links

this is a random post of randomness and links

I’ve had an insanely busy week and I was going to write a long involved post about cocktails with photos and things but I just don’t have time. So that will be forthcoming. Soonish.

In the meantime, randomness collected in themeless post form. Mostly links.

I really liked this piece about The Importance of Endings over on BookRiot, and not just because The Night Circus is mentioned in it. (Most of it is about Joe Hill’s Locke & Key series which coincidentally I started reading this week and am itching to have the time to get back to it. Tomorrow, hopefully.)

I’ve been posting more on my new(ish) tumblr page, which I’m loving for images and inspirations. I think half of the tumblr blogs I’m following (and therefore lots of what I’m reblogging) are all abandoned architecture, but I like abandoned architecture. Also I find it strange that my spellcheck knows how to spell tumblr.

I’m not caught up on all the episodes but I’ve been loving the BBC Radio adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere.

Also it’s spring, yay, even though it doesn’t feel particularly springy yet and it was snowing the other day.

I really need to go back to working even though this post isn’t particularly substantial. Ah well. At least there are links.

By erin, ago

two things with links

First thing: I wrote this brief, passionate yet ill-fated romance for Stylist magazine. I wrote the story and then they styled the photo shoot based on what I’d written and I love what they did with it. I tried to keep it a bit open-ended and vague so they’d have room to play with the images and I really think the end result is splendid. (I’ve seen a digital copy of the print version, which is even cooler.)

Second thing: I pulled out my tripod to get some proper photos of my very dark office in order to do this Write Place, Write Time feature on my writing space. It is extremely difficult to take photographs of a small windowless room with a lot of stuff in it, but I think you can get the general idea and also there’s a bunny in a raven mask.

By erin, ago

a few things and a few photos

  • There is an interview with me featuring hostile questions from Daniel Kraus over here on Booklist. (He signed my copy of Rotters “Daniel Kraus loves Erin!” so I don’t know what his problem is now.)
  • Start Here reached its funding goal YAY! Thank you to all who chipped in. Though this means I have to finalize my Neil Gaiman recommendations. Hrm.
  • I have been missing in action from the internet for the last while partially because I spent last weekend in the land of lousy cell phone service known as Cape Cod for my sister’s wedding. Everything was beautiful, even the weather cooperated, and I couldn’t be happier for her and my new brother-in-law. There will possibly be proper photos of me in bright blue chiffon forthcoming but for now here are a few Instagram-captured snippets of the weekend.
  • (Yes, she got married under a striped tent, though the stripes were also blue.)

 

 

By erin, ago

a slightly belated happy banned books week

I was thinking of doing a post for Banned Books Week, even though a billion other people have said smarter, wiser things about book banning than I could ever manage. I was only going to babble something about how I’m one of those weird people who actually really likes The Catcher in the Rye, partially because I cannot bring myself to dislike a book that is the primary reason I got a 5 on the AP English exam in high school. (I decided no matter what the free essay topic was, I would write about Catcher. I knew that book backwards & forwards.)

And then I read this list of banned and challenged classics, and sitting right up the top with The Catcher in the Rye is another of my very favorite books to be forced upon me in high school, The Great Gatsby.

I suppose this would be a good time to say Thank You to my junior year English teacher, who taught both these books way back in the mid-90s in Catholic school. I needed parental permission to write a paper on Tennessee Williams the same year, but I was still allowed to write it.

That was a good year.

But mostly, seeing The Great Gatsby mentioned reminded me of Kate Beaton’s Great Gatsby comics from Hark, a Vagrant:

So, dear readers. Go read. Go think. Go giggle at comics. Happy Banned Books Week.

By erin, ago

Eep.

Hi.

I have been completely useless. I keep squealing at people on the phone when I’m not rendered utterly speechless. At this point I think my agent would be shocked if we had a conversation that didn’t partially involve stunned silence on my part. I think I EEPed at him. That’s probably not very professional.

I’ve been trying to write. I’ve been trying to read. I have been failing on both counts. I have a half-finished painting on the workbench that Tessa keeps napping on.

So I’ve been drinking tea and wandering around the internet. I bought a pencil skirt.

And I’ve been reading through Allie Brosh’s brilliant blog, Hyperbole and a Half. Her post on being a failure at success is so me right now it’s absurd.

I am not coping well with this bit of success I seem to have come across.  It appears that my nervous system is having trouble distinguishing celebratory excitement from extreme danger.

So yeah, me in a nutshell right now, only not as blonde:

I go back and forth from hysterical giggles to near panic attack. I think the boy is concerned.

I almost don’t want to post this. I want to appear all calm and cool and collected but I’m totally not. And I figure the best thing I can do is just be honest. So yeah, I’m squealing at people on the phone. A lot. I’m giddy with excitement but I’m also kind of nauseous and I feel like my life suddenly completely changed even though I haven’t left my apartment.

Amusement park ride metaphors would likely be appropriate. Maybe not quite roller coaster, but that centrifuge thing that spins you back against the side of a wheel while the world tilts out from under you? Yeah, that.

If I try to get off, I’ll probably just fall down. So I’m going to hold on and see what happens next.

By erin, ago

miscellany for the 29th day of july

Revisionland has destroyed my ability to blog, have you noticed?

Probably because it means I’m typing most of the day, so then when I go to blog my brain thinks “More typing? Can’t we go do yoga or something?” so then I go and drink iced green tea while I think about maybe doing yoga.

So, miscellaneous things that may or may not be of interest to you, dear reader.

  • My very first phone that does more than making phone calls is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. I cannot tell you how happy this makes me. I probably will tell you, actually, in some sort of dedicated phone lust post next week.
  • Zebradonkey. I love his stripey legs.
  • Revising is actually going really well. It’s slow, but since it’s more expanding & adding things than just polishing, I think that’s to be expected. Almost at the halfway mark, I think.
  • This bunny is brilliant and I wants it but I do not have $500 for awesome bunny sculpture, which is tragique.

Yeah, that’s all I’ve got. I’m in nonstop work mode. I saw Inception but I’m incapable of talking about it articulately without babbling and I’m very opinionated about the ending. I have flopsy kittens, which is typical for this time of year. I want it to be autumn, cinnamon-spiced and crisp.

By erin, ago