Maria Alexander News and Updates from TheHandlessPoet.com

My agent asked me to read A Girl Called Zippy as I'm considering a memoir. She said it was a great example of a lighthearted way of looking at an ultimately serious subject.

I'm about halfway through. The writing itself is very smooth, but the stories themselves are only faintly entertaining and ramble with no appreciable progression or concept of the girl's age. The one part of the book I adore because it is so quirky and admirable is that she and her dad are both atheists and that in her childish convictions she makes all kinds of excuses not to go to her mother's Quaker church.

Amused by this, I made the mistake of looking up the author and discovered to my horror that she eventually went to seminary.

NO NO NO NO NO NO!

NO NO NO NO NO...

...nononononononononononononononononononono...




Sigh.

In a furious blaze of synchronicity, Slate publishes a series of articles this week on memoir writing by famous memoir writers.

Alison Bechdel's brief essay hits me the hardest. What she misses, though, is that memoirs betray everyone, even ourselves. I can't conceive of cranking out 60,000 words that glorified myself. How boring! If I'm going to write about myself, I have big, gaping faults that, I think, are as hilarious as they are painful. A memoir cannot make another person in our lives look as badly as it makes us, the writer. It's just not possible. Even a whiny memoir about a bad childhood can make the author look laughably unforgiving and the villains cartoonish.

No, no one asks the little old ladies what they feel, but we know they would never approve. They never do, anyway.

I'm beginning to appreciate the difficulty of what my agent has suggested. It's far more difficult than writing fiction. Incredibly so.

Since last Friday morning: 16,400 words

Not bad. I wrote 1000 less than expected yesterday because I wound up going into town for coffee and shopping with a relative of The Frenchman, the beautiful Dr. B. She took me into the most expensive shops in Aix, the ones where dresses cost thousands of euros. I stifled a hearty laugh in one store because there is a sort of faux gothique trend a la mode right now, complete with skull print scarves and silver serpents writhing around crosses. A delightful artist, Dr. B helped me with colors in the stores. Sometimes you get an idea in your head as to what looks good, but it takes an expert to show you what a silly idea that is. I enjoyed playing with our 250K euro palette.

And yet another damned random Frenchman in the street said to me, in English, "I love you!"

Dr. B laughed at my reaction, which was, "Uh...d'accord..." without looking at the guy once. (He might have been talking to her, but I was the one babbling in English at that moment. Mostly we spoke in French.)

No interruptions for two days. Or almost, anyway. I shudder to think what I'll get done. My Internet is being very slow, which should actually help.

Words since last Friday morning: 13,289

I wrote about 2200 on the weekend, so I'm averaging just a bit under 4,000 a day. Maybe even less. Still, it's a good clip.

Caught a light-weight lighting seed.

AOL is refusing to play the clips from Tori's new album because they're "not available" in my "area." Which means fans in Europe, where the tour begins shortly, can't listen and rate. Convenient? Or just ass-headed? (And does anyone know of a browser that blocks IPs? Maybe that's the answer for now. I need me some more Tori.)

It rained yesterday. Great shadowy sheets of water dropped from the sky all afternoon into the evening. Didn't quite save the sheets on the laundry line but it all survived.

Like I said, I've quit everything. I even quit the Worst Choir in the World, but that wasn't a difficult decision. I do miss going with The Frenchman, though.

The dreams, however, are quite a different thing. I wish I could quit those. Many, many dreams where I discover I'm on a train speeding off to parts unknown. Or in a car, low to the ground, racing across a limitless field. I ultimately find myself in the decrepit library of a cranky magician hiding his unshaven mug behind the check out desk, or in one case I found myself with students listening to Nelson Mandela at an UNESCO rally.

I'm lost. I've got to get home. The usual.

They started last Thursday, of course.

I hope everyone has fun at WHC who's going! I'll miss you guys. Well, not everyone. Breaks are good.

Time for more red hair dye. Joy!

I love it. Really.

Since last Friday morning, I've written 9767 words.

Signed the contract with Dark Arts Books. The following three stories will appear:

"The Last Word"

"Pinned"

"The Dark River of His Flesh" (reprinted from Paradox Magazine 2004)

So, two new stories, one reprint. They're all long -- over 6,000 words -- so you know what that means. (I guess no reviews is no bad reviews, eh?)

I am in full retreat now, focusing exclusively on the current project, trying to get as much done before I leave. The Frenchman has warned me -- and this time I believe him -- that the reverse culture shock is going to be bad. (I had never heard of this, but it definitely makes sense.) If I create a big enough buffer of free time just before the transition, I might be able to soften the landing.

Fingers crossed.

Now for more words.

A Scanner Darkly: Loved it, even though it was confusing in parts. The dialog, the acting, all terrific. But, you say, Keanu Reeves was in it! Yeah, whatever. It was still awesome.

The Lady in the Water: A sweet film with a nice message for middle schoolers (or grownups who somehow missed the memo). While it definitely dropped the ball in a few places, at least I could watch Giamatti's character, unlike in Sideways where I just wanted to wipe his nose full force with my fist. If Night continues to make movies like this, he is in no danger of being assassinated for writing something too deep.

Brice de Nice: This is a huge cult comedy right now in France. It's over-the-top dopey. It's full of silly things you'll continue to say and do to your friends because it's so dumb you can't resist. But I have to say, the English subtitles worked better in many places than the French dialog!

We went to the little city port of Cassis today. I'll upload pictures shortly. The photos I took today were reverse shots of the Cliffs, among other things.

Tonight we here in Cheeseland spring forward. Wheeeee!

Number of words written since Friday morning: 4434.

I'm already springin', baby!

I'm so tired, it's ridiculous.

I woke up ruminating. Stories from childhood -- the almost unbelievable tales that people laugh at when I tell them. Stories about my utterly insane childhood with parents who thought the Anti-Christ was going to break down their door at any minute to hack off their heads for not taking The Mark of the Beast.

Frankly, I couldn't stop giggling when I should have been sleeping. The best medicine is to laugh.

I just realized I owe a bunch of people emails. There's some HWA legal drama going on. I can't talk about it here, but suffice it to say, it took up some time yesterday. I was happy to give the time, but time it took.

The French government did a cool thing yesterday. Their space agency just opened up all 1600 of their UFO files. Their scientists say easily 75% of the reports are either hoaxes or explained phenomenon. The other 25% cannot be explained by current scientific means or by human intervention. They are not saying, of course, that the explanations are necessarily extraterrestrial, but they're not ruling it out either. They're leaving it as simply "unexplained phenomenon." Unfortunately, the website that details all of the cases has received such a deluge that it's been down virtually since it went up. They even had police around the space agency yesterday when they made the announcement because of the UFO kooks. I'm sure it will be entertaining reading once the excitement has died down.

Today, I'm writing like crazy. I need to get the Anti-Christ out of my head.

That was my night, thanks, getting screwed by insomnia.

I had a minor blood sugar crash and then had racing thoughts. This "new direction" is worrying me. I've had lots of talks with my pal Christa Faust about this sort of thing. People prefer nonfiction to fiction, it seems, and it's nuts. Personally, I prefer to read fiction. I like a good story. People's lives rarely make good stories. They're too self-involved in the telling and almost never honest. Of course, humor is a whole 'nother dish o' p'sketti, but still one type of "storytelling" doesn't lend to the other.

Last year, there was a young (WTF?) memoir writer* who went on Letterman and is now a professional screenwriter -- not because she knows how to write a good tale, I'd bet my booties, but rather because she wrote a lurid tell-all memoir about being a stripper in Minnesota for 18 months. She also wrote a thinly fictionalized blog about her office and sex life, and supposedly has another memoir about her teenage angst.

How horrifying is that? Actually, what sickens me more is this quote from her memoir: "I was never molested as a child, probably because I wasn't very attractive."

Yeah, and probably every sexual abuse survivor I know would respond, "Die in a fire, you stupid, fucking bitch."

What's worse is that she just wrote a film that was produced and is writing a new sitcom. I guess Hollywood has always liked that kind of stupifying, head-up-the-ass mentality, so why complain? And to be fair to The Machine, the products of these sorts of people make money, apparently.

I don't want to be lumped with intellectual vagrants like this. I don't care if she's popular. Man, I don't care if her first piss each morning is gold. It ain't right.

The thing is, I won't be like "that." You know this. I know this. I'm older, smarter, more talented. I've always wanted to write about my family as part of the greater dialog going on right now about religion. It's a major thread in the bigger moral debate. And I want to enter that broader dialog. I did in my query to Bitch magazine yesterday, where I pitched an article about The Blasphemy Challenge. I want to entertain with good stories, but I also want to debate.

And that, dear friends, is what was going through my head at around 4:32 a.m. Over and over. Round and round.

Now, I'm going to write.




*If y'all can't Google Fu this, just email me. I'm simply reluctant to give her link space here.

The Equinox hath arrived!

Normally, the Equinoxes and Solstices roll in cool yet startling things for me. Winter Solstice was my first BBC Radio appearance. I'm thinkin' the Spring Equinox brought in Kathleen Spivack, as well as the exciting new direction in my writing career. It feels like Spring, inside and out.

The foot is better. Still stiff, a little sore, but I can move my toes at least. I slept with the foot up, compressed, after several bouts of ice as we watched Lucky Number Slevin (which I felt was an entertaining, albeit an uneven and problematic film with an unbelievable ending). I've set up shop downstairs today so that I don't have to use the stairs. I finally figured out how I might have hurt it. It's still weird, but at least it's better.

The weirdness continued last night as I discovered someone went onto my Amazon Profile and systematically voted down every single one of my reviews of thrillers. They also voted down my photo. The whole reason I was there was because I was thinking of adding another. I had just been there last weekend with the same intent but wound up blowing it off. In the meantime, someone went on a tirade. I hope they got it off their chest and got themselves back to The Home before dinner time so they could get their meds and resume rocking in place.

I also again tried to negotiate (and failed) with the guy who's owned www.mariaalexander.com for eight years and hasn't used it in the last five. I've registered www.mariaalexander.net. I'm just angling for the most logical and effective URL for what I do. The one I have was given to me when I was totally disabled. The gentleman's reasons for keeping the domain don't reflect effective marketing practices, Internet or otherwise, but I'll not try to convince him. I'll make do.

Anyway, even Provence knows that Spring is here, despite the freezing temperatures yesterday. I'll shoot and upload photos of the white blossoming trees when I'm able.

Home now.

Was up super early to catch the TGV. I've had to sacrifice another day to the tax gods because I received a tax form late that I didn't realize I even had to deal with. Bastards! Amended returns with checks are out the door tomorrow.

Been thinking a lot about a friend of The Frenchman with whom we ate dinner last night. (She made us a terrific home-cooked meal, lemon confit chicken with garlic, onions and potatoes.) She is doing the work of a saint. She's teaching high school French language and literature up in Clichy-sous-Bois, the very suburbs where the riots broke out in October 2005. Her students are all extremely poor immigrants from 15 to 24 years old. An incredibly sweet lady, she's obviously got the strength of legions. And get this: she loves her job. Loves it. She went to the top literary university in France. She didn't have to do this.

And she apparently loved L.A. when she visited it.

Hopefully, writing for THRILLED will commence tomorrow. The agent is reading the Nerve article. I'm kinda hoping she thinks Nerve is too small for it, but she might concur that it's just right for it, too. If it went anywhere else, though, I'd feel like my bikini top just dropped.

To bed.

I can't even speak English properly, I'm so pooped! We partied hard with lots of crazy drunk French people last night. We had a blast dancing, singing, carrying on. The band dedicated "Sympathy for the Devil" to me. The Dark Princess of Paris reigns!

Thank you everyone who said so many sweet things about our photos! The Embassy party was beautiful. The American Embassy itself looks like shades of Versailles within. Incredible ceiling paintings, gold trim on the doors, the walls, the mirrors. One can see The Louvre dome from the balcony of the back part of the reception hall. We drank champagne, ate hors d'oeuvres from silver platters offered by stiff French waiters who gave a small bow if you declined the offered contents. The Ambassador bailed on us. Someone else came in his stead who had a longer title and what sounded like a lower station, but I don't recall who it was. The speeches were long and in French. I listened a little before I made my way back to the back area and sat, where I had a really nice discussion with a lady from Los Angeles as we rested our sore feet.

But later, as I was mouthing off about something or other to the incredibly lovely Vice Consul, a really sweet lady named Norma Szokolyai approached me. She's a poet and performance artist. She mentioned that Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer Kathleen Spivack was giving a writing workshop on Saturday here in Paris and asked if that was something I was interested in. (Kathleen doesn't have a website, but Amazon has a few of her poetry collections.) It turns out Kathleen had already been turning away people, but thanks to Norma's call vouching for me and me also calling her (I found her phone number on the Web), I managed to secure a spot in the workshop.

I have to say, one would be hard pressed to find such a collection of writers in L.A. There were people who had written books for the United Nations, an expat from India who spoke six languages, people who worked for foreign governments in human rights (including UNESCO). There was some wonderful writing and interesting insights about making stylistic choices. I realized that I make a lot of stylistic choices from my gut. I really appreciate Kathleen's approach to teaching and coaching, too. She went through our writing samples and chose passages that were good examples of what she was trying to express. Even if there was a flaw, she was so articulate and politic that I never felt like someone was being criticized, only corrected. And she very graciously solicited my writing experience, as I'd probably had more published work than most of the people there.

For the workshop, I gave Kathleen my Nerve.com article about my crazy religious upbringing and Darth Vader as my sexual awakening. It seemed to delight her, and she urged me to write for the big print magazines, like The New Yorker. She agreed that the online literary world was a thing in and of itself, and great to pursue, but that the print world was calling. Like my agent, she pressed me to write more humor. A lot more humor.

Okie! I'm a-writin' as fastest I can!

We did more, but I'm too tired to recount it. Party on.

Thursday evening is going to be something.

The Event: We've been invited to the American Embassy in Paris, where we'll meet the American ambassador at a cocktail party celebrating a certain program The Frenchman was involved with at its infancy 20 years ago. I've seen the embossed, personalized invitations. I've squealed. I've fretted over what to wear. What to do with my hair. All the usual.

The Outfit: Purchased in Paris, a long-sleeved black gauze Victorian dress with black lace around the bottom, crocheted appliqué at the cleavage, and a soft pink silk slip attached daintily underneath. Purchased at the same boutique, a dark grey waist coat with ruffles all around the bottom and a bow at the base of my back. It fastens at the waist with an onyx broach. I bought shoes yesterday that have solid high heels and that lace up like Victorian granny boots with black silk ribbons. Black stockings are a must. I'll also wear my Ruby Raven corset, hidden nicely under the waist coat. It looks ravishing over the dress, although it just might do its business in hiding. The overall shape is very pleasing.

The Insane Realization: One can never be certain about these things, but I suspect this will be the first time in almost 100 years that a corset has been worn at the American Embassy in Paris. Might be the last for another 100 years, too.

The French are very practical people.

The same word for "to scratch" (gratter) can be used for "to itch." It only makes sense. Why would you scratch if you didn't itch? And if you had an itch, unless you're practicing some form of self denial, you'd scratch it under most circumstances (or get someone to do it for you), right?

Saturday morning I discovered three small bites -- one on my shoulder and two on my back -- but by yesterday morning I had a whole arc of bites, with a cluster on my shoulder. Last night, I didn't sleep because of the itching. The Frenchman called Dr. K early and he said he'd see me at 9:00am. I flew out of here with a sandwich in hand to the bus while The Frenchman took care of some pressing home business.

Dr. K confirmed that I had been a steady meal for spiders the last two nights. But I love spiders! I feel so guilty killing one, it's ridiculous. It used to stem from my pagan ideals: spiders were sacred omens of industry and flawless, skilled work, representative of the goddess Arachne. So, I tended to not kill them when I found them unless it was really necessary. One day, I was standing in the bathroom of my Hollywood apartment with Ophelia when a spider appeared in front of her. As she watched it curiously, I said, "Look, Ophy! It's an omen!"

Ophelia bent forward and ate the omen in one gulp.

That's when I decided maybe spiders were so not magical after all. I mean, my damned familiar just ate one unceremoniously. Since then, I realized that I simply like spiders. However, our housekeeper this morning killed all the spiders that I had been indulging except the one daddy long legs in the toilette area. And I am not sorry.

Time for another nap.

Yesterday was a busy day once we hit the door. We first went to a big mall in Marseilles. As we drove into the northern part of the city, I immediately noticed all the projects. But the thing is, their projects look nice -- nice enough, in fact, that at first I thought they were just big apartment complexes like they have in Hollywood. Nope, they're projects. We drove right through the project that the famous soccer player Zidane grew up in, too. The immigrant population is enormous in Marseilles, particularly from North Africa. Even in the malls, the "hip" springs and summer outfits for the younger set all featured this Algerian "desert" theme of "urban turbans" and drop-waist dresses with leggings.

What a lot of people don't know is that, while Paris and other cities in France have been having trouble with race riots, Marseilles has had absolutely no problems at all and yet their immigrant population is enormous. The reason? No one knows for sure but theories by leading experts (which include The Frenchman) are that in Marseilles the projects are integrated beautifully with the city itself. They don't sit five miles away in isolation so that their inhabitants have to take a dinghy train to reach the main population and jobs. They are actually a part of the city here. And, as I mentioned, they're easy on the eyes, some overlooking the Mediterranean (from a distance and with nasty industrialized sectors in the way, but it's no different than any other part of Marseilles).

That's not to say there isn't despair, crime and other problems in Marseilles. In the mall, there were very few people. It being Saturday around noon and not a Muslim holiday that we could think of, the only conclusion we could reach is that the people here are largely too poor even for the cheap shoe shops that sell 15€ boots. The Carrefour in that mall, which is like a two-story Target with a supermarket attached, was a bit busy, but not nearly what one would expect. Again, lots of Muslim families. I notice fashion a great deal here, and the Muslim women had integrated the French skirt-boots-jacket combination with head scarves and darker colors.

In contrast, last night we rented Marie Antoinette. Sophia Coppola has such an interesting style. I loved the costumes, the food, the way she grabbed the feminist reconstruction of La Reine, the occasional integration of pop music. It was beautifully done. On the other hand, the story was a bit flat. We never see the full consequences of any "dangerous" activity. The Queen has an affair with a soldier who "has a reputation," yet nothing comes of all the gossip and hand wringing. There isn't even any gossip about the legitimacy of her son. And in the end, after a glut of indulgent activity in the film, we don't see the actual fall of the monarchy, just a single shot of one semi-destroyed room in Versailles as they flee. (It wasn't even that badly damaged.) I think the bottom line is that we never see the bloody and dangerous results of the lifestyle that killed the monarchy. Yes, historically we know there were consequences, we know that our Revolution fueled theirs, but without any of them in the movie it feels like the end of a successful party that was merely busted up by the cops. And maybe that's all she wanted to show. For me, it wasn't very satisfying as a story.

Writing today. With my tax refunds in place, I can now focus on the next project in peace.

Around noon today, I slumped at my keyboard with that feeling of absolute finishedness with The Bodyjacker: I've completed all the plot realignments, clarifications and pontifications. I've eradicated repetitive words (my favorite was apparently "panic," which appeared 26 times). I've added the homicide investigation details. I hit "Save" for the last time on this manuscript. (Well, the last time until someone else tells me to change it.) But I will now, as Clive Barker taught me to say, send it off to school.

It's done.

I then updated the Nonfiction Bibliography on my website. It's got a nice list of links now to podcasts, MP3s, and online interviews, as well as what feels like a semi-complete list of nonfiction articles. I could have sworn I'd published more than that in recent years, but it's possible I've been too preoccupied with fiction and transcontinental shifts.

For the next couple of hours, I'm going to indulge in writing something that is so off the radar and so mysterious that even I lose track of it. Then I'm off to town to eat crepes and see Notes on a Scandal with my love. I've earned it.

I now have Tabasco sauce. Fear me!

A friend took me to the brand new American Grocery in downtown Aix yesterday. We bought Tabasco sauce and blue potato chips. Wheee! I ate half a big bag of blue potato chips yesterday. We then went to their house where I then squeezed and petted great quantities of love in their two cats. Zia, the super shy little girl kitty, now jumps into my lap to be kissed on the head and get the good, good love.

I poured Tabasco sauce all over my eggs this morning. I'm rrrrrrready!

I'm about 2/3 through working out the plot misalignments of BODYJACKER. I should finish soon and then I'm going to go back through, following one character at a time to ensure each hits the proper beats, and to ensure that the police procedural information is polished.

So far, the book has gained about 4,300 words. The metaphysical discussions are difficult to contain, and they only completely make sense in the context of the story. That way I'm trying to avoid accusations of writing a spiritual treatise (although, it's certainly not a terrible one, if it were). There's just enough there to make someone think twice about the world around them, especially if they've had any number of "extra-natural" experiences.

Incidentally, biologist and professor PZ Myers watched The Lost Tomb of Jesus. It turns out it was pretty much the archaeological stinkfest that I predicted, including the total annihilation of Cameron's already flimsy theory by dragging the forged "James, Brother of Jesus" ossuary into the mess to support his claims. File this under "What the fuck was he thinking?"

Still working on the BODYJACKER re-write.

It's been a fucking doozy of a Mercury Rx period, I tell you. As I've mentioned in previous posts, some people are affected a great deal more than others, depending on how much Virgo and Gemini influence one has in their natal chart. Me, I have some, but The Frenchman has great gobs of such. He's been steadily tormented since the station retrograde just before Valentine's Day. He feels it like a woman feels her period coming. "Is it now?" he asks. I nod. "Yup, it's now." I don't ever bring it up. It's like saying, "Hey, it's raining outside," when there's a tempest rattling the windows. I just remind him to relax and recall all the good things this period is for, rather than focusing on the negative.

Turns out he's friends with one of the editors of a new magazine called make/shift. It's a feminist magazine, chocked full of all that kind of thing. So, I sent them a story this morning set in Hollywood after a positive response to my fiction query. I figure it's worth a shot. The story I sent them is definitely feminist, if we're going to use the word. I've been aching to branch out into other kinds of publications, what with so many genre magazines being suffocated by economic pressures. And I do think, with the success of "The King of Shadows" in the Moondance competition almost four years ago, that there's a mainstream audience for some of what I write. I guess we'll see what they think.

Short day today, so back to work pronto.

I am deeply worried.

That is, about this.

The acronym "WTF" doesn't begin to even scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg...if you know what I mean. Nor does WTFATT*?

Especially as it stars none other than Tori Spelling.

::beats Howard's grave with the base of her palm, sobs::

"Stop...spinning! Stop...Oh! Please...stop...spinning!"







*For the acronym-challenged, that's What The Fuck Are They Thinking.

A lot to do today. But.

I finished Shutter Island. It absolutely fucked with my head, right down to the last chapter. I had crazier dreams than usual last night as a result, some involving his characters. This book has given me a literary hangover. It was brilliant in every way.

Except.

I felt compelled to then go back and re-read the utterly amazing Prologue. When I did, therein I found Lehane's cheat: the person narrating the Prologue said some things in a way that, given the rest of the book, he would have never said -- at least, not in that way. It sets you up falsely so that you will not suspect anything in the book to come. If it were written honestly (and I can't think of any reason this character would not be particularly reliable, despite his advanced age), one would suspect something was amiss nearly from the beginning. But then, he didn't really need the false setup at all. The character speaking in the Prologue could have skipped it all and it would have not lost a hair of brilliance.

So, why he did that kind of confuses me and pisses me off a bit. But the rest of the book is extraordinary. Just...nnNNNGgggrah!

On another note, I read a great commentary this morning on the James Cameron "documentary" by Bruce Feiler. (His blog is acting up. I hope he fixes it soon.)

And now back to work.