own holiday pleasure.
It's been a long time. There've been computer crashes, data salvaging, new computers, data transfers, technical glitches galore -- but now, it's all sussed out and we -- Ajax, the mad scarlet macaw marauder, and I -- are here. Back. So strap yourself in.
This fall has been non-stop laboring. Three classes. A rondelay of writing instructing -- including a cool one called 12-Week Novelist Bootcamp for www.salon.com affiliated www.mediabistro.com . A cover story for L.A. Times Weekend calendar, a cover story for Black Book, and the new piece for Black Clock. The latter's been very exciting because it's just gotten longer and longer -- and may serve as a centerpiece for a collection -- long overdue -- of published stories all ruminating and/or celebrating and/or mucking about in fun arenas of Sex and Death. What better?
Fiery Sam Dunn recently did a piece on Casual Sex for O, Oprah's Magazine. She set the groovy piece on the Santa Monica stairs where she and I have been known to pound the steep stairs, quads screaming, yakking out-of-breath about, well, usually sex. Sex and Loooovve. The Ultimate Killer. In this piece, she changed my name to Rina and let me wax on about casual sex while huffing up and down. I'll check to find which issue it was, or excerpt it. Pretty amusing.
The ultimate grand-dame of letters here in La-La, Carolyn See, formerly Queen of the Canyon -- did the coolest thing by making sure they endowed this new fund over at UCLA for L.A. Literature and SoCal Writers for grad students studying that area. She cajoled, she fought, she stood strong, she donated her own money -- and she made it happen. Practically everyone in literary town was there on Nov. 14th to celebrate and pay homage. Ms. See rocks, and supplies the rock of this SoCal scribbling scene.
The other nite at the Chateau Marmont, I went to visit my friend the saucy, talented, witty bombshell and wunderkind Emma Forrest for her "birthday." Out on the patio, Emma had admirers and well-wishers ranging from Elijah Wood (Hobbit guy) to Mos Def. Needless to say, I creamed when I saw Mos Def. I've always been a big fan -- though I saw the fantabulous Don Cheadle act in Suzan Lori Parks' "Topdog/Underdog" along with Jeffrey Wright at the Public. The Chateau was busting out with Irish, drunk Irish, crammed into every stairwell, sitting in every sill -- seems every one was a Colin Farrell cousin, in town for the opening of "Alexander" the next nite. Out on the patio, one thing led to another, martini, as it does at the Chateau -- a kind of bubble within Hollywood, where all types collide if they happen to be in the bubble -- and we all ended up in Mos Def's bungalow watching sneakpeeks of his latest vids -- including a porn-rad one in a Jersey biker titty bar -- and other more politically edged stuff. Mos held forth on why Elvis ruined pop music by bringing on the cheese factor, how West Coast bands can't keep it together because of the "Lone Gunman" mentality -- all spliced with tasty Dave Chappelle-worthy "honkytalk" white mockery -- and serious rapidfast brainwaves leaping from new self-help movements to made-up cover bands. I suggested a story to Black Book ala Pico Iyer's LAX live-in for the Chateau -- that place is still a hub, inside but somehow outside Hollywood, or maybe, more accurately, just is Hollywood. The best part of it. Hell, it's where Hunter Thompson holds court.
A wish: May we all find our inner Hollywoods and Hollyweirds this present Bermuda Triangle time -- and slash out some hard-edged art out of the suffering vortex.
Peace,
Rachel
Click to get back issues of updates -- more gossip, ranting!
Seoul & Shanghai Surprise: Spring/Summer 2004 Pornification with All-Star Susie Bright
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