Stuff from all over

A giveaway of COSTALEGRE, new feature announcement, book recommendations, a mediation on translation and other post-vacation thoughts.

Hello! I’m back from Careyes, Mexico and it was as magical as ever.

The chachalaca birds are still clucking in the mornings, the mangoes are heart-breaking in their ripeness, the rip tides are still lethal, and I remain as enchanted as ever with the region where I set my second novel COSTALEGRE. Translation: The Happy Coast. Read to the end of this post for info on entering a giveaway of my historical novel about the Guggenheims.

My new obsession. Can’t stop. Won’t.

In the meantime, I want to ramble about a few things. First up: a book recommendation. This one isn’t for the faint of heart…or stomach. Mariana Enriquez’s OUR SHARE OF NIGHT is a political horror story that uses supernatural elements to get at the atrocities committed in Argentina during and after the dictatorship in which Enriquez positions the Argentine aristocracy as a cult of demon worshippers. I have a longstanding obsession with books that examine the decadence and depravity of ruling classes and glory in decline (Renata Adler’s SPEEDBOAT and Sylvia Moreno-Garcia’s MEXICAN GOTHIC fall into this category) and I certainly tried to honor this lineage of books with my historical novel about European surrealists waiting World War II out in a crumbling hacienda under the complicated protection of Peggy Guggenheim. OUR SHARE OF NIGHT has been on my radar for a while, but it is a big book, and a challenging one, and I think that big, challenging books deserve a destination read.¹

So I took it to the Mexican jungle to read during my vacation. I succeeded— finishing during extreme turbulence during a flight back to Atlanta. When I reached the end of this mind bending novel, I promptly purchased everything that Enriquez has available in English, because I’m a fan girl now. To me, OUR SHARE OF NIGHT combines the horror, violence and unbridled sexuality of Marlon James with the classic storytelling devices of Alexander Dumas. A fair warning: OUR SHARE isn’t for everyone. First of all, it’s terrifying, and the violence is extreme. There’s a great deal of abuse committed against children, and the book is loooong. To me, however, every bit of violence and horror in the novel is warranted, as is the book’s length. This book, as with Enriquez’s story collection (shortlisted for the Man Booker prize) was seamlessly translated by Megan McDowell who I am also now a groupie of.

Why am I as much a fan of McDowell as the author she is translating? Let me introduce you to the past in which I was a translator myself. In college, I majored in Comparative Literature with a focus on French to English translation. It was something I excelled at and had a passion for, translation. My thesis on the French writer Michel Houellebecq and my translation of his book on H.P. Lovecraft won a prize at Brown. After college, I moved to Paris where I continued to work as a translator, first at a super sketchy tourism company called “Paris VIP International” that paid me under the table, then at a trend forecasting company called Nelly Rodi which barely paid at all, and finally at L’Oréal which paid me very well. Though translating press releases about nourishing face masks isn’t the same as translating literature, I was passionate about translation in all forms. To me, translation remains one of the highest literary art forms, and the amount of energy and care and sweat equity that Megan McDowell clearly puts into her translations of Enriquez leaves me in pure awe.

This week, I actually came home to a big translation job. I’m translating the script for a feature film my husband is working on called GONE BY MORNING for a French producer. This is a tricky gig as 1) the writing is my husband’s, which makes things complicated 2) I’m translating his work in the house I share with him, which makes things complicated 3) His screenplay is a contemporary Western about a reluctant cowgirl, which means I’m translating the writing of an urban Frenchman into Western parlance and I also have to translate the horse content into a format that is both accessible for readers who know nothing about horses but also exclusive enough to feel insider and cool. It’s a job that would usually take me a month to do well but I have one week to do it, and translating takes so much energy and concentration, it’s going to be hard for me to pivot to other forms of writing, especially after ten days where the only form of writing I did was signing my name on checks for piña coladas by the sea.

---

There’s still time to join! Learn how to build platform with me tomorrow night.

There’s still time to sign up for my class tomorrow night on building and maintaining platform! I’m grateful to the many of you who answered my AMA about platform with excellent questions. Judging from those questions, there’s a disconnect between what the gatekeepers are telling you that platform is and the truth about platform, so I’m psyched to do my favorite thing tomorrow, which is bust open some myths and truth-tell on this subject. I’ll keep sign-ups open until 2pm EST on Wednesday. The class kicks off at 7pm EST and is three hours long because we have a ton of ground to cover. Video will be available for those you can’t join live.

Please note: for those of you already enrolled, the Zoom link went out yesterday at noon EST from my turningpoints.retreats@gmail.com email address. Check your spam if you didn’t receive the link.

---

What are you doing next October? Want to turbocharge your writing on a ranch in New Mexico with me?

On the topic of signing up for things, there is one month left to apply for my writing workshop in New Mexico called Turning Points. If you’ve ever attended a destination writing workshop before, well, mine is nothing like that. Instead of having a group of people who aren’t necessarily your ideal reader workshop 15 pages, at Turning Points, we workshop the things that are holding you back from being a more successful writer. We workshop the parts of you that are getting in your way. We workshop fear, and envy, we workshop procrastination. I customize each workshop entirely around each writer and their writing goals, and most of the work we’ll do is off the written page. You can read all about the retreat, see pictures and read testimonials at the Turning Points web page.

---

A little teaser about something new that’s on the way!

Other people’s craft. My couch.

You heard it here, first! “Craft from the Couch” is going to be a video interview series with some of my favorite authors and publishing professionals. We’ll kick things off with author and magic-maker Marie-Helene Bertino who will help us to find voice, and then we’ll talk to Chloe Caldwell about reprints. Lots of other special guest stars are coming up, so do stay tuned! I’d also like to do video interviews with my own Substack subscribers because you don’t need to be a published author to lecture about craft.

---

A word about…compression

Compression of words is great, but have you tried compression socks?

With the exception of the insomnia that has plagued me all my life, for the most part, the body I’ve been given has been working pretty well. Alas, the “working well” part went to shit when I hit 45. Along with muddled hearing, a laughable decrease in eyesight, and a bunion that makes it hard to walk in anything but Crocs, I’ve recently been gifted with extremely heavy legs. I don’t know if I’m eating too much sodium or have decreased circulation or what, but my legs constantly feel leaden and uncomfortable and kind of dead inside. I’ve had to fly with compression socks for this reason for a while now, but recently I tried working at my desk with them, and you know what? It makes things better. We have a sedentary job and/or passion in this writing thing, and when you reach a certain age (my age?) it just doesn’t feel good to be always sitting down. I got a three-pack of compression socks on the bad place (Amazon) and I urge you to, as well. Your circulation will thank you.

---

It’s giveaway time! Enter to win a signed copy of my third novel, COSTALEGRE

Let’s end with a giveaway! My novel COSTALEGRE is about the challenging relationship between the art collector and heiress Peggy Guggenheim and her troubled artist daughter, Pegeen. So tell me in the comments about a book you’ve enjoyed that also explores complicated mother-daughter relationships. It can be fiction or nonfiction— graphic memoir, YA, everything is game. You sharing your favorite toxic mother-daughter book title will count as your entry for the giveaway. How will I choose a winner? No sé—I’m still running on piña colada energy so I’ll just go off vibes.

I’ll leave comments open to paid subscribers until this Friday when I’ll pick two winners and I’ll mail the winners an autographed version of COSTALEGRE along with a handwritten note. This giveaway is only open to paid subscribers in the continental US because foreign/overseas shipping has gotten mighty costly, sorry! If you want to join giveaways like this and gain access to other exclusive goodies, join us: upgrade.

Ready?

Set?

Enter!

And hopefully I’ll see some of you in class tomorrow night.

1. This paragraph contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org. Any modest commissions I earn off of your book purchases I use toward buying books on Bookshop.org myself. In fact, I just bought Mariana Enriquez’s story collection THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED and Jennifer Croft’s THE EXTINCTION OF IRINA REY with my affiliate commissions—thank you for your support! Getting new books is the best.