Post Thanksgiving Post

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.

xo

Amy

The Unpaid Gig

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. 

XO

Amy

Agent / Author Matchmaker!

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

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.

xo

Amy 

My Commies

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. 

xo

Amy

Of Dogs and Books

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?

xo

Amy 

California Flambe’

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!

xo

Amy