And the winner of the ANWAGTHAP competition is…Janine! (Janine, email me your address and I’ll get the memoir in the post in the next few days.)
Thank you Cheryl, Katie, Jean, Karina, Rory, Anonymous, Janine, Woody and Lee Anne. And, over on MySpace, Antigone, Ciaran and Ellen. They were lovely stories. Love is everywhere.
Coming up soon: posts on submarines (sort of), Aud living inside others, dogs in medieval times and other fun (including, hopefully, some search term frivolity). Meanwhile, I hope everyone’s having a marvy week. Mine’s been puzzling but good.
Nicola Griffith 
Congrats, Janine!
Woo Hoo Janine!
karina, linda–I just wish I could give everyone a prize…
This blog is a prize for everyone. I have 3 copies of your Party already packed and waiting to be distributed in Mexico this Christmas. More would be total decadence. Not that I’m against it. Book decadence is always welcome in this household.
Holy cow!I totally didn’t expect this! What a great surprise.I don’t know what to say, but thank you!.GRIN.Let me know if you didn’t get my email, Nicola.
karina, book decadence is good decadence. I wonder what all those recipients will think of ANWAGTHAP…janine, I got the email. Book will be on the way next week. I hope it makes you chortle.
They’re going to love it. Two of them have read <>Ammonite<> and <>Slow River<> and the other has read those two plus <>The Blue Place<>.
Ah. Very cool. Let’s hope the music doesn’t send them shrieking into the night…
One of them had a punk band when she was younger, before she got lured into singing < HREF="http://shetranslates.com/2008/between-flesh-and-flower/" REL="nofollow">more mellow stuff<>. But I’m sure her punk/rock soul will remain with her forever. I still have the tape where she howls and screams about scratching faces and eating entrails and such.
I just read your blog post. I’m sorry to say I never practised my singing much. That is, I sang all the time, but it was like breathing to me, just something I did without paying attention. The conscious honing…I didn’t learn to do that until I started writing. Sigh.
I think singing the way one breathes is very much in line with the kind of music you were making. I can imagine how writing would have changed your singing career if you had remained on stage. Your prose comes across as being <>so aware<>. I remember spending months thinking about Aud and her heartbeat, Aud and her breathing, Aud and her body. Aud is a universe of self-awareness. It must be hard for an author to keep that confined to the page. I can bet my Mac that such level of attention permeates your entire life.
I drive K crazy, sometimes, with the awareness thing: always noticing stuff, then making up theories to explain them. It’s fun–for me :)Aud was a very handy mouthpiece for my wacky hypotheses (mostly untestable, but, hey, that’s part of the fun–just making shit up).
Poor Kelley. I drive Esmeralda crazy, too. She says I need to come up with strange theories about everything. But I feel like life is a huge puzzle inviting us to shift the pieces around and try to see which ones fit where.Once, I did have a girlfriend who was very good at keeping my thoughts on a leash. As soon as I’d start talking about something “deep” she’d stop me and ask, “Am I a psychologist?” No. “Why are you telling me this, then?” Okay. “Let’s go rollerblading.” Okay. We were seventeen, so I guess it was fitting. She showed me I could push the theory-maker into a little corner if I needed to. Indiana took so much pride in saying she was an airhead, which I know she wasn’t.
When I was 17 I didn’t talk to my girlfriend at all. We had much better things to do…
Ah, yes, there was also that. I called it The Silencing Kiss. Which was usually followed by the better things you mention. ;-)