Lucky Bastards

Success! My blog readers are the smartest people around. I brought along snacks — non-fat yogurt, some cheese and a bit of deli meat and veggies and chicken for lunch. It was perfect! And I’m doing chair pose in the elevator. The elevator is really slow so this is a good way to pass the time. I could also take the stairs, I suppose. Huh.

I’m using my Mason jar for water and feeling extra smart and I go for a walk during lunch. It’s all good. I love my work and I get really focused on it. So much so that if people talk to me while I’m at my desk, I have no idea what they’re saying for the first ten seconds. Yesterday that was not beneficial because my boss came by to answer a question of mine and I’d been focusing for hours and I just started giggling. I had to tell her that I’d been working and I hadn’t come up for air and I was sorry (giggle, giggle). She seemed okay with it, but sort of looked at me oddly.

I realized that public relations is my super-power (along with being trapped and leaving half-full glasses of water all over the place). I did PR a long, long time ago and it was horrible. I hated it. But I was very, very good at it. Now that I’m using social media and combining it with marketing and PR I’m quite happy. I like making connections, getting to know people, hearing stories and promoting stuff I think the other person will really like. It’s not about if I like the thing, it’s about making a match. I think that’s where I went wrong with PR the first time. I wanted to like everything and I couldn’t. It doesn’t matter if I like it. It matters that I make the connection between this thing and someone else.

Seems to me that few big companies really get how to use social media in the correct way. They’re not joining the conversation but still trying to control it. That’s not going to work. Social media, in my opinion, levels the playing field. It makes it so I can communicate with a big company and they’ll hear me. With this new position, I get to help big companies understand that it isn’t about broadcasting, it’s about talking and here are the ways to do it.

Of all the careers I’ve had, social media best fits my beliefs, my ideals and what makes me excited. I don’t often write about social media or tweet about it. I prefer to use it as it’s intended — as a method of making connections with others. I will tell you that every single awesome thing in my life is the result of social media. Except for Archie, who was the reason I started participating in social media five years ago with my first blog, Bedrest without Television.

So here’s to social media and promotion.

AND GET YOUR TICKETS TO BACK FENCE NOW!!!

Events and Retreats and Stuff

Okay, so Back Fence tickets are selling faster than any show previous. Needless to say, we’re very happy about this. Do you have your tickets? If not, I think you should probably go and buy them.

I’m posting over on Narrative Actualization. I realize I’m slowly compiling all the stuff I know about writing. So if you’re interested in writing, or my writing thoughts, subscribe to that blog. And buy a writing bite!

And I’ve been checking the weather for Boston. This week it’s been sunny and in the high 50’s. This gave me hope. It’s rained in Portland for seven weeks straight. But the week we’re there? RAIN. OMG people. OMG.

In other news, I sat under Tahiti for a full hour this morning.

Back Fence=Huge Success!

Seriously everyone. They had to turn away about 30 people. It was sold out. Packed. The storytellers were amazing and it was just so awesome. Check out that cool picture taken by Rich Burroughs. He took photos of the event using something called “film” though I think that one was digital.

Back Fence has another project we’re madly working on. There will be a tiny announcement about it in the Merc this week and I’ll link to it when it’s out. Such a cool project and I can’t wait for you all to see it.

Last week I went out on four nights. I saw a lot of reading-type things. I went to Disjecta and saw Jon Raymond read courtesy of Tin House. They comped me in and that always makes me feel so very fancy. I liked the Disjecta space, but I’m a little confused about the stage. The building itself is a big rectangle with a really cool ceiling, but the stage is set in the middle of the space and it’s a rectangle too. So the long side of the stage is parallel with the long side of the rectangle. I don’t know how to say that better. Essentially the stage divides the room into very unequal quadrants meaning that very few people can be in the audience of whatever is happening on stage.

The sound was quite good and I liked the art gallery, but the art left something to be desired. Oh MFA students, how cute you are (she says as she considers actually framing her MFA and placing it in the restroom for everyone to enjoy). As for the readers, here’s what I think when I see a reading: gawd it wouldn’t take much for that to have been interesting.

I don’t get readings. Authors are not performers so why is this the way authors are expected to market their work? I just don’t get it. I think an interview with an author is more interesting, or maybe just let them talk about why they wrote the book. Or they could do whatever special hidden talent they have, but please. Enough with choosing some portion of the novel that very few people have had the opportunity to read and then reading it without looking up at the audience for upwards of 20 minutes. It’s so blah.

I start to get all fidgity. And my skin gets itchy, and I start noticing the cracks in the walls because HOW MUCH LONGER DO I HAVE TO BE STILL?!?

I have some suggestions for improving readings:

1) let the audience ask the questions, but put a strict rule that no one may ask a question that contains the words: writer and process.

2) let the author interview himself (this could be funny).

3) let the author read from books that she really likes that are not her own.

4) strippers

5) the hidden talent idea from above.

Quasi played at the event too. I liked that there was a band. Next time may I suggest dancing. Or strippers.

I’m Not Meant for High Fashion

Stever and I tried to make a high fashion photo shoot in honor of my new dress, which might just be the most perfectest dress ever sewn by 12 year old Sri Lankan child labor. But I…just…I’m not high fashion.

So I made cat sounds.

The point of these pictures is twofold:

1) This dress is a miracle worker because it makes me look all of three pounds. I am not three pounds, I weigh 150 pounds, and I’m about 5′7″, which, I think, sets me a few pounds in the overweight range. Eh, fuck it.

2) As much as I want to wear the four-inch heels tomorrow to Back Fence, I cannot. Becuase I need to get on and off the stage without breaking my neck. That is not possible in these shoes. I could barely make it out of my bedroom. Which is flat.

Also, why is aligning photos so fucking hard in a self-hosted wordpress blog?

See you tomorrow?

Help Us Sell Out Back Fence PDX on Wednesday

Okay, so Back Fence is on Wednesday. And this is our third show at our big girl space. That’s what we call the Mission because it has a bar and chairs that don’t need setting up. It’s all professional, instead of our building the stage like we did for our first show. Yes, we had out the Dewalt and were actually assembling the stage. What? No one fell through the floor!

So the big girl space. It also holds a lot more people. 250 total.

For our first two shows at the Mission, it was comfortably crowded. It’s a great space (with a balcony) and our crowd mingled and had comfortable chairs and no one was sitting on the counter like people were at our second space where I was actually worried that someone would pass out of heat exhaustion or lack of oxygen.

But in the smaller space, it was sort of cool to see people crushed against the walls and not able to move more than three inches in any direction. And I want that again. Sure, no one else really wants that, but I do. I DO!

We’re rolling out all the publicity in these next two day. So far, we had that awesome article in the Oregonian, and we’re in the Merc’s My What a Busy Week. We’ll be in the Willamette Week somewhere. And the bloggers, the tweeters, the Facebookers, will get the word out too.

What can you do to help us sell it out?

I have no idea. But I’d like you to help.

So…think of one thing you can do to sell tickets to the event. And do it. Do it. For me.

If you haven’t gotten your tickets, you might want to do that here. You can see that the Fan Club has been mobilized…god help us all.

Things That Make Me Way Less Than Awesome

1) Okay, I didn’t post the new Back Fence PDX story. Right? Stupid scheduling posts and whatever. It’s there now and just as good as I said it was yesterday.

2) The other day I made banana bread for my neighbors (they just had a baby) and as I was making it, I wondered why the loaf was so wet and why, when it came out of the oven, it was so damn small. Well, a few days later, as I was emptying the dishwasher, I realized that I had used the 3/4 cup measuring cup AND NOT THE CUP. So I shorted the recipe by one full cup. Right? Awesome.

I have also severely under-cooked a banana bread loaf I gave to them last year when the man of the house came over and re-wired our thermastat and turned the heat on. I’m grateful that way.

3) My blackberry jam has not set up. Even after a week. I planned to give a jar to these same neighbors because it was their blackberries that I picked and now I’m rethinking that plan.

Finally, and perhaps the list above might be a sign that I SHOULD NOT DO THE VERY THING I’M ANNOUNCING I’M GOING TO DO, I am entering the Portland Pie Off. I’ve made but three pies in my entire life. Two years ago when I was visiting my mom, I asked her if she could, you know, pass some woman knowledge on to to me and teach me how to make a pie and she said, “well, first we go to the store. Then we go to the freezer section and get a crust.”

That being said, I do not need a recipe or suggestions. I have a coach for this pie off. She is my pie guru. Someone in my corner who has not only nurtured my career but my psyche too. She is a best friend and always makes sure I KICK MOTHERFUCKING ASS behave appropriately and with kindness.

Shhh…everyone real quiet…there are other pie-off contestants who read this blog…shhh…*Me-Li-Ssa! Me-Li-Ssa! Me-Li-Ssa! California in the HOUSE!*

Or, as Steve just suggested, “Melissa’s hot, ain’t no lie, Melissa’s hot, Pie Pie Pie!”

I’d like to add that the woman who won eight blue ribbons for her pies at the Oregon State Fair is also entering the pie off.

Okay, wish me luck in the freezer section!

Back Fence PDX Day!

It’s Back Fence PDX day. I have to say that it’s really odd sometimes when your two lives, when past and present collide. That happened to me with this week’s story.

The week’s story is written by Zoe Trope, who I blogged about here. If you didn’t read that post, I’ll sum it up, she wrote a book, Please Don’t Kill the Freshman, which was wonderful. My book, Swollen, was released around the same time. I was revising Upstream when I read Zoe’s novel. Needless to say, I was intimidated.

And now, a few years later, Zoe and I are both in Portland. Both struggling with what to write next. We’re on this parallel path with our careers, and we have some friends in common. We meet. We hit it off. And I ask her to write a post for Back Fence PDX. And she does. And I edit it. And she uses some of my edits. And I’m going to publish something of hers.

But it’s on a blog. And I link to her blog. And we, neither of us, are doing this as novelists. We aren’t in our novelist capacity. And yet, here we are. Two YA novelists, and two bloggers, and two people working on very different things. Parallel still.

The story Zoe wrote (and yes, it’s just Zoe now) is so much of what I loved about Please Don’t Kill the Freshman — the voice and the pacing and the subject are all hers. And, at the end of the piece, I got chills.

Please head over there and read this remarkable story.

Back Fence PDX is Up!

It’s Wednesday and that means it’s Back Fence PDX day. That’s an official holiday, just so you know. This week’s post is by my dear friend, Recovering Straight Girl. The RSG is not only my soul sister, but every interaction I have with her, I find out she has a new facet as deep, and intriguing as the last. This story was a total surprise to me. Yet another side to her that I would have never guessed at.

I really love this story.

Back Fence PDX is Up

The latest Back Fence PDX post is up. Featuring Chantel. Remember that heatwave in France a few years back? Not as well as Chantel does.

Back Fence PDX, Some Thoughts

I’m a teensy bit stressed at the moment. I have some big deadlines coming up, and I’m going to LA in less than a week and someone in the Melissa/Steve family got into a car accident. Everyone is fine, and Arch wasn’t in the car, thank goodness.

Back Fence PDX is on my mind. I love this project more than I’ve loved writing two of my novels. I have a crush on it. I think it’s such a cool thing. A few of my storytellers for the live event have expressed their concern that they aren’t good enough, or that people won’t want to hear their stories. And I understand feeling this. It isn’t true, but I understand what that feels like, and I’ve been trying to come up with the right thing to say. And I hope I have. I say, “Everyone wants to hear a story. Everyone wants to hear a voice.”

I have this conversation with V a lot. We talk about blogs and blogging and why this is such a huge medium. Why is it such a delicious thing? For me, I love the community. My bloggy friends are a part of my life. And I love laughing; I love the intimacy and I love the voices. It’s why, instead of blog roll, I have I Hear Voices.

This idea of voice is interesting and why, I believe, This American Life is so compelling. It’s a new story, a new voice. A new person to listen to. And this leads me back to Back Fence PDX. The other day, my partner, Frayn and I went to a meeting where we were explaining Back Fence and the woman said, “so it’s a literary event.” And I nearly went apoplectic trying to explain that there is nothing wrong with literary events, but THAT. IS. NOT. WHAT. THIS. IS. This is a storytelling event. It’s like a blog, but live and in person. And what we are doing is so far removed from standard literary events, it really can’t be in the same category.

My background as the graduate of an MFA program and as a bookseller makes me wary of readings. Well, at the risk of offending some of my blog readers who are writers, I’ll just come out and say it. I think readings are painfully boring. Painful. I hate them. I hate going to them. I have giving them. In fact, I’ve only actually read my book at one of my readings. I usually just read little personal essays a lot like blog posts. Because I cannot stand sitting in the audience and listening to a novel. It bores me and I start thinking really inappropriate things like, “what if I just walked up to the podium and informed the author that I was thoroughly bored and here’s how you entertain people,” and then I’d do a little soft shoe or strip off my clothes or crush a beer can on my head. ANYTHING to end the monotony.

Combine my mortal fear of boredom and Frayn’s background in sketch comedy and what we aim to do is more spectacle than reading. It is a show. You will be entertained, interested, focused on every single moment of the event. And we’re doing things to make sure of this. We’re getting a stage. We’re getting mics and a mixing board, and for the intermission, there will be swimsuit models. Swimsuit models because the theme is Summer Love. The swimsuits are from Popina, which is a designer who makes vintage-looking swimsuits.

Our storytellers are charismatic, interesting people. We’ll have music. Frayn and I are hosting. And swimsuits! And we’ll podcast the whole thing.

But what this means is, it’s a lot of work. And we could really spend a lot of money. But we’re both freelancers and while it’s incredibly glamorous that I wear my robe for 90% of my working day, it means we don’t have a lot of money. So we’re calling in every last one of our favors.

Two days ago at our meeting, we came up with a list of things we need to pull this thing off, and Frayn turned to me and said, “how are we going to get all of this?” and I said, “I don’t know. I hope the answer will come to me in the next 24 hours.” And the only thing that came to me, was my mantra, which is “just ask.”

So I’m asking my blog readers. Below is a list of things we need and would rather not pay for, or at least get a discount on, or do some sort of trade for, including running an ad on our website in exchange. If you can provide any of this, please email me at melissa [at] backfencepdx [dot] com.

1) Truck we can pick up and drop off an 8 X 4 stage.

2) A tent of some sort that our swimsuit models can change in.

3) Someone who can do hair and makeup.

4) Swimsuit models. We need a few more ladies who will model swimsuits. The sample suits come in sizes 2-4, however the woman who runs Popina is very cool and said that if she needs to use her regular suits, she will. If you do want to model, you’ll need to go in for a fitting at Popina.

5) Mixing board and mics and amp. And the know-how for working it.

6) A camera to video the whole thing so we can film it for the internet.

7) Audience members. This one you pay us for, but being an audience member is an incredibly important service and we appreciate it.

Okay, I thank you blog readers in advance for any thoughts or advice or things you can give. Now I need to write a book review, and then pass out because I am so fucking tired.