BIT O' BACKGROUND: I started this website as an experiment, and pasted the site info on my paperback when it came out this past Spring. The response has been amazing. Rather than just having tons of static info about Yours Truly on the site (though it's there too if you want it), I wanted to provide some services. One is the ever-morphing monthly calendar where I post events of talented friends, or people I dig -- from literary to art to fashion to erotic fiction workshops to music and stuff in between.
Then the fiction contest. After years of sending my shit out here, there, and everywhere, and accumulating a thousand rejections, I know there's room for more venues to showcase fiction. Why not on a website? Why not even outside of a straight-up online lit mag or 'zine?
I've been knocked out by the response, and the work. Not only that, but one of the first contest winners has already been contacted by an agent who's interested in more work! You never know.
Also, just started teaching again at UCLA Extension, very cool talented class, so will post some writing tips and ramblings cooked up in there. Did an experimental one week daily electronic handout with sample short-short, daily technique, and requisite writer riffing that the class ate up. Maybe I'll post some highlights from those. What do you think?
UPCOMING READING IN VENICE: Mark your calendars and spread the word!!! Saturday, November 18, 2000, at the dark and lovely Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, 310-822-3006, ever-sexy blackleatherclad New York prose rocker FRAN GORDON (author of smash debut novel PAISLEY GIRL, recently honored by QPB's New Voices series; reading event capo at National Arts Club in NYC and all-round literary champion flyweight) will be reading; and she has invited me to read with her. PLUS, PLUS, I maybe just might just hustle up a mystery guest third reader -- or not. We'll see if trinity or dyad is way to go. Either way, me and Fran'll do our best to blow your minds, I guarantee. The event starts at 7:30pm. Address: 681 Venice Blvd, Venice. Please click on CALENDAR for more details. I will read new material, fresh off the brain's grill, and whet your appetite for book two. See you there!
ANOTHER READING IN VENICE: On
November 30th, Thursday, from 7 to 9, my talented students from UCLA
Extension class will read their work at fab indie bookstores right on
boardwalk Small World Books, 1407 Ocean Front Walk, Venice, CA
90291,310-399-2360, fax 310-399-4512 email: info@smallworldbooks.com
www.smallworldbooks.com
-- free drink and nibbles, say they, ever
gracious. I always end the classes their with the final class being a
public reading. Come check out the voices of tomorrow after a stint at
Muscle Beach!
OTHER NEWSFLASHES, UPCOMING PUBLICATIONS: I've just been made a contributing editor at Tin House magazine! Helluvan honor. Keep eye out for special film-lit issue of Tin House magazine, due end of January early February. There will be a celebratory reading at BOOK SOUP, FEBRUARY 7TH. DON'T MISS. Tons of cool LA writers who straddle the worlds of film and literature will read -- Jerry Stahl, Ann Magnuson, Anne Beatts, and many more -- maybe Bruce Wagner, Michael Tolkin -- all contributors to mag. More info as we get closer.
Don't forget to pick up the paperback of GO WEST YOUNG F*CKED-UP CHICK if you haven't already gotten one -- that is, if you want to see me finish a second book! Also, support your local indie bookstores -- Skylight, Midnight Special, Dutton's, Small World Books, Vroman's, etc. Check out Skylights' new online presence @ www.skylightbooks.com . You can even order books through them! I'll be messing with and updating my website to incorporate that info -- balance out the amazon presence.
Hah! Wrote the below before the BANANA REPUBLIC aka USA came into being. What a bizarreness. Let the below stand as a testimony to life PRE-Election2000 when all was still, ahm, innocent?
BEWARE: BRIEF BUT VITRIOLIC POLITICAL RANT BELOW:
And finally, MAKE SURE YOU FUCKING VOTE THIS TUESDAY! AND PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE DON'T LET BUSH WIN!!! REMEMBER THE SUPREME COURT -- WHOEVER WINS WILL APPOINT JUSTICES (AT LEAST THREE) WE'LL HAVE TO LIVE WITH FOR MANY YEARS -- AND DON'T FORGET THE ENVIRONMENT. OR A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE. DO YOU WANT A FUCKING BRAINDEAD IDIOT PHONY FRAT BOY RUNNING THE COUNTRY? YOUR COUNTRY? GET OUT AND VOTE! (And Naderites beware. Though I applaud certain aspects of Nader, he's fucking the race and if he wants to really build the Green Party of which I'm in favor then back the fuck out and show the country he's bigger than his ego and misguided attempt to shockjock the Democrats into more liberal less corporatized platform -- too much damage will follow in the wake of a win by the odious and dangerous Bush (remember Humphrey-Nixon?! same strategy, awful results, more 'Nam, Kent State, etc. etc.). PLEASE! Inform yourselves, and get out and vote.) DON'T LET BUSH WIN!!!
Dear readers, subscribers, browsers, friends, fans, foes!
DON'T FORGET TO ENTER FICTION CONTEST #2!!!
Whoa, been so long since I updated, apologies. Life as a modern webmistress! More to juggle, but totally worth it. Feels like a burgeoning cybercommunity, taking shape, via the website. Very fucking cool.
Anyway, today will just be a quick update with more to follow. In the throes of writing on new book -- preparing for reading at Beyond Baroque November 18th with superstar Fran Gordon. Finishing out work on that special film-lit Tin House magazine issue. Did an off-the-cuff wacked interview with Andras Hamori, producer of flicks like "Sunshine," "Existenz," "Crash," "The Sweet Hereafter." Just been made contributing editor at Tin House! A high honor indeed -- joining the august company of writers like: Dorothy Allison, Irvine Welsh, Rick Moody.
For the final class at UCLA Extension we always have a public reading -- that'll be November 30th at Small World Books in Venice. Each student reads for five minutes leaving the audience panting for more from these talented debut writers, yowza.
Just now finished George Saunders new collection of short stories, Pastoralia. Brilliant. Never will I look at a themepark quite the same way. Check him out if you haven't. Named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty under forty writers best American fiction writers, this guy deserves it. Trippy savage funny satire with tiny doses of hope for those who still crave it.
And now, I'll cop some 'graphs from a note I just wrote to Jerry Stahl, with whom I've been in correspondence for the Tin House issue -- [Stahl added a wild section to his interview where, after Ann Magnuson finishes with him, Alf steps in. Truly and beautifully deranged.] What I wrote in answer to some of his questions:
"What am I doing. No, not all Tin
House all the time. Just have a tendency to pitbull something until the
bitter end or beyond and I was in so deep, so invested in that issue for
all kindsa reasons, boosting LA writers in face of NY-centered lit
snobbishness, etc. -- but am now focussing on second book. Juggling
teaching, occasional other money-generating brainsuck jobs. Then in this
new work, sinking into sociopathic dimensions, mind-travelling viscerally
jacked-up third world settings, excavating more fucked dynamics, head
turmoils and unhinged loins -- land I love. Can't control how dark the
muse, right?
There's this image -- I'm in Costa Rica, a flock of scarlet macaws stains
the sky red while a Capuchin monkey that looks like someone's miniature
raging bald grandmother hurls a rotten mango at my head. What's it all
mean?"
There you have it. A bit of update. Or, something. A wing window opening
momentarily into the writer's always happy, always buoyant existence. More
to come as more unfolds and inspiration knocks me upside the head.
Thank you for your subscriptions, and keep 'em coming! As usual, don't hesitate from giving me suggestions -- and keep checking CALENDAR for upcoming events -- and thank you again for visiting the site!
Signing off from Topanga,
Rachel
Click to get back issues of updates -- more gossip, ranting!
June 2000 Update: Hell's Angels, Rocking the Tin House, and More!