settling and also comments regarding communication in electronic mail form

I’ve been staring at February strangely because I am confused and annoyed that it has arrived already, but it’s been five days now so I think it’s here to stay and didn’t make a mistake or anything. I am going to choose not to think too much about my unfinished January to-do list and instead make new lists, probably without months on them this time.

Still settling in here, hanging things on walls and re-arranging lamps. I’m slowly but surely putting together my office, a process that has become slightly more complicated by the fact that my new desk does not have drawers. Most of my office stuff is in cardboard boxes, still, helpfully labeled things like “office – papers” and “office – fragile” and hopefully soon I will be able to put the fragile things and the paper things in places that are not cardboard. Cardboard feels so temporary.

I put my newly pared-down bulletin board up, which makes it look sort of office-y. This is the third space I’ve had this board in and I’ve stripped it clean before hanging each time, which feels appropriate for a new space. I added a row of my Nick Bantock postcards which have hung in every space I’ve lived since I was in college and are beginning to show their age around the corners, but having them up above my desk makes it feel more like a space I can write in. Also the fact that I have a desk chair now helps with that. Chair not pictured, but comfy.

board with bantock

(Also pictured on board: lower half of a print from Etsy, torn playing card procured at Sleep No More & postcard from one of several stays at the Royalton Hotel.)

I am still waiting on a few more pieces of furniture, and I keep encountering things that are in need of other things, like rugs that need those non-slippy rug pad things to keep them from slipping, but it’s looking more and more livable every day. I’m trying not to think too hard about how the estimated delivery date for my bookshelves is March, but at this rate that’ll be any day now.

 

And now, a word about email.

I am finally pretty much caught up with my personal email. For about three hours on Sunday I had nothing in my inbox and it was magical.

I am woefully behind on website email, and when I say “woefully behind” I mean I think my autoreply still says it’s October.

The important part: I simply do not have time to respond to every email I receive.

I tried for awhile and I can’t keep up. It takes away from time I should be writing* and also I have this creeping social anxiety that spreads to email answering and I need to think about how to respond properly so it takes me longer to respond and some people could probably handle quickly jotting off replies but I can’t. I’m sorry. I wish I could because it makes me feel terrible that I can’t respond individually to each and every message I get. I do try to read absolutely everything, though, even if I can’t read in a timely manner.

If you need to contact me for professional reasons, there is contact information for my agency in the sidebar of the blog. There is also a Random House contact for press-related inquiries.

I took my own email contact off the website for now, I am trying to figure out the best way to manage it in the future. Please be patient with me, I’m still comparatively new at this.

I’m hoping to spend most of the next few months working on a novel and in order to do that I need to basically live in my head. There’s a lot of stuff in there that I need to sort through and explore and figure out how best to tell the story of the particular bits that I’m sorting through and exploring for this novel. Also there are characters in there who are getting annoyed with me for neglecting them for so long.

I am trying to find a good balance of social media and hopefully that means the blog will be updated with actual Thoughts on a fairly regular basis.

The best place to say hi or ask questions that can be answered in 140 characters or less is and likely always will be Twitter. I do try to answer all directed-at-me @ replies, though I think sometimes Twitter eats them.

I’ve had a lot of stuff to deal with in the last two years, both personally and professionally, and I’m still working through a lot of it and trying to figure out what works best and how to handle, well, life. And when I say “a lot of stuff” I mean I would not wish my last two years on anyone, and for every high-high there’s been a low-low that I can’t tell the internet about. It’s tiring. Sometimes I need to walk away and make gluten-free salted caramel brownies. If I could I would share them with everyone (unless for some reason you don’t like caramel or chocolate or sea salt).

So, please bear with me while I settle in to new spaces and new life and quickly-moving new year and attempt to figure all of this stuff out. I greatly appreciate it.

 

*this includes time doing writing-related things like soaking up inspiration or reading or figuring out where to keep the pens with my drawerless desk.

flax-golden tales: dinosaurs on holiday

dinosaurs on holiday

dinosaurs on holiday

The dinosaurs showed up near the end of tourist season when we were all starting to get bored but before our welcome smiles had completely worn out, which was good timing. It was something unexpected to break up the routine and the dinosaurs were much nicer than the typical tourists.

They were never really extinct, one of them explained. They went to live on an island and they said it wasn’t anything like that movie island with the dinosaur park, though they all liked that movie anyway (but only the first one).

They were here for a quiet vacation so after the initial surprise everyone in town left them alone unless they needed directions or someone to take Instagram photos for them. They ate at all our best barbecue joints and clam shacks and wandered around sightseeing. It was hot that week, so we mixed them big tubs full of complimentary strawberry limeade.

They all bought souvenir t-shirts that were much too small for them and they claimed were for friends but we think they were just being polite.

Before they left they wrote a thank you note on the one of the blank billboards by the beach and we kept it up all through the off season.

No one wants to say it out loud and jinx it, but we’re all hoping they’ll come back again this year.

 

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

read this.

penumbra

 

I spent a good chunk of the weekend reading Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.

I had wanted to read it for a while because I like the title and I’m a sucker for books about books.

Also, the cover glows in the dark.

(Seriously. I checked.)

Also also, it has my name on the back of the (glow-in-the-dark) cover:

harkaway blurb

I figured if Nick Harkaway had such lovely things to say about it it would probably be worth reading.

It is.

It is fun and funny and just plain enjoyable. It has mysterious books and thievery and Google (the place!) and it reminded me a bit of Ready Player One in tone. It celebrates both the old and the new in delightful ways.

And it has the honor of being the first book of 2013 to make me cry, completely unexpectedly. Happy tears of that good-book-sucker-punch-to-the-place-in-the-heart-where-the-booklove-lives sort.

Also, it glows in the dark.

(If there was ever a reason to get the paper book instead of the e-version, there you go.)

So since that was my weekend, I was extra delighted this morning to hear that it received an Alex Award, hurrah! (I haven’t read any of the other winners, bad me. More to add to the to-read list.)

flax-golden tales: perfect pairs

perfect pairs

perfect pairs

I only wanted one but when I got to the address on the piece of paper (after getting lost twice because the handwritten 8s looked like 3s) I was informed, quite politely, that they only were only available in pairs.

The woman at the 8s-not-3s house (who gave me tea in a flowered china cup without asking if I wanted tea) said that it was customary to inform the potential owner about this important detail up front but apparently the guy who writes his 8s so they look like 3s is new and still being trained and it was fine and completely understandable if I would prefer not to continue with the transaction under the circumstances but I should feel free to stay a while regardless and enjoy my tea and I can have the tour and who knows, I might change my mind.

None of them were in cages like I half-expected (she didn’t believe in cages) but all of them, on ottomans and settees and out in the garden, were in pairs. And each pair (of the ones I saw) was almost identical except one was light and the other dark, or warm-toned and its partner cool.

I had told myself I couldn’t manage two but of course when I met a pair I liked I knew I had to take them both, they’re too perfectly matched to separate. They even tilt their heads in unison when I talk to them.

The woman declared them a perfect fit which was strange because she didn’t ask me anything about myself, not even how I took my tea, and she tied red ribbons around their necks while I signed the paperwork but they pulled them off in the car on the way home, each helping the other wriggle free.

I haven’t given them names yet. They have similar personalities, they’re both quite attentive and affectionate and helpful, though one of them particularly likes to fetch things like sticks and seashells and small lizards and things I’d thought I’d lost, while the other prefers reading biographies and watching detective shows and balancing my checkbook.

The woman from the 8s-not-3s house called me after a week to see how we were getting on and asked me a lot of questions about their behavior and sleeping patterns, and then told me I’ll know they’ve really settled in once they’ve mastered mixing a proper martini.

 

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

tarragon & bone

tarragon rug

This is the aforementioned tarragon and bone rug. Technically it has three different colors, though, so I’m not entirely sure what to call the pale pale shimmery green, as I’m guessing the darker one is tarragon and the background is bone.

The internet tells me that the word tarragon derives from something French for little dragon, which I like even if it’s not necessarily true just because the internet said it was.

But the fact that my living room floor is covered in swirls of little dragon herb green is rather fun and quite comfy.

Have yet to determine if it goes with the teal chairs, since the teal chairs have yet to arrive, but it blends well with everything else, so that’s something. I forgot how long it takes to sink into a new home, especially since I never properly sunk into the last apartment because I was travelling so much and also there was construction outside my windows that started every day at 7am which did not make it particularly cozy or relaxing.

I am likely the only person who has ever moved to Manhattan and delighted in how quiet it is. Comparatively.

I am assembling a puzzle of cozy homeyness and I don’t quite have all the pieces yet, but it’s getting there. I have books on shelves and I’m starting to hang things on walls and it feels warm despite the fact that it is far too cold outside.

I’m getting to know the outside, too, though slowly because it is cold. Discovering corners to linger with cocktails and delicious food, trying places on to see if they will become regular haunts. Though the at-home comfy is taking precedence over the outside comfy for the moment.

I found a place to buy loaves of freshly baked gluten-free bread so I can cut the slices as thick as I like (and then cover them with goat cheese and fig spread). I am in love with the fact that anything, anything can be ordered and delivered to your door here, and particularly delighted that sushi arrives in 15 minutes as opposed to the almost-hour that was standard in Boston. Though I suspect almost-instant sushi could also be dangerous.

I’m still unpacking. I just unpacked the rest of my shoes yesterday and half of them are still in a pile in the closet. Most of my office is still in boxes. The “catch up on email” that was near the top of the to-do list for January is still nowhere near to being crossed off despite the fact that January is slipping away.

At this rate I’m just hoping I’ll be through with the cardboard boxes by the time February shows up.

But I’m cozying up the writing cave, so I can spend most of February and March working on that not-yet-novel shaped thing my brain has been itching to get back to, though over the last while it was often too busy being tired to itch.

I think letting it sleep past 7am and not waking it up with beeping and crashing and jackhammers has helped. It’s feeling somewhat well-rested and it’s starting to get itchy again and I actually have a desk chair now, so that should be nicely writing conducive.

The fact that the calendar has little on it beyond writing and home-creating is delicious and delightful, and I can only hope that the writing goes as comparatively smoothly as the decorating has so far, building a new space piece by piece.

flax-golden tales: the light at the edge of the world

light at the edge

the light at the edge of the world

I walk to the edge of the world every day at four o’clock in the afternoon. I didn’t always have to leave so early but the terrain keeps getting worse which makes the journey longer.

The pier itself is in terrible shape and the fence is falling apart in the spots where it’s still standing. I have to watch my footing carefully but I haven’t bothered to fix anything yet. I suppose someday I’ll have to, possibly soon, in order to reach the light.

It’s not a proper lighthouse, just a red light on a post at the end of the pier, but it serves its purpose. It marks the edge. Every evening I wind the generator enough to let it glow softly through the night, even though I doubt there’s anyone left to warn.

Old habits.

I always watch the waves roll in for a while before I head back, listening to the sound of the waves as they slowly eat away what’s left of the world.

 

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.