Sunday, December 26, 2010

What the Queer JuBu Said

I'm giddy that he liked the book. But what's even cooler is that reading it spurred him to go on a search for other gay-Asian-supernatural-historic-revenge-reincarnation-romance fiction. Apparently there's more of it out there than you would think. I didn't even know it was a subgenre; I was just going on what the story of YU demanded that I write.
Mr. Horn does a fine service for readers of gay relationship fiction, and slips in a plug for his own story in this subgenre, which appeared in a 2006 anthology Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling. He says of that story,
"Musuko Dojoji was a retelling of a thousand year old Japanese folktale (Musume Dojoji) framed by a contemporary gay love story. The folktale is connected to the contemporary story by a reincarnation motif. I wrote this story out of love for my late boyfriend, Hiroshi Aoki, as a way of keeping his memory alive through our shared love of folktales and mysticism. It was one way of honoring our connection -- a connection I always felt was something that went beyond my limited understanding of reality."
Although, like some of you, I already have too many unread books on my shelves, side tables, and floor, I can see that there are a few more to be added, from the tempting gems Mr. Horn has found for us.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

The Heart of Recognition

Ever wondered just how the Buddhist lamas of the Himalayas search out and recognize reincarnated masters in chubby baby boys between 12 and 18 months old?

I just discovered a 2008 documentary film, "Unmistaken Child," which follows a young Nepalese monk as he searches and tests the possible reincarnation of his beloved master lama, whom the monk had attended for most of his life.

While the search, test, and recognition process is followed and revealed in a respectful, unobtrusive way, it is the monk's journey from heartbroken grief at his master's death, to hope and then joy at finding the child-form of his master, that is the most compelling part of this film. This young monk had been a boy when he began attending the elder lama, and wound up as the nurturing mother-father, "Big Uncle," to a bright two-year-old boy.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Quit Complaining, You're Already Halfway There

Most people yearn to produce some kind of creative work, and most are further along towards their dream than they give themselves credit for. Our doubt exhausts us and that's when we stop trying.

Because I have now published a book, my friends feel safe confessing to me that they, too, have a book, or books and books and books, in them, and can I give them any advice on writing and getting published? I do my best to listen and be humorously severe. Frequently people sigh over what creative things they would do, if only. The goal seems unreachable, the work insurmountable. If I can get them to just start talking about their goal, and what they've done already, it becomes obvious that creative accomplishment is well within their grasp. They just have to perceive it so, and then act as if a 15-minute bit of work on it is a step forward, for today.

Just last night I was talking with a woman friend with a deep, active, creative, meaningful life. She would like to publish a non-fiction book, blending wisdom from her own life and from her work in the mental health field, but she felt discouraged by the apparent labyrinth between her and getting published.

We chatted about it, and after a few minutes, bingo! She has already written 25 one-minute essays for radio, on the topics she wanted to present in a book, building on skills developed in a similar job she had done for a commercial radio station a few years ago.

Nowadays she hosts a weekly free-form music show for the smaller, funkier community radio station, which wouldn't blink at the insertion of some spoken word. Twenty-five essays is six months' worth of material, I told her. She has an established media platform, and an established audience from the earlier radio gig! Fifty-two essays would make a substantial book manuscript. The task of editing, writing the proposal, and marketing are in the future at this point, so there is no need to worry over them.

We both started laughing. All the necessary elements of her "unreachable" creative project are laid out in front of her, and she hadn't even noticed.

If you out there ever get a chance to listen to a friend in this way, take it. We all get so close to our creative work that it takes another pair of eyes to spot all the resources at hand for that work's completion.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Medieval Helpdesk

No, it's not the Microsoft FAQ. It's a sketch from a Norwegian TV comedy show. I have such sympathy for the poor monk frustrated with this newfangled technology called a "book."And somehow the Norwegian with English subtitles just makes it funnier.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

I love the smell of PR in the morning!

A press release sent to a wheretostay.com, a gay B&B travel web site, resulted in the release being posted on the gayopolis.com news page.

Thank you, Scott at Purple Roofs!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

My Publisher Has New Trimmings

Open Books Press has a re-designed web site!

Sorry I have not posted about the second road trip around Puget Sound. Suffice to say, Fairhaven, Washington is a mellow sort of gentrified frontier port town, just south of Bellingham, and it has an AWESOME bookstore, Village Books, with three floors of booky goodness. I want to move in. Wake up to the smell of trade paperbacks and waxed hardwood floors ... having slept and dreamed in a big cushy chair.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Road Trip #1

I’m back home in Indiana after a one-week promotional trip to Seattle and the Puget Sound Area. You can believe my tax accountant will have fun with all of these receipts come February 2011. It was a great week for a new author: two book signings, with many books sold and an invigorating discussion after a reading.

I’ve been back in the work force for most of a year now, but out in Seattle my weaver friend Lucinda has been having a struggle. So, knowing she is an avid distance driver, I hired her to pilot two road trips around the Puget Sound region posting flyers for my signing events and leaving postcards at libraries, bookstores and cafés. This was a triple-win situation: Lucinda and I got to spend quality time together, she made cash, and I made big strides marketing YU to a book-loving part of the country.

There were many highlights worth a mention, especially on Trip 1.

My low-carb lifestyle commitment kindasorta went out the window on this day, since our first stop was the Blackbird Bakery in Winslow, WA on Bainbridge Island. Lucinda and I needed breakfast, so we savored two tarts: chanterelles with caramelized onions and gruyére for me, figs with the onions and gruyére for Lucinda. She got a double-chocolate cookie for the road (which we split later as dessert for our in-car lunch), and I took a “Downtowner” pastry -- sort of a croissant rolled differently and baked in vanilla sugar, making a hard glaze. Apparently this is the commuter rush’s choice every morning, hence the name.

Poulsbo, WA is much cuter than I had imagined. It is a small fishing village that loves its Scandie-Viking heritage. Port Townsend, while much larger, was more dour, since on a cool, overcast, late October Monday the summer tourist trade was seriously winding down. A hot dog shack on a corner – Dogs Afoot-- with shabby but colorful wooden picnic seating, was celebrating its last day of the season by giving away all of its food, chips and drinks included. Lucinda and I had the best, spiciest andouille hot dogs I have ever tasted. Toasted bun and quality condiments, including homemade sauerkraut.

Whidbey Island is a long, narrow landmass with several small communities tapping the water table. As we neared the town of Langley, we began seeing signs advertising a wine tasting in Bayview Corner, whatever that was. Turns out Bayview Corner was once an agricultural crossroads with a big general store. It is now a complex of stores and galleries around a food co-op, which includes a tasting room for three local wineries (three on one island?!). It had already been a long day on the road, so Lucinda and I went in for a sip or three. The Red Mystique and Chardonnay of Ott & Murphy Winery were startling in their goodness. Further startling us was that in our chatting with the two ladies in the tasting room (one of them being Diane Kaufman Ott of said winery), it turned out they and I had mutual friends in Bloomington! Small world, it is.

I had introduced myself to booksellers and librarians all along the way, but in the venerable Moonraker bookstore in Langley, the longtime proprietress shocked me by putting in a purchase order for YU as I stood there. I nearly burst into tears.

More on the marketing week in the next post.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

New Favorite Poem

Of Worms, Streams, and Mossy Robes

I change into the woods. Moss robes
my shoulders; my branches exhale air.
Crows walk on my grassy back. I am
emerald blades beneath their feet.

As soil, I shiver with the quivering of worms,
tunnel with them in ochre clay, taste
moist salty depths. Then I suffer coats
of gravel, to revel in road's hard rise --

its caroming through dense green
toward sun-flung orbs. I learn
to tremble with lake's yearning
for the touch of her fingerling streams,

feel wisps of fog caress her banks.
As a cloud, I drop my face to lap
at my likeness in water. As the moon,
I shimmer the lake, shiver to chants

of frogs. Soon, as owls in the treetops,
I will throb with fervor for the feast.

--Joanne Uppendahl
from her book, "She Who Gathers Stones"
available at Amazon.com

Friday, October 1, 2010

All That and a Hot Fudge Sundae

I think I have become what I want to be when I grow up. I am an author, starting today my book is published and on the shelves of bookstores, I had my first book signing event tonight.

It only took fifty-one years.

The event was in the best independent bookstore in my university-centered home town; I have fantasized for decades about having a book I had written sit on their shelves, displayed in their window. Now it is there: YU: A ROSS LAMOS MYSTERY.

Friends came from the community radio station where I volunteer, the Tibetan Buddhist temple where I practice, even my high school English teacher showed up and bought two copies.

The Courthouse Square was full of people -- it was a First Friday Gallery Walk, always a happening in this culture-happy little city, and a gorgeous early autumn night to boot. Plus, Indiana University plays Michigan tomorrow, so there were extra Michiganites in view. People walked in. The tray of fruit and cheese I brought was heartily enjoyed. Two friends from different spheres of my life turned out to know each other from yet another sphere, which they share without me -- a fine moment in a small town. The bookstore cat barfed on the carpet. I discovered the bookseller had graduated high school from BHS South the year after me, and had had the same English teacher.

I sold eleven books. That seems like a fine start to a career.

A highlight, I have to admit, was my mother's involvement. Pardon me, my Significant Mother. That's how she's identified in the book's dedication, and she has adopted the title with pride. At 83 she's still a pistol, regardless of the the two hearing aids, two titanium knees, Lifeline pendant, and cane. When we realized that the poster for the signing was only going to stay on the glass door recessed far away from the sidewalk, Mom pulled it down and stood outside holding it up against her chest. She people-watched and announced the signing of her daughter's first novel, right inside here, to anyone who paused to stare.

I think she had as much fun as I did.

One friend urged me to have a glass of champagne after packing up the rest of my books. I agreed, but what I actually did was even better. Arriving home, I immediately got out of my nice outfit and napped for an hour. And then Mom and I went to Dairy Queen. After launching a career as a popular author, a big hot-fudge sundae is the perfect punctuation.

Now here's the postscript. All my life, I have been identified as "Marge Blewett's daughter," because my Significant Mother has always been a pistol, through fifty years and more involvement at the IU School of Journalism. Today (she told me), during the day, Mom walked into the IU J-School newsroom, and a young man saw her and said, "Hey, are you Joy Laughter's mom? When's her book signing?"

I like to died.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

This Face, That Face

It's a wonder how much online writing is required to market a book. There's this blog, blogs at several different literary social sites, the book's Facebook page, and I suppose I will soon have to be Tweeting, although I feel topped up with technology.

It makes me look at my writing in terms of triage. Which "face" should this writing come out of? I don't want to forget how to form long, full thoughts in tight paragraphs. I don't want to forget how to stretch and luxuriate in the music of language and ideas.

Most importantly, I don't want to sacrifice the kind of writing that is more like composting: the journaling, meditation, and solitary noodling that pulls up the night soil of the unconscious, to enrich the growth of fiction.

And then there's the fiction writing itself. The balance of day job, Mom care, volunteer work, book marketing, and creative writing has gotten tricky.

So please don't take offense if my door is closed sometmes. I'm inside, trying not to log on to Facebook.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

The Power, the Power!

A friend of mine bought an advance copy of YU for himself and his wife. He told me today that his wife gobbled it up and loved it. Himself, he's saving it for a plane trip this weekend.

Then he said that he and his wife were watching "Cash Cab" last night and the question was, "What is a single-lens instrument used by a jeweler?"

Wife immediately said, "Loupe!"

"How did you know that?" my friend asked in astonishment.

"Because I read Joy's book!" she replied.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Launch at T minus 37 days and counting!

YU: A ROSS LAMOS MYSTERY will officially launch on October 1, with a signing event at Howards Bookstore, 111 W. Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington, IN, 5:30 - 7 pm.

The next scheduled October event is October 20, a reading and talk at East West Bookshop, 6500 Roosevelt Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 7-8:30 pm.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Topic for the Evening

One mark of a mature, conscious citizen is the ability to recognize when the political process is OVER, and nothing more can be accomplished towards a goal through that means.

Bonus points: relate this statement to Albert Einstein's remark,"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

Discuss.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Mirror Moments

Grounded euphoria increases generosity.
Grouded generosity increases euphoria.


A Facebook friend posted the first line, and one of her other FBFs posted the second.

Both are true, I added in my own comment. Both are necessary. Both happen. I think they are simultaneous, like reflections in a mirror.

There is an insight in here about the joyful side of dependent origination.

If you aren't familiar with dependent origination, it is one of the Buddha's fundamental teachings -- that everything we see, touch, and experience is not a separate "thing," but a momentary confluence of factors that are themselves momentary confluences of other factors, which are themselves momentary etc., on and on into infinity, an ocean of motions, meetings and partings.

Grounding with this (stillness, silence, breath) becomes a quiet euphoria, a joy. Generosity then allows the multitude of events and happenings to simply happen,and pass away.

And after a while there is no separation between the euphoria, the generosity, and the grounding.

Namaste

Friday, July 23, 2010

Availability Update

Hey, Everybody,

YU will hit Kindle by July 26. If you like to buy online, pre-publication orders can be made on Amazon.com starting sometime next week.

Keep reading!

Thursday, July 22, 2010

She's Done!

Okay, the chapters are now posted and I christen thee WEB SITE! Bon voyage!

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Step by Step

The proofs for YU: A Ross Lamos Mystery have at last been finalized, and will now be Kindle-ized. So when will it be up in pixilated lights on Amazon.com? You'll be the first to know.

In the meantime, it's July in Bloomington, Indiana, which is the time of year when the town stretches, takes its shoes off and sets its bare feet up on the coffee table. EveryWhere is more relaxed and comfortable with itself. The University students are few, traffic is light, it's easy to avoid the city's road repairs. Sitting on the streetside terrace of a coffeeshop with a freshly-juiced fruit drink, under a clear sunset sky with just a trace of humidity in the warmth, there are lots of people on the sidewalks but all are suffused with a quiet joy; Now is the only moment, the moment we will always return to for a memory of when we felt in love with nothing in particular but everything at once.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Trotting Arguments

I'm going to have to start saving the captcha nonsense phrases used online to make sure a user is human. I got the title of this post from one. Spam robot e-mails used to generate the most sublime dada haikus with their subject lines. I wish my file of those baffling gems had survived the move from desktop to laptop.

My friend Narges has taken to posting wonderful quotes as her Facebook status updates. Today's quote was so good, I had to do it the honor of straight-up theft (with attibution):

“The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.”
Tom Bodett

Google will tell me who Tom Bodett is. I like to imagine I can run into him at Wee Willie's, brunching on steak, eggs, and gravy.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Don't Look Now

"In many ways, the thing that lasts is like a nautilus shell: it’s lovely, but it’s not what the nautilus thought was really important at the time." -- Abi Sutherland, "Making Light"

This is a similar thought to what John Lennon said, that "Life is what happens while you're making other plans."

What we are sure is vitally important to us in any moment or over a period of years may not be the real story of our lives -- and it is not likely to be what is remembered about us.

This was Konstantin Stanislavski's stroke of genius, too.
"In many ways, the thing that lasts is like a nautilus shell: it’s lovely, but it’s not what the nautilus thought was really important at the time." -- Abi Sutherland, "Making Light"

This is a similar thought to what John Lennon said, that "Life is what happens while you're making other plans."

What we are sure is vitally important to us in any moment or over a period of years may not be the real story of our lives -- and it is not likely to be what is remembered about us.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Making an Entrance

Step onto the stage, step into the circle, step into a new life. I have been remembering lately how during my childhood, adolescence and young adulthood my bursts of honest and exuberant self-expression were stamped out, brushed aside, or ridiculed. I think two things have happened in the evolution from then to now; one is that I have developed the skill of listening first, strategizing my expression based on compassion for not only the immediate moment, but for what can arise from the immediate moment. I suppose you could call this extending my desire for self-expression to involve matters beyond my self-interest.

The second thing that seems to have happened is a huge change in other people -- what are they eager to hear? What interests them about life and its possibilities? A convergence is at hand: my ability to shape my expression, and a general interest in what I have to say.

Of course I must earn that interest. But this is a spotlight, a circle upon the stage. I am ready to be here.