where is home where is love

BSP was away for a few weeks (did you miss me?), back in the PNW for family, friends, work, and even a bit of sixty degree days and rain.
I'd wondered how I'd feel about visiting the city I've called home for so many years and I'll give it a mixed review. Seattle is gorgeous and progressive and some things are easier.
I bought cosmic crisp apples so enormous and crisp and delicious I nearly wept.
The morning and evening breezes are still cool and briny.
But I got harassed on a couple of occasions, a man getting off a bus falling into a crosswalk at my feet, another sucking his teeth and saying I was delicious. A man took off his shoes and lay on the sidewalk screaming next to my open car window one afternoon.
Seeing family was wonderful, two nieces and my sister and her husband dined at a Vietnamese restaurant my nieces have loved for years, had bubble tea and hit the Dearborn Goodwill.
We lost a beloved elder dog, my sister's rescue, a sweet, slightly cranky alpha who herded us and protected my youngest niece.
One sister braved a cross-border bus trip to see me; the other generously lent me a vehicle and went to Barbie even as she grieved her pup, and got me to my airport ride.
I saw wonderful friends, drank tequila on a rooftop with dear women, sharing laughs and a few tears; a writer friend helped me at my cabin, another dear friend meeting us there to get key codes and share delicious blueberries. One of my oldest friends met me for drinks one evening, coffee another morning, and we confided our Gen X weariness with the world, laughing and promising to meet again soon.
The final weekend was a blur of my partner's family, a show with a friend (where a lead singer berated the audience, Seattle-style, for not knowing a song), a drag brunch, and a milestone birthday, where good pals gathered to laugh and sip cocktails and eat cake and celebrate our friend and each other. A road-tripping friend allowed me to stay in her apartment those last few nights and I gazed at Mount Rainier each morning and evening, hardly believing my luck.
That is, until the final night when a carful of drunk women parked outside the balcony and got into a yelling match, carrying on so long that the police came, blue lights blipping, the dark parking lot illuminated with flashlights and opening and closing car doors.
Peace, Seattle.

memoir seeking agent update 4

While bsp was on hiatus, two more agent declines came in.
Both were quite nice but ultimately form letter rejections, which is for me a measure of where I might be in the process (I started publishing short stories more quickly when the rejections became more detailed and personal).
So it's probably time to revisit and hard-edit my proposal.

I'm re-reading a biography of Sylvia Plath, which I won't name because I find the author treats Plath with unnecessary harshness. Reading about Plath's agony over publications, rejections and general literary frustrations is heartening, and terrifying, because if this literary icon struggled, what fate awaits lesser lights like me?
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Meanwhile, the world is on fire and Arizonans are in burn units after falling on hot concrete.

memoir seeking agent update 3

This week's memoir seeking agent update is: no update.
I sent off two more queries last weekend and right now it's cricket chirps.
I know the odds are steep. Last night I browsed a few "best books of 2023" articles and added probably twenty books to my Libby queue. There is a LOT of good writing out there, I mean dazzlingly good.
I'm reading as fast as I can -- including a bio of George Michael and his nearly fanatical belief in his own success -- and also wrote two new story drafts this week.
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I also think about Lil Nas X and his confidence.
Yeah, I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road
I'm gonna ride 'til I can't no more
I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road
I'm gonna ride (Kio, Kio) 'til I can't no more
---
Can't nobody tell me nothing
You can't tell me nothing
Can't nobody tell me nothing
You can't tell me nothing

this gorgeous city

 

a bridge in the City Park sculpture garden, New Orleans

train hopping

I climbed over a train today. It’s probably illegal. 

But I’m tired of standing in the heat staring at stolidly unmoving oil tanker cars. The delay can be five or ten or twenty minutes. 

A bicyclist shoved his bike under the car, scooting through, so after a cautious look up and down and around, I hopped over too.

one book one city

I joined a book chat the other day for Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You. It was part of a city-wide effortto focus on one book. The leaders take the book into the community, to book clubs and libraries and into prisons. I’d read the short stories a couple months ago but this was a chance to revisit them with other readers and writers and it was truly wonderful to realize the care and craft that Ruffins puts into two-page flash fiction.

I’m stunned, amazed and inspired.

memoir seeking agent update 2

I'm lurching along, continuing to refine my memoir proposal and cold call/pitch agents.
My second rejection also came within 24 hours. It doesn't "feel this is the right fit for my list at the moment, so I'll have to pass. Keep querying! Another agent might feel differently."

That exclamation mark. At first it felt encouraging, but now as I reread it, I reconsider. Am I being mocked?
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"The right fit" is language we've used at past jobs to keep out people who don't look like us. A colleague warned me that literary gatekeeping is real. I don't doubt it. I'm just not yet willing to stop trying.
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My Midwestern politeness would very much like to send a "thanks for reading" to these agents but the query manager tool won't allow it. "Sorry, but you attempted to send an E-Mail to an unmonitored E-Mail address. This is an automated reply. Your original message has not been read." The level of "NO" is almost hilarious. Almost.

how hot is it?

Every time I’m on calls with co-workers and friends they ask How hot is it? Are you staying cool?

And yeah, it’s hot. Like life-threateningly hot. Three-showers-a-day hot.

But what’s the alternative? (Realistically, other than snowbirding?)

I’d never have imagined myself living in the tropical South, and the heat and humidity are real, like the evil main character in a short story we’re all reading.

Walking outside is like swimming in a humid furnace, dog paddling along a sidewalk from one patch of shade to the next. Standing still becomes your own personal upright wading pool, with sweat trickling down your back, from your forehead into your eyes, from your butt crack down the backs of your thighs and into your socks and shoes.

I don’t mind a challenge but this is a tough one.