Receiving the bound galleys of one's own book is usually a thrilling experience. It's when the book really feels like a book for the first time. When I received the galleys for Fruitflesh, my first published book, I was so overcome at the sight of my name on the cover, I thought I might pass out or throw up. This time is different.

I recently received the galleys for both My Life with the Lincolns, my YA novel coming out in March, and Delta Girls, my novel coming out in June (you can see the cover here, now that I have a digital copy.) Of course it was exciting when they each showed up on my doorstep, but it was also bittersweet. For those who haven't seen the posting on my other blog, my mom committed suicide six weeks ago, one week after my son Asher was born. I had dedicated Delta Girls to her but hadn't told her; I had wanted to surprise her with it when the galleys came out. Now I deeply regret not telling her, and not sharing the manuscript, which she had wanted to read, with her earlier. I see the simple dedication--"For my mom"--and it takes on a whole other meaning now, and it breaks my heart. I never imagined she wouldn't be here to see it, herself, or that it would become a memorial of sorts.

We never know how much time we have with our loved ones; it makes me want to pull all of them even closer now.

I hope you will read my friend Peggy Hong's breathtaking piece: Embracing the Other, a talk she gave this past Sunday at a Unitarian church in Milwaukee. Here is a taste:

I believe our task as evolving social beings is to make ourselves more comfortable with discomfort. I believe we should deliberately place ourselves in situations out of our comfort zone. Once that becomes comfortable, go to a new place and push the envelope further.

For instance, if you are white, place yourself in situations where you are the racial minority. Go to a black church, shop in a black or Latino neighborhood, ride the city bus, go to a foreign country and stay in a hostel or a 2-star hotel instead of a 5-star resort, work for an organization run by people of color, move into the central city where thousands of beautiful houses wait for refurbishing, teach for MPS.

But go not to convert, but to be converted. Go not to lead, but to follow. Go to educate yourself, not to educate others. Go in humility, not in pride. Go not to be loved, but to love.

Important, powerful words.

If you're in the area, I hope you can swing by!

When I was in college, I belonged to a briefly-lived guerilla theater group called Normal Jungles--we would go into public places and do strange little performance art happenings. I recall us crawling around on the floor of the Redlands Mall, whispering "Put your zucchinis on the porch" to people; eventually we met in a circle in the center of the mall, yelled "Smash all your avocados!" at the top of our lungs and then walked out of the mall as if nothing happened, leaving a lot of confused people in our wake. I am a huge fan of Improv Everywhere, which performs guerilla theater "missions" in public places, but on a much grander, yet more accessible, audience-friendly scale than our weird attempts at the avant garde. This particular performance involves fruit, too, so how I can I not love it? Forget about smashing your avocados--let's squish our fruits together!

Diane Ackerman's book, A Natural History of the Senses, is one of my favorite books of all time, so I was thrilled when the San Francisco Chronicle invited me to review her latest book, Dawn Light. You can read the review here.

Update: Just wanted to mention that I received the loveliest email from Diane Ackerman in response to this review. I had wondered if she'd have a chance to read the review, but never imagined I'd hear from her. It made my day and then some!

I love this quote from Michael Chabon about the parallels between writing and cooking:

As a cook, I came into this inheritance of different traditions, of the American tradition, my Jewish tradition, my mother's family and the family she grew up in. My cooking kind of emerged from both a written inheritance, actual recipes written down by my mother and grandmother, and also in the cookbooks that became important to me, and I also involve my own approach, my own changes in recipe.

I think in a way, that's sort of what you're engaged in doing as a writer, too. You come into this inheritance of things that have been done and the ways in which they have been done, and people who influence you sort of pass along what they think is important, and what they think you need to know how to do. But over time you begin to make changes, what you think are improvements or alterations, because you like the way it comes out better. In that sense, there's less a question of rejecting or accepting the past, less an anxiety of influence kind of thing, than there is an evolution of your own culinary style as applied to language and storytelling.

You tend to make the things you like to eat. For example, I don't care for fish terribly much, so I don't waste a lot of time trying to figure out how to prepare it. As a writer, I try to write books that I think I would love to read. You cook the foods you'd love to eat, you write the books you'd love to read.

For the last few years, my dad has been filling up notebooks with what he calls his "wonders"--his musings about the animal world, the human world, the world of language and other amazements. As part of his 90th birthday celebration, the family decided to compile his wonders as a bound book. The Book of Wonders came out looking gorgeous (and it was so wonderful to see the surprise on his face when we presented it to him on Saturday. I wish I had a clearer image than this one to share! At least you can see the cover clearly below; the guy doing the limbo is my dad in 1969--the coolest cat ever. My mom is looking pretty groovy herself in her straw hat and sunglasses behind him.) You can order the book here and fill your own life with wonder(s).

Some family kvelling...

Check out the video of the alternative high school program my brother-in-law Craig established in Toronto:

And my dad (who will be 90 in 10 days) recently published this letter to the editor in the North County Times:

I thought, when I started reading George Will's column in the September 10th NCTimes about California's problems, that I wouldn't have to grab my dictionary. He always has at least one "big"" word, usually more, that I and probably most people have never seen before. Now why does George do that? Is he just showing off? Not George. He's a rabid Chicago Cubs fan . So am I. Cubs fans have nothing to show off about. To give George his due, maybe he's trying to lift us to his vocabulary level.

At any rate, George did it again. This time, in explaining California's massive problems, he used the word "dystopia", I suppose I should understand that word. But I don't. So I reached for my Webster dictionary which defines dystopia as "an imaginary place which is depressingly wretched and whose people lead a fearful existence," Wow, this is horrible. Let's hope it's only imaginary.

George, I know you're being a bit melodramatic to illustrate your point that California is a lousy state. But, c'mon, surely you can find something a little positive to say about beautiful California.

Maybe a nice "big" word?

Buzz Brandeis
Oceanside

I feel very lucky to be part of such an engaged, passionate (and fun!) family.

Here's a fun way to be engaged, yourself: take the OMG GOP WTF?! quiz sponsored by CREDO mobile (a great progressive cell phone company). This week, every right answer will send 10 cents to CODEPINK.

Here it is: the cover for My Life with the Lincolns! I wish I could figure out a way to share the entire cover so you could see the back and the flaps as well, but I haven't been able to convert the pdf into a jpg file. I absolutely love it. It's not what I had been visualizing (I had seen an image of Lincoln sitting in an Eames chair in my mind) but this is perfect; I love the groovy 60s (but also very current) vibe of the font, the colors, etc.

I got my first blurb, as well, from Lauren Baratz-Logsted, whose latest YA, Crazy Beautiful has just been released and looks fabulous (it's a contemporary retelling of Beauty and the Beast.) Here's the blurb:

Gayle Brandeis expertly marries a humorous manner to serious matter in MY LIFE WITH THE LINCOLNS, an original and timely Civil Rights Era novel about a young girl learning to take part in a cause greater than herself. It's a winner.

I received my first blurb for The Delta Girls, too, from the wonderful Jo-Ann Mapson:

Readers will fall in love with the women of The Delta Girls and cheer at the choices they make to keep their children safe. Brandeis transports the reader into California's verdant Delta country, where whales make wrong turns, where orchards bloom and must be picked in a matter of days, and reveals the lives of laborers and the industry behind them. I loved this book and wanted it to never end.

I'm so grateful for both blurbs!

As those of you who have followed this blog know, The Delta Girls has taken me on quite a wild ride. Well, the ride has taken a new turn--my second editor has left Ballantine/Random House, so now the book is with its third editor. I just spoke with her yesterday; she seems wonderful, and I trust I'll be in good hands, but it's all a bit discombobulating. At least the book hasn't been "orphaned" (such a sad term for books that lose their editors and no one else steps in to care for them); I am hopeful that my new editor will be the same sort of champion and advocate for the book that the two previous editors would have been. The manuscript is actually in production now--I should be receiving copyedits in a couple of weeks, and will hopefully get to see a cover image soon--so there isn't much true editing to be done at this point, but I definitely want to have someone in house rooting for the book. We'll see how it all unfolds. I'm sure there will be more unexpected twists and turns along the way!

When I was in NY on my honeymoon/familymoon, I had the chance to meet with my lovely editor at Ballantine, Lea. It was wonderful to be able to put a face to a name--she's just as sweet as she had seemed in her emails and phone calls (and she took us to an amazing lunch at a vegetarian restaurant called GOBO: Food for the Five Senses. I'm still drooling over the tea-smoked seitan and the cold honeydew soup!) She gave us a tour of the Random House building (which is designed to look like three books inside two book ends); the lobby is awe-inspiring, filled with floor to ceiling book shelves featuring first editions of books they've published, from Moby Dick and Tom Sawyer to more current award winners. It was humbling and exciting to feel myself as a small part of this grand tradition.



I had a chance to meet Lisa, the publicist I worked with for Self Storage, as well as a bunch of other people I've had contact with over the last couple of years, which was very cool. And I met Anna, the woman who will be designing the book cover for The Delta Girls; she was just finishing reading the novel, and I was so happy to hear how enthusiastic she is about it. She told me that had the book been named Pears, she might not have been able to use pears on the cover, since they like to go against expectation, but now that the title has changed, she can bring pears into the mix. She showed me that she had actually been looking at images of pears that day; she had a whole screen full of different pear pictures on her computer. She said she especially enjoyed working on food-related covers, which was wonderful to hear! Lea told me that Anna's her favorite designer there, and showed me a couple of the books they've worked on together. You can see them here. She said that she knows Anna will come up with the perfect cover for The Delta Girls, one that will capture the spirit of the book, even if the title doesn't. I can't wait to see it!

Look what I got in the mail--the first pass pages for My Life with the Lincolns! It's so cool to know what the book is going to look like on the inside. Supposedly the typeface is going to change a bit, but I love how the designer has used the Lincoln hat motif throughout the book. Yay!

I also have a potential title for what I still think of as Pears. I spoke with my editor at Ballantine today (who I'll get to meet in person next week--I can't wait!) and she said the copywriting team came up with The Delta Girls and the publisher is very excited about it. Now, this is completely different from anything that I would have come up with on my own. When I first heard it, something inside me withered a bit. I thought it sounded like a book about sorority sisters (when I brought this up with my editor, she said they hadn't considered that and she would talk to the team about it.) It doesn't have the juiciness, the poetry of the titles that you all so generously recommended (thanks again for all of your input!) In this economic climate, though, the publisher is looking for marketability, not poetry, and they think The Delta Girls will sell.

I certainly know how a title can hurt a book--even though I love The Book of Dead Birds as a title, many readers have told me that it was off putting, that they never would have picked up the book if they hadn't had to for a book club or a class, and I'm sure the title did limit its audience. Part of me cringes to think about my title being chosen by committee, being chosen with numbers, not language, in mind, but of course I'm grateful to be in this position and grateful that they want my book to reach as many people as possible.

I ended up writing a new scene that makes The Delta Girls work on a couple of levels (right now, it's just connected to the fact that most of the story takes place in the Sacramento Delta) and if my editor gives the okay to include the scene in the novel, it will definitely help me make peace with the title. The final decision has to be made by noon tomorrow (Eastern time)--I'll keep you posted. Thanks again for all of your help and support.

The New York Times recently featured a wonderful essay by Mark Dow, No Choice About the Terminology, in their new Happy Days blog (which explores what happiness means during times of economic downturn.) The essay made me happy indeed; it delves into people's quirky and precise relationships with language, and it helped me fall in love with words all over again. I especially appreciated these lines:

We write things down, and hold on to them, for many different reasons. To stop time and keep the “edge of marveling” honed, or at least handy. To create pockets of order. To prove to ourselves that we exist. To be able to immerse ourselves in whatever matters to us but is gone.

I love how both reading and writing can keep the "edge of marveling" alive in our lives; this essay certainly did that for me.

While I wrote about my wedding over at Mama, Redux yesterday, I thought this would be the right place to share the poetry we used during the ceremony.

Our four "chuppah sisters"--my sister Elizabeth, Michael's sister Mette, and our symbolic sisters, Nancy and Jenn, each stood at a corner of the chuppah (the ceremonial Jewish wedding canopy) and read this poem. I included their initials so you can see who read what part; it was so lovely having their four voices chiming all around us, at times joining in chorus:

The Chuppah
by Marge Piercy

E The chuppah stands on four poles.
M The home has its four corners.
J The chuppah stands on four poles.
N The marriage stands on four legs.
ALL Four points loose the winds
that blow on the walls of the house,
M the south wind that brings the warm rain,
N the east wind that brings the cold rain,
E the north wind that brings the cold sun
J and the snow, the long west wind
bringing the weather off the far plains.

ALL Here we live open to the seasons.
M Here the winds caress and cuff us
contrary and fierce as bears.
N Here the winds are caught and snarling
in the pines, a cat in a net clawing
breaking twigs to fight loose.
J Here the winds brush your face
soft in the morning as feathers
that float down from a dove’s breast

E Here the moon sails up out of the ocean
dripping like a just washed apple.
Here the sun wakes us like a baby.
ALL Therefore the chuppah has no sides.

M It is not a box.
N It is not a coffin.
J It is not a dead end.
ALL Therefore the chuppah has no walls.
M We have made a home together
open to the weather of our time.
We are mills that turn in the winds of struggle
converting fierce energy into bread.

J The canopy is the cloth of our table
where we share fruit and vegetables
of our labor, where our care for the earth
comes back and we take its body in ours.

N The canopy is the cover of our bed
where our bodies open their portals wide,
where we eat and drink the blood
of our love, where the skin shines red
as a swallowed sunrise and we burn
in one furnace of joy molten as steel
and the dream is flesh and flower.

E O my love O my love we dance
under the chuppah standing over us
like an animal on its four legs,
like a table on which we set our love
as a feast, like a tent
under which we work
not safe but no longer solitary
in the searing heat of our time.

Later in the ceremony, my anam cara, Catherine, read this poem:

Honey Locust, by Mary Oliver

Who can tell how lovely in June is the
honey locust tree, or why
a tree should be so sweet and live
in this world? Each white blossom
on a dangle of white flowers holds one green seed—
a new life. Also each blossom on a dangle of flowers
holds a flask
of fragrance called Heaven, which is never sealed.
The bees circle the tree and dive into it. They are crazy
with gratitude. They are working like farmers. They are as
happy as saints. After awhile the flowers begin to
wilt and drop down into the grass. Welcome
shines in the grass.

Every year I gather
handfuls of blossoms and eat of their mealiness; the honey
melts in my mouth, the seeds make me strong,
both when they are crisp and ripe, and even at the end
when their petals have turned dull yellow.

So it is
if the heart has devoted itself to love, there is
not a single inch of emptiness. Gladness gleams
all the way to the grave.

Marge Piercy and Mary Oliver are two of my very favorite poets, so it was wonderful to be able to incorporate their rich, wise words into the ceremony, and to have them read by such beloved friends and family.

I just posted a bunch of personal news over at Mama, Redux (a boy! a wedding!), but thought I'd share some writerly news here. I recently found out that My Life with the Lincolns, my first YA novel, is going to be released as an audio book when the book comes out in February! I'm so excited--none of my other books have been recorded in this format before. I can't wait to see who they'll choose to give voice to my character Mina. You can actually pre-order the audio book already on Amazon, which is so cool. I hope to see potential covers for the book soon--I will keep you posted.

Still no news on the Pears-title front, but I'll keep you posted on that, as well. Thanks again for all of your great suggestions and support!

Hi everyone! Sorry for my long absence--between the Antioch residency (amazing), wedding planning (fun but hectic), starting the summer session at UCR and other various life-related distractions, I haven't had time to blog. I hope you are having a wonderful summer!

I heard from my PEARS editor yesterday. I guess I can't really call her my PEARS editor anymore because Ballantine wants me to change the name of the novel. I'd grown very attached to PEARS (I'm even going to have marzipan pears on my wedding cake), but I know how important it is to have a resonant title, so I've been listing potential alternatives, and would love some input. I am hoping the title will speak, even subtly, to both threads of the story--those following the mother and daughter who end up at a pear orchard in the Sacramento Delta, as well as the pairs figure skating team bound for the Olympics. And of course I want something that will inspire people to pick up the book (Ballantine thought that PEARS wasn't evocative enough.) These are my top picks so far:

--How to Pick the Perfect Pear
--Lifting
--Compulsory Moves
--Picking Pears
--Pear Season
--Pears on Ice
--Ripening (or maybe Ripeness or Ripe)

Let me know what you think, or if you have any other suggestions. If I come up with other top picks, I'll let you know

I have a pub date now, which is exciting--July 10, 2010, almost exactly one year away. The book will be released as an original trade paperback instead of in hardcover first. With the economy the way it is, this makes a lot of sense to me (USA Today featured an article titled Trade paperbacks thrive in tough times earlier this year.) Most readers I know tend to wait until a paperback is released to buy a book, so hopefully this will bode well for the novel; my editor told me that if a hardcover doesn't do well (and none of mine have), bookstores are less likely to order many copies when the paperback comes out a year later--original trade paperbacks have more of a clean slate. So we shall see how this goes!

Thanks in advance for your help--I love the idea of this being a collective experience...

This Saturday, June 13 at 2pm, I will be reading at the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. I was graciously invited by festival co-founder Heidi Durrow, whose novel, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, is the most recent Bellwether Prize winner and will be published next February by Algonquin. It will be lovely to meet another Bellwether sister, and to be part of a day dedicated to celebrating multicultural stories. I have to admit, I do find myself struggling a bit with not feeling worthy of speaking at this event, since my own roots are pretty homogeneous, and all the old internal voices that told me I had no right to write The Book of Dead Birds, etc. are rising up inside me again, but I'm trying to quiet them so I can bring an open, humble, non-defensive heart to this beautiful, open-hearted festival.

Happy 70th birthday, Mom!

To honor my mom's birthday, I put together this little video (well, I should say Michael actually did most of the technical putting together.) As you can hear, whatever vocal training I received for Annie Get Your Gun has flown out the door, but it was fun to sing a song to my mom that she sang to me when I was little, and such a treat to go through all of these old photographs.I hope this whole year will be a very sweet one for you, Mom (and I look forward to your own movie finding its way into the world!)

As I was driving to campus today, I burst into tears when NPR announced that Prop 8 had been upheld by the California Supreme Court. Such a dark day for our sunny state. The Courage Campaign remixed their moving Fidelity video in response to the news; you can see it here (and click here to help get it on the air):

Today is the National Media Day of Action on Afghanistan--people around the country are blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, calling radio shows, writing op-eds and letters to the editor, etc. to educate the public about Afghanistan and call for the end of war there. My contribution to the day, On Afghanistan: Compassion and Action through Storytelling, is currently up on PinkTank, CODEPINK's blog. You can find many other National Media Day posts there, as well. Please use today to inform yourself about Afghanistan (and spread the word with your own blogs and tweets!)

If you don't have time to click on my post, please do click on a link I mention within the post for the Afghan Women's Writing Project, an online school my friend, the amazing Masha Hamilton, started to give Afghan women a way to develop their voices. I will be teaching a class online there later this year, and am so thrilled that I'll be able to help Afghan women--who are so often silenced--get their stories out into the world.

I think I've found the blog of my dreams, Literary Food Porn: Descriptions of Food from Literature. Food, books, who could ask for more? I can even remember drooling over the picture they use for their banner as a child (although I can't remember which book it's from--The Country Mouse and the City Mouse, perhaps?) Thanks to Maud Newton for the link!

I've lived in Riverside for almost 19 years, but didn't know we had wild finches in the area until just about a month ago. I was walking to the post office and noticed a swarm of small yellow birds around a feeder in a neighbor's yard.

"Those look like finches," I thought, amazed, and took a moment to enjoy their bright darting and flapping before I continued walking. A few days later, Michael and I were at a local nursery, and I saw a display of "finch socks" for sale--long mesh bags filled with thistle seed. I immediately grabbed one, and we hung it in our back yard when we got home.

The sock dangled forlornly for a couple of days--I worried that the finches would never find it, that the seeds were duds, that I had hung it in a bad spot--but eventually the birds caught on. At first just a couple of sparrow-looking birds with orange heads (I still haven't identified them)--but soon the yard was alive with goldfinches, their yellow feathers catching the sun. This morning, at least a dozen of them were swooping around the feeder, taking turns, scaring each other away, circling back for more.

When I was a kid, my family bought two finches and kept them in a bamboo cage in the corner of our dining room. We named them Romeo and Juliet, but later changed their names to Romiette and Julio after Romeo laid a few tiny eggs. We were so excited when the babies hatched; unfortunately, the parents were not. Romiette pecked a couple of the babies to death and started to attack Julio, as well. Traumatized, we consulted with the pet store and at their suggestion, bought another cage and gave Julio and the surviving baby their own place. They did okay for a while, but somehow I was never able to love our little pets the same way that I had before the carnage. I'm happy that now I can love finches again, in all their wild and greedy glory.

A bird feeder is such a simple thing, but it gives me a real thrill to be able to see and feed these creatures that I didn't even realize were my neighbors until just recently. It makes me wonder what else has been around me for 19 years and I haven't had my eyes open enough to notice...

Please sign our petition at codepinkalert.org/torture to urge Nancy Pelosi to support an investigation that will expose the torture and abuse committed in our name and hold the perpetrators accountable. Thank you!

Yesterday, Michael and I went to the Inland Agency Peace Festival, a lovely event centered around a local after school arts program called A Sense of Peace. The students at Santiago High School created several life-sized canvas people, stiffened with wax, each one representing a different issue--women's rights, animal rights, school bullying, etc. A very articulate young woman, one of the students in the program, led us around the exhibit and explained the different techniques and intentions used for each figure (the animal rights one, for example, was covered with scratch marks made from forks dipped in paint and charcoal, as if animals were trying to claw their way to a better future.) I especially loved how each figure's belly was open, donated items spilling out--these students weren't just exploring social issues through their art; they were also working to make a real difference in the community. So the women's issues figure was filled with clothing for women and children that will be donated to a local women's shelter, the environmental rights figure was filled with food that is going to be donated to a local food bank, etc. I always love to see how people are finding ways to bridge art and social change, and it makes me very happy to know such projects are happening in local schools.

I have some big news--much to my shock, I recently found out I am pregnant(!!!) I plan to chronicle the experience at a new blog, http://mamaredux.blogspot.com; I'll continue to post here (in my whim-driven, sporadic way), but if you'd like to follow this new adventure, please join me over at Mama, Redux.

I've been meaning to let you know about this lovely new anthology for a while, but wanted to wait until my mom and daughter had a chance to read the essay I contributed. The editor of Because I Love Her, Nicki Richesin had invited women authors to write pieces about what we had learned from our mothers and what we hoped to pass along to our daughters; "Poison Pens" explores how my mom taught me the power of the written word, and how I want to encourage my daughter to claim her true boldness (hopefully without burdening her with expectation.) The piece veers into some sensitive territory, and brought up a lot of emotion when I shared it with my mom, but it led to some deep and important conversation, for which I am grateful. And ultimately the piece is a tribute to her, and I know she knows that, even if a couple of lines rub her the wrong way. So thank you, Mom, for being so understanding, and thank you again for showing me how powerful the pen can be. Thank you, too, to Hannah for accepting the essay with such a generous spirit. I am honored to be part of this moving collection.

I also have been meaning to post a link to my short story, Generations, which first appeared on WomenWriters.net in January. I shared this story during my Rhapsodomancy reading a couple of months ago, and think I may have freaked some of the audience out a bit. It's a funky little story.

Thanks to Google Alert, I learned today that The Book of Dead Birds was one of the books featured in this great article: Environmental Activism Fiction Reflects Troubling Truths. It's very cool to be mentioned in the same breath as Edward Abbey and John Nichols and Ruth Ozeki, plus I love that the author Kate Skinner calls my novel "a lyrical, edgy little book, angular, imaginative and pure." She writes "These four titles were selected to highlight in review for the way that each deals with environmental activism. Through the eloquent expression of truth in story, we explore those difficult, profound existential questions: what is personal responsibility, what is the link between what we do and what that does to the planet and ultimately: how do we live as greater (better) human beings?" These are issues I want to continue to explore in my work (and hope I do to some extent in Pears...)