Remember when I used to talk about myself all the time?

I kind of don't feel like it any more.

But here's an interview I did back when I was still all chatty and enamored of myself as a subject. Warning: Not safe for work!

Blah blah blah, me me me, etc etc etc

It's possibly the most hypocritical interview I've ever done, as it's for a website called Suicide Girls, which features pictures of naked women for the purpose of sexual gratification (or, as we sex-negative second-wave types call it, "porn"). So, yeah, there's me on a porn site. Talking about my book, Have You Plowed Her. By Anus Erlbuns.

The folks will be so proud!

Bookslut

No, not me, the website. They just reviewed my "new" book, Hedda Gabler!

(The puns on my book title are becoming more obtuse. Might I be...dare we hope...running out of them?)

But bookslut is also kind of me, because I've still been tramping all around town promoting my book. Last week, I got to meet with the Chapter Chicks, an awesome all-girl book club that tends towards female memoirists. On Sunday, I read at Sunny's, hosted by Gabriel Cohen, with fellow readers Matthew Sharpe and Abraham Rodriguez -- in the crowd were my beloved writer's group, Anne, Cheryl, and Virginia, as well as author Jen Block, and our pal Georgia and her peeps. And last night, I read at Housing Works with Nick Flynn and Stephen Elliott, whose 2006 book, My Girlfriend Comes to Town and Beats Me Up, has easily my favorite book title of, oh, forever. Audience members -- including Virginia, Gabriel, Anne Radford, and a 72-year-old self-proclaimed "saint/slut" named Hattie -- were treated to sneak previews of Stephen and Nick's works-in-progress, which was a treat indeed. Thanks to Housing Works, now celebrating its tenth anniversary, and to Lauren Cerand for producing the event.

I'm hoping to be less of a promiscuous writer in weeks to come -- more faithful to my work, and to this blog. Bookprude, perhaps?

Strident, long-winded, and appearing this weekend

It's about time for another one of those posts that isn't really about anything except publicizing my book!

Here's a lovely interview with our friend Will McKinley in this week's The Villager. If I sound like I'm on an exceptionally high horse, it's because the interview took place two days after the whole Margaret Fuckface Jones thing, and I was still pissed. I mean, of course I lie; remember that time I got sick and couldn't make it to that book party? I was totally home watching Lost.

And here's a 53-minute interview with Deborah Harper of Psychjourney.com -- big huge spoiler alert! Also, laughing while talking alert!

And finally, back to back readings this Sunday (3pm, Sunny's in Red Hook) and Monday (7pm, Housing Works, with Nick Flynn and Stephen Elliott). In case you Haven't Heard Me read from Have You Found Her. Last few readings before I become a total Salinger and retreat from society entirely! Or something.

Blogs are supposed to be weird and personal

There's a woman who goes to the gym in my building around the same time I do, most every morning. She is young, tall, blond, and thin, with a pinched face, like she begrudges every calories that makes it through her pursed lips. Her arms are wet ropes that swim from the sleeves of her t-shirt. It is obvious that she did not spend the weekend, as I did, eating dim sum, cheese blintzes, and gummy sharks.

I am usually on the treadmill when she gets there, and I note the time as she steps on the next treadmill over. 8:16. I have six minutes on her. So, there. She keeps her head down, starts her machine, then looks up at Good Morning America, with its ersatz subtitling, her earbuds in her ears like everyone else's. She runs with her elbows close to her body, like she's suspicious.

I look at my thighs in the mirror. There is dimpled flesh, out where people can see it. My knees have little flab hats. I should wear pants, or leggings, but I get too hot.

Also, I am old, and short. And married.

The first time she clambered up on the treadmill next to me, I had to smile. We looked like the two island castaways on the old Bugs Bunny cartoon, the ones who'd been without food for so long that they started to fantasize about eating each other, and they turned into a hot dog and a hamburger running around in a circle. She was the long, lean, elegant hot dog, sprinting away, and I was the little round hamburger guy, running after her on my stubby legs with an ax.

When running alone or outdoors, I sing along to the music I'm listening to, maybe every other phrase ("I won't change my life...just fine..."). When others are present, I limit myself to mouthing the words. It's weird, but everyone is weird at the gym; it's such a weird, personal thing to be doing, exercising in public. So I sing along without sound, and when the thin blonde comes in and takes her grim place on the next treadmill, I smile.

I smile because if I don't, I will feel such horrible jealousy and self-loathing that I will come to an abrupt halt and fall directly under the treadmill and be ground up to death in a gory industrial accident. I will seriously look over at her and hate myself for the full duration of the run, if I do not smile while saying to myself over and over, "I am happier this way. I am happier this way. I am happier this way."

I don't know what I mean by this. I mean that I am happier not dieting, that much is true. I could have that body -- I had that body, shorter, but with better breasts -- but I'm no longer twenty-three. And I don't feel like being hungry and cranky and resentful of people who actually allow themselves to eat. So in that respect I am happier this way.

I am happier this way. HAPPIER THAN YOU BITCH. YOU MAY BE THINNER THAN ME BUT I AM HAPPIER THAN YOU. LOOK AT ME, I'M SMILING. I'M ENJOYING MY RUN. I DO IT BECAUSE I ENJOY IT, NOT BECAUSE I WANT TO LOOK LIKE YOU. OKAY?

She runs for forty-five minutes. I smile the entire time. She gets off and I keep going; I'll do an hour to her forty-five. She leaves the gym with her sour, downcast look, and I flatter myself that she noticed me smiling, that it peeved her somehow. I win. I am happier this way. I win.

Pressing the Escape key

We're getting out of town for the next few days. Thanks so much for the comments on the previous post; they're much appreciated. I hope to be back to my old solipsistic, hyperconfessional navel-gazing self soon. In the meantime, thinking of you with gratitude and love.

Horrible internet funk

I am seriously thinking about quitting the internet.

Guest blogger: Lori Mocha

Writing Sucks I Mean I Love It

By Lori Mocha

Well here's the deal, writing isn't always so very super fun. I sorta hate it actually. It's lonely and can be super boring.

But I love it too. It has its obvious rewards or I wouldn't do it. And I love to make people laugh. LOVE IT.

Yet what I love most is the connection.

I like to think of us all laughing together, my readers and I. And them going yeah and! And me going yeah I know! And we are all laughing and going oh my god I know what you mean! And then we laugh and laugh and laugh some more.

That is why I write. For that feeling. That is why blogging is my first true love. The instant connection. It feels so great. No revision required.

Now revising. That is the hardest part of writing for me. Chopping up the same damn thing over and over. Soooooo boring.

Oh and lonely. It's total isolation.

I struggle with that HARDCORE. I don't want to sit here all alone condensing life. I want to write and move on to the next thing.

However, I know when something I write could be better. I know I should fix it. But fixing it is tedious busy work. Ugh.

Instead, it might seem I prefer to just lie on the couch crying about my buckets of lost dreams when I should find inspiration in making buckets of cash for what I ultimately love to do. I know that's unoriginal. But I need more than integrity to live. And not just for my underwater ipod but for important stuff like all my medication.

For now though, I'll just sit back and blog. Oh and write inappropriate emails, especially late at night. Oh man, do I love to write those. Probably because I don't have to revise them.

But if I ever want to be a "real writer" then I probably need to revise something once in awhile.

What a bunch of baloney.

In the end I guess less is more, but when is more enough?

More friends with more books!

Look! It's Lea's book! It just came out today -- two days after her wedding (ZOMG) -- now she's married, with a little book-baby! Bar Flower is the story of Lea's (decadently destructive) time as a Japanese bar hostess -- part geisha, part booze salesman, all hustler. It's getting great reviews ("A juicy read" from Kirkus Reviws, "Endlessly candid and engaging" from Booklist, and an A- from E Weekly!), and I'm kvelling for her so hard I'm hurting myself.

Also just out: a reissue of Ariel Schrag's first two books, Awkward and Definition. I'd already read her third book, Potential (and bought copies for some of my favorite young women), but I'd never been able to get a hold of these; the minute I did, I sat right down and tore through them in an afternoon. Written and drawn during the summers after Ariel's freshman and sophomore years of high school, these books are so funny, painful, and honest; it's prescient work from a precociously talented kid (okay, she's not a kid anymore, though she is still, disgustingly, many years younger than me).

Yes, I am bragging again about all the cool writer chicks I know. That's just how I (blog)roll.

Me again, again

Two exciting bits of news for me last week, both involving re-publication:

1. Gather ye first editions while ye may, because Have You Found Her is going into its second printing! Hooray for my wonderful agent and editor, and for publicists Patty Park and Lauren Cerand, for helping to make this possible.

2. The UK version of Girlbomb (which is called The Runaway, and is otherwise the exact same book with a few extra vowels in it) is being re-released in the next few weeks with a new cover:

So pulpy, right? Doesn't she look terribly young and vulnerable? Don't you just want to give her a good home? She's on "the streets!" (Which...technically I wasn't, but if it's going to get all the little Lily Allens and Amy Winehouses to pick up my book, fine.)

All of this is exceptionally good news for me, as now I don't feel the pressure to write another book, since the first two keep multiplying like rabbits. Little, inert, square rabbits with pages instead of feet. Rab-books. Whatever -- it's good.

Recapping the NY Round Table Writers' Conference

First impression: All tables are in fact rectangular. Also, my suit of armor appears to be out of place.

Friday 2pm Non-Fiction panel:

Moderator Janet Reid is funny. Beloved editor Bruce Tracy has a goatee, looks like evil Bruce Tracy from another dimension. Janet asks how many people in the audience are memoirists. Fifty percent of us raise our filthy hands.

Top three questions from the audience:

1. How do we break in?

Answers: Write a proposal, get an agent. Get published in magazines and online. Be a good writer.

2. What else can we do to increase our chances?

Answers: Research your market, get a platform, don't be a rude asshole. Be a good writer.

3. Here is a summary of my book idea, which I will present to you for as long as I am allowed to hold on to the microphone.

Answers: ...

Saturday 2pm Memoir panel

I am on this one, along with five other memoirists and a moderator. There are enough people on the dais for a scrimage. I sit down between Phoebe Damrosch and Stephanie Elizondo Griest and immediately bump my knee on the table leg.

Top three questions from the audience:

1. How much can you fudge?

Answers: (Varied, depending on who was answering. General consensus: Tell the truth.)

2. My family's going to kill me.

Answers: Yeah, probably. But don't worry about that until you're done writing.

3. Here's my entire life story, not that you asked.

Answers: All right, then.

Saturday 4pm Master Class with Sharon Mesmer

"When Words Won't Come: Generating New Work When You Think You Can't." Excellent. I really need this one. I pull up a student desk and get out my notebook. Sharon, who I used to know back in the Nuyorican days, and who is now associated with the Flarfists, says that block is often a result of "being too invested in your own ideas, clinging to familiar themes, characters, your own 'voice.'" To get us out of our own heads, she has us do surrealist exercises -- working with random phrases, rearranging cut-up strips of words. I wind up with two really dark existentialist pieces about death. Hello, third book!