Call me irresponsible...

I'm adding a new item to my weekly "to-do" list: blogging for the Sunday Salon. Hopefully I will be able to do this with some kind of regularity, since I have become less and less responsible over the past year or so. However, I do love to read and several Sunday Salon bloggers have talked about my book, so it's a great community to join. They'd like you to review a book every Sunday, though they are flexible; they have enough members now that if you don't blog on a Sunday the world doesn't end. I doubt it ended before, but you know. I like to exaggerate.

So...the question is, where to start? I'm in the midst of a book now, but really I just started it and won't be done by Sunday, not if I want to get some writing done too. I've finished a couple of books over the past couple of weeks and I could blog about those. I have some favorites that I always enjoy talking about, so I could start with those. I also have a pile of to-be-read books surrounding my bed, some of which I've started and not yet gotten back to. This all is not a huge quandary, I know.

The Fourth of July was fun; I went to Virginia to see the baby nephew again. This child is precious. That's all I need to say, as much as I'd like to believe that he is unique and no other baby in the world is as wonderful as he is. Any of you with babies you love in your life, you know what I mean.

I've gotten the ball rolling with another publicity push. Well, a small ball. Bigger than a Superball, but not as big as a soccer ball. Maybe a soft ball. Many steps yet to go. You'll hear more about it in the coming days/weeks. Meanwhile I'm getting another ball rolling (this one perhaps the size of a big Playdoh ball, like three or four cans of it) with my new book. And the science screenplay is coming along quite nicely. That one I would classify as a snowball, because I hope it will quickly become bigger and bigger.

Yes, I can get obsessed with metaphors.

And it's a beautiful, non-humid summer day on which I get out of work early! Let's get THAT ball going, shall we??

Back from Nawlins

I just took an impromptu trip to New Orleans, city of beautiful antebellum homes, lush greenery, amazing food, and lots of mosquitoes. I have 21 mosquito bites on my left leg. Only 3 on my right; my right must somehow taste different.

I went down for work, strangely enough. My foundation is heavily involved in New Orleans reconstruction, and there was a party to honor the woman who has been the key player/liaison. another key player was organizing it, and she needed help. My foundation sent me.

This is the first "work" trip I've ever taken, and it was a glorious feeling to charge my meals and know they would be reimbursed. Of course, you also have to submit an itemized receipt, and there is a limit on what you can spend each day, but still -- this was a nice thing.

Being a Maughan (anyone who knows my dad will know what I'm talking about) I have to describe the food. It was amazing. Each time I looked at a menu, my first impression was that there wasn't anything on there I would want. Each time I ordered something, however, I was impressed beyond belief. There were the beignets, squares of fried dough mounded with powdered sugar. (Be careful when you inhale.) There were the crab claws in garlic butter. The seafood remoulade. The crab salad. The gumbo. Ah, me.

There was also the private jet. Now, I should state that my company did not pay for me to fly down on a private jet; our consultant is working closely with a woman who owns a private jet. This woman was in New York and flying home to new Orleans that same day, so it made sense I should "catch a ride." When Juliet (the consultant) first used that term I had a fleeting image of being picked up in a car, and thought, "But wait, we're not driving to New Orleans." Then she used the term "wheels up at four," and I thought, "Holy crap, this is a jet we're talking about!"
(and I want to point out that I was using the term "holy crap" long before the late Peter Boyle on Everybody Loves Raymond. This is my reputation we're talking about, here.)

Private jets come highly recommended. I have to add my recommendation to those. One thing that it does for you, though, is confirm a long-suspected but rarely voiced sentiment: air travel DOES NOT HAVE TO SUCK.

We arrived at the small airport in good time. We used the clean, fresh-smelling and lovely bathroom. We went into the waiting area and snacked on apples and popcorn (free) and eyed the selection of coffees and teas. No ID presentation, no security line, no body searches, just a friendly greeting. Then they motioned that the plane was ready, and we boarded a tiny bus that shuttled us the, oh, two blocks distance to the plane. We ascended a small flight of stairs and took our seats, each one of which was approximately four feet from another, in any direction. We could have sat on the couch, or even gone into the back room and reclined on the bed, but we were not that tired. Save that for international flights. Our hostess, the owner of the jet, gave us bottles or water or cans of soda, and candy bars or crackers. She offered us as much as we wanted, and pushed more on us after we'd each taken some. (She was a true Southern lady.) And we chatted pleasantly across the length of the United States until we landed, three hours later. My bag--which had been taken by the chauffeur before we went to the airport--reappeared right next to me in front of our car. Amazing.

All right, that's a long paragraph devoted to the trip down, but I don't anticipate flying privately again any time soon. I had to immortalize it. I flew back Jet Blue with a four hour delay, which promptly brought me back to reality.

I got a "destruction tour" of the areas that flooded and are in the proces of rebuilding. It was eerie to watch the water line get higher and higher as we went further into Jefferson Parish and Gentilly. Many lots are empty, and since this place was densely populated you know that each empty spot is a house that has been torn down and cleared away. Many homes were still boarded up, some with spray paint as to when the rescuers arrived (up to two weeks later) and who they were (eg the California National Guard or another unit) and what they found (one said "Five dead cats in back.") Other homes are destroyed and there's a trailer in the driveway; the trailer is where they are living. And then there are some nice, brand-new homes there too, fresly rebuilt.

I did not see the Lower Ninth Ward; we didn't have time. Jefferson and Gentilly are where the canals flooded and people drowned in their attics. Lower Ninth was destroyed by a storm surge that exploded through the levees; survivors said it sounded like a bomb. It wiped everything right off its foundation. I don't know how much has been cleaned up.

The higher-lying areas look pretty good. My friends said that you could tell there was a hurricane; immediately after roofs had been affected and trees were down, but that is relatively easy to clean. I stayed in the French Quarter, and you would never guess there was anything there. I also saw the Superdome, site of so much disastrousness. (not a word, I know.) And I was told the story of Amtrak calling Ray Nagin, informing him ahead of the hurricane that they were removing all their trains, and should he like to load those trains with those people who didn't have another means of escape, he was welcome...and him not responding to any of their calls. "Buffoonery," was how someone described it. Sigh.

But the New Orleans experience was great. I plan to go back some time relatively soon. It might be the site of a new work-in-progress. We'll see. Meanwhile I'll just entertain my memories of beignets.
I'll try to attach some pictures later. I didn't take very many.

Observations

There's a fine line between "low rise" and "falling off."

In praise of science

It was a fantastic weekend. New York City hosted the World Science Festival, and though I wasn't able to attend most of the events I did go to a play and a reading at Columbia University, my alma mater.

Saturday night's offering was QED by Peter Parnell (who wrote Sorrows of Stephen) about Richard Feynman, a famous physicist who worked on the atom bomb and figured out why the Challenger exploded. It was almost a one-man show (one other character showed up a couple of times, with a fairly limited interaction) starring the legendary Alan Alda. I'll tell you, when someone as distinctive as Alan Alda is onstage almost alone for an hour and a half and you don't think even once of his iconic Hawkeye Pierce character, you know that's good acting. (I saw him in a wonderful play called Art many years ago, and it was the same experience.)

I went to see this play because of the new screenplay I'm working on. I don't want to give a lot of details, but it is based on a famous scientist and a certain time period in that scientist's life. (There will be no "creation of the person" story, even though the childhood merits its own movie!) So while this screenplay focuses mostly on the interpersonal trials of the scientist, it absolutely has to integrate a lot of science in it; we can't have them talk purely about 'their issues,' because science is such a basic part of their everyday lives. The question we're facing, then, is how to go about it? How often, and how much detail? Scientists talking to each other aren't going to dumb it down for the audience; they'll be speaking in terrific, deep scientific jargon that the average person doesn't understand. How long can we do that before we turn the audience off? How much is needed to give it a feel of veracity?

Watching QED Saturday night answered quite a few of these questions. The scientist character, Richard Feynman, talked about many angles of his life: how he learned Russian to be able to travel to a tiny area called Tuva; his bongo playing; his work on the Challenger explosion and how he refused to append a "nice job, NASA" at the end of their report; his work on the atom bomb; the death of his wife; his own battle against cancer. I've only touched the tip here, because this was an incredible man with diverse and fascinating interests and talents. The office set was interesting. He had a messy desk, a couple of chairs, a radio, shelves, and two blackboards, which were covered with equations. I stared at them blankly. In the Q&A period after the play was over, Alan Alda said, "I'm sure most of you recognize this as a Feynman diagram," and the audience (made up mostly of scientists) murmured their assent. I thought, "Holy cow. This is a case in point right here." I understood literally nothing of these equations, but I trusted them. They're over my head, and that's a good thing. The equations need to be correct for the scientists, but they just need to be *there* for the rest of us.

Earlier in my scriptwriting process, I wrote a scene where one of the scientists is teaching calculus to children. As I wrote it by myself, I wrote "Math math math" as a placeholder. "Math question?" "Math answer." Then I went home for a break, and one day grabbed my brother, who's been through several semesters of calculus. He brought in his elementary calculus book (the kind that would be taught to children...very smart children, that is) and we found an equation that could go on the board and figured out the exact questions and answers for the scene. I admit, even after Christopher had explained it all to me, I didn't really get it. (I felt my brain forming a hard, protective shell as he talked.) But reading through the scene after I realized how great it is to have those facts and figures. Ground it in reality!

Okay, so back to the Science Festival. The second night I went to a reading called "Dear Albert," put together by Alan Alda, which was a collection of Einstein's letters to and from his wives and a couple of their friends. He'd had to edit and select sections and tie them together to form the story of Einstein's life. Small factoids: In 1905, Einstein wrote *three* groundbreaking papers, so revolutionary that each spawned its own branch of physics. Max Planck, another legendary physicist, read one of them and said, "The world as we know it has changed." (That may not be an exact quote, but it's close.) Einstein plays only a peripheral role in my screenplay, but again I wanted to see what was done to make him accessible to today's audiences.

It was a terrific piece. He had an unhappy first marriage and an unhappy first wife; both came through loud and clear. And then some of his letters mentioned, in the most offhand way, his earth-shattering work that would change the scientific world. Wow.

After the play was over, people were milling about and Mr. Alda was talking with the audience members who approached him. I generally don't talk to celebrities, figuring they want to be left alone more than they want to talk to me, but he was being kind and talking with anyone who wanted to, so I got brave. I mentioned my screenplay to him, and who it was about, and he got really excited, saying he'd been looking into this same scientist and working on a project of his own. Wow! He asked me what my research plans were, and what sources I've been using, and I told him and he got more excited. At this point, the house managers were getting antsy and asked us all to leave, so Mr. Alda asked for my card. I only had my book card on me (which leads him to my km website, which could lead him to this blog! Hi, Mr. Alda!), and I gave it to him, and then walked out of there thinking, "Alan Alda asked for my card!"

I work at The Rockefeller Foundation, which helped sponsor the Sunday night reading of Dear Albert. Monday I approached Joan, the woman in charge of that department, and told her how thrilled I was that RF was part of that great evening. I told her about my meeting Alan Alda, and she said something I had already figured out: "He's such a wonderful man. So kind and gracious." Yay for good people.

A quick personal note only peripherally about Alan Alda: I am very close to my dad, and this is in a small way due to our nightly viewings of MASH after the ten o'clock news. He and I watched it together almost every night on channel 5. My mom and my siblings never joined us; it was just the two of us together. We watched the entire syndicated schedule, from the earliest Henry Blake episodes to the latest Colonel Potter-and-Charles (and BJ in a pink shirt) ones. It got to the point where we could look at each other within two minutes and say, "Oh, this is the one where Colonel Flagg calls himself 'the wind,'" and then turn back to the TV and keep watching. So I know I'm close to my dad for other reasons than MASH, but the two are very closely linked in my mind.

I am figuring out a few more book promotions, but nothing concrete yet. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, vive la science!

Thrilling...

Summer Fridays! My office lets us go on Fridays at 1 p.m. That makes life that much more manageable, you know what I mean? It makes me feel like a real person. Now if I could just use that time productively (writing!) rather than pacing my apartment wondering what to do....

New Post...

Wow. I knew it had been a long time since I posted, but...two months? Holy cow. What can I say? Grand Theft Auto IV. (anyone who knows me is shaking his or her head right now)

The Utah tour was nice. I say, we ought to be able to take 3 weeks off our day jobs every two months. Five weeks on, three weeks off. It will do wonders for American workforce productivity.

So I did several events while in Utah: the Barnes & Noble signing, a signing at Wisebird Bookery in Ogden, a book club, an in-home reading, and two events at Weber State University--one a reading and one a visit with the creative writing majors. I spent a whole lot of time baking in preparation for my events, so it all was okay. The Barnes & Noble reading went well; they had set up about 20 chairs, and we had to get more, and that's a nicer feeling, certainly, than having four occupied chairs and sixteen empties. Almost everyone there knew me, and therefore already had the book, but that's okay; I can now say I have had a reading and signing at Barnes and Noble. That's not a small thing. They had a table for me to sit and sign copies, and a big sign announcing my name with the logo of my book. (I stole it and took it home.) I sat at the signing table, and mostly watched people eye me and the book and walk away, which was okay. One couple picked up the book and spoke to each other and then noticed the picture, and turned to me and said, "You look like her!" I said, "Well, the picture was taken less than a year ago." They realized what I meant and just lit up, and had me sign the copy and bought it on the spot. That was lovely.

Wisebird was more lovely. I had gotten smarter with this one, and sent invitations that said, "Signing between 12:00 - 3:00; reading at 2:00." With the B&N I hadn't been that specific, so a lot of people showed up after the reading was over. But I sent invites to everyone I could think of, and Wisebird is a lot closer to my parents' home and where I grew up, so a lot more people came. My fourth-grade teacher came with his wife; I instantly reverted to a 9-year-old and actually was excited to realize I am now as tall as he is. My junior-high-school principal came with his wife, too. I spoke with both him and my fourth-grade teacher and kept thanking them for coming. They kept thanking me for inviting them. I said I was thrilled to see them; they said they were thrilled to hear about it. Back and forth we went, with a little contest as to who was more grateful. It was wonderful. My first voice teacher came, and came to the dessert fest we had at home after. I hadn't seen her in at least ten years, and we caught up. (and she looks fabulous!) A lovely woman who has been a widow for 4 years now also came, and started telling stories about how awful it can be. My dad had given her my book a few months earlier (and when he told me that I said, "Really? Is that wise?" -- just because I thought it might be too raw for her), and she told me how much she related to the book. That was one of the best moments, right there, feeling like I had gotten it right.

My mother's book club came to a big gathering, too. They had all read it. I was told that their peak attendance is usually 5, but there were 21 women in our living room, all clutching the book and looking at me with wonder usually reserved for .... something exotic. It's just a lovely thing to sit there and listen to people talk about your book. So rewarding! They took my picture and had me sign their books and generally fawned. I did not complain. And they gave me chocolates! (Mrs Cavanaugh's milk chocolate nuts 'n' chews...nothing better! They had asked my mom what I liked, and Mom got it right.)

My friend Andrea also had a reading at her place, and that was wonderful. A few women I hadn't seen since high school were there, and another woman I hadn't ever met. I read a couple of passages (too fast, I was told; I am a fast reader, I know, and I need to slow down) and we talked about the whole process, beginning to end. One woman, Rhonda, wrote me later to tell me that the evening had made a difference for her in her writing of her own book. Andrea has been particularly supportive through this whole process, and I just can't tell her how much I have appreciated it. The best outcome of the evening, though, was that Andrea and Rhonda and I decided to form a new writing group. I am more than excited for this. I've been doing well with my screenwriting projects, but not so well with the fiction. Time to get back to the fiction.

Weber State was quite kind about the whole thing, too. I gave a reading in the special collections section of the library (attended by the President of the University AND the guy I took to the Sadie Hawkins dance my junior year of high school) and they did a whole article on the front page of their newspaper, the Signpost. The next morning I visited the creative writing majors and their very cool teacher, Vicki Ramirez, who will be publishing her own first novel soon. She took me for coffee/hot chocolate after and it was all very nice.

So that was my Utah publicity tour. Really not enough to justify three whole weeks, but oh, how glorious was that time. Now I'm planning to be there for four whole days at the end of June for my little brother's wedding. I wish I could have more time, but they weren't so eager to give me a lot of time off again. I won't see anybody except family, but family is always good.

Needs no headline...

here it is!! On the table, at Barnes & Noble. I sent my younger brother out with his camera to give me proof that it's there. I'm on the same table as Lionel Shriver's The Post Birthday World, (the teal cover near the bottom left corner, might be unrecognizable except that I just read it) which I feel honored to share space with. AND I'm right next to a picture of Johnny Depp!!

Other news: this same Barnes and Noble (Gateway Mall) has scheduled a reading and signing for me! Saturday April 12 at 3 pm. I am now busy trying to contact local reporters etc to get the story in the paper to get people to attend. A signing where four people showed up would be very painful. Especially because all four people would already have the book. Even more so because they would have the book because my dad gave it to them. Because they'd all be relatives. And we'd sit in a circle and discuss my brother's baby rather than have a reading, because they've already read it, and the B&N personnel would feel sorry for us but not sorry enough not to boot us out to make room, and then we'd have to go to Hires and drown our misery in root beer.

No, this is what I'm preventing. Utah friends and family, make note...

Saturday, April 12, 3:00 p.m. at the Gateway Barnes & Noble.

Bring your friends! Bring your relatives! Bring strangers off the street! I'll see you there.