“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Thank you, Mr Churchill. I think I just passed the mid-point of In the Red. Phew. I am at another stopping point where restructuring will have to take place. This is pretty much the most inefficient way to write a book EVER. It took me like a year for find a narrative voice–and there’s still no solid structure! Basically I write in fragments until I get to a pausing place, then shuffle everything around to make it as cohesive as possible. Then I keep generating the fragments until the whole thing is balanced all wrong and I can’t go any further, and I have to pause and reshuffle again before I can continue. I feel like Sisyphus. Hold me.
These days I spend a lot of time considering alternate careers. Hey, speaking of alternate careers and Winston Churchill, I think I’m going to chuck this whole novelist thing and open a nautically-themed gay bar called The Traditions of the Royal Navy. Who’s with me? (Although apparently that quote was not actually uttered by Mr Churchill. Drat.)
In better news, I just went over the proofs of my story “Commuting” for Zyzzyva’s Spring issue. It looks coooooooooool! It will be out in April! Brace yourself for the awesome. There will be a sexy, sexy release party at Tosca’s in San Francisco if you feel like coming by. I’ll also have a couple of appearances around the March release of the paperback for 13 rue Thérèse. Check out my events page if you’d like to swing by for any and all of these gatherings… I’m sure you could get a bit of rum at Tosca’s! You’re on your own for sodomy and the lash though, unless of course I get to open my bar.
Elena Mauli Shapiro 