One of my favorite words is luminous. I love how it feels in my mouth, love how it looks on the page, love what it means. So I was happy to discover this cool piece on Bioluminescence over at The Believer's website. Who knew shrimp vomit was beautiful?

I don't know what it is about pearliness, iridescence, that draws me so. I guess all of us are drawn to shiny things, but I have a particular fondness for streaky, opal-y, shimmer. Not gems, really. But the inside of an abalone shell, the swirl of rainbow on a puddle of oil, those things light something up in me. My friend Kryn has a new iridescent tea set, and it's so glorious, I couldn't keep my eyes off of it. I realized at some point that many of my poems have gleaming things in them; I guess it makes sense that the name of my--as yet-and-maybe-forever-unpublished--poetry collection is Lack/Luster.

Speaking of as-yet-(but-hopefully-not-forever) unpublished stuff, my new novel, Self Storage was supposedly shipped to HarperCollins on Wednesday. Hopefully I'll get some news within a couple of weeks. The publishing world is full of so much waiting. I'll have to find some shiny things to stare at to keep my mind busy in the meanwhile...