blackdirt

Am three hours from popping off to holiday. A week of R & R with my sweetheart which begins with a soccer tournament for Carson later today, a hand-off to Carson's dad, then bring on the M&Ms 'cause it's road trip time!

This spring break couldn't be more welcome. It's been a rough winter. Kirk's been sick half of it, and I'm coming off some horrendous stomach/head thing (mixed with a particularly heinous "monthly" sitch--God, bring on menopause for real, this perimenopause crap is like giving birth to eight pounds of placenta. ok, tmi. But it's my blog, so fuck it).

Ahem.

So I just finished a rewrite of a project I began in, uh, 1993. Yes, 20 years ago. This project, a novel, has gone by the name BLACKDIRT lo these decades, and it's chock full of homage to the grotesque (in particular, grotesque's intersection with Old World Catholicism), as well as more than a few erotic elements, along with a smattering of, well, let's call it twisted girl-power.  I'm pretty sure the period from hell is nature's way of sage-sticking the project from my uterus. A 20 year pregnancy (albeit, many of those years dormant, you know, like a virus that hides in a rat?), followed by six weeks of labor.

Want to know more about this baby? Of course you do!

Here's my elevator speech-in-progress:

Lily’s father is a second-generation Austrian immigrant, second-generation small town physician, at the mercy of a proud and spiteful mother and a dutiful, sickly father. Lily’s mother, an orphan raised by Polish onion farmers in the fertile Hudson Valley black dirt, slowly dissolves into madness. Lily’s world view develops in the spaces between her Polish grandparent’s onion fields and the mahogany halls of her paternal Oma and Opa’s house.

Brought up in a dying Catholic culture by parents who are torn apart with longing they can neither satisfy nor transcend, dyslexic Lily falls prey to the nefarious elements of a collapsing rural landscape, and slowly sinks into the voices of Rue and Camellia, a duo that acts as both guide and the bridge to dark family secrets. Once Lily discovers the haunting truth of her existence, the voices take over and propel her to seek revenge and transcendence.

Framed with a thriller overlay, Blackdirt edges into magical realism and allegory, where myth and reality merge, the edges blur, and Lily becomes a symbol of pagan transfiguration on the cusp of a contemporary fin-de-siècle. 

Okay, guys, I'm packing the car. What's your favorite road trip food? 

last words

Hey, writer friends, let's play a game! 

A few years ago some pals and I decided to do NaNoWriMo and encourage one another by emailing our "last paragraph of the day" each day. We thought it might be fun to create some additional deliverables beyond the daily word count.

No other rules, no other context, no "what you need to know," simply, the last paragraph you write before tucking yourself into bed.

Our investment in each others' writing blossomed, as did our enthusiasm for our own projects. There was that little "whip" you know? And the feeling that if we didn't submit our paragraphs, we were letting our readers down. Plus, there were some HILARIOUS paragraphs that had us aching for more, more, MORE!

And, hello, it ensured we all were writing every single day.

Do you want to play with me??

Here's how it'll work. Each day, for the next 2 weeks, (March 6 - March 20), post your last para in the comments section below.

As added incentive, everyone who participates and manages to post a paragraph EVERY day will automatically be entered in my lottery for a SIGNED COPY OF THE STUD BOOK BY MONICA DRAKE!!!!

To get us started, here's my last paragraph from yesterday:

There are no sections in party stores where you can purchase Welcome Home from Prison banners. No piñatas in the shape of a ball-and-chain. Forget ordering a cake with a nail file baked into it. The only even close-to-gag party favors for a newly minted ex-con are squirt guns. So I bought a dozen, and then drove to the Little York Package Store for the booze.

Ready, set, GO!!

UPDATE 3/20/13 THANKS FOR BEING PART OF LAST WORDS! I'M SO INTRIGUED BY THE STORIES HERE. I'M AN EPISODIST AT HEART. (IS THAT A WORD? SHOULD BE.) ANYWAY, I DECIDED TO DO A RANDOM # GENERATOR THING TO DRAW FOR THE MONICA BOOK. I FIGURED IF I PULLED MY OWN NUMBER, I'D JUST REDO IT. BUT I DIDN'T HAVE TO. THE RNG PULLED 38, COUNTING DOWN, THAT MEANS THAT DAVID MILLSTONE WON THE SIGNED MONICA DRAKE BOOK! DAVID, THE BOOK COMES OUT APRIL 12. I'LL GET YOUR COPY SIGNED LICKETY SPLIT THEREAFTER AND SEND IT OUT. THANKS AGAIN EVERYONE!