Ms. Autumn Woman flees the city once more to frolic amongst the leaves.

This #selfie is a #failie. I don't care, I love it.

This year I was lucky enough to manage to squeeze not one but TWOOOOO October weekends up in the Catskills: one with my husband, and one with my girlfriends. Our girls' weekends are always heavy on cooking (it helps when one of your friends is a professional chef) and card games and general nerdery, and this one was no exception. We rented a beautiful little farmhouse in West Hurley, and went for rambles around town and took a spectacular late afternoon cruise on the Hudson.

I'm not somebody who enjoys the bone-rattling chill of winter, but I love the way that fall weather is cold - enough to make you want to burrow into your favorite wooly sweater, but you know the whole time that you'll warm up as soon as you step inside. And if you can walk around with a cup of hot cider to keep your hands warm, all the better. And yes, I absolutely recognize that my affinity for all of the special rituals of fall makes me Ms. Autumn Woman. At least I own it. ;)

Best friends, tube tops and the hidden romance of Viking helmets

 She's going to be pissed at me for posting a photo that reveals her to be sub-5'4".*

*(I'm not a giant, though; I just hadn't given up on my shoes yet.)

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the wedding of my very best friend on earth - I hope you guys all have a friend like this. If she's a friend from college, she's the one where the entire first year you knew each other is a blur of irresponsibly late-night (and in our case, inexcusably sober, because we were both too square to drink) conversations about everything and nothing. The one with whom you have so many inside jokes that you have to remind each other where half of them originated from. Even if you haven't lived in the same place in years, she's your first phone call when you're twisting in circles over a crisis that nobody else will understand. She's the only person on earth who calls you by that appalling nickname (the only person permitted to do it, for that matter). And even if you have a partner by now, and even if that partner of yours is as steady and strong as we all dream they will be, this friend's presence in your life will always be the very definition of the phrase "having your back."

I do have a shirt on in this photo. It was a tube top.

It was not one of my better decisions.

You may have heard what they say about flat-chested girls, strapless items, and gravity.

So, a year ago yesterday she married the love of her life. All the usual things were true when they got together - after 12 or 13 years of growling at stories about asshats, I could hear the difference in the way she talked about him, and I could see the difference in the way he treated her. Unlike the asshats, he actually deserves her. He is steady and strong, and kind, but also ridiculous in a completely essential way. KT and I do not last long around people who behave like normal adults.

This is from my wedding, which was two weeks after theirs.

He is wearing a dinner napkin and a Viking hat that he stole from the photobooth. She is gazing at him adoringly.

That should really tell you everything you need to know.

Looking back, I especially love this photo of the two of us, from 2005:

We were in LA for another friend's bachelorette party, and we spent the afternoon driving at random through the Hollywood Hills. We stopped at this lookout point to admire the view, and decided to take pictures of ourselves against the backdrop. I don't even remember what cracked us up, but I love that we were laughing so hard that we totally could not pull it together for this photo. We were 26/27 and didn't have the faintest idea what would happen with the guys we were dating at the time (I married mine, a long-ass time later; she kept looking for a few more years before she met Viking Helmet), but it really didn't seem to matter all that much. Whatever did or didn't happen with the guys, we'd always have each other.

Still, I'm so deeply heart-glad that she found him. That helmet wouldn't look the same on anybody else.

Antagonizing the Mounties, and other adventures: a photo essay

Every summer, my girlfriends and I drive for an almost infinite number of hours to visit another dear buddy of ours, who lives waaaaaay upstate on the St. Lawrence River. And I do mean directly on the river - this is the view from her porch:

And that is Canada on the other side.

In the 10 (ten!) (holy shit!) years we have been doing this, there has always been some sort of misadventure. Horrific traffic jams, late-night GPS misfires, roadwork lasting for the entire state of Pennsylvania, and so forth. This year was no different.

We thought we'd gotten our bad luck out of the way quickly, after it took us 45 minutes to go the five blocks from my office to the entrance of the Holland Tunnel. Giddy with excitement over our impending four days of bad behavior and fattening food, we decided to stop for dinner at McDonald's. And then, as we zoomed back toward the interstate, there was a regrettable incident involving a possible slight degree of over-excitement about a bag of fries, an unlucky twist of the wheel, and a diabolical concrete curb on a no-shoulder road in the very fine state of New Jersey. Our front right tire was the casualty.

Which led to this:

Artist's Impression of Four Women with Seven Post-Secondary Degrees Between Them,

All of Whom Rarely Drive, Figuring out How to Change a Tire

and also to this:

My friend Liz predicted, when we first pulled over our wounded vehicle on this deserted side street,

that the subsequent events would unfold as either a slasher flick or a porno;

I think this photo should make it clear which way things were leaning.

But a couple of hours, two stolen landscaping rocks, and one musclebound cop later, we were back on our way. With 200 miles to drive in three hours on a donut spare.

And we did it. We coined the phrase "but also, still drive," as encouragement for a flustered driver hunting with mounting urgency for the headlight switch on a rapidly darkening stretch of interstate, but we did it. And these were our rewards:

Oh, and the Mounties? Yeah, that happened. On our last night, our friend's mom took us for an amazing sunset boat ride down the river, and as she made a wide U-turn to head back toward the house, a Canadian border patrol boat flashed its lights at us and pulled up alongside. I prepared to be boarded, but they just asked us probing questions like why had we been motoring along and then all of a sudden popped a u-ey and headed the other way? (Answer: we live on the east side of the river, and after traveling south, the only way to return to the house via boat is to pop a u-ey.) And they were so relentlessly polite and Canadian about it all that we couldn't really get too grumpy with them.

But still, I wasn't bold enough to take a photo of them while we were in sight of them, lest they think I really was a terrorist casing entry points into our fair northern neighbors. So I waited till they were a safe distance away. That little blob on the horizon in the photo below, friends, is a vessel of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

And thus ended another glorious ritual of summer. I have come away happier, fatter, and confident of success in any future speed drills involving locating and dislodging the spare tire in Satan's Minivan a 2012 Dodge Grand Caravan.

Massachusetts and other beautiful things

I'm neck-deep in my pre-submission edits at the moment, but last week I escaped with my buds for a long weekend in Northwest Mass, where I went to college. I had fondly pictured patio grilling and guzzling Corona in a warm summer breeze, but Massachusetts had other ideas:

MassMoCA

But that's okay. The purpose of the trip wasn't really Corona, it was research. I'm setting my second book in this lush, chilly mountain valley, and I needed to remind myself what it looked like and smelled like and sounded like. Which is, like this:

Rte 43 after the rain

In between rainstorms, I found what I wanted: a house with a story. I see story in that light that's on, and in the two open casements of those dormer windows:

Williamstown house

I also saw art, literally. In the rambling 19th-century industrial buildings of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

MassMoCA

I was an English major in college, but also a late-to-the-party art history student: after a junior year in Europe exposed me to all the wonders there, I came back and took seven art classes my senior year. I love art and architecture almost as much as I love writing, and I'm damn fortunate to have a day job in a field that makes my pulse race. Just as there will never come a time when I don't love buildings, I'll never stop loving images: creating them, analyzing them, poring over their beauty and magic.

MassMoCA

And that, most of all, is what this weekend was about for me. Digging back into art, and images, and museums, because that that's where my heart is going with this second book.

detail, Piero della Francesca, Clark Institute, Williamstown MA

Better Fiction through Songwriting: Kacey Musgraves

I was hanging out with a dear friend recently, helping her pick out a couch for her apartment (this is the one way in the world in which I am useful to my friends, unlike my friend the veterinarian or my friend the chef), and she played me some songs by great new country artist Kacey Musgraves. "You're going to love her," my friend said. "I just saw an interview with her where she said one of her favorite artists is John Prine."

And boy, can you tell. Not just from the song whose chorus goes, "my idea of heaven is to burn one with John Prine"--although, yes, Kacey, I agree with you--but in her incisive portrait of small town claustrophobia, "Merry Go 'Round:"

If you ain't got two kids by 21,

You're probably gonna die alone

At least that's what tradition told you.

And it don't matter if you don't believe,

Come Sunday morning you best be there

In the front row, like you're s'posed to.

Same hurt in every heart.

Same trailer, different park.

Mama’s hooked on Mary Kay

Brother’s hooked on Mary Jane

And Daddy's hooked on Mary two doors down.

Mary Mary quite contrary,

We get bored so we get married

And just like dust we settle in this town.

On this broken merry go 'round and 'round and 'round we go,

Where it stops nobody knows...

And it ain't slowin' down, this merry go 'round...

We think the first time's good enough,

So we hold on to high school love,

Say we won't end up like our parents.

Tiny little boxes in a row,

Ain't what you want it's what you know,

Just happy in the shoes you're wearin'.

Same checks we're always cashin',

To buy a little more distraction.

-chorus-

Mary Mary quite contrary,

We're so bored until we're buried.

And just like dust we settle in this town.

On this broken merry go 'round...

Merry go 'round...

Jack and Jill went up the hill,

Jack burned out on booze and pills,

And Mary had a little lamb,

Mary just don't give a damn no more.

One thing I love in particular about this song is the repetition of the three "hooked" lines: two short lines, rhyming, same rhythmic pattern, then punctuated by the longer, non-rhyming line that drives home the saddest idea of all three. I think rhythm is one of the most important things we can pay attention to, as writers. You often see the advice to read your writing aloud, and while that's partly to help you make sure nothing sounds stilted or awkward, it's also encouraging you to be aware of the flow you can create through the rhythm of your words. The pauses and beats within a sentence, and the variation between long sentences and short ones. The rhythmic structure of well-written songs can be a great tool to help train yourself to be even more aware of that.

I Haz Agent! Wheeeeeee!!!

the Gato loves spring.

So, friends, it's official: I have accepted representation with the charming and brilliant Meredith Kaffel of DeFiore & Co. Things actually turned out so that I had the extraordinary privilege of receiving offers from three excellent agents, but the nature of the beast demanded that I choose only one, and I am utterly thrilled to be working with Meredith.

It's such a relief to have the agent-hunt process over with. There are a lot of things I'm looking forward to doing again, now that I've unbuckled my seatbelt and stumbled, dizzy, out of my seat on the old query roller coaster:

1. Going for a run outside in the sunshine--I might even do it without sunscreen, seeing as my doctor just discovered I have the vitamin D level of an Icelandic vampire
2. Exercising, period
3. Cooking a real dinner instead of inhaling my usual helping of Chipotle and self-loathing
4. Contributing to cleaning my apartment in a more meaningful way than just placing a wine glass in the dishwasher
5. Being willing to get up early enough to spend a few minutes spackling concealer onto my under-eye circles
6. Buying drinks for all my friends and family who endured two months of my mood veering madly between despondence and euphoria
7. Buying them all MORE drinks... and chocolate, and Valium, and unnecessarily expensive body lotion, to bribe them into continuing to put up with me while the book is out on submission
8. Planning a weekend visit to the location of my second book: a research trip on which my girlfriends *just happen* to be joining me
9. And, of course, pre-submission revisions. But revisions don't stress me out--it's just writing. Making the book even better. Revisions are a bubble massage in a Turkish hammam compared to querying.

So, it's going to be a great spring, and a great summer. Signing with Meredith is certainly more of a first step than a last one, but it's a BIG first one, and I couldn't have gotten here without the support and patience of everybody I love. You know who you are--thank you, and I love you.

I just finished up my third essay for The Gaggle, which was my favorite one yet. It was also the third one, out of every single one of them, that was sparked by a conversation I had with one of my friends or family. It’s inevitable, I know, that writers will have ideas sparked by conversations with the people in our lives… it’s part of the process of interacting with other people. Listening to what they’ve said, and remembering it, and noticing a way in which it’s relevant to things we’ve been thinking about on our own.

But it got me thinking about the way I’ve cannibalized 34 years’ worth of other people’s memories, discussions, secrets and stories to populate my books with authentic moments and quirks. It’s never been conscious… in virtually every case, they’ve slipped in there before I even realized it, and I’ve only realized upon re-reading my writing that a particular idea was borne out of something specific I experienced with somebody in real life. Just the other day I sketched a couple lines about a character in my work-in-progress, and then smiled, because I recognized him. I’d unconsciously given him a trait that amused me about somebody I dated ten (holy shit) years ago, and have scarcely spoken to since.

Now, to be clear—I didn’t “put” my ex in my book. I’ve never just picked somebody up and lifted them, like one of those fairground stuffed animal grabbing machines, out of the crowded bullpen of my memory and dropped that person into a story. What’s more challenging, and more rewarding, and ultimately way more fun, is to create new characters that are shaded with the kind of quirks that real people have, the stupid or beautiful or generous things that real people say and do. Any time that one of these is based in real experience, what I love to do is shift it… spin it the opposite way, pull it in a different direction, drop it into an unrelated context. Otherwise, it feels like cheating.

So, for anybody reading this who happens to know me, here is what I can promise: I will never put you, whole and recognizable, into a story. But that nervous tic of yours, your favorite swear word, that story you told me about your mother-in-law—well. I’m sorry, and I love you, but those are fair game.

Greetings from the Naughty Bear Cafe

This weekend was my mini-bachelorette party. This is not to say that there will be a MAJOR bachelorette party at some point in the future--just that I didn't want a big fuss involving airplanes, Four Loko, greased-up strippers pretending to find vaginas appealing, or disorderly conduct arrests. It was just me, my sister-in-law, my cousin, and a couple of badly-behaved girlfriends... it was perfect. The girls surprised me with a sweet Apple book of photos culled from all their various hard drives, which made me both laugh and sniffle. And the cover of this book, splashed across it at full bleed, was the photo above.

My cousins Lauren and Leigh and I had just finished up a nice greasy brunch at a Shoney's in Harrisonburg, VA a few years ago, when on our way to the exit we spotted this painted wooden bear next to the cashier's station. He had a giant head and an ingratiating grin but what concerned all of us, immediately, was the gaping hole in the middle of his pelvic region. He had a little compartment for lollipops tucked away in there, so kids could just reach in and grab one. Cute, right? Except for the location of the hole. The bottom of which is a mere inch above the androgynously smooth, shapeless "T" of his crotch.

The more we studied his lollipop hole, the more his wide-eyed grin took on a whole new meaning. Reaching in there and feeling around while he beamed back at us was just... wrong. So what did we do? Took a picture of me with my hand in the hole and a similarly excited look on my face, of course. And that is the cover of my photo book, for all posterity. Me molesting a lollipop bear. And that wasn't even the last time I did something inappropriate to an animal statue in public.

That's what SHE said.

Every summer, my best girls and I road trip up to our friend Jess's house on the St. Lawrence river, where we spend four days playing cards, gorging ourselves on cookies and peering suspiciously at the Canadians across the river. When we all get together, our collective maturity level devolves to that of a pack of thirteen-year-old boys who giggle uncontrollably anytime somebody says the word "hard." One particular manifestation of this is an obsession with "that's what she said" jokes, which we take turns passing around-- but after a while we get a little over-zealous with it, and some of the jokes get a little strained (not that that stops us from trying).

After I got home, I went through a couple tough days of withdrawal--whenever I try one on my fiance, instead of laughing, he tends to just get a look on his face like, "why the hell am I marrying a teenage boy?" And then there I was, at work on Wednesday, minding my own business, when my coworker went to lift a heavy binder off the shelf over her head. "Man, that's big," she muttered to herself.

I LEAPT ON THAT LIKE A GOD DAMN JUNGLE CAT.

"That's what SHE said!" I shouted triumphantly, leaping up from my seat with a combination fist pump/finger-stab.

I am. So very cool.