Well, it’s a rental.

Today, the awesome comes in two flavors: local and international!

(1) Local: Tomorrow night, Friday July 29th, my story “Commuting” will be performed by actress Bonnie Antonini at Sacramento’s Stories on Stage!  The show starts at 7:30 PM at the Sacramento poetry center on 25th street (at R).  So exciting!  Also terrifying!  But mostly exciting!

(2) International: 13 rue Thérèse was nominated for the Guardian’s First Book Award.  Sweeeeeet!  I just received a copy of the paperback edition for the UK (coming out in September; apparently they do paperback six months later over there rather than a year later like over here) and it is gorgeous–complete with a fabulous blurb from Simon Schama front and center: “A flirty, dirty tease of a novel.”  Rowr.

Also: some great write-ups for my book from the Commonwealth: Australia’s MC Reviews, South Africa’s TO>NIGHT, and England’s The Spectator.

With all this worldwide fame, I have to wonder why I still live in a messy apartment filled with dilapidated furniture mostly pulled from dumpsters, and carpeted almost entirely in old cat puke stains.  (Fortunately the carpet is cat-puke-colored, so the stains are invisible.  But if you scan it with a black light, it’s like a fucking House of Horrors in here.  Forensics EVERYWHERE.)

Well, I must decamp, because I have cats meowing at me for dinner.  Off to go refuel their squirty stomachs so they can juice up the last few square inches of our living quarters that don’t glow like a freaking nuclear reactor when swept with my Stinkfinder.  (Yes, that is what my hand-held black light is called by its marketing team–poetic, is it not?)  As the husband likes to say about our dwelling: “Well, it’s a rental.”