Hobart has been one of my favorite literary zines for a long time — and I have a new story in it this month, called “Quiet.” It starts like this:
He suggested we go to the rooftop where it was quiet, and I said yes, though I knew he didn’t really want to talk with me. I knew what he wanted. That hadn’t changed. Then and now he wanted go to a place we could fuck, though he never said the words, let’s go fuck, much less, I want to fuck you. He was obvious but never forthright, which is why I couldn’t blame him afterwards, for misleading me, or for disappearing.
I wrote my last love note of 2020! Here’s an excerpt:
At this point of the year there’s the sense of life just going on formlessly, its loose ends drooping like the strings of tired balloons, shriveled and slowly sinking to the floor because the party was over days ago, and it happened without you. The end of the year feels like purgatory, we trudge through it wanting it to be over already, we chafe against the grimy December days grinding on and on and on, keeping us from the fresh new year. Though as with all unpleasant places, purgatory too has its pleasures — the end of the year gives us full permission to wallow and sink and writhe around in our miseries, to isolate and indulge in those secret, shameful habits we can only truly enjoy when we’re alone.
This is my second story in ZYZZYVA — and my second ZYZZYVA story inspired by Craigslist. It’s titled “People Say they Want Something.” Here’s an excerpt:
It was because of a couch that I met Cellie. The couch was ugly and listed under free stuff. I figured I could use it until I found one I actually wanted. The photo showed a cheap, boxy thing that looked to be made of Styrofoam. “It’s got some stains on it. It can be cleaned, but I haven’t gotten around to it,” read the description. This seemed very honest. I texted the number on the ad.
She called me back immediately. “Can you get it tonight?” she said.
“Tonight?”
“I really need to get it out of the house tonight.”
“Oh, is a new one being delivered tomorrow?”
“No, I just want it gone.”
I demurred. “Tonight is difficult….”
At that she went at me: “See, this is the problem. People say they want something, but then they just flake on you. I don’t get it. Why do you go through the trouble of reading Craigslist and contacting people when you have no intention of actually getting the stuff? I really want to know. Why?”
“No, I really want the couch,” I said
“Why?”
“Why do I want the couch?”
“Yeah, why,” she said, then laughed hysterically. The laughter went on for a while, long enough that she started making me laugh, incredulously, and a little curiously too. I wondered if it would ever stop. Then she was back. “Seriously, why do you want it? It’s disgusting.”
Get a copy of ZYZZYVA no. 119, Winter 2020! And join me for the launch reading, happening on Zoom on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020 at 6 pm PT. Hosted by City Lights Books, the reading lineup is Wendy C. Ortiz, Jonathan Escoffery, Andrés Reconco, Kathleen Mackay, Nina Revoyr — and me, Siel.
Spring is over — but the Spring 2019 issue of The Hopkins Review has just come out, and it has a story of mine in it!
“Dumbo” is about a floor of smart girls in college who all happen to have hooked up with the same guy. Here’s a short excerpt:
We lived on the girls-only floor for the science scholars. The opportunity to live there was sold to us and our parents as a privilege and a perk, a reward for our high AP Biology scores and violin playing and community service projects, and as good girls we checked yes, we would welcome this social privilege, come to us at long last after the lonely years of high school. It was only after we arrived that we found out a floor of female scientists was not valued highly in this keg-stands and undie-runs college. We were, on the whole, not lookers. Glasses wore coke-bottle lenses. Skinny tied her hair in ponytails that gave her scrubbed face a tight, pulled-back look. Amoeba’s soft, doughy limbs resembled pseudopods, slowly extending and contracting around cheap, cakey treats. Lisse was the exception, with her dark-red hair and big boobs. She wore makeup and tight T-shirts. She curled her eyelashes. On Sunday nights she slathered her face with an algae-green mask before going to bed. “My mom swears by it, for soft skin,” she said when we asked about it in the morning, the mask now hard and cracked like a putrid eggshell. Later, alone in our rooms, we wondered why our mothers hadn’t instructed us in any of these feminine wiles.
This story is part of a longer collection I’m working on called Defects, which you know about if you subscribe to my love notes…. Hope you enjoy the read —
I’m used to driving to the Mandrake from the west, so making the trip from Burbank for the first time last weekend, I got completely turned around. I parked in the general vicinity, walked up a confused half block to the stoplight, and was repeatedly pushing the cross button when I looked behind me to see an open door, and over it, the familiar little neon sign: BAR.
The Mandrake is a low-key bar in the industrial-looking area that’s the Culver City arts district. It’s also home to It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere, a quarterly reading series organized by Julia Ingalls (above), essayist and literary provocateur who sometimes writes about her love life. When I walked in, she was up front in a loose tank and white jeans, greeting people with hugs.
“Siel! I haven’t seen you in so long!”
We hugged stickily. It was a warm day, high seventies, and warmer in the bar.
Julia’s readings begin, not coincidentally, at 5 pm. Or more accurately, 5 pm is the listed start time — when people arrive, order drinks, and mingle in the sunnier front room. About a half hour later we’re corralled into the darker, danker back room, with its upholstered booths and ghoulish lighting.
Julia went up front, welcomed everyone, and the crowd of about 40 or so settled in as she introduced the first reader, Mike Sonksen, by reading a bio off her phone.
Mike Sonksen’s better known as Mike the Poet. He wore a jaunty hat and Dodgers T-shirt. He performed his poems — all about L.A. — from memory, bouncing on his heels (sample line: “The 562 is a good time because the people are down to earth”). His energy was catching; the audience smiled and bopped along. He finished with a happy yell — “I’m still alive in Los Angeles. L.A.!” — then bounced back to his seat in the applause.
Lisa Locascio went up next, pink hair glowing under the overhead light. She read from her debut novel Open Me — about a teenager’s affair with a 28-year-old man who starts keeping her locked her up in his apartment (sample line: “How fine to be a body against a smooth plane”).
Then Susan Banyas read her nonfiction work (sample line: “Is there a sense of justice, even in young children?”) with emphatic nods of the head, in the manner of an enthusiastic children’s librarian during story time. Next was Roar Shack organizer David Rocklin, reading a moody excerpt from a new novel he’s working on (sample line: “But there was the sea, blazing cobalt….”). Lynne Thompson closed the reading with more poems (sample line: “Forget this irrelevant history. Can anyone know what’s true?”).
Suddenly, it was over. The crowd applauded and started moving out, stopping at the Skylight Books table to buy the authors’ books.
Back in the sunnier front room, people looked less ghoulish, prettier. We chatted, we mingled. Julia was back in the middle of things, working the crowd. It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere was now about three years old, she told me. She said she tried to get “a medley of different mediums” for each reading — poetry, fiction, nonfiction.
Outside the evening sun was still bright. I started walking toward my car, then realized I was going the wrong way again, and turned around.
The next Five O’Clock Somewhere happens September 15, 2019 — put it on your calendar! To hear about future events, email Julia at subtextdesign@gmail.com and ask to be put on the mailing list.
It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere. Quarterly, 5 pm (email Julia or check Facebook for dates), Mandrake, 2692 S La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles.
Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.
What comes first, the setting or the plot? I thought this was a good question for Anne-Marie Kinney, who with Sara Finnerty puts together the fantastic Griffith Park Storytelling Series. These readings are held in various beautiful settings in the park ranging from the bat caves to the shade of pretty trees — and getting to, enjoying, and departing from each of them always makes for a fun plot to recount to friends —
Anne-Marie’s new book, Coldwater Canyon, comes out this Thursday, Oct. 4. Read on to hear Anne-Marie’s thoughts on book trailers, indie presses, and the valley.
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Siel: Why Coldwater Canyon? Did the setting come before the story – or the story determine the setting?
Anne-Marie: The setting came first. The San Fernando Valley of this book is a composite of different valley neighborhoods I’ve lived and hung out in. I was inspired by the valley’s quirks and how it’s a place that feels like a secret right under the nose of Los Angeles. I paid a lot of attention to strip malls and parked vans. The valley is teeming with mystery.
I inserted Coldwater Canyon into the book because I used to walk my dog down it, alongside a section of the L.A. River where you’d really have to lean over the fence to see if there was any water down there at all. It’s a long street that runs from Sun Valley all the way through Beverly Hills, so to me it kind of represented the gamut of Shep’s L.A. experience.
I love how you’re able to capture the voice of Shep, a Gulf War veteran suffering from PTSD. Was writing from a male viewpoint a challenge for you – or something that came pretty naturally?
Characters always start from the outside in for me. An image of someone will pop into my head and I’ll feel compelled to think them into fully realized person. I imagined a sort of grizzled guy walking a little dog down the street on a windy day, and that became the opening scene of the book. Once more details about him started to gel in my mind, I started reading books about Gulf War Syndrome so I’d have some knowledge to base him on.
Writing a male protagonist didn’t feel unusual. It felt natural to inhabit him. My favorite moments in writing are when I can feel a character in my body. It’s a kind of high, where the borders between my self and another self blur.
I really enjoyed the book trailer for your first book, Radio Iris (above). Do you think you’ll create one for Coldwater Canyon? And what advice do you have for writers who are wondering whether or not to make a book trailer?
I wanted to make a book trailer for Radio Iris (conceived and directed by Pete Larsen with a score by Nathan Budde) because it seemed like the thing to do in 2012 and I had talented friends who could make it happen. It was my first book, and it seemed like every other book coming out then had a trailer, so I thought I should have one too.
I liked how it turned out and it was fun, but I don’t plan on doing one for Coldwater Canyon. Are people still doing book trailers? I can’t remember the last time I saw one. I feel like they were in vogue for a while but are no longer considered essential. I think an author should only make one if it’s purely for fun.
You’ve published two novels with two different indie presses, Two Dollar Radio and Civil Coping Mechanisms. Have the experiences been largely similar or largely different?
The experience has been fairly similar. In both cases I was only working with one or two people, who really got the book and seemed to care about it as much as I did. There’s definitely a comfort in having just a couple of people to talk about everything with, from edits all the way to promotion.
What are you working on next?
I’m working on another novel, tentatively titled Sinking Feeling, about a long estranged mother and daughter reunited by a series of catastrophes. It’s a little too messy at this point to go further into what it’s “about,” but I’ve been researching climate change, brain tumors, buried treasure and doomsday preppers.
Siel: Why Coldwater Canyon? Did the setting come before the story – or the story determine the setting?