LITERARY NEWS 2024
How did this happen?
My short story, “Toltec on Haight,” became a novella at 31,000 words! Inspired by my own Beatnik uncle, an avantgarde filmmaker, abandoned before birth by his Mexican actor and filmmaker father, the most famous Mexican film director of the 1940s, Emilio Fernandez, it is a story of a troubled and talented man searching obsessively for his father by managing to find and watch his films. The novella takes place in the 70s when foreign films, Mexican ones in particular, were almost impossible to find. The novella is currently in the hands of the editor of ZYZZYVA, the top West Coast literary review, and one of the only lit reviews publishing novellas. All my eggs? Let’s see what happens…
By chance, the Los Angeles Philharmonic recently produced an entire concert celebrating the Golden Age of Cinema in Mexico and Hollywood (1940s), which included a tribute to Emilio Fernandez. A friend in LA told me about it and I had to go. As it turned out, my first boyfriend (I was in the 10th grade and living in LA), a consummate bass player, was performing in this unusual concert, conducted by the young and stellar Gustavo Dudamel, who my teen boyfriend generously introduced me to.
In early May, I took a solo car trip to Death Valley to work on my story, “Astral,” about a middle-aged astrophysicist from Nebraska, Elliot Langmore, obsessed with black holes, dark energy, nebulas of stars, and everything that exists OUT THERE at unfathomable distances from our planet. Set at the Oasis Inn in Death Valley (which is where I stayed – something about that grandfather clock in the lobby with no hands!!), the story explores the intimate juxtaposition between all we consider sacred and all we consider profane, in other words, the exquisite and the mundane (beautiful physics equations vs ketchup dribbling down a chin, for example). Here we have a transformative memory of a boy with his mother at the Chicago World Fair in 1933; an unexpected encounter with Betty; the talkative, middle-aged head of housekeeping at the Oasis Inn; a rain storm in the driest place on earth, and a man’s delirious longing to disappear.
After my four days of reading, writing, and thinking, in an effort to get to know Elliot and the celestial landscapes he loves, I returned to San Francisco on Highway 395 just east of the Sierras, awed by the tallest mountains in the contiguous United States, and staying a night at a ramshackle lodge on June Lake, where my parents went for their honeymoon in 1948. The trip added 1000 miles to my odometer, all the views breathtaking: our gorgeous, dramatic Earth, painted by solar and lunar light and shadow.
October 31-November 11, I treated myself to a ten-day self-directed writing retreat at PLAYA, an artist retreat on Summer Lake in southern Oregon, where I have been three times before, the first time with a fellowship. There I worked on revisions of “Open the Way” and “Dark to Themselves” and continued developing “Astral.” I worked 12 hours a day with undaunted literary lust. So immersed was I that I didn’t leave my cabin even once for 8 days and nights. I found out later that the artists in the cabin next to mine feared I was dead!!
On the contrary, I was too alive…
I found an editor! Lori Ostlund (The Bigness of the World), who lives in San Francisco. We seem to grok each other, in life and on the page, which is what counts. This has been life-changing. I basically wrote The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs by workshopping the stories at writing workshops every summer for seven years, and with a writing group locally. Each workshop had 10-11 participants. I heard from dozens of emerging writers and a half dozen esteemed mentors. I could not have brought the stories in The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs to fruition without all this diverse and thoughtful feedback. Now, however, I am submitting my close-to final drafts to one insightful person, which feels just right for where I am right now as an author.
Over these next few months, I intend to write three more stories, “Memory Palace,” “Astral,” and “Dinner with a Mortician.” My goal is to complete the book manuscript by June 1, 2025. Nose to the grindstone, prayers to the Muse!! It means a lot to know so many of you are rooting for me!! Thank you!!
IN OTHER NEWS:
I was approved in August to become a new member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto, which, I have discovered, is an incredibly supportive community of Bay Area writers – journalists, screenwriters, playwrights, poets, novelists, memoirists, and short story writers. I read with a dozen of them to an enthusiastic audience at a bar in the Mission District recently as part of San Francisco’s annual and inimitable Lit Crawl to celebrate the Grotto’s upcoming 30th Anniversary. The theme for our readings was: words to save the world. I wrote a love poem to libraries and books, eulogizing the way we create our own existence with our imaginations like Harold does with his purple crayon.
My panel proposal was approved for the next AWP (Associated Writers Programs) Conference taking place in Los Angeles late March 2025. The panel is entitled: “Thieves or Transformers: How Much of Fiction is Fiction?” Panelists include authors Ananda Lima, Sidik Fofana, and T. Kira Mahealani Madden, and entertainment lawyer, Liz Hasse. I find the question of the title infinitely provocative and look forward to the discussion!
REMEMBER: I am available for your book groups!! I have participated in six thus far, all on zoom, and have found them to be extremely lively and satisfying for all concerned.
AND PLEASE REMEMBER: The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs is available as a gift for your friends and family, and for your libraries. Purchase here.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
My holiday wish is for you to choose my award-winning story collection, The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs, as a Chanukah, Xmas, or New Year’s gift for someone you know who likes to read. Buy a copy for yourself. Buy five copies to give to friends and family. Especially if you have read the book and loved it…spread the wealth! Mahalo.
Be in touch if you have any comments, questions, need a book signed to someone, or have an idea for a book event…
Love,
Leslie
REVIEWS FROM READERS LIKE YOU:
Wow!!! What a journey to take as a reader…and absolutely masterful in word and story. Compelling rich layered funny deeply intelligent phew!! A. Mueller
I just finished reading The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs… and now I want to go right back to page one to experience again the wonder, delight, despair—the fullness of life you brought into being in this stunning collection. A. Hoover-Bartlett
I was astonished by these stories. K. Shein
Your details are amazing and simply blowing me away. M. Lynch
Every time I read one of your stories I am gutted. Every new one becomes my new favorite. J. Nitchie
Your stories are beautiful and complicated. Your women are human, but ultimately strong. You are so confident that they will survive. L. Rosenthal
I am absolutely gobsmacked by your masterful and thoroughly original imagery. Z. Smith
I found each of the stories to be distinctly powerful. I was totally engrossed in each one. D. Riverbend
Every story in your collection is so smart and compelling and structurally magical. The way you write about the body and about love are unparalleled. C. Sen
Dozens of readers, most people I know personally, wrote to me after they read the book. I combined them into one delicious document. And honestly, I go read them a couple times a year just to buck myself up as I wrestle with the stories in my next collection.
TWO-THIRDS OF THE WAY TO MY GOAL OF SELLING 5000 COPIES. And thus being in the top 2% of book sales nationally. Which will help me when my agent starts to sell my second story collection in 2025. Quality is one thing. But publishers look hard and fast at sales as well…