marquisdd's 8/29 entry makes me remember writing the last paragraphs of Soul Kitchen days before we evacuated: "How the hell did we ever end up with so much good luck? Rickey wondered. What if something bad happened to balance it out? Then he thought of everything that had happened over the last few months, and he began to laugh. If the balancing hadn't already happened, the world was a crueler place than he was willing to believe."

It sure was, Rickey (I miss you like a brother). One of my silly but self-amusing little conceits of the sort writers tend to cultivate, unremarked upon by anyone as far as I know, is that all three of the extant Liquor novels end with the characters laughing together. Even if I manage to write another someday, I don't think I'll be able to end one that way again.

As of today, The Green Goddess officially has its liquor license! Swing by 307 Exchange Alley and have a Green Fuse, a Sultan's Dream, or one of their many other delicious specialty cocktails to celebrate. If you do not imbibe of the grain and the grape, they have lots of virgin cocktails too.

Me, I'm off to eat "transparency of raspberry and yogurt" and "black truffle explosion," along with twenty-one other tiny fabulous things.

I took the Mary Sue Litmus Test for my earliest and most recent "autobiographical" characters. (I use "autobiographical" not to suggest that the characters' lives have resembled mine in any way, but because they were the characters I most identified with/felt I resembled while writing the stories in question.)

Nothing from Lost Souls:

Your Mary Sue Score: 100 (71 points or more: Irredeemable-Sue. You're going to have to start over, my friend. I know you want to keep writing, but no. Just no.)

Rickey from the Liquor novels:

Your Mary Sue Score: 39 (36-55 points: Mary-Sue. Your character needs some work in order to be believable. But despair not; you should still be able to salvage her with a little effort. Don't give up.)

So apparently I've been guilty of Suedom my entire career, but I have improved some.

I spent a week training myself to wake up early so we could get a good start in Grand Isle, and now I keep finding myself up at ungodly hours. It won't last once Chris gets his restaurant open*, but for now, I suppose it is all right for gardening purposes.

It leaves me cranky, though, so maybe this is a good time to address that shiny new New Orleans show, Treme. People keep asking me what I think of it, and my friend Adrienne suggested in a Facebook note about it that I should write for them, so I'll tell you pretty much what I told her:

There was a very good chance that the Liquor books would be made into a cable series until this thing came along. I had a writer who'd done a killer treatment, alleged interest from a couple of networks ... and then suddenly there was Treme. Of course there couldn't be TWO New Orleans series at once, and David Simon (sorry, never heard of him) is apparently some kind of big deal, so naturally my guy and his project got dumped. I'm feeling too grudgey to get excited about this, plus the fact that they're employing Snoozin' Spicer as a chef-consultant makes me suspect they will get everything at least as wrong as K-Ville did. Or, given Spicer's cooking habits, maybe it means they'll just steal all their ideas from better shows and then claim to have invented them. I also gotta say I don't remember all this emphasis on "New Orleans through the eyes of cooks" in the show's earlier publicity, but that's probably paranoia, because eliminating the competition and then absorbing its salable points just isn't how Hollywood operates.

Oh, you say, but Poppy, shouldn't you put aside your grudginess for the sake of something that will focus attention on New Orleans? Well, I reply, if we're at the point where we need a fictional TV show to focus attention on us, I think we're pretty much fucked anyway. I'm far more excited about the fact that the current American president actually seems to give a shit about us.

Tom Piazza is a good writer, and Lolis Eric Elie surely knows New Orleans, so those are two points in Treme's favor. I hope there are more. Yeah, my first instinct is to feel like they're taking food directly out of my cats' mouths, and yeah, I'll probably never watch an episode (never saw K-Ville either, just learned about it through cultural osmosis), but if nothing else, they are creating some jobs here and I don't actually hope they fail. Well, OK, I kinda do, but I realize that's just pettiness and the sort of thing I am trying to put behind me.

*If you want to know more about this, please look for updates at chefcdb. I'm happy for Chris' sake that it is happening, but since the details of opening a restaurant bring back sorrowful memories of the days when I had the drive and the caring and the voice to tell stories about such matters, I'm just staying out of the way, concentrating on my garden and my "craps" (crafts), and letting him do his thing.

The first of the blank books goes out tomorrow -- to Spain, where my books have been before, but I have not. I've finished the second and third books in the three-book St. Francis of Assisi series and will probably put them up tomorrow. The first one is already up, along with the lovely black and red Goth Deluxe journal. (That translucent, veined red paper slays me. I must return to the store, a craft zombie, for more of it.)

I have had, and continue to have, tremendous fun making these books. Yesterday I was talking with a painter friend who has also written a book. Writing is easy and fun, she says, but it's hard for her not to look at painting as work. Funny how that happens. I started off writing Liquor totally for my own enjoyment, because writing had become largely joyless. I told myself it was fun, disposable crap and I didn't care if I ever finished or published it. Somewhere along the line, though, it started to matter, and then I was told I couldn't possibly do it and it started to matter in a different way, and by 2006 it mattered so much that I had written four novels, a novella, and a bunch of short stories about the characters. And it had hardly ever stopped being fun; the things that derailed me from writing had little to do with my characters or subject matter.

Anyway, so far, making these books is play for me. I'm trying to improve my technical skills and make them look as good as possible. A couple of them, I think, even express something beyond aesthetics. But if it stops being fun, I'm going to stop doing it. Until then, I hope people will continue to look, bid, and enjoy.

Oh, and I made the tag "blank books" because I feel like an asshole every time I use the "art" and "books" tags on these entries. In fact, I think the "art" tag can go away altogether.

Until today, due to Internet avoidance issues, I hadn't looked at my gmail account in about two weeks. I'll try to get to the many messages there soon.

One of the things I was avoiding was a post-Frankfurt Book Fair e-mail from my agent about the French launch of the Liquor novels, and how my publisher Au Diable Vauvert would still like me to come to France. It's hard to explain without sounding ungrateful to people who have faith in me that, at this point in my life, it would be impossible for me to go Be The Author at the bookstore down the street, let alone overseas. Sometimes I barely remember how to act like a human being, let alone a Famous Writer. Now that I'm cruising at least somewhat sanely after the craziness of the past three years, culminating in the series of horrible, dangerous choices I made last winter, I'm not going to force myself into anything. I'm going to help keep vigil at the church and tend my garden and read a lot. If I take a notion to spend a week by myself in Amsterdam in January, well, I just might do so. But a big splashy public week of interviews and signings in beautiful, delicious, kind, but (to me, always) utterly terrifying Paris ... I wish it weren't out of the question, but for now, it is.

Yes, well, when I found out Livejournal had not only a tiki theme but a purple tiki theme, what else could I do? I've also started using tags, which appeal to the part of my nature that enjoys alphabetizing, making lists, and such. So far I've tagged my entries back through June of this year. Eventually I'd like to do as many as possible, but given that I've been keeping this journal for five years (!), it's going to be a big task. I've set it up (I hope) so that people on my friends list can add the tags I've already created to my entries, so if any of y'all feel like helping with this, I will be most appreciative.

We recently had a piece of very good news, which I didn't want to mention until it was finalized (money --> bank). Back in 2000, when we lived on Napoleon Avenue, the Army Corps of Engineers and the New Orleans Sewer & Water Board began a huge construction project along several blocks of the street, including ours. They basically removed the neutral ground (the median to non-New Orleanians) and dug two huge canals underneath the street, each big enough to drive a city bus through, which were meant to improve the notoriously poor drainage in Broadmoor. Unfortunately, as well as making everyone's life a hell of filth, ugliness, and insanely loud noise that often started as early as 5:45 AM, the construction severely damaged most of the beautiful old (mostly circa 1920-1930) homes in the neighborhood. Our foundation collapsed and our house developed several large cracks in the interior and exterior walls as well as a couple of major roof leaks. Another family's house actually split in two, rendering it uninhabitable. I wrote Liquor during this chaos, working late at night and grabbing moments of silence wherever I could find them. By the time the construction ended in 2004, most of us in the neighborhood were involved in a group lawsuit against the Corps and the S&WB. Not a class-action lawsuit, but along those lines. I never expected to see a penny from it, especially after the federal levees (you know, the ones built by that same Corps) failed, but the suit was recently settled, and last week we received a very nice sum. Not hundreds of thousands or anything, but enough so that we won't have to worry for a while, enough so that we can take our twentieth-anniversary trip next year, and (most important at the moment) enough so that Chris can wait a bit longer for a good job opportunity to come along instead of taking a job just to bring in money. He is restless and misses cooking and his customers, but there has been a dearth of decent chef jobs recently. (He's already had two offers; unfortunately, one was in Lafayette -- three hours away -- and one just looked like a worse fit the more we thought and talked about it.)

We owe a vast debt of thanks to Linda Harang (isn't that an excellent name for a lawyer?) and her associates at the Murray Law Firm; they certainly earned their big slice of the pie.

So that's where we are now, and it seems like a pretty good place to be. I know that some people who read this journal are kind enough to worry about us, so I just wanted to let folks know that -- financially, at least -- we will be OK for a while. Thanks for caring.

Tracking down a purchase link to Alcool for an inquiring reader, I found one customer review (4 stars) on the page. This is how Babelfish translated it:

"In New-Orleans, one eats well. There are heaps of restaurants and local specialities, smarter with most original. Rickey and G-Man already worked in step badly d' between them, and form a couple of cooks very attaching. Rickey is a large mouth, beautiful child, very gifted and creative cook, while G-Man is balanced much more, also good behind the furnaces but much more flexible character question. After step badly of galères in so much qu' employees, they have great idea: to open their characteristic restoring, with a kitchen entirely associated with l' alcohol (lobster with the whisky and other delicious associations), their sentence " doudou" being since glosses, in the event of blow of slackness: " there is always l' alcool". And what n' was jusqu' with at the time qu' a joke, becomes suddenly possible with the nudge in the right direction d' a celebrity of the restoration. C' is in fact there that the troubles start… C' is a novel which gives a furious desire d' to go to the restaurant, which opens a door hyper temptress on the world of the kitchen. There is a constant opposition between l' action, which is realistic, in its rails and goes in the good sense, and the subversion of the characters: there are the homosexual ones, drug addicts, large arms who make to the dirty job, of the gossip, the rumours, violence and racism, and beautiful and great feelings, the dreams, the dishes appétissants and this love of the thing well done, this trade shown so well. In extreme cases there is even perhaps a little too many sentimentalism and the heroes too sympas, in spite of their faults. But j' vibrated so much with the culinary side that j' took the whole with a rapture which s' is ever contradicted."

I think "A novel which gives a furious desire to go to the restaurant" would make a fine blurb.

For those who read French, the French website Fluctuat has a new interview with me and a review of Liquor (Alcool in the language of love). From what I can make out, the French reviewer seems to see a stronger and more obvious connection between my older novels and Liquor than all the American reviews that claim I've done a 180-degree turn and stunned my poor faithful gothy readers. This doesn't surprise me; my French readers in particular have always seemed to have a gift for seeing the bigger picture, rather than needing things to be all about the horror or all about the goth.

Now I have to go answer questions for yet another French interview.

I just read the following quote on (of all places) Letters From Johns, a site where men talk about their experiences with prostitutes, which I happened upon thanks to susiebrightfeed:

... that line that Anthony Hopkins used in Legends of the Fall ... "Organized religion is for those who have no internal morality compass and need outside assistance."

I haven't seen the movie and have no idea whether this quote is accurate, but -- in my case, anyway -- it's pretty close to the mark.

Au Diable Vauvert's edition of Liquor (titled Alcool) has just been published, and there are interview questions from three French magazines lurking in my e-mail. I tried to get Chris to answer them for me and even offered to pay him, but he wouldn't go for it, that bitch.

It takes me a while to get to them, but I eventually approve all the friend requests on my MySpace book-doctoring page, even the HOTXXX BARELY LEGAL CHIXXX, because, well, why not? It doesn't cost me anything to be friendly, and if they act up, I can always ban them later.

I just clicked "Deny" for the first time ever.

Back in 2004, I was going on tour for Liquor and the independent bookstore Book Passage had just opened a new branch in San Francisco's Ferry Building. I'd been deemed good enough to sign at their original Corte Madera location in my previous life, and the Ferry Building was (and is) something of a foodie mecca, with all sorts of fabulous specialty cheese shops and cafes and such. According to the Book Passage newsletter, they also featured lots of cookbook and food authors, so it seemed obvious that this would be a natural place for me to sign Liquor. I had my publicist at Three Rivers contact them, only to have the message delivered that they weren't interested in a Liquor signing because "we don't handle many hip, edgy novels."

Undoubtedly, this was at least partly the fault of the blithering publicity morons at Three Rivers, whom I could never quite disabuse of the idea that the Liquor novels were somehow "edge lit." Still, you call me "hip" or "edgy" once, you are anathema forever. I am as hip as Bing Crosby and as edgy as Junior Samples. I am ninety-two, dammit. I'd rather set myself on fire than go to Burning Man. I only ever put seven songs on my iPod, and the first one was "Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart. I don't know a single word of Japanese, not even one that describes a pornographic act. I've never put anything on YouTube. I listen to sports talk radio. I HATE COOLNESS AND COOLNESS HATES ME. So of course when I saw "Book Passage" on my Friend Requests list, my first thought was, "Ooo!!! I'll show them who's hip and edgy now! They are! Deny! Deny!! DENY!!!"

(I said I was old; I never said I was mature.)

But just in case some innocent Book Passage employee sought my MySpace friendship and is now wondering why the cold shoulder: hunt down the bitch who called Liquor "hip and edgy," send me a photo of his or her severed head, and you're in like Flynn.

Bad high school English classes have given too many readers the idea that "theme" in literature is a ponderous concept, the sole province of Great Literature, something writers decide on before they write the first word of a novel. In truth, I think most stories, highbrow or otherwise, have a theme of some sort, and it's seldom a preconceived thing. It grows out of the story and the characters, and I believe few writers know what the themes of their novels are until the novels are finished, or at least well underway. Sometimes it doesn't become evident until years after you've written the damn thing.

In On Writing, Stephen King writes:

I don't believe any novelist, even one who's written forty-plus books, has too many thematic concerns; I have many interests, but only a few that are deep enough to power novels.

Of course I got to thinking about what my own "thematic concerns" might be, and I came up with a few I believe have run through my work over the years, regardless of how radically some readers may feel it has changed:

- The search for and creation of alternate families by characters whose biological families have rejected them (Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, The Value of X)

- The way the gay community sometimes victimizes itself almost as effectively as it is victimized by the religious right and its other obvious enemies (Exquisite Corpse, The Lazarus Heart, [to a lesser degree] Prime)

- How doing the work you truly want to do can power your life and fulfill your dreams (Liquor, D*U*C*K)

- How the everyday people of New Orleans, even more than the celebrities, the architecture, the food, the music, the spooky glamour, or any of the other things we're best known for, make it the unique place it is (Liquor, Prime, Soul Kitchen)

I don't know if this is of great interest to anybody, but I don't have much to say about my work these days (what work, ha-ha?), so I thought I'd share.

Something I learned today: In some ways, being at a funeral for a friend's loved one is harder than being at a funeral for a friend of your own, because your grief doesn't feel legitimate and you know your friend is hurting terribly and there's nothing you can do about it, nothing you can really offer except your presence. I'm not saying this quite right -- I don't mean "harder" so much as "weirder" or "more awkward" or something along those lines -- but what am I supposed to be, a professional writer or something?

And such things never stop hitting you, I guess. Just now I was working on the Chile Pepper article, took down our Commander's Palace cookbook to check something, and saw Jamie Shannon's signature in the front: Chris, keep in touch. I'll be around. Let's have coffee. We never saw him again, and he was dead of cancer less than a year later, the same age as I am now.

I've been promised two dreamcatchers and am taking Ambien until at least one of them arrives. It's very strange how the drug seems to keep back the truly mind-assaulting dreams while still letting through some silly ones (me and George Jefferson opening Christmas presents together) and some containing annoyingly obvious messages (standing on the line at Liquor during a dinner rush, obliviously reading a cookbook while everybody works around me and Rickey finally tells me to just get the fuck out of their way). I've had the Liquor dreams before and don't take them personally; it's kind of comforting to know that things are still going on in my absence.

Apropos of nothing much: I seem to have overcome my addiction to customerssuck: after a while you hear the same voices whining about the same things over and over, and while I understand why they'd need such an outlet, I also found myself getting increasingly bored and impatient with them. I am now addicted to fuckyoulist instead. I don't know what appeals to me so much about reading other people's complaints.

greygirlbeast writes of her interconnected novels Threshold, Low Red Moon, and Daughter of Hounds:

Usually, when someone asks, which book should I begin with, I say Low Red Moon, which, if you believe this is actually a "series" (it isn't, no more than your life is a series), means you're starting in the middle.

Bold emphasis mine, because it perfectly expresses my feeling about that aspect of the Liquor novels ... which made Three Rivers Press' insistence on trying to shoehorn them into the "mystery series" category and then blaming me when they didn't take off as such all the more galling. However, I do feel that the novels build upon one another to some degree and usually recommend that readers who have a choice begin with Liquor (rather than The Value of X, which takes place first chronologically but seems to be much more favorably received by people who've already read one or more of the "official" Liquor novels than by those who come to it with no knowledge of the characters ... which probably indicates some fairly serious flaws in TVoX, but that can't be helped now. TVoX is what it is, and while it's far from the best novel I have written, I think there is much that is good in it and it was such a joy to write that I will always have a great deal of affection for it).

The Liquor world need never be gone, and I suppose it never will be as long as the books exist, but I feel distinctly unwelcome there right now.

No, dammit, that's too melodramatic, as if somebody were being mean to me. No one is being mean to me. Like anyone working in or for a good restaurant, I am welcome if I can do my job and do it well. If not, I'm no good to anybody. I feel certain the world is going on without me. "You wanna work, then work. If you're gonna lay on our legs all night, then go home." At the risk of closing with yet another eye-roller, I sometimes think my characters deserve a better author. They are good, honest, hardworking people whose lives have, after all, been torn apart just as thoroughly as mine. It's too bad they didn't luck out and occur to some young, hungry writer still stupid enough to believe s/he can triumph over the cannibalistic evils of Big Publishing.

... but I thought this bit of discussion from prime_liquor was worth reposting here:

jeffpalmatier asked:

You know, if these publishers are just interested in making money and apparently don't care about publishing terrific fiction, then why not go into real estate, become a stock broker, etc.? I can understand accepting or rejecting a book on the basis of quality, but beyond thinking a manuscript is of good quality nobody can predict whether a book will do well, so why do publishers persist in believing that they can predict success? Gee, I don't know: how's this for a business plan: pick manuscripts on the basis of quality and then let the chips fall where they may? If these publishers only give a fuck about the bottom line, then get the hell out of publishing. What do you think, Poppy? Am I (as usual!) overstating my case, or do the people who working in these big publishing houses really care about manuscripts or could they care a less what they are selling as long as they make moolah? I don't blame anybody for wanting to make lots of money (I wish I was), but I think these calculating people who think they can predict success are being naive and even arrogant.

I honestly don't know anymore. There are still too many good books being published for me to say that, across the board, publishers don't care about quality. I do know that they are hysterically fixated on category; the absolute worst thing an unknown (and frequently even a known) writer can do is to produce a fresh, well-written, original novel that doesn't fit neatly into any identifiable genre or category. Even if editors recognize the quality and want to buy such a book, the suits usually won't let them. Occasionally there's an exception, something brand-new and uncategorizable that a brave or canny publisher decides to turn into a sui generis publishing phenomenon; the first thing that comes to mind is House of Leaves. While I think most of my readers consider me sui generis and don't give a damn what genre I write in, I've never quite achieved the level of sales that would allow publishers to give me that freedom. First, Liquor was declared unpublishable because it wasn't horror. When Liquor was finally published, it did very well, but not well enough to free me from the obligations of genre; I made what I now feel was the bad mistake of letting them (at least vaguely) categorize the books as mysteries even though I had no intention of sticking exclusively with the murder/caper template, because I do enjoy writing in that milieu and I thought maybe Three Rivers knew how to sell mysteries. Now I am of the opinion that Three Rivers doesn't know how to sell anything; it takes a special kind of anti-talent to throw away the publicity and reviews garnered by Liquor. I think one of the big problems is that the majority of their books are reprints of hardcovers, and so they really aren't accustomed to having to work to publicize and sell new material. I kind of hate my ex-editor, but I can also see that she's nearly as much a victim of the bullshit system as I am; she has risen to her level of (in)competence; she's overworked, probably underpaid, and completely unable to handle the day-to-day requirements of her job (I routinely waited 4 or 5 months for simple editorial comments on manuscripts). Even the mega-houses aren't making enough money to hire and keep enough really good people, and sadly, I think that can be traced to the fact that consumers are buying fewer books than ever.

Late on the night of my fortieth birthday, Chris and I sat on the levee looking out over the beach and the dark Gulf waters, and we talked about the new life we're starting to build, and about what we hope our future might hold. One thing I'm not sure mine holds, at least for a while, is making a living as a writer.

I've written nothing to speak of since mid-November of 2006. To go so long without writing is unusual for me, and what's even more unusual is the fact that I don't miss it. I miss spending time with my characters, but I don't feel the writing urge itself. I don't know if I am taking stock of my life or getting my house in order or retiring or what. I do know that I'm not sure I can continue working with big publishing houses. The business is filthy and cannibalistic. They build careers for a few fortunate (and frequently talented) writers and shove the rest of us through the grinder like cheap hamburger. Editors and authors alike jump from house to house. There's no continuity. Our editors are as overworked and underpaid and frequently unmotivated as we are.

What happened was this:

In September '06 I turned in a proposal for the next two Liquor novels, tentatively titled Hurricane Stew and Double Shot. The first was the post-Katrina novel, the story of Liquor and the rest of the New Orleans restaurant community rebuilding. The second focused primarily on Lenny, who's always been a popular character. It was a good proposal, but I had a bad feeling about it; the publicity for Prime had been completely botched, and Three Rivers hadn't done much better with Soul Kitchen. All the great things we'd achieved with Liquor had basically been thrown away, and the sales figures had gone down with each book.

In mid-November, I heard from my agent that Three Rivers didn't want the two novels, or any more Liquor novels. A few days later I received the following letter from my editor. Posting it here is not the most professional thing I have ever done, but I think it's worth showing what condescending, insulting dreck we put up with from people who are practically half our age, who don't know our work other than the books they themselves have edited, who have no interest in the arc of our career or the obsessions that drive us.

Dear Poppy,

I trust that this finds you well. First of all, I want to congratulate you on the great attention you’ve received for SOUL KITCHEN. It seems that this book struck a stronger chord with readers than PRIME, and the positive review coverage certainly didn’t hurt. It seems that you, [assistant editor], and [publicist] made a good team, and I hope we’ll see similar results for the next installment, DEAD SHRIMP BLUES.

I am writing in regards to the next two books you propose, synopses for which [agent] passed along to me. While I appreciate the shift you envision for HURRICANE STEW and DOUBLE SHOT, I’m afraid that I cannot see extending this series beyond the four books we currently have under contract. This was certainly a hard decision for me to come to—I love these characters and the atmospheric stories they inhabit. I had high hopes for this series when I acquired the first two books, and faith enough to extend the deal to four books. Sadly, the books just haven’t caught fire the way I envisioned they would.

In regards to your desire to write about post-Katrina New Orleans, I can truly say that you are better equipped than any writer to do this in fiction, and to do it right. I’d love to see you write the definitive Katrina novel, but for that novel to have any chance of breaking out, I really do believe that you’ve got to think outside of the Rickey and G-Man world and create a new tableau, a new venue to work in. You’ve been working with these characters for quite some time, and while readers of the series certainly love them, I also think that there is a wider audience out there waiting for this kind of book who probably doesn’t know Rickey and G. Plus, I believe there is much more to be added to the story that comes from outside of the restaurant world, a story that you have lived through and can capture like no other writer. If this is something you are willing to consider, I hope you’ll consider working through ideas with me.

I think we’ve suffered because there isn’t a single target audience for the series, but several smaller ones, and we’ve tried to get to all of them, to varying degrees of success. We have not been able to tap into the core mystery market, due to content that slants somewhat outside what is the norm for this genre, but also your apprehension on this front. The gay market has responded, but only in the somewhat expected minimal way, and the “foodie fiction” reader we have tried to grab seems to be as elusive as a good bagel in my home town. Even Tony Bourdain’s forays into this genre have been met with so-so sales. Honestly, I think we’ve cast the net too wide and pulled in a small catch in the process.

This leads me to my next concern. The two plots you propose fall even farther outside of the mystery genre, a conscious decision on your part but one I feel will limit our reach that much more. I appreciate that you wish to develop the post-Katrina story, and the character of Lenny Duveteaux, but I worry that we’ll see increasingly diminishing returns with a decided shift from what you call the “murder-mystery-type plot.”

I know this is not the answer you were hoping for regarding HURRICANE STEW and DOUBLE SHOT, but I hope you will take this to heart—you are a writer with many fans out there, and I have truly valued being your publisher. Our decision to not move forward with this series will in now way affect our commitment to publishing DEAD SHRIMP BLUES well, and with enthusiasm for you and for the cap of our series. I’d very much like to continue our relationship, and take it into a different direction that will hopefully carry appeal for a far wider readership, leading to better results for both you and Crown.

I thought of trying to explain how offensive it is to suggest writing "the definitive Katrina novel" (since every writer affected by the failure of the federal levee system will have his or her own definitive Katrina novel, and I already knew what mine had to be), or to believe I'd want to "work through ideas" with someone who hasn't visited New Orleans in years, who didn't bother to contact me for months after the storm, who knows nothing about life here now. I decided it wasn't worth it, because she wouldn't get it and she wouldn't care; it isn't her job to care; she's forced to be about the bottom line and nothing but, and it doesn't matter that Three Rivers buried the books: their perceived failure is still my fault. Maybe you're beginning to see why this is a business I'm thinking I want out of. Instead, I bought my way out of my Random House contract; if and when Dead Shrimp Blues is published, it won't be by Three Rivers. I had completed about a third of the novel, but the rejection -- and especially that awful letter -- on top of the fifteen months I'd just been through took the last of the heart out of me. I felt as if all that had been keeping me afloat was the knowledge that I still could make a living writing about these characters I loved, working through the tragedy with them. I stopped working on the book and fell deeper into an already fairly serious depression, which you saw chronicled here if you've been reading for a while. It wasn't just a bad time for me; it was a dangerous time. Things only seemed to start getting better when we bought the new house, because now I had something to do other than sit around not-writing. Right now I'm dedicating myself to improving my health and creating a new home and life for us. Chris is making pretty good money, and I've supported him through enough lean times that I don't mind letting him support me for a while; I also have a small royalty income from my first five novels and short story collections, and Liquor, at least, will probably earn out soon ... if they bother to keep it in print.

I've never had these problems working with the small press, and if I could afford to, I'd work solely with them. But that assumes I have books to write. I don't know if I do. I'd like to at least finish Dead Shrimp Blues, because it's a story I really want to tell, but I feel no urge to actually write it. I've been approached about doing a biography that intrigues me, but when I think about it, I feel simultaneously intimidated and exhausted. I've always said I don't write for any reader but myself, and that's true, but I do value my readers. Many, many readers have been incredibly kind to me, and I want to keep my part of the bargain by giving them the best work I'm capable of ... but I can't do it when I don't have to do it. That's the way I have always been, and that's where I am now. Peter Straub says on the subject -- and I hope he won't mind my quoting him here, because it made me feel proud and comforted, which mot much does these days where writing is concerned -- "Nobody who writes like you can ever be defeated forever by depression. Something wriggling, living, shiny, mysterious will eventually pull you out. Your life did blow apart, you were torn in six different directions, and you need a long time to sort yourself out." I hope he's right. I hope that, if and when I do start writing again, people still care. It's an ephemeral business, and if you don't publish a book a year, people start asking if you've died or something.

Anyway, I felt the need to talk about this because people have been asking about Dead Shrimp Blues and other future books, and all I can say is, "I don't know." I try to avoid talking about it. I'd prefer not to answer a lot of questions on the subject. When I stopped doing public events in February, it really was because my back problems had made them nearly impossible, but it was also becoming harder and harder to smile and say thanks when people told me they couldn't wait for the next book; I felt like a bum and a fraud. I'm terrified to post this, but I know I will go on feeling like a bum and a fraud until I've owned up to what is (and isn't) going on in my life, writing-wise. I expect there will be some snarky fallout, but that kind of stuff doesn't seem to matter much anymore, and I hope most of you will understand.

At age 40, or damn close to it -- and nearly eighteen years into a relationship you know will last the rest of your lives -- love is not Valentine hearts and passionate declarations and flavored lubricants and angst. Rather, it is sitting at your favorite sushi bar and hearing Jim Croce's somewhat cheesy but really quite lovely "Time in a Bottle" come over the sound system, and your eyes meet, and you know you're both thinking the same thing, and you zone out and don't realize for several minutes that the sushi chef is talking to you.

On a sort-of-related note, this year's Rex made the (awful if you think about it) toast to his queen, "May this be the best day of your life!" The girl is 21 or 22. Being Queen of Carnival is surely magical in many ways, but one hopes it isn't all downhill from here for the poor thing.

Anyway, I started trying to figure out what had been the best day of my life, and I came up with September 30, 2003, for which my journal entry reads:

Really nice day yesterday. The first sentence of LIQUOR reads, in part, "It was the kind of October day for which residents of New Orleans endure the summers, sparkling blue-gold with just a touch of crispness," and that's the season we have entered now. Chris and I drove across the lake to Abita Springs, where we visited the amazing UCM Museum, a place that's nearly impossible to explain or describe, but that you should certainly visit if you ever get the chance. We had dunch (my word for a meal eaten between or in lieu of lunch and dinner, superior in every way to the loathsome brunch) at the surprisingly good Abita Brew Pub, then raced back across the Causeway at sunset to attend a debate between Rosalind Peychaud and Jalila Jefferson, two State Representative candidates who do not represent our district and for whom we are not qualified to vote, but we wanted to see them anyway. I believe this officially qualifies us for political junkiedom.

Nothing to it, really; just a day we spent together that was good in every way. I suppose I was also thinking about it because Chris and I haven't seen enough of each other lately, or at least haven't had much time to just hang out; he's been working a lot, I've been doing things at the new house, we're both tired, and we miss simply spending idle time together. I'm looking forward to enjoying the house, but I also hope that before too long -- maybe for my actual birthday -- we can take a few days to go to Grand Isle. That is the place where we live wholly in each other's pocket 24 hours a day, with not even a cat or four to take up the space between us in bed.

Chris did bring me a daiquiri yesterday, but I poured 3/4 of it down the sink and ended up drinking dirty martinis, the Filthy McNasty McNair martinis I've had an insatiable lust for lately. I just can't deal with the sweet shit anymore. I got a little drunker than one should respectably get on two martinis, but perhaps if one has eaten very little over the past three or four days ...

Things to do all day, and tonight I must go through the Soul Kitchen first-pass pages, at least cursorily. Just grabbing a minute to make an entry. A new Amazon reader review generally lauds Liquor but voices a complaint I've heard before:

My only big problem with the book is that things just seemed to fall into the characters' laps. Maybe, there are nice rich people in the world that offer to front businesses at the drop of a hat and take only 25% of the business, but none of them have ever talked to me.

All I can say is that a lot of restaurant people have read the novel and none has felt (or told me, anyway) that this was particularly implausible. You don't invest in a restaurant unless you're willing to risk losing money, but Lenny knew Liquor was a good idea from which he stood to make a tidy profit even at 25% (had he demanded more, I doubt Rickey would have gone for it). Now having become successful, it's a cash cow that requires virtually no work or further investment from him. More importantly, I suspect, it gave him a chance to update his reputation a little, to get credit for building the careers of a pair of hot young chefs, to let some hipness rub off. Rickey gets the pub, but people know Lenny is behind the restaurant. (I'd also argue that, while he has been very good to Rickey and G-man, "nice" is perhaps not quite the word to describe Lenny Duveteaux.)

As well, I just don't think the potential conflicts of struggling to start a restaurant would have been all that interesting to read about. I had more in the first draft, and cut a bunch of them: did anyone reallly want to read about G-man's contretemps with the health inspector who told him public restrooms in New Orleans restaurants are required by law to be painted in light colors, forcing him to paint over the originally planned dark green with two coats of white? I find it hard to think so. The interesting conflicts begin after the restaurant opens.

The reviewer said he planned to give Prime a whirl, and he'll probably like it better: it's much "plottier" (what a word), as is Soul Kitchen.

Bless kava kava. When you're low on your -pams, it can be a godsend. Don't worry about the liver-damage rumors you've heard, just splurge on the good shit that's made entirely from the roots. The liver-damaging toxins are in the bark, which is only used in the cheaper versions. At least that's what I choose to believe, and ain't nobody better tell Daddy different. Right now I'm more concerned about my sanity than my liver. (Make that last sentence a little less unwieldy and you could sell about a million T-shirts bearing the slogan in New Orleans.)

I wasn't in the mood to read the newspaper this morning, so I came in here, removed some of the toxic junk that's been flying around my journal and prime_liquor for the past couple of days, looked at some e-mail, and scanned my Amazon page. I look for new reviews and check the sales ranks (which aren't usually all that great, but occasionally they shoot wildly up, which is mysterious and exciting even though my agent says, and I quote, "Those damn numbers don't mean a damn thing and I wish to hell you writers would quit looking at them"). This is a daily ritual for a lot of writers. I've never known a single one who didn't take at least an occasional look at their Amazon "reviews" (though, admittedly, I've not quizzed every single writer of my acquaintance on this). The thing is, I really only pay attention to the "new" books. I might glance at the older books' sales ranks to see how they're selling, but I never check to see if they have any new reviews the way I do with Liquor et al. It's not that I don't care about the books themselves, but I guess I've gotten far enough away from them that I don't much care what people think of them anymore. The other day someone said to me -- not in a mean way, though I don't suppose there's any really kind way to tell someone you hated their book -- that he hadn't cared for Exquisite Corpse at all. Had he said the same about one of the newer books, it would have hurt my feelings and I might have said something snotty. (I hope not; I try not to, but you know me.) As it was, I just replied, "That's cool -- I don't think EC is my best book either, though I think it's probably the best of the earlier ones. If you feel like it, check out Liquor or one of the more recent ones. Here's a page I made to help people figure out which ones they might be interested in reading." He seemed surprised and grateful at my measured response, and said (possibly even truthfully) that he would pick up Liquor.

That wasn't really leading up to anything, I'm afraid. It was just another sad little peek into how writers spend their time online.

Late-breaking, heartbreaking bulletin: Chris, who's in the other room reading the paper, has just called out to me that Mr. Ernest Hansen has died. You can read his obituary here; it's a particularly well-written one and may bring a tear to your eye. Briefly, Mr. Ernest was the co-proprietor of what I consider New Orleans' best snowball stand, Hansen's Sno-Bliz. It's mentioned in Liquor. He invented the machine that shaved the ice to a soft, snowy consistency utterly unlike the hard crystals you'll find in many local snowballs. Whenever I would go into Hansen's wearing a sleeveless top or dress, Mr. Ernest would always get excited about my tattoo of the Amsterdam city crest and start reminiscing about his youthful travels (which may or may not have actually happened; I could never really tell). You may recall that his wife, Ms. Mary (who concocted the delicious syrups that completed the snowballs) died shortly after evacuating to Thibodeaux in the storm. I imagined he would follow her soon. After a 72-year marriage, they were only able to bear seven months apart.

(Since Ms. Mary died during the immediate aftermath of the storm and I never saw her obituary, I didn't know until today that she was a Gemelli before marriage, but it just further proves my contention that in New Orleans, everybody's grammaw was Italian.)