Okay, I’m having a bit too much fun with this, which I just saw on Galley Cat. When I put in a couple paragraphs from the opening pages of my novel, I got Nabokov. Which was kind of funny – thought for sure I’d get Nick Hornby or Helen Fielding or perhaps Martin Amis. But Nabokov?! But then when I put in an excerpt from one of my blog posts I got J.K. Rowling. Hmmmmm.
Try it, it’s ridiculous fun!
I just saw this review of my novel. It was posted a month ago, but somehow I’d missed it.
It’s interesting because Rae says she can identify with my protagonist, Sophie, because she had something similar called selective mutism. I hadn’t heard of that before and so looked it up. It’s where a child doesn’t speak in certain situations, although the child can speak and does so at other times. It’s an anxiety disorder, as is Globus. Interesting because I remember having something similar when I was a child. I remember my father thinking I had a speech impediment and having me enrolled in a speech class in … I think it was either kindergarten or first grade. I was in a special ed class with kids who had severe lisps and couldn’t pronounce groups of words properly. The teacher told my parents that wasn’t what was wrong with me and the class wasn’t helping me. I don’t remember what happened, but eventually it must have gone away. I’m just now remembering it.
I haven’t been to Phoenix since early 2001 and I’ve been getting a bit homesick for the desert. Everything seems to be reminding me of the Southwest lately – even last night’s NYCB program with Melissa Barak’s new ballet, Call Me Ben, set in Vegas with its Santiago Calatrava-designed desert-themed backdrops, and then Balanchine’s Western Symphony with the cowboys, saloon girls and Old Tombstone-looking stage piece.
Albert Evans and cast in earlier NYCB Western Symphony production, taken from Explore Dance. Photo above that of the main street in Tombstone, AZ, taken from the city’s website.
I have to get out there soon.
In the meantime, just ordered this book, which looks like the perfect proverbial beach read.
The photo of the little guy at the top of the post, by the way, is taken from the Facebook page of my childhood friend who operates a kind of traveling zoo featuring reptiles native to Arizona, exposing children to and creating respect for their unique little charms.
Is up at A Moment With Mystee. That was really fun! Some of those questions I really had to think about. Thank you again to the wonderful Mystee 🙂
Above photo taken from here.
Thank you so much to everyone who showed up last night for my little book celebration party! And as well to those who couldn’t come but who were there in spirit 🙂 I’m so very grateful to have such wonderful longtime personal friends as well as newer-ish Facebook and blog reader friends and Tweeps with whom to celebrate such things. And, as always, I’m immensely grateful for everyone’s support. Thank you, you guys!
Photo taken by my good friend and fellow writer, Ariel Davis.
You guys, last week I received this really sweet email from a woman who read my novel. I figured ballet lovers, particularly fans of New York City Ballet, would appreciate it:
“Hello. I hope you don’t mind me writing. But as your email address is listed, I shall write you.
“I first came across you by cruising the Internet and bought your book, Swallow, because my dad’s family, Borree, lived in Florence AZ. There is even a Borree’s Corners in AZ where the family owned a gas station and a grocery store.
“My thoughts about your book. I love NYC, and I have suffered from chronic anxiety all my life til treatment with medication. So your book was really greatly appreciated. I do wonder how you settled on using Florence.
“You may recognize the last name as my mother loved ballet and gave my sister, Susan Borree, ballet classes. Susan was with many different companies and her daughter is Yvonne.
“Out here on the other coast, I have a scholarship to benefit art students. The scholarship is in honor of my mother and my sister who gave their children art and ballet lessons while their families faced great difficulties.
“Sincerely,
Jeanine Borree”
How coincidental — I love Yvonne Borree! And how much do I love that her aunt wrote me 🙂 And so excited to learn that part of her family hails from Arizona — and the same small town I wrote about no less — and that there is a Borree’s Corners, Arizona, which of course I will have to look for the next time I am out there. And I love that they owned a gas station and grocery store. I also love that someone who’s suffered from an anxiety disorder appreciated my book, which centers on a specific anxiety disorder called Globus Hystericus, or Globus Sensation. I’ve heard from some people who have either Globus or problems swallowing that emanate from another condition that they’ve had a hard time reading Swallow, because it’s too close to home. So, I’m very glad to hear someone with another kind of anxiety was able to read and appreciate it.
When I asked Ms. Borree if I could mention the email on my blog and she wrote back, she added that her sister, Susan Borree (Yvonne’s mother) had danced with ABT and Jerome Robbins Ballet. I came to ballet too late, though, to see her dance with either company.
Anyway, I just wanted to share this with my readers since I know so many of you are NYCB fans:) Sweet story, and small world, right!
Oh, I’m so sad. The judge I clerked for following law school, Sylvia Pressler, just died. She was only 75 and had only retired a few years earlier. Of course, she worked until the last possible moment a judge could until mandatory retirement under New Jersey law.
She was head of the Appellate Division (New Jersey’s intermediate appeals court), and had a reputation for being very intelligent, very formidable (but sweet!), and very liberal. She’s responsible for a good many important civil rights decisions, involving mainly gender equality, sexuality equality, and the death penalty and due process. Apparently, if I’d been born a New Jersey resident, I would only have been able to play Little League (as I did in Phoenix) because of her. (Btw, New Yorkers just love to condescend to New Jerseyians, but Hoboken, you know, is the birthplace of baseball… and Frank Sinatra. And, New Jersey law tends to be far more progressive).
I remember the year I was there our flashy, press-attention-heavy due process case involved a high-school’s extreme last-minute decision to prevent a student from graduating because she’d gotten into some kind of vague fight with another student earlier that day. The appeal was emergent (since it needed to be decided right then, the graduation ceremony being just about to happen), and Judge Pressler determined in a few precious moments that since the school had failed to give the student a hearing beforehand, they’d violated her due process rights. The student graduated. Her photo was in the paper the next day waving about her diploma, wearing a huge smile. The school board was not happy, but the student and her family sure were. Judge Pressler was always a champion of the underdog.
The several judges who shared our Hackensack building would often take all of us law clerks out to lunch together. Judge Pressler was one of only two female judges (I think I remember her saying she was the only woman in her entire class at Rutgers Law), and by far the most liberal, and she managed to be both sweetly likable, and formidable (she was the head of the entire Court after all). She’d start going off on some conservative politician (usually Giuliani :)) and the male judges would sit there biting their hands, dying to say something but too intimidated to speak up. It was great — we were in awe!
According to the Times, she died at her summer house in Sparta, which I remember from our end-of-the-year judicial panel party (and which I always thought sounded very balletic). It’s out on this beautiful lake, where there were many swans. I remember approaching one (which I’d never seen in person before) and realizing they’re beautiful and elegant, but if you get too close and they get threatened — especially if they have babies around — they can be very aggressive, which I guess makes sense.
Anyway, I was very honored to have clerked for her. Below is a photo of her swearing me into the New Jersey Bar — one very cool thing she’d do for her law clerks (as did most of the other New Jersey judges; in New York, I got sworn in along with about a thousand other people in a gigantic room by a nameless, faceless someone).
She has a son, Noah, and a daughter, Jessica, who is a writer. I think Jessica writes for New York Magazine.
My novel is finally up on Amazon. Eeek, am kind of freaking out a bit…
SLSG has been named a top law blog in the criminal law category by www.laws.com, likely for my previous coverage of the Sean Bell shooting trial and some other related posts. This is particularly exciting because my soon-to-be-published novel is in part about the life of a young female criminal appeals attorney. I also plan to write more about the Sean Bell case. So I’m very honored!
And apropos of criminal defense attorneys, the movie Disturbing the Universe is a must-see. It’s a documentary about the life of civil rights / criminal defense attorney William Kunstler, made by his daughters. Since he was involved in practically every major trial of his time — disorderly conduct sit-ins protesting racial segregation, the Chicago Seven, the Attica Uprising, the standoff at Wounded Knee, the Central Park Jogger case, the trials of those accused of the 1993 WTC bombing — it ends up being, above all, an immensely informative history of late 20th Century race-relations in this country. See it!
I haven’t been watching SYTYCD this season (I don’t watch the auditions anymore), but my friend and former Latin ballroom teacher, Jacob Jason, just posted this on Facebook!!!!!
Last night I read from my new novel (which is still VERY much a work in progress) with the Writers Room at the Cornelia Street Cafe, and it actually went okay! Better than I expected! Several of my wonderful friends showed up to give me much-needed encouragement and support (maybe someday I’ll be confident enough actually to post here ahead of time when I’ll be reading…) and they all seemed genuinely to like the piece I read. And several people I didn’t know came up to me afterward — including a filmmaker who gave me her card! — to tell me how much they liked it. One woman said she wanted to read it as soon as it was out! Though she told me the way she didn’t want it to end. I assured her it didn’t 🙂 So, I just have to write the rest of the book now…
But I was so worried because the subject matter is kind of controversial and the character whose piece I read from is a young black man with a certain kind of voice that my face and body certainly don’t in any way fit, so I worried I just wouldn’t be able to pull it off. And I am a horribly sucky reader and always will be — I’m just shy and I’m not an actress and that’s just that. But people still got what I was trying to convey through the actual words, so I am extremely happy about that. That’s all I can ever ask for!
Anyway, funny thing is that there was this guy sitting up front who looked just like Christopher Wheeldon. Seriously, just like him except about 10 years younger. And it really freaked me out because then I started thinking of this. And then I started thinking what if someone reacts to me like that! I mean, you can’t please everyone of course, and there are always going to be people who don’t like you, but, well, all I can say is that the more I write (and the closer my first novel gets to publication), I am feeling a lot less critical, at least of new works 🙂
Anyway, now that this all-too stressful event is over, I’ll blog about the Natalia Osipova / Herman Cornejo La Sylphide at American Ballet Theater Monday night. She was good, he was insanely excellent. It’s like with Kathryn Morgan the other night in NYCBallet Dancers’ Choice — I don’t know if there are words to describe him. If you want to see sheer perfection, go see him in something — anything. I can’t imagine anyone better in all the world. I mean, every great dancer brings something to the stage, and he simply brings perfection, in the Webster Dictionary definition of the word: “an exemplification of supreme excellence.” One of my Twitter friends (who’s a very established ballet dancer) told me he’s a “dancer’s dancer,” which I can totally see. He’s a non-dancer’s dancer too 🙂
Anyway, more tomorrow, I mean later today. I have to sleep now.
