A few things that are making me happy

I am stealing a meme from dear, so-talented, and missed Eating a Tangerine with this up-to-the-moment report on what is making me happy.

First, the cherished memories of my trip to the BEA this past week. Thank you, so many of you, for being such an integral part of my adventure, thank you Armchair BEA for the love, and thank you Florinda for the conversation.

Second, the news that Dangerous Neighbors has been chosen as the summer read by a lovely local private school. I have so wanted that for this book of mine, and I am grateful.

Third, the happy reality that, after allowing myself to stall for a few days (as I imagine most authors waiting to hear about circulating manuscripts do), I have found my way back to my prequel-in-progress to Dangerous Neighbors. Research proved to be the key. I have lucked onto something astonishing and juicy—a little known fact that will give my story heft, suspense, momentum, and (I'll toss the word in there) thrills. I have myself a riveting something. Now I just have to write it.

Fourth, spending time at the Devon Horse Show, taking photographs of horses, children, riders, and the big jumpers. Today I'll be photographing the carriages that are rolling down my street (two just did, so I interrupted this blog to catch them) as well as the famous puppy contest.

Fifth, spending an hour with Kim, my former student, at the show yesterday.  There she is, petting a three-month-old mini. Both are, I think, beyond words.

Finally, receiving and reading the richest imaginable e-mails from my son, now in his fourth day in London. The Brits are treating that great guy of mine exquisitely well, and he is turning most every hour into something worthy of a story. In exactly two weeks I'll be there, in London, too. Laughing, I'm certain. And listening.

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My video conversation with blogger Florinda

I'm off to teach at Agnes Irwin today, while back in New York City, the book bloggers have gathered in force. A few days ago, as those of you who followed the Armchair BEA know, I had the chance to talk to Florinda while Elizabeth Law of Egmont USA videotaped our conversation. I re-post the video here, in celebration of the book bloggers I have come to know and love.

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The You Are My Only Giveaway/Armchair BEA

Yesterday, as I wrote below, I had the great privilege of video interviewing Florinda for the Armchair BEA event that is going on all this week long. My great thanks to Chris, Tif, The 1st Daughter, Chrisbookrama, Michelle, Amy, Pam, Emily, and Florinda herself, the organizers of this runaway-hit of a program, for also making room for You Are My Only, which is due out in October, and for facilitating a giveaway of a signed book and poster. There will not be many such giveaways with this book, and so I encourage those who might be interested to head on over and listen to what Florinda has to say about being a book blogger (and what I have to say about my love of and great appreciation for bloggers).

Please note that I donned my Undercover stance with this interview, hiding, for the most part, behind my humidity unstraightened hair.  This was not intentional, but I'm going to pretend that it is.  I write fiction, after all.  Or I do, at least some of the time, when I'm not teaching students how best to tell the truth.

Thanks to Elizabeth Law of Egmont USA for the great camera work.

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As the crowds gather at the BEA: a video tour

I wanted to find a way to share the essence of the BEA with you kind readers, and so I turned on the video mode of my Sony camera. Here, in order, are the early-morning lines of those just waiting to get in through the doors, the quiet of the exhibit booths before the official opening, and the crowd surge minutes after the doors opened.

I was filming all of that for you and was just finishing my crowd-surge footage when Julie of Booking Mama surfaced on my little screen. She's like that, my friend, Julie. Always there when you need her. You can catch her right at the tail end of the last video. Beside her but out of view (in the crush of the crowd) is Kathy of BermudaOnion.

Thanks again to Egmont USA for bringing me to the 2011 Book Expo America.

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On the making of a young editor: my interview with Alison Weiss of Egmont USA

In this brief chapter from my morning at the BEA, I spend some time with Alison Weiss, the youngest of the Egmont USA editors. She talks about her evolution as a lover of books to a maker of them.

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2011 BEA: An Interview with Egmont USA Marketeer Rob Guzman

I'll be posting a few videos from my travels to the BEA today. Here we meet the terrific Rob Guzman, an integral member of the Egmont USA marketing team.

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Stone Arabia/Dana Spiotta: The Book of This Year?

Let me call this one as I think it rightly is: You might be headed to the BEA next week in search of the Book of the Year, the Big One, the Ultimate Prize Winner. You may imagine yourself wending down and through those Javits Center aisles, your shoulder a book-bag-burdened sloop, your ears somewhere between burn and buzz, the whole of your senses gone hyperkinetic as you pile on the galleys and pack in the giveaways and assure yourself that somewhere, inside all that brilliant literary mayhem, is the Best Book of This Year.

But unless you somehow find yourself a copy of Dana Spiotta's Stone Arabia (and at the moment copies are scarce) you are (I am sorry to report) not in possession of this year's best. You may just have to wait until July 12, when this slender volume sets sail.

Because maybe Jennifer Egan and her music-saturated, technically daring Goon Squad captured our imaginations in 2010. But Dana Spiotta, with her own lyric-besotted, indie-spirited Stone Arabia (Scribner), does something different, something more. It's a book about losing, fudging, and outfoxing memory. It's about a brother and a sister in their reeling mid-lives—that brother's life as an almost-musician, that sister's lonesome, fated love.  It's about the anomie of living right now—when the news affronts and hallows, and the tragedies of perfect strangers make us cry, and we lose ourselves within the portals of internet knowing and emerge merely more lost and a lot less knowing. (It's also, in small part, a calibrated riff on our blogging culture, but I only smiled, took no offense.)

We are a half step from forgetting, Spiotta reminds us, and we are a half step from being forgotten, but we are not vanished yet. We still have it in our power to live beyond the authoritative record, to tinker with our own legacies. The brilliance of Stone Arabia is matched by its beauty, which is to say that this is a fiercely intelligent book and also (importantly) an utterly humane one.

A personal note: I found Lightning Field, Dana Spiotta's gorgeous first novel, in a bookstore and brought it home a decade ago. Soon enough, Spiotta's second novel, Eat the Document, was nominated for the National Book Award. From time to time, then, in conversations with other writers, I would hear about Spiotta's graces as a person—her unshowy intelligence and big heart noted by writers like Rick Moody and Ken Kalfus.  Her university workshop students seem to love her, too; I've heard a fine tale or two about that.

But none of what I thought I knew prepared me for the power of Stone Arabia.  I hate that it's late May and that you'll therefore have to wait until mid-July to read it.

Read it, though, as soon as you can.

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Meet me at the BEA (2)

Thanks to the urging of my friend A.L. and the talents of my husband, W.R., I will now have these bookmarks to hand out during my Wednesday, May 25, 10 AM signing at the BEA.

I can't guarantee that my hair won't be wild (though I can promise that it won't be as wild as a certain dancing pro on a certain dancing show last evening). I can't guarantee that I won't, as in years past, be standing there in the autographing arena beside Jodi Picoult (guess whose line was longer? guess who managed through it?). But I can tell you that I'll be there, with galleys of You Are My Only (Egmont USA), and this fancy-schmancy bookmark.

Thanks to those of you who have written to say you've scheduled this signing in.  I can't wait to see you.

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Meet me at the BEA

All right, so:  This isn't really Book Expo America.  But I like the photograph, so I place it here, and while I'm at it, I invite you to join me at the real and actual BEA, Javits Center, New York City, on Wednesday, May 25th, where I'm privileged to be appearing at two events: 

YOU ARE MY ONLY Book Signing:  10 AM (author autographing area)

AUTHOR TEA:  3 PM

Perhaps our paths will cross?  I can't promise you a Googer's Cake or Thing.  But I can promise you conversation, and maybe the Famous Elizabeth Law will walk by and sing a tune in your direction, or maybe Egmont USA's Katie Halata or Greg Ferguson or Mary Albi or Doug Pocock or Rob Guzman will lay down some ink for you.  Or maybe Nico Medina will at last wear a costume on my behalf. 

A girl can dream.

Big thanks to Florinda.  She knows what for.

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