Laurel Snyder

You’ve already seen this, right?

I LOVE it!  I love the idea of all those cosmo-sipping Carrie-wanabes getting their mail this week, and finding 18th century epistles instead of NYC naughtiness. 

Now, if only a wildly popular movie would showcase an imaginary book called, “Scratch My Mountains” or maybe “Slidy Dinah.”

I’m reading tonight with Megan Volpert and Karen Head at the U*Space Gallery, down on Edgewood.  I’m excited about this on so many levels– partly because I rarely read poems these days, and partly because I can’t wait to hear Megan and Karen, but also partly because this means I’m spending the evening at like, an actual art gallery.  I’ll get to LOOK at ART and maybe TALK to ARTISTS and meet new interesting people…

Like you?

Firstly, Lizzie Skurnick is all over A Wrinkle in Time today, over at Jezebel.  You should read it if you haven’t, though if you do not read Lizzie’s column every week, you are basically a moron.

Secondly, I had ANOTHER car accident today. The second time I’ve been rearended at a red light in just over 6 months.  Causing me to HATE ATLANTA!  I would blame myself, as I am NOT an especially  good driver, but I was STOPPED AT A RED LIGHT!

Thirdly, I want to teach you a lesson I learned this week:  DO NOT BORROW things you cannot afford to replace!!!  And if you THINK something might be out of your price range, for god’s sake, ASK!

I borrowed the loveliest shoes in the universe to wear to BEA.  These shoes were partly responsible for me feeling like Cinderella. They were silver, and supple, and GORGOUS.  I did not ask how much they cost. 

Know what I figured out?  Things that seem nicer than anything you have ever owned are probably things you never WILL have. 

I scratched the shoes!!!! I wore them dancing and scratched them, and came home sick over it.  Because of course the minute I saw the scratch I realized that the shoes were probably expensive.  Really expensive.  When I took them to the repair guy, he said, “I can’t really fix this.  Shoes like this aren’t really made to be worn.”

But you know what’s TRULY amazing. My friend did not get angry. She just said, “I knew if I told you you’d never borrow them, and I wanted you to feel beautiful.”

Now THAT’S a friend!

Still, I’ve learend a lesson.  When my friend offers to loan me her diamond-encrusted hedgetrimmer I will know what to say.

MiPOesias reviewed my poems last month, and… well… Cheryl Townsend is pretty much my new favorite person in the universe.  It’s so unbelievably exciting to know my poetry is being read and considered and appreciated by people like Cheryl.  Crazy. 

Really, I’m bowled over. She says:

Picture Alice in Wonderland, running from the Queen, going nowhere but where she’s just been. An exquisite ouroboros of mad surrender.

She says I make her skin prickle!!!

Poetry is hard for me these days.  I can justify sticking the kids with a sitter to write novels, because I have this glimmer of hope that prose may one day pay the bills, and at the very least the books pay enough to cover the sitter and taxes.  But though I BELIEVE in poetry, we just don’t have the $$$ for me to go sit in a coffee shop and write it at present.  Which is hard.

I miss poetry.  I have to work on it in bits and scrimps. I jot it on receipts and stick them in my glovebox.  I sit in the car, in the grocery store parking lot, and scribble when the kids fall asleep.  I wish I could go out there and do more readings, and spend time with other poets, and conference, and teach.  But I’m a mom on a shoestring.

Yes, I am.

And so a review like this makes me feel like poetry matters to someone besides me. Which reminds me how much poetry matters to me.

In a related tidbit, I’m actually my poems next week at the U*Space Gallery, here in ATL, with Megan Volpert and Karen Head.  Details are on the front page of the site.

Please come?

Screw a bunch of book news, mine or anyone else’s. Lewis took his first step today!!!!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Lew!

My new friend (who just happens to be Iowa Citian, lucky wench!) Sarah Prineas has  a BIG book release today!  Everyone give it up for The Magic Thief! 

So…. W00t and Squee and all that other interweb mumbo-jumbo, but mostly YAY! Yay for Sarah!

I’ll be seeing/meeting Miz Prineas in Iowa, for the 4th of July. At which time I’ll be glaring jealously at her, on account of she has torn-y edges and  olored endpapers, and her book’s trim size is to DIE FOR. Really, it’s a gorgous book!  It really LOOKS like magic. Go buy a few, eh?

(side not– Diane Capriola, owner of my favorite bookstore, LSOS, and all around lovely lady, blurbed Sarah’s book for Booksense. That makes me double-fancy!)

So you know how I was saying that I didn’t get to hang out with people as much as I’d have liked at BEA?  One of those people (someone I just kept missing wherever I went) is the truly faaaaaaaabulous Vicki Arkoff.   Who took these pictures of me while I was speed-dating,

…and sent them to our (shared) agent, Tina!

 THANK YOU VICKI!!!!

God as my witness, next year I’m gonna find you on the dance floor!

There is absolutely no way for me to tell you *all* about BEA. It was completely overwhelming and exciting and I got lost, and didn’t sleep a wink (okay, I left like, 17 winks). I know I will leave out a LOT of important stuff. But in brief…

I got to spend lots of time with my Tricycle crew. Laura and Nicole are the BEST. Ladies I’d want for my family, or my friends (and it kind of feels like they are now, both of those things).  Friday night they took me to this silent auction full of incredible artwork by many of my very favorite illustrators. And the shindig was all snack foods (never seen a mashed potato bar before?) and vino, and then  after the mashed potatos disappeared, we went into a ballroom, where they awarded the EB White awards, and Nikki Giovanni spoke and was inspiring, and (for those of you who care, though I found this part to be silly) they “unveleiled” the new Stephanie Meyer cover and a trailer for her movie, which looked uber-dumb. 

And then on Saturday they took me to the event I’d come to LA for– speed dating. And that was crazy. I was in the green room and just kept tripping over my tongue because I was surrounded by the likes of David Shannon and Jane Yolen and Polly Horvath and… and… and… then we went out and “dated” and it was not easy, but it was a kind of adrenalin rush, and I basically just showed each table of bookstore people my book, and told them about how I written it in Iowa, while working in a diner, and about how it isn’t really *that* sinister… and everyone was very nice, but it was kind of a blur and then the bell would ring and I’d hop up and move on to the next table of people… and finally it was over and I cuold breathe again.

And then they took me to eat very very spicy Mexican food. Yum!

Then, that night, the wonderful Tricycle people had a party at a FABULOUS place called Zucca, with a little tiny creek in a culvert (that I kept jumping over after I had a few of the fresh blueberry mojitos) and that was a ball.  The hilarious Dave, of Little Shop of Stories wonderfullness turned up, and my equally-funny sales rep (from here in Decatur) and he hatched a plan to do a launch for my book at Crescent Moon, a retro-diner here in Georiga. How cool is THAT!?

And after that, since I was around the corner, I joined the irrestiblie Richard Nash, who is one of my very favorite humans (and a new papa too) as well as being my publisher at Soft Skull. He was hanging out in a kind of walled garden in a courtyard behind the Hotel Figueroa, which may be one of the most beautiful hotels I’ve ever seen, all Moroccan tile and swimming pools. The bathrooms smelled like cloves.   

And I made new friends there, and so we all (strangers, all of us) hopped into the car of a particularly awesome new friend (Hi, Jim!) and sped off to the El Rey, for a PARTAY!  A partay the likes of which stay-at-home-mommies like me rarely see.  I will leave out the embarassing details of my flailing and screaming and fun….

But I will tell you that the evening ended at 2 am (which was 5 am to me) at an IHOP, with a pattie melt, and the illustrious Tom Bell and the delightful Jamie Allen and my partner-in-crime Marc Fitten, and some other people who were awesome but I was too far gone–more tired than drunk– to remember their names (forgive me?)

 And I met so many other great folks too. Vicki Arkoff and Heidi Estrin and Susan Weis and Donna Freitas and Elizabeth Devereaux especially.  And I got to see other friends.  Summer Laurie and Peter Manseau and Antoine Wilson and Karri Boyle and Jennifer Laughren and David Sarno, and my aunt Christine, and Daren Wang, however briefly. 

And I absolutely stuck my foot in my mouth a number of times.  Little stumbles, including the moment when I told David Shannon that my son loves his book “Angus” (when I meant “Fergus”) and also a particular stumble one might call a “cock block” (for which I alpologize to a friend and hope he will forgive, and that he was able to undo my wickedness) and also telling another friend I’d bought his book in hardback when it never actually came out in hardback (and for that I should explain that I *did* buy the book. I actually bought several, as gifts. But my ignorance shows I never read it, and for that I feel bad.  I just haven’t had time to read much this year. Sigh.)

The hardest part was NOT getting to do everything I think.  My cousin Ann was there, and we never managed to find each other.  That’s sad. And Slash (G&R Slash) was there and he didn’t even *call* me!  And Prince (or the artist formerly known as a symbol or whatev) hosted a party I didn’t get an invite to, if you can believe that. And  I wanted to pick up more books and I wanted to soend more time with so many people…

 But mostly, I felt like Cinderella at the ball.

And then I came back and was VERY happy to see my little cinders.