Today is the big day! Daughters of the Air is out in the world. I'm excited that after so many years this is really, really real. Really. It is out of my hands and readers are reading. Whoa. I am especially excited to share that Tin House has published an excerpt on their blog today, which you can read right here.If you'd like to help me get the word out, there are a few things you can do:Join me at the launch party tonight at 7:30 pm at the Hotel Sorrento. Elliott Bay Book Company will be selling books there. Or join me at one of my upcoming events around the country. Bring friends! Buying the book at bookstores show booksellers there's enthusiasm for it. And it supports all the good work booksellers do. And, um, in general buying the book helps me pay the bills and write my next book.Review the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, Powell's, your personal blog...Let people know your thoughts.Let your friends know if you think they might like a novel that is dark, fabulist, lyrical, political. Or if they're into cities like New York, Buenos Aires, Manaus, or Rome. Or if they're into myth and fairy tale. Or if you really like my sentences and think they'd really like my sentences too!Request your local library carry it. Have I told you lately how much I love libraries? Here is a very old blog post about one of my favorite toys.If you're part of a book club, suggest it to the group. I'm happy to meet with groups in person in the Seattle area, or while on book tour, or by Skype.Let me know if you'd like me to read at your reading series or come talk to your students or would like to adopt the book for a course. I love to give readings and talks. Daughters of the Air will be taught in a human rights class in the fall and would be a great fit with other classes too, such as contemporary fairy tales, Jewish studies, Latin American studies, and small press publishing.Send me photos of you with the book and I will post it on Instagram! Or tag me, and I will happily repost.Of course, these are all good things to do for any and all books out in the world that you wish to support. Thank you so much for championing literature!
In 2014, I focused my blogging attentions to 16 posts on writing prompts for Ploughshares. Now that the series is done (though stay tuned--I have plans for them), here's a little update on what I've got on deck for 2015.
- I'm slowly submitting Novel #1 to small presses.
- I'm almost done with a third draft of Novel #2, workshopping a chapter a month with my writing group. In early December 2015, I will have a public reading thanks to a grant from 4Culture. More on this novel soon.
- I'm in the planning stages of Novel #3 (!)
- My story "Raven in a Jar" will appear in the March/April issue of CICADA; in the fall, my story "I Loved You in New York" will be released as a chapbook in Alice Blue Books' Shotgun Wedding series.
- My New Year's resolution is to get more into food writing, since food is all over my fiction. So far I've brainstormed 16 articles to pitch. I want to pitch somewhere between two articles a day and two articles a week (this will depend on some other news hanging in the balance). I can't control whether an article will be accepted, but I can certainly control how often I send out work. I believe this is called a "SMART goal". Wish me luck! Here's a helpful tumblr with examples of successful pitches.
- I'm teaching several classes at Hugo House, most immediately Intro to Fiction: Writing the Short Story and Hugo at the Henry: The Senses in Reading and Writing.
What are your plans for 2015?