How yous-guys doin’, as they say nowhere but on TV,
I’d like to take this moment, surrounded by news crews and spectators, onlookers and bystanders, to let you know why I like living in NYC.
It makes me feel alive.
This neighborhood in the Financial District seems prone to massive disasters. The WTC complex is one block from my apartment (I choose complex carefully because while it was the most significant disaster I have personally experienced, the renewal of the neighborhood has been extraordinary to be a part of) — and there have been many other large-scale disasters from the Sandy flooding and complete blackout, to smaller but still momentous events like the terrorist driving the truck aimed at costumed kids during Halloween a few years ago and of course, last week’s parking lot collapse (that, so far, shows no indication of being anything but the increase in the relative weight of new cars on an old structure—but it does make me worry for our national bridges. Here’s a video about car weights increasing that I highly recommend. I couldn’t stop watching - it’s about half an hour of the most riveting and distressing facts about our national consumption of manipulative advertising as relates to our family cars.
(In your YouTube settings you can push the playing speed up to 1.25 to get the facts more quickly. But you have to watch to see how many kids can sit on a driveway in front of an SUV and remain entirely invisible to the driver.)
I did give you a heads-up on what today’s topic would be.
Long before 9/11 happened, I lived on 55th and 8th Avenue in midtown (my front door immortalized on Seinfeld because we lived next door to the “Soup Nazi”)
I recently went back for noodles on the block and saw my building was still there.
Soup Nazi was still there too - though he no longer advertises that name in large print as he used to do in the late 90s.
The corner of 55th and 8th is a block from a Police Precinct, a block from a Fire Station and three blocks from a hospital. My husband and I had to tape every TV show and then hit pause while the sirens went by. I do not think we ever were able to watch a single episode of Friends without hitting pause.
Even now, I hear a siren barreling up Broadway. This is not as common anymore. My windows are thicker, our apartment is higher-up. But things do happen. This week a Parking Garage collapsed, flattening many cars and the manager of the establishment.
Time is fleeting. I have lived through a terrorist attack, a superstorm, more than a few blizzards, and countless minor inconveniences that might have killed me had they happened closer to home.
Sirens remind me that I am still alive.
This is good, because I have a lot of work to do.
REVIEWS ARE IN:
I am so grateful for all your gorgeous reviews for A FLASH OF DARKNESS!
Terese Svoboda (she has published so many books that she can write an opera and slip it in and no one thinks that’s strange, her current book is DOG ON FIRE), Amy Grech (queen of horror and possibly also of Twitter), David Ebenbach (who is a poet who writes really funny novels), Tommy Dean (the most prolifically published person I know—and this includes the above-mentioned Terese Svoboda) and this just in: Teresa Dziegliewicz (Pushcart Prize winning poet!)— here are all their reviews collected in one place for your reading pleasure.
You can add your reviews to Amazon or email them to me! Either way I am happy to know that people are reading the book already! For those of you still waiting for your book to arrive, thank you for your patience. :-) Luckily things like Netflix and Instagram keep sending us things to do while we wait for books to arrive in the mail….
More News:
I was interviewed about productivity and parenthood by Estelle Erasmus on Freelance Writing Direct, a popular writing podcast. I’ll tell you more as the release date approaches.
I also have a story in a new anthology called Tumbled Tales that is getting a little attention. Pub date for that is later this summer. Preorder link for the e-book is available now and there is a discount. On release day (June 21st), the price for the e-book will increase. The direct links by country are:
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C24TKFGQ
CAN: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0C24TKFGQ
But remember - this preorder link is for the e-book only. If you are interested in the book in print you have to wait.
Additionally - Vilnius Review will hopefully soon be publishing a terrific interview that Laima Vince did with me last week for her series on Lithuanian writers. She asked some never-before-asked-of-me questions!
Don’t let any of those things distract you from the main plan of Buying My Book!
Thanks for reading this far - I am still working on a launch party, but I promise it will be amazing, even if it has to be in June….
Random Final Thought:
People on Twitter are obsessed this week with the Blue Checkmarks that verify an account as legitimate. For non-Twitter users: one of the fun things on Twitter is the ability to change your name at will—so there are a million hilarious spoof accounts purporting to be celebrities, lambasting various current events, dogs have accounts, robots have accounts, Gul Dukat has a great account, Kelly Link changes her name almost daily…it’s great fun, but the “serious” accounts used to be able to earn this thing that is called a Blue Checkmark and Elon Musk just took it away and asked people to pay to put it back, so now fake accounts can pay to look even more real.
I am obsessed with the fact that the checkmark is actually white not blue.
I feel about helicopters somewhat the way you do about sirens. When I was young, we lived a few blocks from the largest hospital in the state, where my mother was in medical school. I remember her explaining to me that the helicopters we heard overhead were bringing sick and injured people from faraway parts of the state (or, I suppose, from anywhere during home football games--the stadium is cheek-by-jowl with the hospital) to get treated at the big hospital.
That was the same era where we ate dinner at a card table in the living room every Monday night so we could watch M*A*S*H. At six I had little understanding of the large implications of the show, but I knew my mom was learning to be a doctor like Hawkeye and BJ (and of course Radar was from Iowa, just like us).
I know in my logical mind that helicopters are used to end lives and injure people as often--or more often--than they are to save people, but I can't override the feeling of that early chopper sound.
I cannot bring myself to watch that video. My middle schooler is tiny and had to cross a parkway to get to school. Deep breaths help me teeter between ensuring he makes it to adulthood and ensuring he has some life skills and independence when he gets there. Denial is an important ingredient in my parenting strategy.