miscellany

2014 state of the nation

I thought 2013 was going to be the year of calming down from the emotional roller coaster and getting myself back on track and writing again. Instead the roller coaster threw me for a few more loops and left me sitting with my head between my knees trying not to vomit more than I would have preferred.

I am feeling better now, but I am really, really tired of high highs and low lows.

When I was writing a lot, before, I was sad. The kind of sad that you swallow and push down and try to pretend it’s not there and you get really, really good at hiding it. To the point where no one believes that you could possibly be unhappy.

I wrote to escape. I lived in my head because I couldn’t feel the sad as much in there.

And over the last couple of years the sad has been going away. I like the life I have outside my head now.

I need to learn how to write now that I’m happy. I like spending time in my head but I don’t have outside things pushing me back in the way I used to.

I’m getting to know myself again, and I need to figure out how this me writes now, in 2014. I took baby steps toward figuring it out last year, and hopefully I can how I approach my head and learn to live there properly again, enough to make the stuff in there book-shaped.

It also means I need to have a low-volume internet year.

I know, it seems to be trendy to be taking social media hiatuses and unplugging and whatnot, but I really, really need it this year. So…

 

A few notes for 2014:

Regarding the blog

I have been habitually posting twice a week, in the highly organized categories of “flax-golden tales” and “other stuff.” The flaxies will continue as scheduled, the other stuff may turn into more photos and little bits of things rather than long writing-heavy posts. Not that I’ve been good about long writing-heavy posts lately, but I’m going to make a point of it this year.

I may also do a site overhaul/redesign mid-year. Pondering.

Regarding Twitter & Tumblr

I will still be Tweeting, maybe a little less than I am. I try to respond to @ replies as much as I can. I am convinced that Twitter eats them sometimes, as well as Direct Messages.

I am currently avoiding Tumblr almost entirely because I live in fear of Sherlock spoilers but I will continue to mostly re-tumbl things I like. I might not keep up with it as frequently as I’ve been trying to. I still haven’t gotten the hang of tagging things.

Regarding Instagram

I will probably be keeping up the same volume of Instagramming.

I very nearly Instagrammed our salted caramel ice cream sundae (with popcorn on it!) at abc kitchen last night but it was too marvelous not to consume immediately.

Regarding email

Nothing has changed since this post. I am finally, finally caught up with my personal/professional email as in things that go to my personal address but the website email is a sad neglected thing that I believe has an autoreply on it that thinks it’s still May. My apologies. Someday I will have a good and proper system for email. Today is not that day. Hopefully I’ll sort it out around that mid-year possible site overhaul.

If you need to contact me for important reasons and you do not have my personal email address please contact InkWell or one of the Random House contacts listed in the sidebar of the blog.

Regarding book blurbs

If you are an editor/agent/etc and have sent me an advance copy of anything for blurbing in the last calendar year I am sorry if I have not gotten back to you. The pile seen in this photo is now nearly three times as high. The bookish time-bomb-ness of them makes me anxious and I’m afraid the vast, vast majority hit their quoting expiration dates and silently detonated before I could give them proper attention.

(For reference: I read 40 books last year, total. It took me all of December just to get through The Goldfinch and no I still don’t know what I thought of it. It would take me more than a year, probably more than two, to read everything in the please-blurb pile right now.)

I don’t know how I’m going to manage in the future but I need to be writing this year, especially the first half of this year. I am sorry I have not been able to be properly communicative about things that are sent to me unsolicited but I’m not sure I can be better about it in the future. I don’t want to put out a blanket “don’t send me things” because I never know what will stand out and capture my attention. I like books. I wish I could stop time so I could read them all. If anyone figures out how to do that, please let me know.

 

 

In summation

I am still trying to figure all this out. How to be a proper author. How to be me. How to be me on the internet. How to be nice to myself. How to keep my hair from going all hobbit-y. How not to get overwhelmed. How to write a novel again.

I am trying. I appreciate your patience and attention. Thank you for reading, always.

By erin, ago

goodbye, 2013. hello, 2014.

This is my Rob Brezsny horoscope for this end of December, beginning of January:

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Big rivers don’t travel in straight lines. Their
paths are curvy and complicated, with periodic turns and bends. In some
places they flow faster and in others they’re slower. Their depth and
width may vary along the way, too. Your own destiny is like one of those
big rivers, Cancerian. In some years, it meanders for long stretches,
slowing down as it wanders along a crooked course. It may even get
shallower and narrower for a while. But I expect that in 2014, you will be
moving more rapidly than usual. You will be traveling a more direct route,
and you will be both wide and deep.

2013 was a meandering, crooked year. It was shallower than I had expected in some ways and rockier than I would have preferred but here we come to the end of it, stronger and wiser.

We spent last New Year’s Eve in this then brand-new apartment, surrounded by cardboard boxes. Now instead of boxes there are books and teal chairs and two very well-stocked bars. We are doing fancy long rambling dinner, there has already been cheese baked with brandy and honey, grilled hearts of romaine and king crab legs. There are short ribs in the oven braising in red wine, prosecco gelee with raspberries chilling in refrigerator and non-gelee prosecco with St. Germain being sipped from coupes.

(Pause here for blood orange sorbet.)

(We decided if we weren’t going to go out, we might as well have as delicious a night in as possible.)

Looking at last year’s post about wanting time to rest and read and write and I did quite well on two out of three and not too terribly on the third all told. I needed the rest, I think. I know.

I’d like to have something book-shaped by the end of 2014. That’s not a resolution, because I’d have liked the same thing for this year and last year for that matter, but things don’t always go the way we’d like.

I don’t have anything new book-shaped yet but I do have sparkling wine and I’m really happy, right here and right now and maybe I needed to get to really happy sparkling wine phase first.

Stars in my hair again. My stars are getting older and wiser, too. And they’re showing it, glass glitter oxidation. Dark around the edges.

Erin New Year

I have other stars that are brighter, having been kept safely sealed in a bag but I like these ones. They’re well-travelled and well-worn and I have the whole bunch of them in my hair this year. (There are seven, total, the others are hidden on the other side.)

Later tonight there will be tarot readings and midnight kisses.

I am looking forward to 2014, especially if it is indeed more direct than meandering. I think I’m ready for it. I wasn’t before, even when I thought I was. Hindsight.

Didn’t have an obvious song of the year for 2013. Had to sit and think about it and as I pondered I realized I habitually put the same album on whenever I felt lost for what to listen to, and it was always just right.

2014. Wide and deep. I’ll drink to that.

By erin, ago

2013 favorites: nyc edition

As of the end of this month we’ll have lived in NYC for one year. It is still strange to me to live in New York. I like it more than I thought I would, though I don’t think I will ever get truly used to it, no matter how long we stay.

The buzz of the people isn’t as overwhelming as it was at first. The sidewalks don’t seem as crowded. I don’t feel quite as lost once below the helpfully numbered gridded streets in Manhattan, though I still need to rely on my phone to help me navigate.

We will be here for at least another year, so I feel like this was the practice year of falling out of the cardboard boxes and acclimating to the wonderment. I’m ready for another tour through the seasons.

Here are a few of my favorite things about New York, punctuated with some of my favorite city photos from this year.

nyc photos - tree

Central Park. I know, it’s an easy choice but it’s also a marvel, to literally be in the middle of the city but to feel as if you’re somewhere else entirely.

The High Line. My other favorite oasis in the city, that feels like a river more than a park, you get swept along the lovely changing flow of it as you wander up or down. I love how it changes with the seasons, too. During the winter it had these lovely bare branches that faded from yellow to red that were just gorgeous.

nyc photos - high line

The Morgan Library & Museum. I didn’t even know about this beautiful space before we stumbled upon it and I’m so glad we did. Saw a wonderful exhibit of surrealist drawings earlier in the year, looking forward to seeing their current Edgar Allen Poe exhibit, too.

The McKittrick Hotel. Also known as the home of Sleep No More, (which I only actually saw once this year, we went for the Valentine’s Day Dance) the space itself has expanded to include Gallow Green, one of my favorite rooftops in the city, plus multiple live music spaces and now it even has a restaurant. I keep expecting the whole thing to just vanish into thin air one day, but for now I’m glad it’s there.

nyc photos - statue

Over the course of the year I have become convinced that the block of 10th Ave between 15th & 16th is food heaven, it already had Morimoto &  Chelsea Market and as if I needed confirmation for this belief, it is now home to the NYC incarnation of one of my Boston favorites, Toro.

But if I have to pick a single favorite restaurant in NYC, the one that I keep going back to over and over that’s always stellar that is also on that block, it is Colicchio & Sons. We end up in the tap room more often than the main dining room but they’re both absolutely wonderful. I went twice in one week in November because I had to have the roasted apple chowder again. Love the space, love the food, love the service. Wish they’d bring back the gluten-free bacon waffles for brunch, because I miss them, but I also love that the menu is constantly changing.

nyc photos - grand central

I feel like I have only scratched the surface of the cocktail bar options in the city and I have so many more to try but of the ones I’ve been to my favorite so far is Milk & Honey. Maybe it’s the hidden location, maybe it’s the space itself which is dark and deco and everything I love about a proper cocktail hideaway: quiet and atmospheric and sexy. But really it’s the cocktails themselves, since they don’t have a menu and you just tell them what you like and they run with it which makes everything surprising and magical. It is one of my very favorite places in the city. I kind of don’t want to tell you about it, that’s how much I love it.

I could go on and on but those are the major favorites. I’m sure next year’s version of the NYC favorites will have new discoveries and that’s one of the things I love about New York, there’s so much of it to explore.

By erin, ago

2013 favorites, part one of several.

There will be a few favorite things of 2013 posts this month, saving books for last and doing NYC favorites next week and this is… other stuff. Mostly media and cocktails. Let’s just call it entertainment favorites, maybe.

{Insert obligatory marveling over how fast this year went by here.}

These will all be very much Things I Liked Most in 2013. I am not making any decrees about Bests. A lot of them will not be 2013-specific beyond the fact that they were new-to-me this year.

 

Let’s start with TV, which I don’t watch that much of and hardly ever live but I do occasionally get hooked on a show and I had a few this year but the two I ate up like candy were The Killing & Person of Interest. I am not caught up completely with either, only up to beginning season 3 for both so I’m not even going to look up proper links.

The Killing has the most interesting detective pairing I think I’ve seen, they’re compelling to watch even when the storyline hits lulls.

Person of Interest just gets better and better and better as it goes along and I would have started watching earlier had they called it “Psychic Batman” which is basically what it is. Also, Michael Emerson in fabulous suits. (I already had a crush on Michael Emerson from LOST and the suits make it so much worse. Swoon.)

 

Movies. I had a minimal movie year, I hardly saw anything in the theatre. I did, however, see most of the things I saw in in theatres in fancy theatres that serve wine which was a bonus. Favorite in-theatre movie was probably The World’s End, which I probably enjoyed even more than Shaun of the Dead & Hot Fuzz, though I love them both, too.

Favorite new-to-me, non-theatre movie was The Lady Vanishes, which is also quite possibly my new favorite Hitchcock. I’m a sucker for a train.

 

Music, recorded, new-to-me. Found a lot of good new music this year but my favorite new discovery was easily Houses. Especially since I literally only clicked on the album in iTunes because I liked the cover. I’d never heard of them, didn’t know what kind of music it would be and was unbelievably pleasantly surprised. So atmospheric and lovely.

Music, live. Not much live music for 2013, and Mumford & Sons would have been the best live show were it not for the really belligerent drunk guys next to us. But instead the favorite live music experience of 2013 happened completely unexpectedly at the McKittrick after having dinner at Gallow Green thanks to a wonderfully kind door guy who decided we were leaving too early and instead sent us down a dark hallway to watch Flight of the Conchords, who were brilliant, of course, and even more brilliant for being unexpected.

 

True confession time: 2013 is the year I admitted to myself I’ve turned into a gamer. I think it was somewhere around the time I was at my desk quoting the lemons speech from Portal 2 while sitting under this poster.

Very favorite out of lots of games for the year: Ni no Kuni which we picked up because Studio Ghibli was involved and it got good reviews and at first I wasn’t sure what I thought of it and then I got pretty much obsessed with it. Still not finished, though we’ve been playing pretty regularly for months. I’m going to miss it when it’s over.

(Also this year Adam & I played through all the two-player collaborative levels in Portal 2 together which was more fun than it had any right to be.)

 

Cocktail time.

So let’s start with components. Favorite new discovery has to go to Bluecoat Gin, which Chuck Wendig recommended & maybe two days after that I saw Daniel Handler recommend it in some cocktail-centric interview so I had to pick it up and it may very well be my new favorite gin. Also in new discoveries for 2013: Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, which is so lovely & versatile & also comes in a beautiful bottle.

Proper cocktail favorite of the year is the very old but new to me  The Last Word. Equal parts gin, lime, maraschino liqueur and green chartreuse. It’s lovely and balanced and interesting and it has a great name. I bought a bottle of green chartreuse so I could make them at home.

 

And that’s it for this round of 2013 things. Favorite new-to-me cocktail bar will, among other things, be covered in NYC favorites next week.

By erin, ago

happy giving of thanks

thanksgiving 2013

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Hanukkah!

Holiday greetings from warm climes with cold wine and no turkey! Cornish game hens with lemon and rosemary and white wine and garlic instead. They were an experiment but came out surprisingly well.

I am Thankful for so many things this year. Too many to list. For those lovely souls who listened to me cry and held my hands and gave me moonshine, they know who they are. For old friends and new friends. For my family up in Massachusetts who are likely colder than me at the moment but I know they have plenty of cookies. For people who read books and write books and sell books and blog books and whatever the proper verb is for librarians and books. (“Lend” does not seem to cover the full scope of librarian ability.)

This has been a strange year. I think I am ready to wrap myself in the holiday season like a cinnamon-scented blanket and bid 2013 a slow farewell. If today was any indication, I am off to a delicious, cozy start with that.

(Though I was mildly disappointed that the Pekingese didn’t win Best in Show at the National Dog Show. It looked marvelously like something out of a Studio Ghibli film.)

For now I am going to pour espresso over toasted almond gelato and be filled with the sort of thanks that is difficult to put into words.

Wishing you all warm delicious cozy things.

By erin, ago

foxie.

So last night we stopped at FAO Schwarz after dinner and in the Central Park Zoo section there was a plushy fennec fox and we had to take him home. I mean, how could we not?

fennec fox

I carried him home sticking out of my purse like a small dog and as far as I could tell no one even noticed. I kind of love New York for that. (I have, for the record, only asked the fox what he says about a hundred times.)

Also in adventures from last night: I very much enjoyed David Blaine’s Real or Magic, I am fond of his style anyway and Ricky Gervais’s lovely rambling reaction at the end about real things disguised as illusion reminded me of the circus.

In other news, off to warmer climes for extended holiday season stuff soon, though I can hardly believe it is so late in the year already. This year flew, like a little fast thing with wings.  I will likely be even more MIA from the internet than I have been already due to the wonderment that is NaNoWriMo. (Current word count: 38,415.) I will probably Instagram Thanksgiving cooking adventures. Also I have downloaded Welcome to Night Vale to listen to on the road trip because I have heard endlessly good things about it.

There are lots of random things to post about and hopefully I’ll find more time to post about them in December, and I’m keeping all my crossables crossed that 2014 ends up being a bit calmer than 2013 on several levels. I hope you are all well & wonderful.

By erin, ago