Gwen's blog

Current Events

January 28, Houston: The book launch party for Lone Star Legend is at Brazos Bookstore, at 7 PM. Y'all are all invited!

February 4, Houston: I'll be reading/signing at the downtown Houston Public Library, at 6 PM.

February 5, Austin: I'll be reading/signing at BookPeople and will undoubtedly stop by the FlipHappy crepe trailer some time after that.

February 5, San Antonio: I'll be reading/signing at the San Pedro Barnes and Noble and will probably buy some coconut candy at Mi Tierra, too.

My other blog: Go read my the Houston Chronicle parenting blog (or my ChronMomBlog, as I like to call it) and find out what I've said to piss off the more conservative commenters this week.

Buy my new novel, Lone Star Legend.

Tuesday, December 09, 2008
this weekend

I’m going to be at the Edward James Olmos 6th Annual Houston Latino Book and Family Festival on Sunday, at noon, on their children’s stage in the George R. Brown Convention Center, reading my first book for kids, Growing Up with Tamales. Last chance to get a signed copy before Christmas. It’s a free event. Not only will I be there, but they’ll most likely have lowriders, food samples, and people dressed as Clifford, the Poky Puppy, or other characters. You should check it out. It’s Saturday and Sunday, and it’s fun. Oh, and sometimes Edward James Olmos, AKA Commander Adama, shows up, too. I’ve met him three times now, at various points in my life, but he never remembers me. However, I like that, every time I meet him, I’m more successful than I was the time before. Hopefully I’ll see him Sunday, then, and I’ll be like, “Hi, Commander Adama! I have five books now! Last time you met me I only had one! The time before that, I had zero but I was playing Anita in West Side Story! I loved you in Blade Runner!” and he’ll be like “Hello, nice to see you,” and he’ll smile while my boyfriend snaps a photo of us, and the photo will come out with me in mid-blink, so that I look high or developmentally delayed, and I won’t be able to post the photo on my Flickr and no one will believe that I ever met Edward James Olmos at all, much less three times.

So you should come to the festival and see me. This Sunday.

Welcome to the (Publicity) Machine.

I had a meeting with my publishing peeps the other day and we wrote a bunch of dates on a bunch of pieces of paper, and now I have to do a lot of work to make the dates come true. I have to research stuff and email people and ask my publisher to mail books to people and write press releases and coordinate schedules. It doesn’t sound like hard work, and it’s not, but it is a lot of little details to manage.

Doing publicity for yourself is like a whole other job, in addition to your writing and to your day job, if you have one. And in addition to your parenting and your household-running and your girlfriend-being.

Most writers don’t like that part of the job very much. (I think it’s because most writers are introverts. Do you agree?) I’m not complaining, because I’d rather have something to publicize than not. But the publicizing isn’t my fave part, either.

Things I like about publicizing my work:

Things I don’t like about publicizing my work:

But I’m getting over those petty peeves, with the help of self-directed cognitive therapy and the daily horoscopes of Mr. Rick Levine. Like I said, I’m not complaining. I’m just telling y’all how I feel so that you authors can empathize, and you aspiring authors can know what you’re in for. Some of you are reading my list of publicity dislikes and saying “What? That sounds like fun!” And to y’all I say, boogie on, reggae extroverts.

(That’s a take on a song by Stevie Wonder. “Boogie on, reggae woman.” Sorry – I’m kind of obsessed with that song ever since I saw a drunk guy try and fail to sing it at karaoke three or four years ago. So he danced, instead. Drunkenly and heartfelt. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I wrote about it, here on this blog, back when it happened, but I think that entry’s been deleted. But I still think about that guy and that song all the time, especially when I think about people doing what they want to do, despite the laughter of friends and strangers.)

(The subtitle of these paragraphs is my take on a Pink Floyd song. Yes, half my blog entries are actually just classic rock song lyrics, altered slightly.)

the birds

There are these birds migrating through Houston right now. I researched last year, and I think they’re indigo buntings. That’s what someone from the Houston Audobon society told me They’re grackles. That’s what Andrew at the Houston Audobon Society told me. We always have grackles in Houston (those are my fave birds), and then we get extra ones coming down for the winter, and then they all hang out together on the trees and electric lines.

Andrew told me that the grackles are very smart, for birds, which I already knew. I know this because they steal sugar packets from local restaurant patios, forcing restaurants to think harder. They take the Sweet n Low first, a waitress told me. The pink packets are their faves, basically. Even if they’re generic, I imagine.

Andrew told me that grackles go under parked cars and climb into the radiators to eat the bugs that gather there. Can you imagine?

People here have been commenting on how awesome the birds are for lining up on the electric lines, all spaced two bird-widths apart. I agree that it’s beautiful, and not just because I wish humans would keep two people-widths from me at all times, either.

Male grackles are iridescent black, kind of like black Infiniti G35s in the sun. Female grackles are dark dove-brown and always defer to the male grackles when it comes to food. No matter how many times you throw ciabatta pieces at female crackles, they’ll have to let the male grackle have them, if he shows up and wants them. Even if you yell at the male grackle, “Hey, you get out of here! Those are for her!” They have entrenched patriarchal inequality. But, besides that, they’re awesome.

One of my winning-the-lottery fantasies is that I’ll throw a masquerade ball on New Year’s Eve. For my costume, I’ll fly to Venice and have them custom sew me a (male) grackle costume. It sounds weird, but I have it all planned out, and it’ll be better than you’re thinking.

Don’t tell anyone I told y’all that, though. It’s kind of private, my grackle masquerade fantasy.

I wish PBS would do a show about city birds and their behavior. Maybe there’s one already? I wish someone would do a whole documentary about city birds in Houston. No, I wish someone would fund me and a team of ornithologists to do a documentary about the birds at three or four Houston establishments. Probably Empire, La Madeleine on Shepherd and West Gray, the zoo, and any random Jack in the Box. I wish it was my job, to make that documentary.

I’ve never understood elderly bird-watching hobbyists, but now I’m obsessed with grackles. I still don’t understand them, though, because they travel around, seeking out various species in the wild. I wouldn’t do that. When I’m too old to do anything else, I’ll totally go to different restaurants and name the grackles, pigeons and wrens. I’ll be like, “Here, Julio and Veronica, I bought you an almond croissant. But you have to share it.” And people will be like, “Oh, that’s so sad. Look at that old lady with ‘90s hair. She thinks those animals are people.”

I wonder if I’d even like grackles so much if they weren’t named grackles. If they were just crows or ravens or blackbirds.

Yes. I would.

Okay, don’t tell anybody anything I said about birds today. I’m starting to think it’s a little crazier than I knew.

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6:13 AM #

Comments:

 Love this, ESPECIALLY your Venice-grackle-costume plans! And I'm so with you on this kind of bird love, city birds especially. It would be a wonderful documentary too. The only docs I've seen about birds are Winged Migration and several specials about Pale Male, the hawk living in Central Park. Amazing stuff.

A black Infiniti G35s...you kill me, Gwen. That's a damn fine description. Congratulations on all this well-earned success too. It's inspiring to see it happen from here.


# posted by Blogger Marigoldie : 10:53 AM  

 I suck at tooting my own horn. I had this discussion w/ my mother last night and because of my rural, northern, protestant upbringing I am not allowed to publicize myself or talk myself up. Trying to get over it.

Grackles. We call them Texas Crows. We being - people here, who have lived in Texas. Indigo Buntings are one of my favorite birds. They migrate through some woods near here. They are very small and a brilliant turquoisey blue. Divine.

I so wish I could come to the book fair. I am talking your book up to the children's librarian. Best Wishes and Congratulations.


# posted by Blogger greenish gold : 11:59 AM  

 From someone who has several years' worth of reading you to know: when you publicize your work, you aren't gauche about it. You're very matter-of-fact and "here's my deal, buy my book" and it all seems very normal and it fits with what I expect an author should do.

I think I need to take another look at grackles. Normally, they irritate the !@#$ out of me. But when they are so eloquently championed as here, it's hard not to say, "well, maybe I'm missing something."


# posted by Anonymous Tracy : 3:17 PM  

 Do your Houston grackles have bright yellow and super-pointy beaks? That's what the ones around here have, and the males have ultra shiny black feathers that have a hint of midnight blue, at least to my eyes.

When they're all lined up on the wires they remind me of musical notes all perched on F.

- maggie


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 7:33 PM  

 Is your costume party going to be like that scene in Labyrinth? That'd be really kick-ass. I don't think that's crazy at all.


# posted by Anonymous CarlyM : 8:01 PM  

 I was in Dallas for training this past August and spent 20 minutes in the parking lot watching the grackles. "Texas Crows," huh?

M.R.


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 6:55 AM  

 I've always thought of grackles as Texas peacocks. Watch those males spread out their stils and puff out their chests and go chase the smaller females during courtship. There ae city grackles (they swoop down on people's Fritos) and wild grackles (they still eat everything and anything, but they don't steal it from people; they hunt it down themselves). Even though their excrement when liquified after a rain doesn't small at all good, nothing can detract from their physical beauty.


# posted by Blogger Rantor : 9:17 AM  

 Great-Tailed Grackle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-tailed_Grackle

but prettier than that:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.naturespicsonline.com/Nature23/_mg_1282_std.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.naturespicsonline.com/Nature23/_mg_1282.htm&usg=__88NdiZQKv71cqD9XvFc7y4ZwTlk=&h=600&w=900&sz=442&hl=en&start=59&um=1&tbnid=JnUSB11wTzInMM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=146&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgreat-tailed%2Bgrackle%26start%3D54%26ndsp%3D18%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

Can't find photos that do justice. Yet.


# posted by Blogger Gwen : 10:23 AM  

 I haven't seen so many grackles in Austin lately, they must have gone downwards to you. It's been colder.

I find them absolutely amazing too, in an Alfred Hitchcock sort of a way. And how they sit on the front yard in rows waiting, like warriors that grew out of the ground from magic planted shark's teeth (must watch Jason and the Argonauts again sometime, not sure what sort of teeth that was).

Brilliant post :)


# posted by Blogger alice : 11:56 AM  

 We do like Crows and we do have Grackles here (just not as many), it's just that in a highly populated area the city grackles behave the same as city crows.
It's not a slight on their beauty or ingenuity.

That's what Crows, Grackles and Ravens all have in common.


# posted by Blogger greenish gold : 12:13 PM  

 Thank you so much for writing this. I was seriously starting to feel like a freak because I really like the WRITING part of writing but not so much the TELLING EVERY DAMN PERSON ABOUT YOUR WRITING part of it.

Thank you.


# posted by Blogger That Chick Over There : 8:46 PM  

 Every time I see those grackels lined up, it always makes me think of the Alfred Hitchcock movie, "The Birds." Then I think about the scene where someone gets their eyes pecked out, and it makes me laugh.

If you had a horror-version of that costume you're describing, it would involve grackels being thrusted through different parts of your body, including your head. That would actually be a really cool costume!

- DVL


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 3:12 PM  

 It shipped!!!

I just got an email from Amazon letting me know that my copy of Houston, We have a Problema has shipped!!

What a nice holiday present for me.

M.R.


# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 11:57 AM  

 I love grackles! I actually wrote a kids' book about them myself, but no bites on the publishing front, yet. Good luck with your writing ventures in the New Year.


# posted by OpenID new england noir : 8:44 AM  

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