Blogger Summit

There may not be a new post this weekend, as we're conducting serious business here at W6HQ: an important summit meeting with Moonlight Ambulette. Our negotiations will have far-reaching effects on the literary blogosphere: Condalmo will be expected to post five times more often than usual, the Rake will be asked to change the name of his blog on a weekly basis from now on, and Ed Champion will be forced to become a restaurant critic. These are all Amy's ideas, of course, we just sat there nodding.

Somehow we found time to enjoy a terrific reading from Amy's new book at The Bookery. She was very funny, and passed around a helpful handout about how to get your novel published. (Hint: live around the corner from Paul Auster.) Thanks to my students for attending, and for the hippie who played the bongos down the hall the entire time: dude, you are awesome.

How Far Is the Ocean From Here

Moonlight Ambulette is a wonderful blog, one of my favorites. Amy always has excellent recommendations and hilariously charming commentary. I knew I'd love her first novel. It's about a very pregnant runaway surrogate mother stranded in a down-at-heel motor lodge in New Mexico, and it's full of weird, surprising, beautiful writing and good characters. On the surface I guess HFITOFH is about family-making (can you make a family out of random strangers?) but a step or two deeper down it's about what people owe each other -- indebtedness. The characters are constantly giving each other things: pebbles, breakfast, lodging, babies. (One of my favorite lines is when one of the characters demands his breakfast: "'Pop-Tarts and a orange,' he said. 'Yeah.'" He gets the Pop-Tarts, but no orange.) I loved the setting, too: the desert, the motel with its huge, buzzing neon sign and greenish swimming pool. Anyway: it turns out you can blog AND write great fiction! Or at least Amy can.

It's good to be back. I shouldn't have picked an election season to try and give up the internet, though. I would have done more writing if I hadn't spent so much time checking the latest tracking polls. Several of my old lit-blog haunts disappeared during my hiatus: Writer, Reading is gone (drop a line if you have a new blog, WR) bloglily is taking her own break, etc. But I'm totally raring to go. Anyone seen Max around? I really miss that mean old son of a gun.