I will be teaching an Intermediate Writing Workshop over at Smith College in Northampton this fall, beginning in September. Woo-hoo! as the kids are all saying these days. The class will be small (12 people) and, I'm sure, filled with highly motivated, hardworking students.
It's been a year since I was teaching anywhere and man oh man, I'm looking forward to it.
My Greek's a little rusty, so I'm not clear on the slogan. But I'll work on it.
ANNNND, big thanks to those people who said a nice thing or two about me as my references, in order for me to land this gig. You know who you are, and I couldn't have landed this gig without you.
Metal Blade is a label, for those of you who didn't know. They sign all kinds of metal bands, and also other bands, like Purson here, who play guitar righteously and rock out.
I'm a sucker for this stuff.
They have a new record recently released and I like it quite a lot.
So I've been writing about one review per week at SpectrumCulture.com -- mainly music reviews but also the occasional graphic novel as well. Here's a selection:
Two-album compilation of Kenyan Afro-funk from the 1970s and 80s. Great stuff.
Savannah's progressive metalheads Kylesa get their latest offering, Ultraviolet, reviewed here.
And there's much more to come! The bulk of my reviews and columns are still over at PopMatters.com, but hey, I'm branching out. SpectrumCulture is a fun site in general and they try to do some different things (restaurant reviews? Why not?), so come take a look.
Ho there! Summer has officially arrived. It was in the 80s yesterday and is supposed to be so again this afternoon and tomorrow.
Condolences to the folks in Oklahoma, who are struggling with the onset of summer storm season in a terrible way.
Meanwhile, my excellent column Don't Open That Door! over at PopMatter continues to trundle along. It was about this time last year that we got started, so, in the spirit of anniversaries and so on, here's a recap of recent events and a peek at things to come:
Don't Open That Door! #44:The Mummy (1959) Don't Open That Door! #45: The Mysterians (1957)
Don't Open That Door! #46: The Amazing Transparent Man (1959)
Don't Open That Door! #47: Varan, the Unbelievable (1958)
Don't Open That Door! #48: The Fly (1958)
Hey, that's a pretty good few weeks! Don't miss these columns, and remember to hit that Facebook Like button and spread the word... The more hits the pages get, the better off for everybody. (Well, especially me. You know what I mean.)
As promised, a few shots from the 2013 Rochester Lilac Festival:
We tried going on Monday but it was, like, 45 degrees and rainy and miserable. Tried again yesterday (Tuesday) with much better results... The sun was even shining. Woo-hoo!
But hey, it's got nekkid girls in it! Drawings of them anyway. So there's that. Also the lyrics are fairly incomprehensible, which is always a plus. Mostly though, the song is pretty great. Sort of a molten, dirge-y Alice in Chains vibe, which is fine with me, without being a direct copy, which is even better.
We're here in Rochester for the Lilac Festival. Some pictures in the next couple days, promise.
As promised, here's the recipe for a mighty nice soup that will help keep your blood flowing and (hopefully) keep the chill at bay:
Ingredients:
2 Tbs olive oil 1 onion, chopped 2 Tbs chopped garlic 1 Tbs minced ginger pinch cayenne 1 Tsp salt 3 or 4 nice-sized sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped 7 cups vegetable stock 1 cinnamon stick 1 cup plain yogurt 1 cup green peas 2 cups chopped watercress 1 cup chopped cilantro Salt & pepper
In a large soup pot, fry the onion, garlic and ginger in the olive oil on medium heat for a few minutes, till the onion starts to brown. Add the cayenne and salt and cook for a minute, then stir in the sweet potato. Let it cook a few minutes to absorb the flavors. Then add the stock and bring it to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for maybe 15 or 20 minutes, till the potatoes get soft.
Take everything off the heat, add the cinnamon stick and let the pot cool for 15 minutes or so.
When it's cool enough to handle, run the mixture through a blender and puree till it's velvety smooth. You'll probably need to do this in batches. Rinse out the soup pot and pour the puree back in. Put it on very low heat.
Whip the yogurt till it's smooth and creamy and stir it in. Add the peas, watercress and cilantro. Heat everything gently for a few minutes till it's all warmed through. You don't want to boil the yogurt though.
Add salt and pepper to taste. You probably won't need much.
Serve with corn bread or some kind of crusty baguette. Nice. Feel the warmth.
So, astute readers f this blog will notice that I haven't written anything here for a while--eleven days, in fact. Perhaps you suspect that I've been busy with the exciting life of being a writer and overnight staff at a group home. Hah! While I have been working at the group home, it's true, there's nothing much else happening of note. Hence the silence.
I mean, I've been busy enough. I did my taxes, which is always a lengthy and anxiety-provoking process. (Good news: I'm done for another eleven months.) I've been reviewing stuff over at PopMatters, and to a lesser degree at Spectrum Culture. I've been watching Game of Thrones (duh) and my other guilty pleasures, Survivor and The Voice. And I invented a killer recipe for what I call Circulation Soup, which contains tons of stuff that's supposed to help get your blood moving. (Sweet potatoes, ginger, garlic, cayenne, watercress etc.) It's actually fairly awesome. Maybe I'll post the recipe soon, if I can remember it.
And, lo, I've been keeping at it with Don't Open That Door!, my truly awesome column for PopMatters, which I still hope might--someday--make its way into the world in book form. Maybe not, but, it's worth clinging to the dream.
But in terms of actual, you know, writing books and stuff, there's been a minimum of that since moving to sunny (sometimes) and cold (often) Massachusetts. Mostly I'm doing stuff like working and buying groceries and trying to keep the house relatively clean and watching DVDs of dumb movies that I'm going to review. I will say that my agent has evinced a recent flicker of interest about my next book, so maybe he's putting together a strategy to get it out there. With luck, I'll have something more substantial to announce in the next few months. Meanwhile, here's this.
Okay, it's been a while getting here, but I have good reason to believe that sring may finally be just around the corner..
The above photo is of the crocuses I planted in September--I put in dozens of them:
I love how they bloom right there in the snow. They're like, "Screw you, winter."
They were supposed to be a mix of colors--white, yellow and purple. All the evidence so far points to their being only yellow, but whatever. I'll take what I can get, at this point.
Above are a couple of tulips, which are sprouting at an alarming rate along the front of the house. This is great, especially as we face north and so get virtually no direct sunshine along there. I was afraid I had planted in vain, but... so far so good. Also, there are daffodils mixed in there. Maybe they're the red things sprouting in back? I'm not sure. Not a huge fan of daffodils, myself, but supposedly they prevent the squirrels from eating the bulbs.
I also put in a few along the sunny edge of our parking spot:
With any luck, these will bloom just fine.
So: winter is in retreat, spring is on its way, but will we have flowers? Stay tuned.
Spectrum Culture is a lively web site covering music, movies, books and--hey presto!--food, and I've been invited to contribute. Being congenitally unable to say no, I have signed on to write some graphic novel reviews (ie, comics) and will also drop the occasional record review as well.
My first two contrbutions went up last week and this, the first being a review of the the new Black Rebel Motorcycle Club album, and the seconf being my contribution to the site's Monthly Mixtape, in which writers say a few words about recent songs that they think deserve some attention. I dug up a live version of Red Baraat's "Shruggy Ji," but all the tunes on the list have soem merit, and I invite you the check 'em out. (Red Baraat shows up on page 3 of the list, btw.)
There's a lot going on on this site, so bookmark it and check back once in a while. Right now new content seems to go up every Friday, but I have a feeling that schedule is going to start accelerating soon...
Ohhh, this is a good one, kids! The latest entry into my ongoing PopMatters column, Don't Open That Door!, is a little 1959 quasi-masterpiece entitled Teenagers From Outer Space. I can hear you asking right now: "Wait--you mean there are other kinds?"
The movie features teenagers from--wait for it--outer space, who land on earth intending to take over the place for, um, some reason that I can't remember right now but I'm sure seems very importnt to them. There's a flying saucer and death-ray guns and giant lobster-like monsters and all manner of mayhem. But that's not the weirdest thing about the movie. The weirdest thing is this:
Against all odds, this movie doesn't totally suck.
Here's the first paragraph of the column:
"A flying saucer arrives on Earth carrying a load of teenagers with names like Thor and Derek, plus their lantern-jawed captain, who appears related to Ed O’Neill of Married With Children. These interplantary white supremacists (there is much talk of “our supreme race”) decide that Earth is a perfect grazing ground for their herds of giant, flesh-eating Gargons, and the presence of human beings is of little concern. Only sensitive Derek, who busily reads from a forbidden book of Pablo Neruda poems in his spare time, has qualms. He’s quickly outvoted, so he runs off from his heartless companions, one of whom is dispatched to catch him while the others return to their home planet to pick up the Gargon fleet and conduct it to Earth. The race is on."
And things just go downhill from there.
Do me a favor and trot over to the column and check it out. The more hits the page gets, the better for me. And then click on the Facebook Like button and/or the Tweet button and send this little masterpieces out into the internetosphere, or whatever we're calling it these days. The more hits and the more popularity, the longer they'll let me continue with this column, which is something I enjoy a great deal. Thanks.
Next week it's The Deadly Mantis, another favorite from years gone by. Be sure to check that one out, too...
So, last weekend my tulips and daffodils and crocuses began poking their noses up out of the cold heart ground, and I found myself fluched with enthusiasm for, y'know, spring and life and renewal and color and all that. Then on Monday night it snowed, a lot, and it kept up on Tuesday. We got the better part ofn eight inches, and I'm officially Pretty Sick of Winter. Then I did my taxes yesterday, and believe me that didn't make me Any Less Sick.
So what's a guy to do to keep his spirits alive? Well, I reviewed the excellent Mars Attacks book for Spectrum Media, and it should be up online in a week or ten days. And I've been gulping down previews for season 3 of Game of Thrones like there's no tomorrow. Lame, I know. But helpful nonetheless. As I've said more than once on this blog, it's the best. Show. Ever.
If and when any surviving crocuses/tulips dare to raise their heads above ground, I promise I'll let you know. The way this winter is dragging, I'm thinking May. Mid-May. Or maybe June.
Take a look at this nifty web site, Spectrum Culture, which a small but mighty site dedicated to books, movies, music and food. I have been invited to write for it, and I will be doing so, concentrating mainly on comics and maybe a little music from time to time. This will of course not interfere with my PopMatters writing in any way, especially my ongoing column, Don't Open That Door!. I have way too much fun writing all that stuff, and it will remain my first priority. (After my own books, of course.) Nothing there that I've written as of yet, but there are some good reviews and plenty of fun features, so stop by and check it out...
I had never been to AWP before, and I have still never been to the MLA conference, so I really didn't know what to expect. But the Bookfair part of AWP, at least, was hugely fun and a little bit overwhelming.
I signed books for an hour, along with some fellow Red Hen Press writers, and got the chance to shmooze with a few peole who were genuinely interested in what I do. This was gratifying to say the least. I also met with tons of Red Hen press people, who were without exception enthusiastic and vociferous in their love of books in general and An Age of Madness in particular. So that was mighty exciting also.
Sorry about the blurry pics. It was indoors and these shots were taken with a phone (thanks Uzee!). Plus, y'know, I'm sort of jittery and dont stand still much.
More important is Red Hen's unique take on book promotion, to wit:
That's right, it's a candy bar. The David Maine An Age of Madness candy bar to be exact. Buy a book, get a candy bar. Red Hen does this for every new release and I have to say, it's a stoke of genius. And also tasty. And also popular. how popular? Well, I got the last one, so there you go.
Plus as a SPECIAL BONUS for making the trip to Boston, I was able to meet up afterward with the lovely and rather frighteningly brilliant Fizzah Sajjad, a former student of mine (from 10th grade!) who is now a Fulbright scholar getting her Master's at MIT. Holy shit. There was a time, once, when I could say with confidence that I knew more things than this person, but those days have long since passed.
It's been eleven years since we'd last met, so it was quite the reunion. Fizzah joined me, Uzee, and Uzee's editor, the lovely and talented Hilary from Clockroot Books, for lunch at a Greek place in Boston near Newbury Street. (See photo below, in which we are toasting our day with empty water glasses. This was my idea and it made sense at the time.) We then strolled Newbury Street to the quite awesome Trident Bookstore, which besides selling books also has a pretty killer restaurant offering a quite tasty (ahem) apple cobbler. A fine time was had by all, trust me. No pics of the cobbler, unfortunately. But I highly recommend the shop.
So, a great big SHOUT OUT to Red Hen Press for being such a great publisher with such a lively stable of talented and compelling authors, and also for takign the time to ask me to appear at AWP. It was, frankly, loads more fun than I had anticipated (much less stuffy and "academic" than I'd feared).
And I haven't even mentioned Traveling Marla -- but will do so soon. Promise.
Hey, it's Saturday, which means the Bookfairpart of the conference is free to the public! So go take a look, and stop by to say hi.
It's a beautiful cloudless day here in western Mass., and I believe Boston is the same. It's a terrific day to get out of the house and work off some of that cabin fever. Hynes Center in Boston (Copley Square next to the Sheraton, on Boylston Street). I'm signing books from 12:30 to 1:30 at Booth 304.
See you there... And if not, I'll try to put some pictures up tomorrow, provided my camera behaves.
Take a gander at the wryly-titled blog In Which Our Hero, which ran this very nice review of An Age of Madness back in February but which I only noticed yesterday.
Obviously a discerning reader possessed of fine critical taste, the elusive "Keith," who is reputed to be a librarian in Los Angeles, has many fine things to say about the book. To wit:
"Maine's characters are
the novel's strong suit. Regina has a sharp and distinctive voice, and Maine's
not afraid to let her be unlikable. The principal supporting characters, Anna
and Russell ... are equally well drawn, and Maine is very
good at letting us see them through Regina's eyes in ways that let us understand
how that view might be distorting things."
Told you he was discerning...
In all seriousness, a big thanks to Keith out there in LA for taking the time to read the book and write up something about it. It's much appreciated!
A vivid contouring of politics, geography, relationships and “fragments that never extended far enough into history books but lingered in the air”, of vastness and intimacy, [Thinner Than] Skin is a story of lovers, exiles, dreamers, wanderers, set flush with a backdrop that’s as mythic as it is spectacular: Pakistan’s Kaghan Valley, the Karakoram and Pamir Mountains, forests of deodar and pine watched by owls, rivers and lakes born of “mating of glaciers” and violence of wind-blown rumour. Destinies as sinuous, entwined and varied as the ancient trading routes along the Silk Road fill out Skin, perspectives shape-shift like snowmelt in mountainous passes where “China encroaches and Pakistanis, Uzbeks, Russians, Chinese, and Afghans all come together to trade”. Inhabiting this world, Skin dwells on dispossession, the rent in silken connections, the drift when love is “like a Pakistani glacier. It was difficult to say if it was growing or retreating”.
It's quite a long article and there's a lot more to it, so take a look. Oh and the book is great too, if you haven't checked it out already.
IN OTHER NEWS: Just three days till AWP in Boston. I'll be there at the Red Hen Booth from 12:30 to 1:30pm on Saturday afternoon, so stop by and say howdy if you're near the Hynes Convention Center.
Actually, I still don't have a lot of details about my appearance at AWP this year, but here's what I do know:
1. I will be appearing on Saturday, March 9, from 12:30 - 1:30pm.
2. Red Hen Press will have a table/booth at the bookfair, and they'll be selling my book An Age of Madness, and I'll be available to sign copies, offer relationship advice, etc.
That's pretty much all I know. Here's a link to a bewildering overload of information.
I believe that my involvement is with the Bookfair, not the conference itself, which is full of people talking about books rather than people who actually write them. (Snarky, I know. But I've got my reasons.) There will be writers too I believe, giving talks and so forth but that's not me. I'm just there to sell & sign.
The Hynes Convention Center in Boston seems like a fairly huge place -- near the Prudential Center and the Sheraton, if that helps -- so... plan on getting there early to find parking, etc. (I'm certainly going to.) Despite all the mayhem, this does seem like an interesting event, especially the Bookfair side of thigs, where you can meet some interesting authors and publishers and, maybe, pick up some good books. I plan on doing some browsing before and after my hour in the limelight. Hope to see you there!
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