But Call Me Betsy

I went to a Philadelphia Noir event at the Rittenhouse Barnes and Noble last night--wasn't sure if it would be a reading or just a discussion or what. It turned out to be a book signing. There were like 8 of us contributors sitting in a row behind a table of books. I believe exactly one girl stopped to talk to us. I don't know that she bought a book. But it was still interesting to hear the other writers chatting. Many of them have books out on their own; one woman I talked to writes historical fiction and seems to be doing very well with it. Another guy bragged about how his novel was rejected from a huge publishing house because it was just too literary and good. And then a third was checking his book sales on a laptop and reporting good returns. So, what is wrong with me? I don't know why I can't seem to just commit to writing a longer work. I have my thesis from grad school which is a novel, but it needs work. I have sort of an idea for a character and story, but I...

If you need to see me this evening, I'll be taking part in a reading of Philadelphia Noir , edited by Carlin Romano at the Penn bookstore at 6 PM. You can read about it here . We're not actually reading from the book, because that would take forever, but I guess we're supposed to say something about the process of writing the story--how we came up with our ideas, etc. I made Dan talk with me about it yesterday so I could try to remember how the idea came about. I was just rereading some of the story, and the narrator just really isn't very likable. The situation too is a bit of a stretch. But I can talk about how I determined where it would be set. I was writing it when I was also looking for a house, and so I got to see the inside of all of these different South Philly homes, and started noticing similarities among some of the places where you could just tell the owners were older. Dark paneling, furniture covered in plastic, Jesus-es all over the place, and, oddly,...