The first ever Putting Your Passion Into Print Pitch Off was packed beyond capacity, 150 people crammed into the world famous mecca of books The Strand Bookstore on a chilly Wednesday night. People were lined up hours before to get their shot at making their book dreams come true. A panel of publishing titans: Larry Kirshbaum, Chairman & CEO, Time-Warner, James Levine, Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, Mauro DiPreta, VP & Editorial Dir., Harper Ent., Annik LaFarge, Senior Editor, Crown Publishing, Karen Holt, Deputy Editor, Publisher’s Weekly, evaluated 30 book pitches by authors-in-waiting. Funny, informative, inspirational, it was a success on every level imaginable. In fact, several of the people who pitched are being pursued by agents and publishers even as we speak. Based on the phenomenal success of this event, we are going to do them all over the country. See you there then! Thanks to everyone at the Strand, and Workman Books. David Henry Sterry & Arielle Eckstut.
Hubba Hubba Ding Ding Ding - wot a weekend. Rocking Litquake, Northern California Independent Booksellers Association in Oaktown, and Booksmith at the Haight. I love Booksmith, it’s such a great bookstore, and the Haight is my old stomping ground, when I was first starting as a stand-up and living on Top Ramen, making money as a soccer referee. Plus everyone is so nice to us there. AND, you get author trading cards when you do a reading there. SO now I have two, one solo, and one with me and Arielle. Thomas Gladysz is so kind and gracious, he’s the guy in charge of events. And Gary Frank, owner and founder of the joint, actually showed up for the event, which was way cool, the man is a book God, and he gave us massive quotes for Putting Your Passion Into Print. The only problem was that not enough people showed up. I am getting very frustrated, I know there are so many writers out there, and people in general for that matter, who wanna get a book published, but i am able to only reach a teeny tiny fraction of them. It’s maddening frankly. And I don’t know exactly what to do about it. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Maybe we’ll go set up a booth on 4th St. in Berkeley and take our act out amongst the people. On the brighter side, Los Yankees won, with Mariano throwing 2 innings of Sandman, lightsout cutters, so that dream still lives. On the darker side, Pakistan is suffering again with yet another natural disaster. Mother Nature is clearly pissed off, and who can blaim her? On the brighter side, it’s a fucking glorious day. On the darker side my cousin the convicted rapist is rotting in jail in Florida and the Niners got blown out and away yesterday. Alex Smith looked like, well, a rookie. Rookie QBs in the NFL have this funny way of throwing a pass, followed immediate by that OOPS moment, where they recognize just after they’ve thrown it that an impossibly huge, impossibly fast guy is closing from impossibly far away, and is going to intercept their pass, that no one would have touched in college, and he’s going to waltz unmolested into the end zone. Which is exactly what happened yesterday. O well. Tonight we’re doing the last stop on the tour, Berkeley at Cody’s on 4th ST. I’m happy.
I just got home from the Litquake Writers on Drugs show, it was outrrrrrrrrrageous, the place was packed, jacked and wacked, 200 litquakin’ loons crammed into the Edinburgh Castle, where the ghost of Irvine Welch pukes in the bathroom, and oh man the joint jumped, rumbled, rattled and rolled, 9.8 on the Richter Scale. Alan Black the masterful master of ceremonies, was the very model of Scottish hospitality, all nettles and good cheer and the blackest of humor, invoking the dead who’d perished in the Castle from overindulgence and intemperence. What a wag that Alan is, if you’ve never met him, do yourself a favor, introduce yourself at the Caslte and have a blather, he is a true Olde School wit. BTW, Litquke was actually conceived at the Castle, in the front room, i’m not sure what bodily fluids were exchanged but the fetus was made and life began there. From such humble beginnings, Litquake has become such a huge amazing phenomenon. The program this year is amazing. Every different kind of writer and reader. Beth Lisik, Tamim Ansary, Michelle Tea, and on and on. I was so sad to miss Howl Night, but we were doing an event at Booksmith for Putting Your Passion Into Print. Howl was one of the first poems that I read when I arrived at Reed College as an 18 years old, and it was a revelation to me. Epic, sexy, bursting, political, personal, exquisitely written. We were given the assignemnt of writing a poem in the style of a poet, and I chose Ginsburg and Howl. I did a Howl parody, I worked all night on it, I went over and over it, wrote my own opus that went on for pages and pages, and I found I just got his rhythm and it flowed like elderberry wine out of me, intoxicating me, making me feel alive, I tell you ALIVE!!! So I was deeply sad not to be a part of all that Howl business the first night of Litquake, I heard there were 1,000 people there. 1,000. But I was very happy to be at the Castle for Drug Night.
I’m happy that the Bush house of deadly cards shows signs of collapsing. Tom Delay, that evil vile fuck, is finally getting his. How’s that contract with America working out for ya, Tom? And I pray that Rove is next to go, that Goebels of a dastardly genius.
So we’re back from the on-the-road section of our Passion tour, 15 cities in 19 days, man it kicked my ass but good. I came home so sleep deprived I was cross-eyed. I sleepwalked around the house for a few days, hacking and sneezing. Then I was able to sleep 10 hours the last three nights and I finally feel like myself again. Holy shnikey it was brutal. But fun. There were equal Rock Star and What the Fuck Am I Doing With My Life? moments. But in the end it was a tremendous education. And my God there are a lot of people out there who want to write books. I’m excited aobut reading at Edinburgh Castle on Saturday for Litquake, I think the place will be rocking. I’m looking forward to meeting Kate Braverman, we are both in the SF Noir anthology. And of course it’s always an honor and privilidge to be sharing the stage with Michelle Tea, superstar. We’ve been on lots of bills together, and I never get tired of listening to her. Tomorrow we’re doing Putting Your Passion Into Print at Booksmith, and I really look forward to getting my author trading card, that is one of the highlights of my career in authordom. Then Monday we’re at Cody’s in Berkeley, and those people are super good. Life feels good. I just wish my mom wasn’t dead.
My mom loved National Public Radio. Lived for it. Died with it. She was always calling me to tell me about some fabulous story she’d heard on This American Life, or some new Peruvian musical group she thought I’d love, or some unbelievable new writer Terry Gross interviewed. That was my mom all over. She loved getting all excited about things, and sharing her joie de vivre with those near and dear to her. It wasn’t enough that she got jazzed, she wanted you to be jazzed, too. It is a terrible thing that the world has been deprived of the excitement she generated on a daily basis.
So when I got an e-mail from a producer at NPR asking if I’d like to read a piece I wrote about my mom’s sudden, gut thumping death and the resulting grief, I was overjoyed. Then plunged into yet more grief, as I imagined how excited she would have been, how she would have told all her friends, how proud she would have been, how she would have spread all the love around thickly. That night I had a dream in which we were all sitting around playing cards, which was one of her favorite things to do. And she was her usual self, concentrating so hard on the cards that her lower lip curled up over her upper, giggling like a kid, smiling and laughing and telling everyone about me and NPR. What a happy dream. Up to that point I had been unable to shake the image of her on her death bed, head on fire from radiation, unable to speak, scared and wracked, gasping for air when her spirit was barely even there anymore but that sturdy Geordie body just not giving up the ghost. I was horrified to think that this would be the image I would have of my mother for the rest of my life. It was a depressed prospect, and seemed the opposite of honoring the laughing, joyful, fierce, thoughtful, fearless person she was. But that dream seemed to break the ice, and after I awoke with a smile, my images of my mom changed to happy ones.
When I went into the studio, the lovely and talented producer, Mark Trautwig, was so nice and generous. He too has suffered. Sharing our stories made me feel so much better. So not alone in me in my pain, a solo freak drowning in my agony. The recording itself was so easy. I did what I thought was a warm-up take, then saw the technician wrapping things up. I wanted another take. Before I could ask, they discovered I was 6 seconds long. So I got my second take, and as I did it I could really feel my mom with me, filling up the room, flowing through me, into the mic, and into the giant recording device. I was all lit up from the inside, the words flowed with no effort, and by the time I was done, I was floating in ecstasy. The second take was exactly the right amount of time. I’m including it here if you wanna take a listen. It’s only 2 minutes. Exacty 2 minutes.
http://www.kqed.org/pgmArchive/RD62
One of my mother’s goals when she got sick was to go to New York and see “Spamalot” on Broadway. She was a great theater and Monty Python lover, both of which she passed on to me and my sibles. She just loved the Python’s wacky brand of saucy, sassy, silly highbrow lowbrow comedy. In fact, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” became her theme song. Sadly, she died before she could see it. But we all decided, what the hell, we’ll trek to New York and see it in her honor. So me and Arielle, brother Craig, his wife Steph, their kids Ruth and Sam, and her life partner Judy went to watch King Arthur battle rude Frenchmen and a killer bunny. My mom loved to laugh, and this show was hysterical, in the best sense of the word. As the audience tittered, snickered, chuckled, guffawed, bellowed, and roared in laughter, I could hear my mom laughing with them, with me, with us.
And during the grand finale, when the whole cast comes out and sings “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”, while the rest of the audience applauded, I burst into tears of sorrow and joy. And when I looked down our row, my whole family was crying, while the rest of the packed theater was clapping and laughing. I think my mom, would have liked that.
Holy Shneikey! 15 cities in 19 days. Putting Your Passion Into Print, the road show, has just been to Phoenix, Tempe, Denver, Dallas, Austin, Kennesaw, Atlanta, Charlotte, Philly, New York City, Dayton, Minneapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. Often times we’d have a 6am flight out of one city, go to 15 bookstores shmooze and sign books, then do an event in another, then fly out at 10pm and land in yet another city. It’s not that it’s like coal mining, which killed my granddad, but it is so exhausting being charming over and over again. But above all, it’s the sleep deprivation that gets to you. You can’t even remember who you are, never mind where you are. But man, it was a blast. My favorite was doing our show at the original Barnes & Noble on 5th Ave and 18th St. in New York New York, so nice they named it twice, the city that never sleeps, where, if you make it, you can make it anywhere. It was standing room only, packed to the gills and the tits, our editor the fab Suzie was there, as was our uber-publicist Nicki, and we rocked the joint. Best news of all was that ours was the best selling book in the ENTIRE STORE for the last month. Worst event: a store where they advertised the wrong day for our show, and 1 (ONE!) person showed up. He did get a hellofa show though. Great news is that we are doing a Pitchathon at the Strand Bookstore in NYC on Oct 26, with an All-star cast of characters, the head of Warner Books, Editor-in-Chief of some other joint, it’s gonna be soooo cool. We’re gonna use it as our pilot for a reality show The Great American Pitch Off, where anyone in America gets the chance to pitch their book to a team of book people. It’s like American Idol without the Simon. My favorite tunes on the road were: "Louise" by Bonnie Raitt, "Ellis Unit One" by Steve Earle, and "Smells Like Funk" by the Black Eyed Peas. Because I try, as they espouse, to keep it stinky.
There’s a cool new book that has just come out - it’s an anthology called SF Noir, by a wonderful publisher, Akashic, and edited by the handsome and talented Peter Maravelis. It’s featured on the front page of the book section of the SF Chronicle today. "…stories really do pop…frenetically powerful…a spooky tour de force… The strongest of the lot could be the closing story, David Henry Sterry’s ‘Confessions of a Sex Addict’… http://www.akashicbooks.com/SFnoir.htm
