To celebrate Playing with Dynamite’s publication day, Real Simple magazine published a new essay. I like to think of it as a sequel to the New York Times Modern Love essay that appeared last year (and which was adapted from part of my book). You know, the what-happens-after-you-get-married part. My title for the Real Simple piece was “Meet Me in the Lake.” And I have no idea who those ridiculously happy people in the photo are. But I have a lot of affection for this piece, and I believe in the ideas it promotes. It’s a playful and silly essay, but it’s serious, too. And who know? It could even save your marriage.

Link to Real Simple essay here.

Link to Modern Love essay here.

 

On my publication day, Lit Hub published an excerpt of Playing with Dynamite: A Memoir. It’s the set up of the book, the first few pages of Chapter 1, after the prologue. The rest of the book, I promise, is not as sad as this. And the end of the book is happy. Here is the link.

I have always loved reading the self-interviews in The Nervous Breakdown. They’re always funny, always cheeky, always a little meta. So I was thrilled to be able to do my own. It’s so much fun to both ask and answer at the same time. Here’s how it begins:

You just published a book called Playing with Dynamite: A Memoir. Why did you decide to write a book about yourself? Did you do jail time or recover from addiction or walk on the moon or something?

First of all, I never intended to write memoir. Like many writers, I started with autobiographical fiction. I wrote a novel about a teenage girl growing up in Detroit who embarks on a quest to find out who her father was and how he died. It’s remarkable how many memoirists say they started by writing their story as fiction, but it didn’t work, so they finally had to tell the whole truth. That’s what happened with me.

 

You still didn’t answer my question.

About walking on the moon? No, I never did. Yet I like to think that my ordinariness is a plus, that everyone who has ever had a father can find their lives reflected in my story.

 

To read the rest, follow this link.

An excerpt from Playing with Dynamite: A Memoir appear in the same issue, here.

I was delighted to talk to Lisa Ellison for The Huffington Post because, as a memoir writer herself, she understands the complexity of writing about memory. We discuss my desire to get inside my characters’ heads as a way to gain empathy for them, the pros and cons of imagining scenes, and the need to differentiate between what we know for sure and what we can only conjecture. To real the whole interview, click here.

Trudy Hale, Editor of Streetlight Magazine and director of the writing retreat Porches (a lovely, magical place, where I finished the final-final edits of my book) was gracious enough to interview me about memory and myth making. Trudy is also a fabulous memoir writer herself, and it was fascinating to talk to her about craft. You can read the full interview here.

An excerpt of Playing with Dynamite also appeared in the same issue. To read, follow this link.