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Crocodile Tears Saturday, March 2, 2013
Another new print. This is a companion piece for a story I wrote of the same name. First time experimenting with oil paint dry brushing (I think I am in love).
Feather Head & Mother Earth Friday, March 1, 2013
Two new prints in the shop. The original of Feather Head is already sold.
Bebe Tuesday, February 5, 2013
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My short story Bebe is out now in The Menacing Hedge. Be forewarned, it is a very dark and twisted fairytale, not for general audiences.
There is lots of other stellar writing in the winter issue, including a story by Aimee Bender (I love her!).
Sad Desk Salad by Jessica Grose Wednesday, January 2, 2013
The pink curlicue font on the cover is a little too cute for a book that could be charitably described as bitchy. Bitchy in a good way.
Alex Lyons is a writer for a gossip blog, and she is obsessed. Her personal hygiene and relationships are suffering. She wears the same black muumuu for days on end. The bitchier she is the more views she gets, the less likely she is to lose her job, a possibility that is looming within a month.
Then someone starts a hate blog about her.
Sad Desk Salad raises a lot of interesting questions. Namely, how much is too much? How much transparency? How much social obligation? How much venom? How much visibility? How much ambition?
How to protect your image without the expectation of privacy?
How to get the toothpaste back into the tube?
This is not a book I would have necessarily picked out on my own. I am reviewing this for The Well Read Wife blogger book club. I do read chick-lit on occasion, but always somewhat defensively.
Usually I end up sorry I did. Sad Desk Salad is another story altogether. It's feminist. It's smart. It's funny. I really liked it.
Word Play 25 Ways Thursday, November 8, 2012
1. Use different colored pens for different moods. There are so many shades now, you can be incredibly specific. Silver for scintillating. Purple for pensive. Orange for awkward. Gray for kinky.
2. Leave secret messages where no one will notice them for a while, on the underside of a table, around your bellybutton, carved into a watermelon.
3. Come up with your own neologisms.
4. Name inanimate objects. Bertram the refrigerator has a nice ring to it.
5. Write a fake diary as a practical joke. Keep them guessing.
6. Play free rice. Feed people, improve your mind, and procrastinate on the internet all at the same time.
7. Make your own magnetic poetry. Your favorite word is scrofulous or doodad? Boom, you can add it.
8. Free associate. An old one and a good one. This is how I get a lot of ideas.
9. Make a cake just to pipe on it in icing—a love note, a confession, a movie line, whatever.
10. If you stay someone’s house, hide thank you notes and compliments in your room for them to find when they clean up after you.
11. Make a found poem from your favorite book.
12. Keep a diary of bon mots people say.
13. Come up with your mission statement. If you are not mission statement person, come up with your personal anthem, even if it is more in the style of Rasputina than Eye of the Tiger.
14. Try hand-lettering different fonts, or designing your own.
15. Keep a haiku diary.
16. Keep a journal of all the times you felt awesome.
17. Memorize quotes to insert at the most devastatingly perfect moment in a conversation.
18. Write something sweet or scary in steam on the bathroom mirror. (You have a cute butt. I can see it right now with my hidden camera.)
19. Use oil paint markers to write affirmations on the bottoms of your drinking glasses, or anywhere really. First idea that comes to mind—suck it up.
20. Keep random personal ephemera. Years later, shopping and to-do lists are undeniably fascinating.
21. Save a love letter in a special file on your computer for your loved ones if you die.
22. Let visitors write whatever they want on a wall in your house. I did this with a door once.
23. Use fabric markers on a white t-shirt to commemorate a season. Make observations. Doodle on it. Have your friends sign it like a cast. Every time you wear it you will think, ah yes, the summer of 2013.
24. Caption your photos.
25. Make lists.
The Forest for the Trees Thursday, November 1, 2012
I wanted this piece to have a soft and dream-like feel with just a soupcon of creepiness. I was thinking about the reducing valve of perception. How easy it is to get lost in your own thoughts, like a dark and endless forest, and not even know that you are lost.
Waterfall Swing Thursday, October 25, 2012
A collaboration between Mike O'toole, Andrew Ratcliff, and Ian Charnas for the 2011 Word Maker Faire.
This is a madly beautiful idea.
40 Fall Reads Friday, October 12, 2012
What does fall signify for you? To me it means the return of coziness—spiced desserts, hot tea, cats on blankets, delicious shivers. So these are comfort reads, propped up on four pillows in bed reads, for when you want books that are pleasantly melancholy, pleasantly spooky, or just plain pleasant.
In no particular order:
1. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
2. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
3. A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle
4. And the Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman (in honor of the election)
5. Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
6. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
7. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
8. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
9. The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury
10. Being There by Jerzy Kosinski (also in honor of the election)
11. Pretty Monsters: Stories by Kelly Link
12. Amphigorey by Edward Gorey
13. Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
14. Special Topics is Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
15. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
16. Good Bones and Simple Murders by Margaret Atwood
17. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
18. Watership Down by Richard Adams
19. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
20. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffennegger
21. How I live Now by Meg Rosoff
22. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
23. An Exact Repica of a Figment of my Imagination by Elizabeth McCraken
24. The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton
25. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
26. The Book of Nightmares by Galway Kinnel
27. The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
28. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
29. The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake
30. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
31. God Stalk by P. C. Hodgell
32. The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy (recommended for fans of Downton Abbey)
33. St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
34. There Once Lived a Woman who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
35. Complete Poems and Stories by Edgar Allen Poe
36. Gentleman and Players by Joanne Harris
37. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
38. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
39, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
40. Complete Poems by Dylan Thomas
