Trendy But Casual

Autumn, New Orleans, November 2009

Hurricane Ida is on her way, curling up through the Gulf after terrorizing central American and the Yucatan peninsula. She’s breaking up now into a tropical storm, but that still means a lot of water and wind, especially along the coast. It’s gray outside, but there’s no rain yet. The Tulane flag hung over the porch railings by our peppy neighbors flaps back and forth. T. Middy has lifted all our plants off their stands, and taken his rain boots to work. As one of our friends said last night, at least when the electricity goes, it won’t be too hot.

The storm is passing to our east, so I don’t think the electricity will go this time. It’s very quiet outside: most schools are closed today, just in case. In Plaquemines Parish, it’s flooding already (storm surge), and some people are evacuating. Everyone’s selfishly hoping it’ll turn a little farther east, and hammer someone else.

I haven’t posted for a while, because I’ve been busy with the semester – including a fantastic visit last week from one of my literary heroes, Deborah Eisenberg, and a dinner with my screenwriting students and the writer/producer Eric Overmyer, veteran of The Wire, who’s creating a new HBO drama here with David Simon.

Also, I’ve been busy with lots of book promotion for Ruined – including four visits to local schools; two book groups (one at Octavia Books, and one at Barnes & Noble); a trip to the SIBA conference in Greenville, South Carolina; and book events here at Octavia and Maple Street, at the Louisiana Book Festival in Baton Rouge, in Mississippi at Lemuria Books in Jackson and Square Books in Oxford, and at the Neighborhood Preservation Center in New York City. I have another event coming up this Saturday at the Catholic Library Association conference. And, of course, there was the great trip to Orlando to film a marketing video for Scholastic Book Fairs. Ruined will be sold in book fairs all over the country from January.

T. Middy – for those of you pining for news – is busy as well, working on the Dean’s Colloquium, and the Ellis Marsalis performance this Thursday (Dixon Hall, November 12). We go up to St Louis for his birthday/Thanksgiving later this month, and then to New Zealand for two weeks over Christmas. My sister sent me an email, saying: “Would you two like to cook Christmas dinner? No pressure.” (Um, sure.) Only four weeks of classes left.

I’ve been scribbling notes for various posts – at the Epcot Center in Disneyworld; at the Angola Prison Rodeo; at the gravesite of Robert Johnson just outside Greenwood Mississippi. My bizarre autumn. Today, for the first time, and thanks to a tropical storm, it almost feels like fall.

I am rubbish

Wednesday is our ninth wedding anniversary. Last week we were looking at the wedding photo we have tucked away, out of sight, in the chaos of our back room. “That was the last time I smiled,” announced T. Middy. I ignored him.

Yesterday I asked him why we were still happily married. He attributes this solely to his “incredible patience and willingness to concede.” Apparently, I bring very little to the table.  He conceded, at last, that I was “funny-ish and brainy-ish,” and that was helpful, sort of.

When TM is not criticizing me, he can be very useful: he created a spiffy flyer for my new novel, Ruined, that we sent to independent book stores in Mississippi and Louisiana. I now have three out-of-state events booked. The upcoming ones are around Halloween: Square Books in Oxford, MS, on October 30, and Lemuria Books, in Jackson, on Halloween itself.

I met a lot of other booksellers on Friday at the SIBA convention in Greenville, SC. I was on a panel of mystery writers, and then took part in a frenetic hour-long book-signing session afterwards. More invitations to appear at stores in Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina. I’ll try to fit some more in before Christmas, if possible, though this semester is horribly busy. Afterwards I was taken out for dinner by the friendly Scholastic sales reps. Greenville is a very pretty town.

The trip there, however, was a nightmare. I almost missed the panel altogether, even though I left home at 5:45 that morning. (The panel started at 4:10 PM.) My 7:15 flight to Atlanta had mechanical problems, and didn’t leave New Orleans until 10. So I missed the connection to Greenville; the next flight from Atlanta was delayed until 3:20, which meant I wouldn’t arrive at the convention in time. So I had to get changed in an airport bathroom, rent the most expensive car ever from Avis in Atlanta, and make the 150-mile drive.

The Avis experience took 90 minutes, and included their computers going down on numerous occasions; me losing the rental agreement somewhere between the bus and the exit gate; and a second wait in line to get another. By the time I got to the convention center in Greenville, my panel was in its final ten minutes. The only good thing about the trip was the 80s station on Sirius radio.

The next morning, Saturday, on my way back to New Orleans, I managed to misplace my ID. I’d stuffed it into a pocket of my bag when driving – wildly – out of the Avis lot, and then shoved it, along with a handful of booksellers’ business cards, into my suitcase. Cue: panic in Greenville airport. I returned to the rental car to search it before remembering the suitcase card-dump. And what did I find in the car? The lost rental agreement, down the side of the passenger seat. Not so brainy-ish, obviously. I was glad to get home in one piece, back to the incredible patience of T. Middy.

Now it’s Sunday night. I took part in an ACLU “banned books” event this afternoon, reading a section of Midnight’s Children. I came home and finished writing a review of the new Margaret Atwood novel, The Year of the Flood. Then tonight: The Amazing Race and Mad Men. (Never call me on a Sunday night.)

The weather tomorrow in New Orleans: a high of 91. Near record temperatures. So much for the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. But at least there’s something decent to watch on TV again.

Book stuff

T. Middy suggested that I call this post 'From Rags to Ruined', but (wisely) I ignored him. We've been watching Taxi Driver tonight and eating take-out from Felipe's: we both teach on a Wednesday, and finish late. We're both exhausted because of students, and our day of fame. Susan Larson wrote a very nice feature about Ruined in today's Times-Picayune. TM managed to wriggle in, as usual, and my niece, Rebecca Hill, infiltrates it as well. 

Also pleasing: the display in the Tulane book store.

This weekend, we had an enjoyable signing event at the new Maple Street Books; there's another coming up at Octavia Books next week, September 15. 

On Monday, on the way home from a trip to Marksville - five years since we were living there as evacuees - we stopped at the Barnes & Noble in Baton Rouge. There I spotted an actual teenager taking Ruined down from the shelf. I restrained myself from shouting HELLO I AM THE AUTHOR THANK YOU FOR BUYING THIS WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO SIGN IT? and had to content myself with buying a number of sale-price DVDs upstairs. The customer in question did not recognize me, needless to say, because - according to my sister - the publicity photo on the dust jacket in no way resembles my actual appearance.

Busy, busy, busy

Here is what I've been doing today to avoid getting on with my work:

1. Messed around with an Excel spreadsheet of literary contacts.

2. Spent over an hour trying to work out how to create mail-merge mailing labels with actual words/coherent addresses.

3. Prepared mailing of flyers promoting two upcoming signings, one at Maple Street Books this Saturday, and one at Octavia Books on September 15.

4. Wrote thank-you notes for birthday gifts.

5. Persuaded T. Middy to come home for lunch, which meant driving to campus to pick him up and re-deliver him safely an hour later.

6. Spent too much time at the Post Office standing on line, affixing stamps, observing crazy people, etc.

7. Visited the big Borders in the Garden District to see if they had any copies of my new book, given that the novel is set in the Garden District, and Borders is doing a September promotion of it; found no copies.

8. Visited Garden District Books to sign more copies, as they've already sold their initial shipment.

9. Called into the new Village Coffee on Jefferson to buy an iced tea, pretending it was event-related research (i.e. I asked if they had a community bulletin board; they do not).

10. Sent unnecessary emails.

11. Wrote an unnecessary Facebook status update.

12. Made unnecessary comments on other people's Facebook status updates.

13. Read Twitter unnecessarily.

14. Dropped off a box of signed copies of Ruined at the UPS store, for return to Scholastic for use in contests, etc.

15. Walked around to my friend Sarah's house with an invitation to this month's salon.

16. Checked on reviews of Ruined on Amazon, trying not to feel annoyed by the irritating ones.

17. Re-ordered my Netflix queue.

18. Wrote this blog post.

And now I better get on with something.

Kashin

Kashin

Sad news from home today: Kashin the elephant died at Auckland Zoo yesterday. I know it’s ridiculous that I’m moved to public lament when this blog fails to commemorate the deaths of Bergman, Pinter, Antonioni et al, but I guess I’m sentimental. (And not alone.)

Kashin was one of only three elephants in New Zealand. There’s another Indian elephant, called Burma, at Auckland Zoo, and an African elephant down in Nelson, in a circus. My sister remembers Jamuna, who used to give rides at the zoo: Jamuna arrived in 1923 and died in 1965. My sister probably also remembers the chimpanzees who held tea parties: this was stopped before I was born. All I remember is the Punch and Judy shows, which involved no inconvenience to animals, apart from persistent cruelty to the puppet crocodile.

The funds for Kashin were raised by the ASB, which in those days stood for the Auckland Savings Bank. It now calls itself the ASB Bank, which seems ridiculous to me, but presumably makes sense to its new Australian owners. Kashin arrived at Auckland Zoo when she was four and I was seven, in December, 1972. A public competition came up with the elephant’s name, though it has a Hindi meaning as well, allegedly unrelated to money. My brother and I were very excited about the arrival of a baby elephant, though he would no doubt deny this now. (He has a very non-elephant-like memory.) Like almost every other child of our generation, we got plastic Kashin-the-elephant piggy banks from the ASB. We had several of them, as I recall. I’m sure that one, at least, is stashed away in my storage unit in Albany, along with all the other jumble of my childhood.

When we were children, the best thing to see in the Auckland Museum was the gigantic stuffed form of Rajah, a male elephant who lived at the zoo in the 30s until he became too violent and unruly and had to be put to death. (It was seen as the humane thing at the time, apparently, because the alternative was spending his life chained up.)  Australians are also implicated here: before he arrived in Auckland, Rajah was being terrorized by the public in Hobart, and this is now blamed for his anger-management issues. I think he’s still on display at the Museum, though the latest generation of curators despise him, no doubt, as a relic from a less enlightened age, and see the exhibit as capitulation to trashy public taste.

Today the Auckland zoo is all environments rather than enclosures; the old elephant house is rented out for parties and wedding receptions. It backs onto Old Mill Road, just where the road takes a steep climb. When we were children, we used to beg my father to drive this way at night – when we were going back and forth to my grandparents’ place in Ponsonby – so we could see the elephants. Just a glimpse of those massive dark backs, like upturned hulls, safe in their pens for the night.

The Auckland Zoo is closed today: they’re in mourning for Kashin. Here in New Orleans, it’s late afternoon, which means the McMain band is outside wailing and braying and trumpeting in the school yard, and our new next-door neighbor is practicing scales on her French horn. The sound of elephants, perhaps, but not quite the same thing.

 

New Orleans, August, Hot

On week days, when I’m alone in the house, I turn off the air conditioning – to save money, to see how long I can stand it. By four, my head starts to feel swaddled with cotton wool. I’m sleepy. I stick to things. Sometimes, clammy and oppressed, I feel almost feverish.

It’s overcast outside most afternoons: in the month since I’ve been back from the UK, there’s been two or maybe three days without a thunderstorm. On Monday it rained almost all day – the soggy shoulder of a tropical depression pushing up into the Florida panhandle. I lie in the bedroom, the coolest room in the house, and think of ways to describe the heat. Every day is sweltering. Outside the heat is a thicket, almost visible: we wade through its dense swamp in dreamy slow-motion.

If I could write my first novel, Queen of Beauty, over again, there’d be much more about the heat in New Orleans. The heat and the rain and the smell of things here. I was talking about this today with Susan Larson, the books editor of the Times-Picayune; she was interviewing me about my YA novel, Ruined. I would include more heat, more smells, and more lizards, I told her. In August, the lizards are the only fast-moving creatures in this place. At the moment the ones I see are bark-skinned and tiny, darting across sidewalks, disappearing into bushes.

TM has had various face-offs with lizards in the house in summers past, involving absurd hallway chases and daring Tupperware entrapments. Lizards particularly like the Venetian blinds in our south-facing back room, which is oven-like for six months of the year. They lie, lizard-legs dangling, on the dusty slats.

The heat won’t break for more than a month – maybe in two months’ time, maybe a little sooner. We were married in New Orleans nine years ago, at the very end of September. Knowing this place a little better now, we would never dream of arranging a wedding (a black-tie wedding, in fact) for such a volatile time of year. It’s the heart of hurricane season, the end of September. The heat is usually still ferocious and unrelenting. Last night, I met up with a few people for birthday drinks, and my friend Russell Desmond was talking about business over the summer – he owns Arcadian Books, in the French Quarter. People forget, he says, that September is still the summer here. It’s another hot, stifling month that has to be endured – survived – between the European tourists and the fall conventions.

Sometimes it’s Christmas here, and we’re still waiting for the fall.

Last night T. Middy got to indulge in a rare public rant on one of his favorite topics: the weather coverage of WDSU, otherwise known as Channel Six, the NBC local affiliate. We’ve lived here for five years, and TM continues to be outraged by the weather coverage. (Don’t ask why we don’t just watch another local affiliate: wherever we live, we watch NBC. We miss you, Sue Simmons.)

The WDSU empire has established an outpost on Channel 108, which is known as WDSU Weather-Plus News and Traffic. When TM has tired of being aggrieved at my various crimes – finishing all the wine, eating all the cashews, watching yet another past-season marathon of America’s Next Top Model – he likes to turn to 108 and complain that it’s never New Orleans weather.

Here is a transcript of a recent diatribe on this topic.

TM: No matter when I tune in, it’s Houma. Then Mandeville, then Hammond. You say it’s in alphabetical order, but, baby girl, look – it’s HOUMA, MANDEVILLE, AND THEN HAMMOND.

[Turns to another station, then switches back.]

TM: Now it’s THIBODAUX, GRAND ISLE, AND GULFPORT. And what’s on right now? GRETNA.

 [Turns to another station, then switches back.]

TM: And then it’s mostly commercials for WDSU.

[Lower-level grumbling while distracted by Tropical Storm Watch in the Gulf of Mexico.]

TM: So now it’s New Orleans. They’re saying thunderstorms at noon tomorrow. Let’s check back tomorrow, shall we? Let’s see what they say then!

[Turns to another station for quite a while, then switches back.]

TM: Just to see what’s happening, let’s turn to 108. THIBODAUX, GRAND ISLE, AND GULFPORT! This is the New Orleans metropolitan area! Why don’t they show New Orleans? They could at least show Metairie.

[Swearing and muttering.]

TM: And you know, I bet a lot of these forecasts are the same. Because it’s a ****ing tiny area!

[Turns to another station, then switches back.]

TM: Slidell. What’s next? HOUMA, MANDEVILLE, HAMMOND.

[The next day: I’m in another room]

TM: Ha! GRETNA!

Actually, I don’t know why he needs to watch the weather. It’s the same every day: mid 90s, with a chance of thunderstorms. I’ll be here, waiting for the sky to darken and for the heat in the house to simmer and thicken. Until my head aches, and my hair curls, and it’s time to turn on the air again and finish off all the wine.

New book

Last year, when I was holed up in the little flat on Albert Park in Auckland (courtesy of the very generous Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship), I worked on four big projects. One of them is published this week.

This is my YA novel, and it's published here in the US by Scholastic/Point. It's already selling on Amazon in various countries, as well as on other sites and in numerous US independent book stores like the great Lemuria in Jackson, MS. If there's a teenager in your life interested in a mystery involving ghosts, curses, murders, carnival/Mardi Gras parades, yellow fever, voodoo, New Orleans (especially the Garden District and Treme), Haiti, cemeteries, Roman society, high school shenanigans, or any of the above, please consider buying this for him or her. I'd like to crack the top 100,000 on Amazon!

If you need more persuasion, here's the starred review from Publishers Weekly:

"With this haunting love letter to New Orleans, Morris makes her YA debut, telling the story of 15-year-old Rebecca Brown, a proud New Yorker sent to live with a family friend while her father travels overseas. Ostracized as an outsider, Rebecca struggles to fit in and cope with her new surroundings. When she befriends Lisette, a ghost who has haunted the cemetery ever since her mysterious death 155 years earlier, Rebecca is drawn into an eerie story of betrayal, loss, old curses and family secrets. As Mardi Gras approaches, so does the culmination of something dark and angry that has been brewing for decades. This moody tale thoroughly embraces the rich history, occult lore and complex issues of race, ethnicity, class and culture that have defined New Orleans for centuries, turning the city into a character in its own right. Rather than shy away from the shameful or tragic moments of the past, Morris uses them to capture the city's essence. From Mardi Gras rituals to voodoo spells, Hurricane Katrina to jazz, this is a story that could only be told in New Orleans."

Note: I just checked on Amazon, and I've already cracked the top 25K - maybe I should aim higher (or lower)? Say, top 10K?

New Orleans, late July

Good things about being back in New Orleans: the blueberries from Pass Christian, MS, which are juicy and delicious. The crepe myrtles in bloom – white and lavender and mauve – sprinkling fallen petals over car roofs and sidewalks. The prospect of going swimming this weekend in Metairie, where our friend Becky has a real pool, or around the corner, where Sarah has installed something inflatable and possibly illegal in her back yard. The students are still away for the summer, so it’s nice and peaceful, apart from the times when the McMain summer drum camp starts rehearsing under the trees … but even that’s not bad, because it reminds me of parade season. (I always miss the endless schoolyard band sessions after Mardi Gras is over.) The fruit cart guy is set up on Napoleon: he always has ripe avocados. Lots of restaurants and bars have specials on right now, because it’s such a quiet time of year.

Annoying things. Hmmm. Yesterday lunchtime, a Cox Communications worker was tinkering with the lamppost outside. Next thing, our cable access is gone. A technician is due to come around this morning, in the approved two-hour window, but this has involved SIX calls so far – one to book the appointment, and the other five to confirm it. One last night, four today. Cox: please stop calling me and JUST COME AND FIX OUR CABLE.

This morning I called the doctor to make an appointment for T. Middy, who managed to get a touch of the old swine flu just before he left the UK. He’s feeling a bit better, but his ears have been blocked for ten days, and he may need antibiotics . No doctor at our local medical clinic can see him until mid-August. That is, almost a month away. I’m so glad we don’t have the evil “socialized medicine” in this country, with its long waiting lists! He’s calling the hospital now to see if he can get an appointment with a specialist. This will cost more – it’ll cost us more, and it’ll cost our insurance more – but what else can he do? Make a doctor’s appointment for a month hence and hope he’s still sick?

At Whole Foods, looking through their lunch salads – which manage to be dispiriting, mundane, and over-priced – and buying ingredients to make pizza, I was told that they will not be stocking pancetta again until the fall, because “nobody buys it in the summer.” I’ve never found pancetta anywhere else in the city. If any NOLA-based reader knows where I can buy this grotesquely unseasonal item, please email me.

The day I was home last week, in between getting back from the UK and flying to New York, a tremendous thunder storm flooded the streets and knocked out power along much of Magazine Street. I picked up TM and his office wife, Trina, so we could go and get some lunch, but everywhere was closed because the power was gone. We ended up at Crabby Jack’s on Jefferson Highway – crossing parish lines to get a delicious shrimp po boy! We would have driven to Houma if necessary: we were hungry.

The traffic lights were out at numerous intersections on St Charles and Magazine long after power had been restored to the neighborhood, which reminded me of the #1 most annoying thing about being back in New Orleans: the drivers. So many of them were speeding through four-way intersections –with no functioning traffic lights – without slowing down, let alone stopping. I understand that it’s impossible for drivers here to ever use indicators, because they need to steer AND make calls and send text messages, and that red lights/stop signs are perceived as an affront to our constitutional right to drive wherever it is we’re going without inconvenient pauses, but still. It makes every journey an adventure, I guess.

The cable guy is here. He tells me they turned off the cable next door yesterday, but the incidents are completely unrelated: this is not the reason our cable disappeared at exactly the same time. Hmmm.

Once he’s gone, I need to take my life in my hands and go out for more blueberries from Pass Christian. You can buy them at Rouse’s. Unlike pancetta, they are seasonal.

Still Wandering

Various people have been asking: are you home yet? and the answer is no. I was home briefly last week, just enough time to neglect to unpack, despite T. Middy's new rule (nobody is allowed to go anywhere until they've finished unpacking from the previous trip). Right now I'm in New York, where it's hot, though not as hot as New Orleans. New Orleans has entered its annual inferno state, from which it will not emerge until October. Only the crepe myrtles can stand it.

TM came with me, but he's already back in NOLA. I have to stay another day to have various meetings, including a big one with Scholastic's sales and marketing people. My YA novel, Ruined, is published next month. The promo video they made for the book is up on a number of sites now. Naomi Bates has made her own great little trailer. There's also a good review from Publishers Weekly, which I saw for the first time today.

It was a beautiful summer weekend in NYC, and yesterday we walked for hours, to the Met, through the Park, etc, with TM's great friend (and lawyer-to-the-stars) Rob Marcus. But on Saturday we spent pretty much the whole day inside, watching all three plays in The Norman Conquests. They were spectacular. I'm so pleased we were able to see them - it's the Old Vic production, which ends its NY run next week. I hadn't seen the trilogy since the 1978 TV version was broadcast in NZ, when I was still at high school; one of my friends suggested it might not have aged well, that it might not seem so hilarious anymore. Actually, it's still absolutely brilliant.

Star spottings yesterday: Brian D'Arcy James, our favorite Broadway actor (and Rob's friend), after he'd spent an hour-plus getting out of his Shrek make-up after the Sunday matinee. And TV's own Padma Lakshmi, sashaying through the park in a romper suit, looking very beautiful and very thin, and as self-conscious as a teenager who's just found out she's pretty ...

TM and I were upgraded, inexplicably, to first class on the way here. This has now ruined him for all lesser travel. We hardly ever fly together, which means I am usually deprived of insightful conversations like this one:

TM (excited): I'm in Seat One-A. That was my draft classification [a Vietnam-era reference]. But that wasn't a good thing, like this.

PM: I thought it was A-One, your draft classification.

TM: A-One is a steak sauce.

In Arden

It’s almost a week since TM arrived in London, and it’s been quite a whirl. Within five days of his arrival, we’d seen three plays: Wally Shawn’s Grasses of a Thousand Colors at the Royal Court; As You Like It at the Globe; and The Cherry Orchard at the Old Vic. I’ve had two great meetings with agents, and we’ve been out with various friends to dinner at Moro, in Exmouth Market, and Ozer, near Broadcasting House. There’ve been visits, too short, to the British Museum and Tate Modern. Even to the Dickens Museum, which I've never visited before. We’ve had lunch or drinks or ice creams all over the place. Here is the evidence.

At the weekend we had a car, which meant sitting in traffic for hours, without air conditioning, trying to get to Hampshire and back. And this week, without a car, we’ve been wilting in the heat of tubes and buses: TM has brought NOLA-style weather with him.

We’ve been walking a great deal, too – along the King’s Road, along the South Bank, through the back streets of Southwark, around Piccadilly, down from Clapham Common (because our tube stop closes after 10 PM this week), and, a couple of nights ago, all the way from Oxford Circus to Sloane Square, via Belgravia and Brompton where everyone was out in the streets, eating and talking and listening to music. That night we heard scraps of conversations like this:

Woman: I couldn’t believe what that German man was saying!

Man: He was Swiss.

Woman: I couldn’t believe what that Swiss man was saying!

We’ve also become very familiar with Tooting Common and the streets of Balham, because two or three times a day we take Tipsy, the dog we’re sitting, out for walks. Tipsy is a Border terrier with very strong views on preferred routes. In the early evening, we go to the Common with two tennis balls and a plastic flinger, and spend 40 minutes wearing her out.

 

At night she sleeps at the end of our bed. (This is one of the reasons it’s too hot to sleep.) I’ll miss Tipsy when we have to hand her – and the house – back to the owners on Sunday.

We’ve been watching Wimbledon, of course, and using the barbecue in the garden. Shopping at Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, looking at the astounding house prices in real-estate office windows. Today we’re a little low-key, because some friends came over for dinner last night, during which they confessed to voting multiple times for Diversity, the dance group that won Britain’s Got Talent, even though each call cost something like a pound.

I have a short story to finish, and we need to troop back to West Wickham this afternoon for another encounter with the osteopath. The plank seats upstairs at the Royal Court finished me off.

By the way, if you want to see what TM does at work while I'm out of the country, have a look at this slide show created by his office wife, Trina.