AmyKossBlogThang

Goodbye Little Fliff 2009 - 2012

2012-02-20T17:08:00.000-08:00

You were a great bunny.
xo
Amy

Heartbreak in the Garden

2012-02-12T14:54:00.000-08:00

Yes, emotions are the meat of the human experience, but still, so many of them are unpleasant! Sorrow and grief certainly suck. Jealousy, anger, fear, dread, shame...

And as if sloshing through the mandatory emotional stew isn't enough, there are those days of extra helpings. It could be blood sugar level, PMS, jet lag, the result of a sleepless night... and BAM! Suddenly feelings are dialed up to super-hyper-excruciating. Everything seems unbearably poignant, unutterably sad, overwhelmingly touching.

I’d been out of town for a week. (long story) So this morning, I took my coffee into the sunshine, to survey the empire, and see how all fared in my absence.

Someone had shred toilet paper in the azaleas. It had to be either my husband or my dog since they were the only ones uncaged. And neither of them had watered. But in spite of the abuse and neglect, my carrot patch had flourished. In fact, it had grown so crowded it needed to be thinned.

I’ve never had luck transplanting carrots. Instead of re-rooting they'd always faint and wither. Thinning therefore means putting some plants to death so the ones around them can grow.

You see where this is going.

Luckily, I have a bunny and a Guinea pig who are happy to eat the delicate tops and tiny pale pre-carrots, so it isn’t exactly a waste.

But still, how do I pick? Just reach in blindly and pull? Comb through looking for the smallest?

I choked up over the jumble of hopeful green -- the magic combo of water, sunlight, and dirt, growing exactly where I'd once cavalierly scattered their seeds.

The arbitrariness of life and death was suddenly breath taking.

The inequality of power between myself -- large, and mammalian and determined -- and the baby carrot plants -- innocent and entirely defenseless.

Wally Dog watched me get weepy and offered to shred another roll of toilet paper to snap me back to the business at hand.

Thank goodness for dogness.

Amy

Amy's Believe it or Not!

2012-02-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

Dearest Dears,

Starting tomorrow, Monday, February 6th, I, Amy Goldman Koss, am off for six days to grade THE NATION'S REPORT CARD! Yes, me and 59 other volunteers (read unpaid) shall be sequestered by the United States Department of Education to do whatever it is people like us do under the circumstances, for the NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress to evaluate the writing skills of American students. (Training on site.)

There is an unofficial pool afloat re. how long I will last before either being drummed out by the government project leaders when they discover that I am a high school drop out who cannot spell, who harbors an intense hatred and distrust of authority, as well as a bone-deep skepticism regarding formulaic evaluation of creative skills.

OR I bolt for the airport in screaming boredom and/or horror.

Love and Kisses

Your,

Amy

PS. I have indeed signed a confidentiality agreement, so will report back in full upon my return.
In the interim, please feel free to weigh in with your feelings about The Nation's Report Card, our current system of evaluating student writing, or my likelihood of completing this six day, 8:30am -5:30 pm project, intact.

A Morbid Little Blog

2012-01-27T22:11:00.000-08:00

Once Upon a Time I was pretty sure I’d live forever and have all the time and energy in the world to write whatever I wanted.

Then time sped up. Decades passed in a blur. The rate of death around me rose from the rare, hideously tragic, premature death, to the more mundane sad but not entirely unexpected. Now I find myself able to discuss the relative merits of various funeral/memorial styles with aplomb, and have opinions on how I'd like my own "celebration" managed.

Which makes a woman start asking herself this: If it takes a year or two to write a book, and a year or so to find the right home for it, then a year or two for that home to kill all the necessary trees or whatever it is they do that takes them so long to get the damn thing printed... Well, she begins to wonder how many more of those cycles of waiting, and rejection, and waiting, and hope, and waiting, does she have left in her? How many more can she stand?

And she asks herself this, too: Remember that guy* with locked-in-syndrome who had to blink out his exquisite little novel The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? letter by letter with his one good eye?

Shouldn’t we, (and by “we” I mean “I”) concentrate on writing only the stories that are so dear and important to us that if we had to, we’d blink them out?

That leads to the other question: Which of my books would I have written if I’d had to blink them?

Oy!

Laziness being as it is, I know I’d sooner eat whatever they served me in the home than blink even my menu selection.

None the less, a new book must be started. Never mind that beginnings are not what they used to be. Never mind that if I swam, which I don't, I'd have to enter the pool from the ladder now, rather than the high board.

Never mind that I can no longer just jump in, tra-la-la, and start banging away at any old book. I can't pretend not to know how l-o-n-g and hard the process is. Can't trick myself into thinking it will be easy.

So, it has to be a book worthy of the countless future hours and months of straining to get it right, of the sore back and stiff fingers and furrowed brow, and eye strain. Worthy of self-inflicted misery, insecurity, pacing and re-writing and sleeplessness and self doubt.

Because even if it’s not “blinking” it’s still blinking.

And even if we're feeling fine, we never know which book will be our last.

Amy

*Jean-Dominique Bauby

Recycled Birthday!

2012-01-19T16:55:00.000-08:00

(Dear Dears, can't write right now, so am running a b'day op-ed from the LA Times (with a few tiny edits) from last year. If you feel that's cheating, feel free to skip it and just send CASH!)

Every year about this time I start to squirm, watching my birthday lumber forth. I'm glad not to be dead. And even though my birthdays come way more often than they used to, and their numbers are surreal, I'm content to keep aging. That's not the problem.

The dilemma is what to do with the damn thing.

That is, after I've checked my newspaper horoscope, gleaning pertinent wisdom for the year ahead. Then, to my computer, where my b'day alert will have magically appeared on the screens of every one of my nine-hundred and forty-million close, personal Facebook friends.

But the chore of pressing the refresh button and typing my heartfelt "Thanks!" over and over will only dispatch a fraction of the day. If I'd planned better, I might be able to eat my way across town gorging on free birthday meals, but I've neglected to sign up for any.

It's the puzzling birthday life cycle at work.

As a little girl, when birthdays seemed eons apart, I'd recover from the disappointment of one less-than-magnificent birthday in time to get giddy in anticipation of the next. But I slowly learned that happiness didn't come in a box, no matter how promising the bow.

The next phase in my birthday evolution was wanting it to be an event. A big, crowded, noisy, inebriated celebration of my fabulousness by classmates, co-workers, strangers in bars…

After that, I just wanted my boyfriend/husband to do something romantic, which led to the next phase — kids.

During the chaos of planning and cleaning up, physically and emotionally, from my children's birthdays (the jumping houses, reptile sleepovers, chicken pox), my own birthday wishes ran from wanting a chance to shower alone in peace to fruitlessly begging the kids not to fight for the entire day, and maybe clean their rooms.

Years later, my wish was that I not have to bail them out or talk them down on my birthday.

My mom, in her 80s, keeps her birthdays quiet so the Evil Eye won't notice she's still alive. The only gift she requests each year is that my dad get rid of something from the basement.

My dad is pleased if the kids call, but I suspect his dearest birthday wishes are to see another birthday — and not to have to part with anything from the basement.

My mother-in-law still wants something sparkly for her birthday to make her friends jealous. My husband likes to hike to the top of things. My brother wants to smoke a cigar indoors. My kids just want money.

I turned 50 a few years back, right in the middle of my daughter's chemotherapy treatments for Hodgkin's lymphoma. Until her diagnosis, I'd been dithering about maybe having a party for myself, since 50 seemed like such a big deal. Ha! Life and its shifting expectations.

And that brings us to now. My babies have grown, survived and flown. I no longer have to feign interest in blowing out candles or hearing the birthday dirge. I don't need or want anything you can wrap; I can shower unmolested whenever I wish; and I already eat plenty of cake.

So, I shrug, and go back to sleep.
xo

Amy

New Years!

2011-12-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

As I pack I tell myself, “At home I may pull on the same soggy jeans week after month, and shlump around in my ratty sneaks, but the woman I will be on vacation probably wears outfits and srappy sandals. This floral smock lurking in the depths of my closet will be perfect!”

Actually, I‘ve slipped this particular dress into many backpacks and suitcases over the millennium, so why are the tags still on it?

That's because ever since some ancient shopping bout of delusion, it has been lying in state awaiting either my radical personality change, or its own Resurrection to the thrift store. Well traveled, never worn.

Why? Because when ever I get where I’m going, I invariably find my lazy, comfort loving, ratty sneaks wearing self there waiting for me.

And yet, there's something so sweet about the packing self. The self awash with unrealistic fantasies, flush with faith in the possibility of change, willing to suspend disbelief and imagine myself as someone who holds her stomach in.

The same part of my mind that allows me to re-pack that silly dress, allows me to make New Years Resolutions, although I know I’ll unpack them next December with the tags intact.

As a fiction writer I certainly believe we are all entitled to the full range of human emotion and delusion. So -- Come the New Year I will write EVERY DAY! Fingers on the keys, mind on the plot, eyes on the screen. Perhaps cutting off one finger or toe any day I don't write -- allowing me 20 (very bloody) days off.

I will also diet and exercise like a woman who believes she is mortal -- or die trying.

And I'll either wear that damn dress -- or fly it as a symbol of fashion liberation.

And here’s The Who performing I WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zydAs5bRW1U

Happy New Year!

Amy

Out-Of-House-Trifecta!

2011-12-16T10:42:00.000-08:00

I am here to report that this is a big country and not all lives are identical! This I know to be true having recently had three (3) illuminating Out-Of-House-Adventures!

The 1st was a school visit to a tiny town in southern Illinois which, recently went from being a poor mining town to being an even poorer ex-mining town.

The shuttered coal mine.

I visited their cemetery and ate at 3 of their (I think) three restaurants. One being Dairy Queen.
Most of the town consisted of small homes, grassy fields, major woodsy parts with spectacular fall colors, foolishly fearless deer, horses, cows, and a sprawling K-8 school of enthusiastic, mostly blond, white kids whose principal looked like Southern Barbie.

When the school first called to arrange my visit and ask about ordering my books, I suggested they contact their local independent bookstore. HA! HA! HA! Now I know that the closest "bookstore" was the Walmart a few towns over.

There seemed to be more corner bars then there were corners.

It must be fun to be a kid there though, tearing around on bikes, tipping cows, racing the train to the unfenced crossing, cooking meth or whatever.
But what do the grown-ups do?

My Los Angeles-ness practically broke out in boils. It made me wonder how my books read to kids whose surroundings and experiences are so different from those of my characters. Unlike the kids in my books, when these kids skip school they don't take the subway to China Town for din-sum, or sneak into office buildings and ride elevators to the fifty-eighth floors just to make their ears pop. That would be hard to do in a town with exactly zero (0) buildings over three stories high.

I'd puzzled over this sort of thing before when my books were translated for sale to kids in foreign lands, but I'd never considered how exotic they could seem in my very own language and country.

Stop #2 was a red brick Catholic middle school for at risk girls in urban St. Louis, Missouri. There I addressed the entire student body (72 mostly African American, uniformed, excessively polite but involved and curious girls) in one smallish room.

These girls get to school early and stay until 6:00PM year round. They even have class one Saturday a month, unlike the girls in some of my books who are nannied about from piano to dance lessons, to pool parties at each other's houses, and spend a lot of time lolling around bored.
I was asked (by a plain-clothes-nun, which I think is sneaky right there) why I choose to use foul language in some of my books.
My auto-reply to this question (and you are free to use it if you are potty-mouthed) is not, “Who gives a shit?" But the smarmier: “As a writer, I love ALL words, just like I love all the characters in my books, including the mean nasty ones.”

The 3rd phase of the Amy-Out-Of-House-athon was spent wandering a mostly deserted suburban mall with (according to their website) 215 stores & 45 restaurants. I don't know if that includes the kiosks.

There I discovered a preponderance of sparkly things for sale, not just for little girls, but for grown woman as well. And not elegant, 1930s evening ware from the black & white movies type glitter, but hysterically screaming, super flashy, giddy, giggly, clothes, shiny bags, belts, hats, wallets, sequined hair sparklies, twinkly make-up, girly outfits for phones and steering wheels, and pink feathered princess stilettos like those once offered exclusively at Fredrick’s of Hollywood.
What a blinding species we became while I wasn’t looking!

It occurs to me now that the greatest fun would be to mix it all up and as my pal KT says, "Blow the stink off!"

Take some of those Dairy Queen country kids I met in Illinois and plunk them down in the massive food court of the Tapanga Canyon Mall.
Put those St. Louis city girls on horseback and let them race through the unfenced small town cemetery.
Scoop up the sparkly crap from the mall and heave it into the sea. No wait, that would hurt the fishies. Send it to outer space? No, we’ve hurled enough trash at the stars. Ah Ha! I just so happen to know of a town with an unused coal mine!!!!

Amy

P.S. Apropos of nothing, here's a picture of Wally Dog.

Writer's Block

2011-12-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

There's never a Q&A where someone doesn't ask where the author gets her ideas. Most of us have some semi-snotty, semi-true pat reply like, The idea store up on Sunset, the newspaper, my dreams, whatever...

Or we answer the question with a question: How does anyone get any idea? How do you get the idea to walk across the room? Have some pie? Beat the kids? -- You just think of it.

I used to say my books initially came like any other ideas, but those that evolved into words on a page were the ones that stuck around, buzzing relentlessly -- like mosquitoes in the night.

Truth is, I found it a puzzling question.

What did the asker mean? Isn’t it the nature of the brain to have ideas? Was it possible not to? What about when the askers vacuum the rugs or are forced to endure banquets or jail time or religious ceremonies? Don’t they get the What Ifs? Such as, What if that droning officious twit burst into flames?

Perhaps the askers just didn't understand the jump between having fantasies and being driven to nail those fantasies (bam! bam! bam!) to the page in an obsessive frenzy?

BUT (and now we’re spiraling closer to the point of today's blog) what about when those ideas which the author has been taking as her due, suddenly... stop?
***

Many non-afflicted writers will tell you there’s no such thing as Writer's Block.

There is fallow time when one might need to refill the blah, blah blah...

There's the reactive flinch caused by encroaching reality and the numbing touch of the outside world; Discouraging words from agents, editors, reviewers, book buyers, an ungrateful public or the bank that holds the mortgage.
There is cowardice.
And there is laziness.

But Writer's Block (according to those who have never felt its sting) isn't like a cramping intestinal blockage threatening peritonitis, nor a road block in Rwanda manned by jumpy, trigger-fingered teenage rebels armed to the teeth. It is simply the self-doubt any grown up feels when attempting anything new, mixed with an indulgent dose of woe-is-me.

“If I were a miner,” the pre-Writer's Blocked author might say, “would I need inspiration to go daily into the mine?” (smirk) “And does the checker at Ralph's get to tell his boss he doesn't feel the bagging today?" (derisive snort) "Or that his sweeping-up muse had forsaken him? Can a teacher shun the classroom to sulk and wallow in self pity when she doesn’t hear the call to teaching?”

Writing is work. A grown up goes to work. That is all.

Nonetheless roughly nine-zillion books have been written on overcoming this non-existent malady. Written I suspect, by people attempting to explain the unexplainable and make a couple of bucks killing time till their own blockage clears. (see bloggers)

Their advice reels from forcing yourself to sit down and stare at the screen, to writing gibberish, to whistling past the computer as if you haven’t a care in the world, to changing your diet, schedule and surroundings, to adding vitamin supplements sold here at special discount for YOU!
... Follow these six, nine, sixteen simple steps! Eat all you want without gaining weight! Bring the pa-zazzle back into the bedroom! Stop acid-reflux, acne, incontinence and hair-loss once and for all! And write the award winning, best seller, blockbuster you know you have inside you! Or your money back!

While in the grip of WB, ideas still waft but they don't resonate or persist or buzz. There is no chemistry, no lust, no urge to obsess. They are merely passing thoughts. Which is to say once we become Writer's Block sufferers, we gain an intimate understanding of the once baffling question, Where do you get your ideas?

In fact -- we have no clue where they come from. None.

Suddenly, the askers are not an alien life form devoid of imagination. They are us. A less smug us. Us minus that unknowable thing that makes writers write.

Amy

Post Thanksgiving Post

2011-11-24T23:00:00.000-08:00

I, Curmudgeoness Koss, am glad we got all that thankfulness out of our systems, as there is no math more cloying than the counting of blessings. It is not that I don’t see how amazingly lucky we are. I do.

We’re lucky to be ALIVE and healthy and more or less conscious and intact and housebroken.

We’re lucky to be alive NOW after the good folks before us took care of the messier aspects of inventing pie, and e-mail and deodorant and elevators.

We’re lucky to be alive HERE where we are free to believe, write about, wear, eat, and say pretty much whatever asinine thing pops into our addled little minds, as evidenced by this blog.

All that is a great start, but it always seems like underneath all this warm fuzzy thankfulosity is an under-tone of bargaining; The assumption that if we act really grateful it’ll stall worse crap from descending. See Fate? How fun it is to do good things for us? See how grateful we are? (and worthy)

But the real issue about all this thanks-giving is its implication that the job is done, mission accomplished with no room for improvement.
Call it greedy, but I want more. Just because I’ve got a house doesn’t mean the world can check housing off its list of problems. Just because I have medical coverage doesn’t mean the nation is cool on health care. And just because I can eat like a pig doesn’t mean we don’t have a ways to go before hunger is no longer an issue.

Let's just hope more of us have more to be thankful for by next Thanksgiving.

Amy

The Unpaid Gig

2011-11-13T19:04:00.000-08:00

We know that society has decreed that we writers are our most authentically deep when kept poor and garroted. And that love of our craft, plus the joy of working loose hours in the ratty bathrobe are a fair trade for our poverty and lack of dental benefits.

But guess what? Not unlike other humans the writer does like to be treated well from time to time. And, more specifically, for the purposes of this rant, we like to be treated well by the people or organizations for whom we are doing a favor.

As a fellow chump mentioned the other day, 2011 has been the year of the free gig. The economy is trash, our business in particular is circling the drain, and we feel extra sorry in a panicky way for schools and libraries and anyone else out there with an historic sympathy for the written word. So, when they call and say “Please,” we cave and say, “Sure.”

And for that we are often (although not always) punished.

I am not talking about the gigs that put their money in play to have authors hold forth from a podium, or lead their fellows in writing workshops, or hand out awards and eat the book club / school / library lunch and gab amiably with banquet-esqe cheer. But the ones who ask the author to don hard shoes and show up for free.

We're often willing to show for charities & good causes, believing that this is how community is built, or karma is balanced, or otherwise un-reached kids are reached, or in hopes that unpaid gigs lead to paid gigs, and perhaps circuitously, to increased book sales.

Some freebie events go nicely, but a horrifying number of them do not.

Nicely equals your arrival is anticipated and prepared for, appreciated and even sometimes celebrated.

The not nice are the ones where you are not greeted or introduced and must gamely ignore the toilet paper stuck to your shoe, show your Happy-Harmless-Kid’s-Book Smile and introduce yourself -- feeling like you’re burping Tupperware to the leery or opening your grimy trench coat to reveal your collection of stolen watches going cheap.

Sometimes the guests did not know you were coming or why you are there... and they see your presence in their midst as an affront -- the pushy book peddler, fingers in the greasy til.

And you endure until allowed to scuddle away, feeling raw and sheepish at the end wondering how much lower you could possibly sink without going subterranean.

And so, I learn again (and again and again) that too often, we are valued by how much we cost. Sadly, the moral of the story seems to be -- If you give it away for free, it must be worthless.

Please remind me next time.

Amy

Agent / Author Matchmaker!

2011-10-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

If there existed a match.com-esque matchmaker site for author/agent relationships...

Agent profile: Enjoys walks on the beach. Just as comfortable accepting the Newbery in crimson pumps, as stomping out a great contract in thigh-high-steel-toed-shit-kickers.

Writer profile: Shoes? Who needs shoes?

Agent Seeking: Fresh voices -- edgy, unconventional stories about tics and fleas.

Writer Seeking: Someone to sell my books fast for lots of money.
P.S. Wow! We're super simpatico! I adore F&T! Especially en croute! In fact I was just working on a fabulously edgy but accessible, unconventional but user-friendly manuscript/app about fleas and tics! But um, re. T&F... did you mean for or against?

Agent (check all that apply)

Wants to share daily with client, synchronize menstrual flow.
Prefers to be spared the inane details of your petty little life.
Prefers contact by phone.
Prefers contact through e-mail.
I’ll find you when I need to.
Wants to be involved in the editing process.
Doesn’t actually read manuscripts.
Believes in nurturing talent.
If you want sympathy, call your mother.

Writer (check all that apply)

Needs encouragement, reassurance and praise.
Needs tons of encouragement, reassurance and praise.
Will settle for moderate abuse in lieu of being entirely ignored.

xoxo

Amy

P.S. FYI Have recently signed with a new agent, so this is actually retro-bitterness, but still.

Write What You Know: CANCER

2011-10-10T19:35:00.000-07:00

When my daughter was 14 she was diagnosed with a blood cancer called Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Needless to say it was an unspeakably ghastly time, but beside a little lingering PTSD we all got through it. She’s 21 now, in college, worrying about other things.

But when we were still in the thick of it, my friend went looking for cancer books for my daughter and her friends. What she discovered was that when kids in books, movies and TV shows get cancer, they die.

I can’t blame writers or readers for loving a good tear-jerker, but if it’s your kid, your self, or your big sister who’s sick... well, you see my point.

And those story book sick / dying kids were invariably portrayed as saintly and angelic, more concerned with other people’s happiness than their own. Peaceful, fearless, accepting of their fate.

This was not my impression. Mine was that snotty 14 year olds are snotty 14 year olds, sick, well, or on a Ferris wheel. The patients at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles were as bizarre and motley as any other huge group of kids.

And another thing I learned and re-learned and re-re-relearned going through the whole cancer nightmare, was that people inadvertently say and do incredibly insensitive and cruel things.

True no one knows what to do, and there is no one right thing to say besides, “OOPS! It’s all been a mistake! Your daughter is perfectly fine!”

So, once my daughter was in the clear, I set about writing a funny, teen, cancer survivor book based on her medical experience... Keeping these three things in mind,

1. Not all sick kids die. 2. Sick kids are no different than any other kids. In fact they ARE any other kids except they got sick. And 3. Sick kids, like the rest of us, are surrounded by idiots.

The truly horrific reality (finding out you’re sick, getting chemo and the side effects of chemo, hospital stays, trying to return to normal, school, well meaning friends and strangers...) makes for a scary enough story without having to kill anyone.

And I got to get back at all the stupid things people did by including them in the story! Pure spite and delicious revenge!

When the manuscript was done, I showed it to my daughter. She gave it her resounding approval and off it went.

SIDE EFFECTS was published in 2006, and the paperback followed a year or two later. The reviews were great and it still sells well... Although there have been complaints about the character's "language."

But the best part BY FAR are the fan letters.

I like all my fan letters. Even the e-mails saying they have an author report due on me in the morning and need answers quick.

But none compare to the letters I get from young people with cancer who thank me for writing a book that tells their story.

So that’s why I agree, at least this once, with the old saw about Writing what you know.

Amy

My Commies

2011-09-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

A cupla days a month I volunteer at the library used book store.

One of my regulars is a short, pregnant looking retired navy guy who marches in as if on a tight schedule, looking for VHS movies for himself and the wife.

Something invariably distracts him mid-search, a movie title, an interesting item on Fox News last night, and he stays to rant about, “The Damn Commies... The ones here. Ruining America, the country so many fought and died for.”

He gets rather spitty during the peak which is all facts and figures and proofs about the card carrying commies in our midst.

I nod and smile.

By Commies in our midst I assume he meant my Great Auntie Rosie and Uncle Jack. She with the line of cleavage that started at her neck. He, a ringer for Popeye but with a fierce little rodent stance.

They used to come stay with us in Detroit for a month every summer when I was a kid. Or perhaps it just seemed like a month. The only good part about their visit was that they treated my parents like kids.

I remember one night when my parents got home Auntie Rosie met them at the front door with her fists on her hips.

“Vere vas you so late?” she demanded, making my utterly adult parents stammer excuses and squirm.

I’d never heard anyone speak to my parents like that. It was thrilling and horrifying. It put them on semi-equal footing with my brother and I, as Rosie criticized my mom’s house work and kitchen skills and Uncle Jack, a carpenter bossed my father around and dissed his work on household projects.

Years later Mitch and I moved to California and visited Jack and Rosie in their tiny, upstairs apartment in the Fairfax district. Jack was already ga-ga by then.

He told us about how he and Lenin fought side by side in the old country.

“Bah! Jackie! You vaz seven years old!” my aunt corrected.

He jumped to his rickety old feet, dentures clicking wildly. “Shut up Rosie! You know nothing!”

Around that time I sold a piece about spring cleaning to the LA Times. I was over-the-moon excited and called to tell them to read it.

My Auntie called back. “You have a chance to be in news pepper and you talk about cleaning? This is vat you have to say? Mit all the problems in the vorld? This is vat’s important to you?”

It was the early eighties. And since my Aunt didn’t drive, she caught the bus on Santa Monica Boulevard, which pre-and-early-AIDS was a hopping meat market of young male hookers.

“There’s no jobs!” she said. “All da boys stand around mit no vork! You don’t write about dis? About Regan and the mess he’s making?”

I was shamed by my commie aunt.

Sometimes I still cringe about the fluff I produce for a living. And when kooks like my library ranter damn the commies, I get nostalgic.

Amy

Of Dogs and Books

2011-09-15T21:45:00.000-07:00

Am staring down this novel, while vacuuming up the copious schmutz with which our new puppy covers all surfaces.

His non-allergenic poodle fur doesn’t shed, so there is less fur to sweep.

BUT his curls act like Velcro for the crispy bits of twig, bark, leaves, and parched, withered death that this drought and I have created in the name of zero-scaping.

His extremely effective dirt-delivery system, teamed with his enthusiastic interest in pinecones, shoes and paper products has effectively replaced the dirty dishes, wet towels, sticky wrappers, and smelly laundry with which my children filled the nest until quite recently.

So, time-wise, I’m still cleaning.

And writing?

By way of encouragement, I tell my writing students that there is something learned by the completion of each book that makes it easier to write the fifteenth novel than the fifth...

BUT I’m not entirely sure I believe that.

In fact, if there is anything I am sure of, it is that each novel writes itself differently.

You may learn the basics on the first one: How to carry it so you don’t bash its soft spot on every door jam.

How to diaper it.

How to attach a car seat...

BUT beyond that you must discover / re-invent on a per project (book / baby) basis.

For example -- You could get Kid #1 to shut up by strapping it into that automatic swing, AKA the electric chair, and setting the timer for next Thursday.

BUT Kid #2 arches the back, goes ridged, and will have none of it.

Novel #6 filled itself with jokes, whereas Novel #11 took itself very seriously.

And so I struggle against the encroaching squalidifying of my home, as much now with this filth-hound as I once battled the onslaught of Barbie shoes and lego.

And I wrestle the new novel as if I’d never attempted such a battle before.

Odd, ain’t it?

Amy

California Flambe’

2011-09-05T18:48:00.000-07:00

As I sit sweltering at my desk, pretending to re-revise this pesky novel, the mind drifts like smoke back over my happy years living in a fire zone. I cast the eye about at the crispy kindling that is my zero-scaped yard and recall a couple years ago at this time, stuffing all fifty-two of my photo albums into my van in an attempt to save my past if not my future.

We live in a narrow box canyon with only one road in, and no other way out -- that is, unless you are a fire, in which case you can reach us from all sides.

One interesting thing about living in a canyon is that even if you live on the opposite side from the one that’s burning, you still feel very close and personally involved. I could, in fact hear the merry snap and camp-fire crackle from my kitchen.

Everyone crept outside and drifted together in the street to watch our hillside burn. There was talk of who smelled what when, evacuation, and mild disagreement about whether deer or lizard or bobcat could out-run the flames, and whether anything could burrow to safety under them.

The scene was bizarre not just because the neighbors were gathering, or because fire is alarming on a gut level, or because it smelled wrong, but because the scale seemed off. Trees looked like bushes, firefighters in silhouette looked like brave little toys, helicopters circled like hawks, and when the smoke shifted, the flames were way too enormous to be credible.

One old timer recalled our canyon ringed in fire in the 60’s when some guy, gambling on fate, made one-time-only, now-or-never offers to buy everyone’s houses. Ha!

I called my kids and asked which two or three of their possessions they’d most like to see again. That could have made for a whole evening of interesting conversation but by then the ash was falling like snow and the air was making me dangerously nostalgic for my smoking days. We agreed on the harp and a few guitars.

My husband came home to "help" me load van. "We" put our turtle in a soup pot, crammed the guinea pig and bunny into a small cage, and hoisted our big old dog up onto the seat.

On the way out the door, we took a last look at the house and our stuff. I was sorry about leaving some of the art, but felt surprisingly indifferent to the rest of my earthly accumulation.

We squeaked out just as they were blocking off the road. Any of our neighbors who came home after that had to leave their cars at the mouth of the canyon and hoof in to get pets, kids, papers, whatever.

We spent the night at a friend’s house in Eco Park and returned in the morning to our intact home. The hillside was revealed to be shaped like an elephant's head, although no one admitted to seeing it but me. The elephant was stubbly with blackened stumps like a five day beard, he smelled like an ashtray and looked strangely raw for several months.

This was an entirely unknown phenomena in Detroit where I grew up. Houses burned but just one at a time, mostly. Space heaters took several a year, Christmas trees, lightning, cigarettes and vandals took their share. Businesses burned as part of insurance scams, but it was rare that a Michigan arsonist got more than a few houses or apartments at a time.

So, this seasonal occurrence of multiple miles of flame took some getting used to.

Our modest little canyon fire burned maybe a square mile or less. A few weeks later a couple of miles north of us the Station Fire began it's two week rampage incinerating 251 square miles. That one made for fabulous on-going, high-drama viewing. Asthma or no, we’d park in the hospital lot with our fellow gawkers and sit on the roof of our cars, admiring the glorious billowing smoke patterns by day and the breathtaking flames by night.

And just this week, we’ve kicked off this year’s fire season with the Cajun Pass Fire, standing now at 1,150 acres burnt, two homes lost.

Wabbit season! Duck Season! Wabbit season! FIRE SEASON!

Amy

Sleepless in the Universe

2011-08-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

This is the perfect opportunity, (4:24 am) to discuss one of the few topics about which I qualify as an expert, and that is INSOMNIA.

Insomnia Type 1.) You brush the teeth, don the nightie and crawl into the bed, get comfy with blanket, pillow, white-noise-producing fan, dog, husband, and fall gently into a sweet, deep, sleep, just like the other diurnal creatures from the prairie to the forest.

Until... you turn over to settle the hip, to cover the foot, to switch the pillow to the cool side, while ordering self: DO NOT THINK! DO NOT THINK! THINK NOTHING!

But a tiny, seemingly harmless thought slips through, a gateway speck of brain activity that mutates instantaneously into the cacophony of ceaseless inner chatter. Thoughts of things left undone, unsaid, begin their taunt. Mundane niggling details repeat and repeat like acid reflux. The night is lost.

Or, Insomnia Type 2.) After dragging through your day, hallucinating with sleep deprivation, you yawn through dinner, take the hot soothing bath, drink the warm milk, lay the weary head upon the pillow, close the blood-shot eyes.
Ah, blissful rest! (two, three, four) Pop! The eyes are open.

You play possum, hold unnaturally still. But the foot must twitch. You are too hot, too cold. There is no comfortable position for any part of your body or soul. The dog’s toenails click across the floor. The husband snores. You hate them both. You seethe. You whimper, panic. If religious, you wail at the heavens, beseech the sleep gods. Tears of exhaustion and frustration seep.

You try the couch but cannot escape the repeating lyrics of a bank commercial from your youth.

You remember the tricks. Massage the face. Tense and relax various body parts. Snap on the light and read till the words blur, have the shot of whiskey or the addictive, hangover-producing magic white pill. You re-paint the kitchen. Or write a blog about insomnia.

Things that aggravate symptoms.
A. Working.
B. Not working.
C. Needing to get up in the morning.
D. Having said or done something cringe-worthy earlier in the day, or week, or lifetime. Or having had same said or done to you.
E. The future.
F. The Past.
G. Having children, a spouse, parents, siblings, co-workers, neighbors, friends, acquaintances, relatives, or none of the above.
H. Concerns about encroaching global stupidity, catastrophic weather anomalies, dust bunnies under the armoire, and the inevitability of death.

Possible Side Effects

A. Sleeping on the inside while driving on the outside.

B. Inappropriate weeping while wielding a machete.

C. Divorce.

D. Incarceration.

Treatment Methods
A. Lobotomy
B. Death

xo
Amy
P.S. This post is dedicated to my fellow sufferers.

Mosaic and the Magic of Grout!

2011-08-22T00:35:00.000-07:00

Some things that seem like they'd be the opposite of writing -- aren't. Like sleeping, or walking the dog, or sitting around with friends....

Your story can and will follow you there, tug on your sleeve, pretending it has come to buy the next round when really, it just wants to make sure you haven't forgotten it... for even a minute.

But mosaic is different. It uses a tunelessly humming, color / texture / messy / mud-play part of the brain that, at least for me, doesn't welcome words. And just as writing is pristine on the outside (human in chair, fingers tapping keys) while a rat's nest internally, tiling is all dust and sloppy glop and shattered stuff to the eye -- while the inside of the tiler is as sweet as a breeze.

And every step of the process is glorious.

1. Assemble things over time and sort them...

Satisfying already, right? Gathering objects, making little piles of buttons, stones, coins, toys, blue things, shiny things, round things, shells, tiles, bits of colored glass...

2. Smash them with a hammer (the appeal should be obvious.)

3. Glue them to things. Tra la la.

4. Smush muddy grout on it. *

5. Wait, but not too long.

6. Wipe away excess grout, revealing colors & shapes as you go -- like digging up buried treasure, or an archeological dig sped way way up.

* Ah Grout! It takes disparate objects and unites them. Not in philosophy or lip-flapping theory but in reality. It embraces chips and jaggedy bits and cements them into one solid, smooth-faced, indivisible, immensely satisfying THING.

And it does so quickly, simply and without words! If only more aspects of life could be grouted.

xo
Amy

Remember when TWO Truman Capote movies came out at once????

2011-08-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I gotta say, this has been a professionally repulsive week.

In an act of kindness however, I will not enumerate the horrors. Allow me instead, since our heads are already in the bowl, to mention the vomit-inducing R collection.

One "R" word is Remaindering.

This, for the uninitiated, is when the money guys at your publishing house decide to stand all the characters in your book on the slippery edge of a pit. Then, in cool legalese, they send a note informing you of their intention to gun down everyone of those characters. P.S. Kindly offering to send you any sweepings of salvageable blindfolds or body parts at a Thanks for everything! Your call is important to us! Have a Nice Day! discount.

This can happen after the book has been in print for decades, or mere moments after a book's release. But still, in the context of these Rs, remaindering is The Happy R! because at least remaindered characters had a chance, however brief, to live.

The next R word, Rejection, needs no introduction.

As wretched feelings go, the rejection of your novel is way up there with shingles. But no rejection is necessarily the last word. There always exists the hope that the next editor to read your story will get it. So even this R is a bit happy-ish.

But meet #3. Realization of a Repugnant Reality.

This grim set of Rs refers to the discovery that a book very very close in concept, nature, subject and possibly even style to the book you've been wrestling with for years... was recently published in a unique circle of hell, by a newbie on a unicycle.

Unlike being remaindered, your characters never had their chance in the world.

Unlike being rejected, no future opportunity for acceptance or even for further rejection exists.

Again, all your characters, their world, every scene and situation teeter at the edge of the maw, not after a long or short life with readers, but after no life at all.

The world forever denied your MOBY RICK.

Amy

Fair Judgement!

2011-08-08T15:54:00.000-07:00

It's no sweat picking the winners of kid-lit writing contests when I'm the only judge. I read through the submissions, make a pile of the ones I hate least, worrying that I'll have to eenie-meenie-miney-moe for my Gold, Silver and Bronze... Until oh good! I find one I hardly hate at all! Then some I actually like -- sometimes even love.

I always agree entirely with my own taste, so the winner is clearly The Winner to me. This makes it easy to believe every cliche’ about artistic justice -- Cream rising to the top, Good writing and hard work telling out in the end...

Many years ago I was on a huge panel of judges, judging books that were already published. In that case my dissenting vote was soooo far out weighed by the majority that I might as well have not even read all those enormous boxes of books.

But recently I served on a panel of just THREE judges, judging the unpublished work of grant hopefuls.

We read through the fifty submissions and each came up with a list of our favorites. Then we compared lists. Two lists had overlaps. One, (mine) did not. Hmmm.

I’d heard of awards committees who, unable to reach consensus, settled on a winner which was no one’s favorite, making the winners into losers and crowning mediocracy with glory. The gold going not to the book anyone loved, but to the one no one hated.

But I always thought that was an urban myth. Sort of the baby in the microwave of writing competitions. But then.... here we three were with unmatched lists.

So, how does a well intentioned, mild-mannered panel reach a fair agreement if they don’t in fact agree?

Enter a bit of lobbying, negotiating, amicable compromise.

No one offered or accepted bribes, or made threats or pulled rank. Our solution was give the top award to the entry my fellow judges both had on their lists... although it wasn’t at the tip top of either. Second place went to my favorite, and honorable mentions to the manuscripts they'd each liked best.

None of us sacrificed inordinately, and all were more or less satisfied. But in truth we arrived at our top choices almost arbitrarily, led by a unanimous wish to avoid unpleasantness and return to our regular programing.

The winners and losers of the contest didn't know that, though. Their reactions to our decision would not take our ambivalence into consideration. They'd either feel like winners or losers, as if my fellow judges and I knew anything at all about anything.

Which of course we do... and don’t.

This calls for a tiny cringe.

But that doesn't mean the contestants should discount our results. Reading is so utterly subjective that perhaps this jury's random method of selection was as pure and righteous as any, and stands as a fair microcosm of the whole submission / selection / rejection process.

Maybe that’s why so many of us drink.

amy

Luck!

2011-07-29T17:45:00.000-07:00

I was at a writer’s conference recently where various speakers took the stage to give their version of “The Marvel That Is Me.” speech.

One performed the, “Aw, shucks, I’m just a regular guy, writing regular guy stuff,” talk.

Another chose the “Forgive my tears but I find myself and my professional journey unbearably touching” talk.

And the third delivered the, “I deserve my success because I worked way harder, way longer than any of you slackers” speech.

This is not to imply that my presentations are any less riddled with narcissism. The point is that all these presenters were attempting to create a coherent narrative of why they had succeeded in a realm where so many fail.

And, as annoying as these speeches can be, they address a subject that attendees at writers’ conferences are eager to hear about. The question of -- What separates the speakers from the listeners? What information can be gleaned to transform today’s listeners into tomorrow’s speakers?

Some writers may believe the narratives they trot out for the unpublished. But most of the writers I know are privately, just as flummoxed by their good fortune as their conference audiences. And whereas the wanna-bes may believe that their lives will be bliss evermore once they get published, the old-timers know that success is punctuated with failure and that you win a few, and lose all the rest.

Rejections are sprinkled throughout, but with each we worry that our most recent success will be our last with nothing ahead but the hell of the has-beens and used-to-bes.

Getting published is one hurdle. Staying published is another. And both rely largely on chance and the changing whim of fashion and finance ... or in other words; Luck.

The luck to find the right editor at the right house for the right book at the right time.

How maddening to know that we can work so damn hard, and still be at the mercy of luck! On the other hand, how fabulous that luck can still strike!

Amy

PS Let me know you're out there! Comment!

Welcome Wally!

2011-07-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

Meet the new kid

Wally G. Koss

(Author assistant in training)

So far so good!
xo
amy

Dog-days

2011-07-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

Mitchell is away on a freelance assignment for another week so it seemed the perfect time to marshall the team and head for the pound.

My kids and their boyfriend & girlfriend and I wandered the heartbreaking rows of outdoor cages at the Pasadena Humane Society. Many many soft faced pit bulls, German shepherds, corgi mixes, and all kinds of unknowable combos, plus one alligator, two chickens, a bunch of bunnies.

Our crowd thinned as members peeled off, each attracted by a different dog. I could barely meet all the beseeching, or resigned dog eyes as I dragged cage to cage feeling weepy.

And then I saw Wally.

Wally couldn't be less like Sweetie.

Sweetie was our ancient big black lab. Wally is a young, white, curly haired, poodle-ish looking, mid-sized muppet. Sweetie slayed us with her dark eyes. Wally has no discernible eyes.

Wally (who we named in the car on the ride between the pound and frozen yogurt celebration) is not just not Sweetie, he is also...his own Wally self, whoever that is.

We don't know anything about his political leanings, his taste in music... Will he torment our rabbit and Guinea pig? Does he dig up the garden? Escape and chase cars? Chew up shoes and books? Bark constantly? Growl at guests? Pee in closets? Knock over the garbage and spread it around? Choke on fish bones?

Well, we'll learn these and many otherwise unpredictable and no doubt lovable things about him, starting Tuesday when we bring him home.

Meanwhile, here is one more memorial picture of Sweetie, before the era of our boy Wally begins.

Time do march on, don't it?
xoxo
Amy

Jiggety-jig

2011-07-09T23:17:00.000-07:00

Home from my visit home. Or -- back in Glendale, CA after ten days visiting fam in Farmington Hills, MI where the air is smogless but fetid. Fireflies, mosquitoes, long sweaty days caught in the sticky strands of the family web. Watching my parents being erased right off the page.

Momba nearly blind no longer reads novels, can barely get through the Times. Tentative gestures, unfocused. Even her handwriting has gone small and spidery. Poppa so thin his pacemaker pokes through his shirt. Each with an array of illnesses and worn out parts, but glad to be alive and glad to have us there.

Sobering. Not only watching my once powerful parents diminish and fade, but all the other history and chills of a visit home. There are so many more dead people there. Some who I keep forgetting have died in my absence, seem to die all over again every time I visit home. Others who were once old it turns out I've now outlived. Plus, an ex husband. The road not taken.... well taken, but median jumped, U turn pulled.

Anyway, in spite of the insult I could NOT risk letting my old deaf, blind, frail, hesitant, parents drive me or my kids around, so we seized their keys --- and smashed up their Lincoln on a round -about.

Oops!

And so it begins...

2011-06-26T15:00:00.000-07:00

With little or no intelligent design, I hereby hurl myself into the blogosphere. It begins on this the 26th day of June, 2011, (my half birthday) with:

1.) A middle grade novel (I hope will be my 15th published) on exclusive submissive submission to a new publisher. (stay tuned)

2.) A bunny rabbit unable and unwilling to eat anything but watermelon since being attacked (my fault) by a stray dog.

3.) Two fragrant kids (and their insignificant others) home from separate colleges to fill the sink with dishes and cover the floors with laundry for the summer.

4.) An imminent trip to the homeland (Detroit, Michigan) to visit the elderlies and assorted family bits, in-law and out, with my extra thirty pounds, and my kids, (one of whom is

scared of airplanes) while husband remains home on bunny duty.

5.) A garden full of bitter lettuce, thick-skinned tomatoes, dry green beans, and squirrels

nabbing my plums and apricots before they are ripe, having already shredded and

strewn about my peaches.

6.) A recently dead father-in-law, cousin-in-law and dog.

I suspect the above subjects comprise the bulk of future blog posts, with the addition of the occasional gig story, or rant. Such is my life....

Amy