Well, we’re off!!!!
You Should Have Known publication date is April 4. The launch party is April 6, at Exile in Bookville, 410 South Michigan Avenue (in the historic Fine Arts building.) If you preorder through Exile, I can stop by the bookstore and sign it for you before they send it out! Preorders are also available now. (People planning to attend the event can preorder and pick it up, have it signed and personalized that evening!)
This program partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
As I said in the introductory email, this newsletter is about writing, art. Because all sorts of things fuel those fires, and because I have a magpie mind that picks up observations and analogies of all sorts and brings them back to whatever task I am engaged in, it is likely to be about a lot of other things as well.
Which brings me to the title of the newsletter: “Under Construction.” This title is also the message people get when they arrive at a webpage that isn’t working. Hopefully the “--A Newsletter” following it, and the pretty banner design (thanks Jordan!) will be enough to alert people to the fact that they have indeed landed on a page that is deliberately named.
But why? Why even risk confusion?
Because “construction” is what writers and artists do. So maybe a nanosecond of confusion can be good? Like a splash of water, the momentary “huh?” refocuses attention, makes folks ask, “What is this?”
Humans are meaning–making machines. We assign importance to omens and happenstance, we look for context, we understand that people and ideas and relationships have histories. We construct stories that are containers for organizing our memories, and every time we tell a story, we lay down a new memory track, build a new container, or remodel an old one.
I expected the words ‘construction’ and ‘structure’ to share a root, but to my surprise, they don’t, exactly. The Latin root of structure is “strutura: “to build.” But the root for construction is construere “to heap together”-and it is directly related to our word ‘construe.”
To my magpie mind this is perfect. A novelist both construes things, and builds a structure for those things. They do this in collaboration with a reader, who likewise adds meanings, associations and memories of their own to the experience of reading the book.
So here we go, constructing things! In the following weeks I’ll share more of the influences, random thoughts and odd happenstances that went into the making of “You Should Have Known” and other projects as well.
But for now I’m excited to announce some preliminary info about some upcoming events:
PODCASTS!
In the coming months I’m going to be a guest on several podcasts, (details to follow as drop dates become finalized). These include:
A Bookable Space with Yvonne Battle-Felton
A Bookable Space is your audio literary salon. Each episode features writers delivering three engaging readings and answering three interesting questions. Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered. Here's the link for the show.
Or:
Carter Wilson's Making It Up
Kris Clink's The Writing Table A podcast for writers and book lovers. Whether you're a newbie-author or a reader, pull up a chair and learn from established authors, publicists, bloggers, and creatives. There is always room at the writing table.