Category: My Rise to Fame

My first piece for the Huffington Post has been published. The unhelpful comments are not my doing.

My review of Michael Patrick MacDonald’s memoir “Easter Rising: An Irish American Coming up from Under” has been published in last week’s San Francisco Chronicle. It’s a sequel to MacDonald’s debut “All Souls” which I loved. I didn’t love this one so much.

Oh happy day! My piece on Citizen Media is in Fast Company this month. Page 30. On newstands now.

My first ever piece for the LA Times (a review of Chuck Klosterman’s new book Chuck Klosterman IV) has just landed. I couldn’t be happier.

Oh and an ancient episode of Talking Pictures is available for your listening pleasure.

So I’m at the breathtakingly beautiful Banff Centre today in the mountains of Alberta, Canada. I’m speaking at Annual General Meeting of the Alberta Book Publishers Association which I wanted to come to last year but was in the middle of book touring. I’m glad I could make it this time.

The Banff Centre is an arts and cultural center about 90 minutes north of Calgary. World famous musicians, writers, arts study, teach and present here. I’ve heard it called the Tanglewood of Canada. The hotel on the campus I’m staying at looks from the outside like a college dorm but my room is more comfortable than many 4 star 39 floor monstrosities I’ve stayed at in the past.

And the setting? Daaaaaaayyymmm. Mountains so tall and majestic they look in danger of toppling over. Rod-straight pine trees that remind me of my childhood in Michigan. Today it snowed (the Executive Director of the program told me Canada has two seasons, “July. And winter) cold and heavy. I’m no longer accustomed to winter after 6 years in Northern California. But, ah, the snow weighing down the Aspens, sliding off the hills like a version of the glaciers that carved out this valley. It looks like something Jack London would have dreamed about.

I’m not staying at this hotel but they just don’t make ’em that way anymore.

Did I mention elk? I was warned not to feed the elk because they can be aggressive this time of year.

I gotta come back here.

So a quick look at my next book project, a Jewish history of American popular culture, has the proposal in my agents hands and me working on the introduction and the sample chapter. I’m a few thousand words deep into the first and feeling that muted sick feeling of hacking heavy through brush but feeling lost anyway. The argument makes sense but is too broad, is cute but has a big “So what” stamped on its forehead. I usually work this way, spewing nonsense until I have what looks like a finished pile of nonsense then trying to shape it into something. I end up with good stuff and the end but it tastes forever and forever is the last thing I have.

I’m not going to make my deadline. I need to do a ton of research for my sample chapter and I don’t feel like I can make room for it until the introduction is done. And I’ve got other projects to make money while the book finds its own weaving way.

One foot, then the other.

But I’m kinda close to finishing my book proposal. Meep Meep!

I’ve been about eight kinds of busy the past week with Lollapalooza and four separate deadlines the past week. But the smoke is starting to clear and I’m going to be focusing heavily on book proposal stuff for the remainder of August. And trying to do a little blogging as I feel I’ve been neglecting things a bunch around here.

In the meantime, you can check up this segment I did for Dailysonic on the band The Mystic Underground. And an interview I did for Canadian Press (their equivalent of the AP) has surfaced from I don’t know where. But I was glad to find it.

If all systems are go, I’ll have pieces in Fast Company, The LA Times and Poets & Writers this fall. And I’ve been asked to blog for this esteemed institution.

All of which is incredibly but if you see me taking on more porject which keep me from completing my book proposal, please hit me with something heavy.

An interview with me on Thoughtcast (podcast about ideas and academics) that I gave last summer during my book tour has been posted. I haven’t listened yet. How do I sound?

I’ve got a million things going on and really trying to concentrate on the proposal for book #2. Hopefully I’ll have something for your blogging belly tomorrow.