Writing Project Update

Blogging, right? Good to do. I get so busy with other projects I rarely pop in anymore but it seemed like time.

Currently I have three completed novels and a poetry collection that I am shopping around with small presses. The novels are in the same world and kind of a series but they're all stand-alone work. It seemed too difficult & grandiose to try to find an agent and big press to publish them as much as I loved Harry Potter. This is X-rated queer Harry Potter for adults where the magic may all be a Schizoaffective delusion. Mary Gaitskill-influenced dives from glamour to abjection. Bit of a niche audience but literary fiction nevertheless.

Scaffolding is a nineties punk Portland prequel to my first novel Jet Set Desolate that took me 20 years to write. I have a query in to Bedazzled Ink for it. An excerpt, "Bent Scaffolding and Robotussin" is coming out at Entropy July 5, 2016.

Angelina at the Serrano is a noir journey of addiction, MFA and recovery in San Francisco, San Diego, CalArts and Los Angeles. It took 12 years. I have a query in to Publishing Genius about it. Excerpts were recently submitted to The Rumpus and Switchback but I'm still waiting for those believed editorial emails.

In Diary of a Hollywood Hedgewitch, a widowed Wiccan searches for love and sobriety from a fabulous Hollywood address. This one took 2 years. Barrelhouse Press is looking at it. There is an excerpt "Sidepiece Blues" in The Fanzine here.

Bleed Almond is poems about a queer mentally ill Latina struggling through love, alcoholism and heartbreak in Los Angeles. GusGus Press is looking at it. I submitted it to 15 contests as that is apparently how one gets a small press poetry book published. All rejections so far, still waiting to hear back from 3 of them.

Apparently productivity comes with sobriety. Good to know. Wish I'd figured that out so much earlier. I might still be married. I'm super-happy to be doing what I love & seeing results as I relentlessly submit work & keep trying. The sacrifices and hard choices of never having children, not pursuing a PhD, not cohabitating anymore or getting married again, managing Schizoaffective Disorder & dedicating my SSDI and family money-fueled free time into artistic and literary pursuits are what I'm doing. It is what it is. I must accept it & I do.

Angel's Flight Literary West, an exciting new Los Angeles online literary magazine is featuring eight oil paintings, a Q & A and a breakup poem in their Bastille Day issue on July 14, 2016.  Queer Mental Health will publish my essay, "Intersectionality and the Orlando Shootings" when they fix their technical difficulties. apt is publishing three poems in December 2016. I have a piece of Creative nonfiction in Bedazzled Ink's anthology Haunting Muses that is coming out October 2016. Thrilled to bits.

 I'm trying to send out more artwork to online magazines as right now all of these paintings and collages are sitting in my apartment gathering dust. Entropy's seasonal "Where to Submit" articles have been invaluable in my marathon sessions of carpet-bombing submissions. I understand that persistence, willingness to write for free, professionalism and social media networking are how this game is played. I'm in it to win it & I want to play.

Here's a mixed media oil painting called "Three Ladies." My too graphic for most NSFW Series is here.

Here's a photo of me my BFF Alicia took when I let her do my makeup. The revelation of eyeliner after being a red lipstick girl for so many years. The top is on backwards but tits never hurt.

I am trying to be better about blogging now that I'm still doing this. It's a late night on Wednesday and I'm reassessing.

Today I woke up with a revelation about what writing projects and should shelve (DIARY OF A HOLLYWOOD HEDGEWITCH) and start (ANGELICA AT THE SERRANO). This took the form of a dream where I looked at the ANGELICA AT THE SERRANO manuscript. Realized that I would find so much more to edit on that that I should work on that instead for a while. and only later get back into DIARY OF A HOLLYWOOD HEDGEWITCH to cut that last 10,000 words once I had taken significant time  away from the manuscript.

 My other revelation was that I can't query an agent for DIARY OF A HOLLYWOOD HEDGEWITCH as I had previously been planning to because the exact range of money $13,000-100,000 of which is the exact range advances from big presses come in would be the amount that would totally fuck up everything I have built and strived for in my life and land me in far more debt than I am in right now, making publishing with large presses undesirable for me at this time. I will be attempting to publish my two-three novels and memoir on small presses only in the future. This is because I am on disability and have had $100,000 in student loans forgiven which I owe again if I lose my disability or make over $15,000 a year for the next 2 years.

I will continue to labor in the trenches. I will work quietly and rotate manuscripts one by one until I feel that one is ready then release it upon the world with a select small press where I don't really care how much they pay me or if they do. It's my path as a writer. It's what I have to do to preserve my position. I'm trying very hard not to fuck everything up, and every year I get close to the brink and then realize my mistake and change my mind and pull back. I'm trying to make better choices now.

Getting sober really helps. I have 2 years and one month sober from alcohol now and I am so much happier. I don't have to work at staying sober any more. The cravings have completely disappeared. I just know implicitly that I can't and won't drink and I won't even if I'm around it or someone offers it to me. It's great!

Now that I'm thinking ahead and planning, I'm trying to make better choices as I move forwards into my 40s which I'm hoping will be my happiest and most prosperous decade yet. It will certainly be the soberest and most productive I hope. I'm 39. 2016 is the year I turn 40. I'm trying to get ready for it. Gear up to it, as it were.

I am prepared to labor quietly in the trenches for the rest of my life until someone discovers one of my books at a used bookshop and falls in love with it really. That's what I live for. I always friend back my fans on Facebook because I don't have an author page. So if you are one, say hi!

I published a food essay: "Ode to a Latte Macchiato,"  in Entropy, February 26, 2016.
And "Sidepiece Blues" Excerpt from Diary of a Hollywood Hedgewitch, February 15, 2016.

I've been busy. So for the moment I'm taking a little break. Catching up on my social media. Pinterest, anyone? I love this shit.

Here's a picture of my cat in a dress because you're nice for listening to me talk about myself for one whole blog entry:

Dusting the old blog off once again

Have I forgotten to blog for a year and a half? OMG I did. Nothing for 2015.

Well, since July 2014 a lot has happened. I've been on Agent Query a lot and it tells me blogging is important for writers, so I figure I'll dust off the old blog and get back to it.

It's crazy to think that I started this blog in 2006 when I was writing JET SET DESOLATE but hadn't gone to grad school or had it published yet. This blog covers a lot of time, although it is not always regularly updated. I'll try to be better about it, if anyone is reading this. All the social media is helpful to my writer platform. Why not do this every once in a while?

At this point since July's Camp NaNoWriMo when I last blogged, I have a new draft of SCAFFOLDING that's currently shelved. SCAFFOLDING is an autobiographical fantasy about bipolar disorder in nineties Portland. I have worked on two other manuscripts that are also currently shelved. They are ANGELICA AT THE SERRANO, a memoir about addiction and recovery in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and KATIE RISING, a memoir about my relationship with my dead wife, Katie Jacobson.

What I'm working on right now is a memoir called DIARY OF A HOLLYWOOD HEDGEWITCH. A widowed, mentally ill queer witch searches for love and sobriety from a fabulous Hollywood address. I wrote this in spring 2015 and am currently cutting 20,000 words and revising the manuscript before querying another agent.

I'm also working one an ongoing growing poetry manuscript called BLEED ALMOND. I sent it out to fifteen contests with publication as the prize. This is apparently how you get a poetry manuscript published on a small press. Every time I write a new poem I add to it.

I'm still sober. I have 2 years sober from alcohol. Medical marijuana has been a godsend and has helped me stay sober, along with yoga, meditation, and willpower. I'm totes done with AA. Sorry not sorry. It's just too much of a cult. Part of the journey, part of the journey.

Here's a rundown of what I've published online since I last blogged, in case you are interested:

• "The House is a Woman: A Review of Maison Femme: a fiction by Teresa Carmody with Illustrations by Vanessa Place,” FANZINE, February 4, 2016
• "My Thoughts on Guns as a Mentally Ill Person," Queer Mental Health, January 27, 2016
• "Let It Snow: Christmas Among Ghosts," Entropy, January 13, 2016
• "Thanksgiving and the Apocalypse," Entropy, December 7, 2015
• "Cockroaches in my Cookbooks," Entropy,  October 19, 2015
• "My Boyfriend's Super Quesadillas," Entropy, September 21, 2015
• "Apocalypse," ENCLAVE, September 21, 2015
• "Femme Bisexual Invisibility and Passing," Queer Mental Health, September 2, 2015
• "Eat Your Words: Eating Dates with Veronica," Entropy, July 8, 2015
• "My Experience with Leaving AA and Successfully Staying Sober," Queer Mental Health, July 2, 2015
• "Apocalypse Lemon Pie," Entropy, April 24, 2015
• "My Experience with Wicca and Pagan Spirituality," Queer Mental Health, March 24, 2015

I've been so busy publishing personal essays online that I haven't taken time to blog. But the blog is back on. Always good to have more social media in my arsenal.

Also, in case you care, I've totes revised my website. Here it is: https://andreaklambert.com.

Happy reading! Thanks for listening!

I enjoy my insomnia. I know I could take the Saphris and go to sleep, but I enjoy the process of self-discovery that being up late on the computer brings me.  It is so dark, so quiet, but the inner self seems alive with the hum of electronics and psychic energy.  It is the perfect time for yoga, art, writing or witchcraft, all best practiced alone.

I am concentrating and working so hard yet still I feel it is not enough.  I stop for a moment, I look at the screen and I see a white corsage pinned on a handmade dress. I see moments of cinematic beauty. And I am reminded that there are reasons to stay here.

Perhaps a nice yoga session while I watch the Virgin Suicides and process these things. Then back to revision from 7pm-11pm.  Camp NaNoWriMo is coming along. I am getting the work done as I need to get done.  the novel is much improved.  it is just a lot of time, but I am happy to put in the work.

My boyfriend teases me with the story of the Gamer who never finishes his game.  I want to finish this book at some point, hopefully soon. I have committed to emailing Writ Large whatever I have on August 4th.  From that point I will wait.  And put in all the time I can reasonably commit to until then.

Again? Again.

How much self-expression is enough self-expression?  I have been doing this blog since 2006 and it is just such a comfortable space, so I continue.

Reopened the doors, so to speak.  A lot has happened.  Katie committed suicide on October 15, 2012. i went to detox and rehab and got sober from alcohol.  I started consuming medical marihuana as a harm reduction measure in February 2013. It helps with the PTSD and anxiety.

Part of getting sober involved committing to honesty and full disclosure. Why lock up this blog? i have nothing to hide anymore. I commit myself to the truth. This is a record of what has past. Records are valuable.

Perhaps I will be posting more as the spirit moves me, but I need to put on makeup, go to the Dispensary and do a spell at high noon.  I've gotten quite into witchcraft. It always works.

This blog is a bit of a relic, but shaken off and stirred it stands, to post in again. I'm still on disability, so I've got a lot of free time.

I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo with the Scaffolding manuscript.  It balloons.  A revision, but I must read through it again.  Later.  Another day.

For now, to live!

I am calming, now, I am calming.  I recieved an iphone for Christmas and it has a white noise app whose "ocean waves" setting has the most amazing ability to calm me.  I had a bit of a flashback today.  A scarcity flashback.  I have been broke since Christmas, waiting for a handout from my parents, broker still from some car repairs due to gang vandalism.  Very frightening, a major gang tagged my car and now when I go to the [location redacted] I'm afraid I'm going to get my hand chopped off with a machete by the {name redacted}. (this is how scared I am)

Tonight Katie ordered Thai food and as we were eating I had a flashback to the several periods when I had no reliable source of food and no food stamps and had to eat each meal as if it was my last and began to eat the Thai food as if in a panic of starvation.  Now, I am not starving.  I eat one or two meals a day but that is customary, that is normal, coffee and alcohol help it along.  I didn't leave enough for Katie and she was hurt, she felt something was wrong, she felt my disquietude.  Now I am drinking her last beer as well, my greed for fear of deprivation, in engulfs magnitudes.

The waves, how calming.  Last night I listened to them for an hour. I lay in bed and imagined I was on a boat the size of my bed floating on gentle swells, over the sea.  Burial at sea or rather memories of our honeymoon in the cabana on the Caribbean Sea, the ocean outside the window, or childhood camping by streams, my college dorm by river, our home now so recently by a lake.  Before dredging. Before expulsion.  I have been trying to dredge why this sound is so calming, where the other white noise sounds are not as soothing.