Realizing that I’m already lost in a sea of millions of blogs; realizing that once again I’m proposing something that is obviously naïve, this idea actually would work to help save the world economy, if properly implemented.
We know that banks and financial institutions have been “bailed out” in ways that seem unfair to many. We know that much of this happened under the Bush administration, and now President Obama is left holding the bag.
One of the causes of the U.S. (and by extension, world) economic collapse has been the housing bubble; the idea that housing prices could go up indefinitely and everything would be okay with this.
The result of the bubble burst has been banks and financial institutions bloated with what they call “toxic assets.”
Many of these “toxic assets” are foreclosed properties.
These foreclosed properties used to be homes, to families.
What is the result of a glut of foreclosed properties on a geographic environment? There are now large communities filled with foreclosed properties, which drive down the prices of all neighboring houses. So everyone suffers.
The solution is not to float the banks and allow them to continue business as usual.
The solution is to legislate compassion and empathy for families, while allowing banks to turn toxic assets into avenues of recovery – literal avenues.
This could be accomplished by providing tax credits to those banks and financial institutions that donate “toxic asset” foreclosed properties to organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, which would regenerate these properties for people who need homes. This solution would create necessary housing, stimulate new jobs, revitalize housing market values, and relieve economic burdens of banks and financial institutions.
What are we waiting for?
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Ice Storm Reverie and Writing Like There’s No Tomorrow
I’m sitting here by the fire, handwriting this. Handwriting is what I used to do years ago. Now it’s a struggle to grip the pen; I’ve become so accustomed to the keyboard.
Today is Sunday, December 14th. Two days ago, at 4:30 on Friday morning, I awoke to what sounded like gunshots and rain outside. And there was a weird silence outside that, a silence that comes from the loss of electricity in a New England ice storm. The gunshots were actually ice-coated tree limbs breaking and landing on a lawn thickly coated with more ice. When dawn came around I could see the shiny front lawn and our huge birch trees all bowed down; their 40-foot-high tops touching the ground, stuck there by ice, ice everywhere.
“It looks like the Apocalypse,” said my 16-year-old daughter when she went outside later that morning. She’s not given to religious analogies, yet her comment still seemed eerily accurate. (We are a theologically diverse family, inspired by the works of Marija Gimbutas and Starhawk, with deep sympathies for Tibetan Buddhists, as we are always inspired by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his cheerfulness.)Yes, if we were to believe in the concept of “the Apocalypse” then yes, perhaps it might look like this.
The moon is just past full and we’ve been waiting in the dark, watching the ice-kissed tree limbs dancing in the lunar light. This is terrible beauty, as Yeats would have said.
Ironically, the folks just two miles down the road from us (literally DOWN the road, as we live in one of the “Hilltowns” of Western Massachusetts) still have power and have no ice and they have Christmas lights and refrigeration for their food. Now three days into this (as our power apparently disappeared Thursday night, while we slept), our refrigerator food has gone bad. (We had kept the refrigerator door closed, thinking that if the power came back on we’d save our food by keeping it insulated in the short term, thinking the power would surely return within a few hours, as it always had before. But it didn’t, so now I need to discard all this food; such a sad waste.)
I am angry at myself – I should have been less optimistic – I should have been better prepared – should have taken those expensive veggie burgers out of the freezer and put them in a cooler in the car – that might have preserved them through this storm. Fortunately, I had the foresight to fill the bathtub with water so we could flush toilets (as our plumbing and running water also disappeared, along with our heat and refrigeration during the power loss).
It’s hard not having running water. I love clean, warm water. And I feel so selfish to complain about missing it. We Americans are among the earth’s few to enjoy so much – everyday – running water, refrigeration, heating fuel…
A friend recently commented on the “bravery” of my writing. I told her my bravery is more likely naïveté (and a sense that no one is reading what I write anyway)…
But if you are reading this, let me tell you, the Apocalypse is at hand. The weather is a symptom of our Holy Mother, who has been polluted.
I got interrupted a few hours ago.
And I’m re-reading what I wrote earlier. So let me begin again.
The earth is alive. She is our Mother. She is God. We are part of Her.
Her Being is the summation of all that is spiritually sentient.
But she is sick with a disease we have decided to call “Global Warming” (I tend to call it “Global Extremes” as we are being swept into weather extremes at an increasing rate – yesterday the temperature was 25 degrees Fahrenheit; tomorrow it’s expected to reach 57 degrees).
The sky is beautiful right now and the sun is beginning to set. The ice on the treetops is glistening – the perfect Christmas card scene. Throughout the afternoon my husband has been periodically opening a window to take pictures of the ice-coated landscape.
I am sitting in the living room by the fireplace with my two younger daughters. My 16-year-old is taking a nap (and fighting a cold); my youngest is drawing a picture of the eternal “Om” (for a 7th grade school assignment). My oldest daughter lives in New York City (where she is working to provide legal aid for people with AIDS); she hasn’t contacted us and I don’t know if she knows what we’re going through. Better to keep her in the dark than to call and concern her.
About five years ago I wrote a novel that predicted some of this (it was published on an Icelandic zine, which I’ve described earlier on this blog). I can’t seem to promote it though – because it describes too much pain, I think. And I’m tired of giving the book to friendly acquaintances who later tell me they “love” it but then start avoiding me – as if I’ve exposed them to something nefandous. There is an unwritten rule that governs our society, which says, “Don’t disturb our peace by showing us your wounds.” People don’t want to know about another’s pain (unless that person is a celebrity, perhaps). Some people try to block out reality with “reality” television. Some people block another’s pain by blaming it on the person in pain. All this doesn’t really lead to compassion. You can lead someone to compassion but you can’t make them think (or feel).
And so, as the sun sets, and my vision fades, I am reminded of E. A. Poe’s story, “Shadow – A Parable.”
It is a parable for now as much as then – and if we can all just be merry to the end, then maybe we can at least perish peacefully, which may be our last best hope.
Today is Sunday, December 14th. Two days ago, at 4:30 on Friday morning, I awoke to what sounded like gunshots and rain outside. And there was a weird silence outside that, a silence that comes from the loss of electricity in a New England ice storm. The gunshots were actually ice-coated tree limbs breaking and landing on a lawn thickly coated with more ice. When dawn came around I could see the shiny front lawn and our huge birch trees all bowed down; their 40-foot-high tops touching the ground, stuck there by ice, ice everywhere.
“It looks like the Apocalypse,” said my 16-year-old daughter when she went outside later that morning. She’s not given to religious analogies, yet her comment still seemed eerily accurate. (We are a theologically diverse family, inspired by the works of Marija Gimbutas and Starhawk, with deep sympathies for Tibetan Buddhists, as we are always inspired by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his cheerfulness.)Yes, if we were to believe in the concept of “the Apocalypse” then yes, perhaps it might look like this.
The moon is just past full and we’ve been waiting in the dark, watching the ice-kissed tree limbs dancing in the lunar light. This is terrible beauty, as Yeats would have said.
Ironically, the folks just two miles down the road from us (literally DOWN the road, as we live in one of the “Hilltowns” of Western Massachusetts) still have power and have no ice and they have Christmas lights and refrigeration for their food. Now three days into this (as our power apparently disappeared Thursday night, while we slept), our refrigerator food has gone bad. (We had kept the refrigerator door closed, thinking that if the power came back on we’d save our food by keeping it insulated in the short term, thinking the power would surely return within a few hours, as it always had before. But it didn’t, so now I need to discard all this food; such a sad waste.)
I am angry at myself – I should have been less optimistic – I should have been better prepared – should have taken those expensive veggie burgers out of the freezer and put them in a cooler in the car – that might have preserved them through this storm. Fortunately, I had the foresight to fill the bathtub with water so we could flush toilets (as our plumbing and running water also disappeared, along with our heat and refrigeration during the power loss).
It’s hard not having running water. I love clean, warm water. And I feel so selfish to complain about missing it. We Americans are among the earth’s few to enjoy so much – everyday – running water, refrigeration, heating fuel…
A friend recently commented on the “bravery” of my writing. I told her my bravery is more likely naïveté (and a sense that no one is reading what I write anyway)…
But if you are reading this, let me tell you, the Apocalypse is at hand. The weather is a symptom of our Holy Mother, who has been polluted.
I got interrupted a few hours ago.
And I’m re-reading what I wrote earlier. So let me begin again.
The earth is alive. She is our Mother. She is God. We are part of Her.
Her Being is the summation of all that is spiritually sentient.
But she is sick with a disease we have decided to call “Global Warming” (I tend to call it “Global Extremes” as we are being swept into weather extremes at an increasing rate – yesterday the temperature was 25 degrees Fahrenheit; tomorrow it’s expected to reach 57 degrees).
The sky is beautiful right now and the sun is beginning to set. The ice on the treetops is glistening – the perfect Christmas card scene. Throughout the afternoon my husband has been periodically opening a window to take pictures of the ice-coated landscape.
I am sitting in the living room by the fireplace with my two younger daughters. My 16-year-old is taking a nap (and fighting a cold); my youngest is drawing a picture of the eternal “Om” (for a 7th grade school assignment). My oldest daughter lives in New York City (where she is working to provide legal aid for people with AIDS); she hasn’t contacted us and I don’t know if she knows what we’re going through. Better to keep her in the dark than to call and concern her.
About five years ago I wrote a novel that predicted some of this (it was published on an Icelandic zine, which I’ve described earlier on this blog). I can’t seem to promote it though – because it describes too much pain, I think. And I’m tired of giving the book to friendly acquaintances who later tell me they “love” it but then start avoiding me – as if I’ve exposed them to something nefandous. There is an unwritten rule that governs our society, which says, “Don’t disturb our peace by showing us your wounds.” People don’t want to know about another’s pain (unless that person is a celebrity, perhaps). Some people try to block out reality with “reality” television. Some people block another’s pain by blaming it on the person in pain. All this doesn’t really lead to compassion. You can lead someone to compassion but you can’t make them think (or feel).
And so, as the sun sets, and my vision fades, I am reminded of E. A. Poe’s story, “Shadow – A Parable.”
It is a parable for now as much as then – and if we can all just be merry to the end, then maybe we can at least perish peacefully, which may be our last best hope.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
What is the matter?
What is the matter? The matter? The nature of matter?
The other day my 87-year-old father-in-law, Bill, told me his query.
He wants to find out what’s at the end of the universe. He wants me to help him find out. He’s been asking this question of everyone he knows; everyone who will listen.
Bill’s wife, my late-mother-in-law, died a few months ago. They had been married for more than 65 years. After her death, he spoke only of her. Now he speaks of her in relation to the universe.
Bill wants the definitive answer to this question. He wants this answer to come from science. He said scientists have told him that the universe folds in on itself – and he shook his head, as if this is not the answer he seeks.
Bill has always been a scientist. Educated at MIT and Tufts, with advanced degrees from both places, Bill has never doubted the scientific theory.
My husband tells me that Bill always used to avoid eye contact, believing that making eye contact can be misinterpreted as an aggressive act. But when we spoke the other day, I leaned forward and stared into his liquid, oceanic eyes, both of us searching together for the answer to the question of matter.
At first I told him that the answer is love and kindness – and we each must find this answer in our heart – and caring for one another is all that really matters. He nodded, agreeing, but also insisting that there is a scientific explanation – some answer we can seemingly ascertain if only we can think it through.
Then I reminded him that all things and concepts are associated with symbols – and perhaps in seeking his answer, he could meditate on the connection of each thing to another, and perhaps that could help him arrive at the answer. He considered this explanation.
Finally I asked him what would happen if he found the answer. “If you could find the answer, if you actually knew, maybe you would be sad, because then there would be no more questions, and wouldn’t that be sad, not to have any more questions?” He smiled, then laughed, then said, “You have me.”
It is part of the puzzle, isn’t it? To seek – an answer or an object – even if we cannot understand it or possess it – and yet – there is such sadness when the seeking has ended.
When I try to define the universe, I meditate on the symbology behind the etymology of the word matter: mother – mother of creation, mother of what is holy, giving birth to all that is material, to all that we know of, to all that we know we are, all heart and spirit and soul; all that matters.
The other day my 87-year-old father-in-law, Bill, told me his query.
He wants to find out what’s at the end of the universe. He wants me to help him find out. He’s been asking this question of everyone he knows; everyone who will listen.
Bill’s wife, my late-mother-in-law, died a few months ago. They had been married for more than 65 years. After her death, he spoke only of her. Now he speaks of her in relation to the universe.
Bill wants the definitive answer to this question. He wants this answer to come from science. He said scientists have told him that the universe folds in on itself – and he shook his head, as if this is not the answer he seeks.
Bill has always been a scientist. Educated at MIT and Tufts, with advanced degrees from both places, Bill has never doubted the scientific theory.
My husband tells me that Bill always used to avoid eye contact, believing that making eye contact can be misinterpreted as an aggressive act. But when we spoke the other day, I leaned forward and stared into his liquid, oceanic eyes, both of us searching together for the answer to the question of matter.
At first I told him that the answer is love and kindness – and we each must find this answer in our heart – and caring for one another is all that really matters. He nodded, agreeing, but also insisting that there is a scientific explanation – some answer we can seemingly ascertain if only we can think it through.
Then I reminded him that all things and concepts are associated with symbols – and perhaps in seeking his answer, he could meditate on the connection of each thing to another, and perhaps that could help him arrive at the answer. He considered this explanation.
Finally I asked him what would happen if he found the answer. “If you could find the answer, if you actually knew, maybe you would be sad, because then there would be no more questions, and wouldn’t that be sad, not to have any more questions?” He smiled, then laughed, then said, “You have me.”
It is part of the puzzle, isn’t it? To seek – an answer or an object – even if we cannot understand it or possess it – and yet – there is such sadness when the seeking has ended.
When I try to define the universe, I meditate on the symbology behind the etymology of the word matter: mother – mother of creation, mother of what is holy, giving birth to all that is material, to all that we know of, to all that we know we are, all heart and spirit and soul; all that matters.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
A Maze: L.A. Law strikes back (ruminations by an obscure novelist)
Hello –
This is my first attempt at blogging, so please be kind to me, and please allow me to introduce myself.
In the spring of 1977, when I was 18, I was published for the first time. It was a poem called “The Riving Rite,” which was published in my college literary magazine (The Onyx).
Because I was such an ardent admirer of Edgar Allan Poe (who had published as “E.A. Poe”), I decided to follow his example and publish my work using my first initials and last name, which was “L.A. Law.”
The following spring, in 1978, The Onyx published two more of my poems, and one of my short stories (called “The Joker”). And again, these works were published using my name, L.A. Law.
Also in 1977-1978, I worked as a disk jockey on my college radio station, and my on-air name was the same as my pen name: L.A. Law. (Strange aside: once, at a radio station party, a former “lover” – who also worked on the radio station – handed me a large manila envelope and a glass of champagne. As I perused the contents of the envelope and sipped the champagne, I was shocked, first to find that the envelope contained many documents talking about “L.A. Law” – all with headings that copied the fonts of major magazines and newspapers – this perplexed me because this was in the days before personal computers; therefore, professionally produced fonts like those were not easily generated – but also, I couldn’t grasp what was happening in general - and everything around me became terribly strange. When I asked the person who’d given me the envelope - and champagne - what was happening, he responded, “Read The Electric Cool Aid Acid Test. Maybe that will help you.” It was the champagne. And so my one experience tripping was not by my own will.)
In 1982, I read about Sylvester Stallone’s plans (he and I have the same birthday, except I’m 12 years younger) for a Hollywood film on the life of Poe, so I wrote to the Chartoff-Winkler production company to ask about the film, signing my name, "L.A. Law." In August of 1982, I received a letter from Stallone’s assistant, saying that he had asked her to write to tell me that they would “definitely” be in touch when and if “Poe” ever went into production. I still have that letter. And I’m still waiting.
In 1983, when I began my career as a technical writer, I also published technical materials under my name, “L.A. Law.” Then, a few years later, when my boss told me that a television show was going to premier with my name, I didn’t believe him.
Not long after the television show appeared, I stopped publishing under my name L.A. Law, because it was no longer uniquely mine and had become equated with some other entity. I thought about trying to get attention about this – maybe by appealing to Oprah?
I felt indignant in my frustration. It was my name. But did that matter? Does that matter? Do names really matter?
That’s where the unsuccessful novelist discussion arises.
After I stopped using my name, L.A. Law, I decided that I wanted my publication name to be unique – not something that could ever be confused with something or someone else, or copied. Inspired by the Icelandic convention of “Dottir,” I began publishing under the name “Leda Joandaughter” (because my mother’s name was Joan, and Leda was originally the Goddess Nemesis – a most important Goddess whose time has come to re-emerge).
I’m not Icelandic, but when I first got published by the name Leda Joandaughter in 2002, it was in Iceland, on a zine called Apsaras Review. And now, in 2008, oddly enough, when I do an internet search on the name “Leda Joandaughter,” most of the sites that appear have nothing to do with me. Somehow my pen name “Leda Joandaughter” has gotten picked up and flung around in the cyber-muck and then stuck in all kinds of sleazy, unsavory, seedy places.
So maybe it’s time to change my pen name again. But for now, it is "Leda Joandaughter" (because that’s how I’ve been published internationally, in Iceland and also in Greece, in a science fiction anthology).
And now to the unsuccessful part: even though I’ve been published internationally, I have not yet earned a penny from my novels.
I’ve written five novels so far. Two are published. The God Children was based on my longing to make sense of suffering (this is the one that was first published in Iceland - and an excerpt from it also appeared in the Greek anthology). But neither of those publications ever paid me. And isn’t money the metric one uses, in our society, to determine success?
Paul Fontaine-Nikolov, the editor of Apsaras Review (the Icelandic zine), had advertised for writers in a national writer’s magazine. So after submitting some novel excerpts and emailing back and forth with Paul, he eventually asked me to be a(n unpaid) staff writer for the zine.
Apsaras Review described itself as a literary/political journal that focused on promoting humanitarian issues; it featured many writers from the international community. From its inception until it folded, Apsaras Review published works by approximately 50 writers from diverse locations, such as France, Wales, Jordan, and Cambodia, as well as the U.S. and Iceland. Article topics were wide-ranging and included the Palestinian water crisis, Cambodian reparations, psychology, theology, anarchy, politics, and epigenetics; fiction included both absurd vignettes and serious novels in installments (such as mine). (You can see sample pages from the original Apsaras Review site, documented by www.archive.org.)
As a staff writer for Apsaras Review, I was one day surprised to encounter an entirely new link to the site, which appeared in late September 2004:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040924003404/http://kremenapublishing.com/
Following this unexpected transmutation from the peace-promoting Apsaras Review (not so little voices of the world) to the Direct Method, the “Apsaras Review, Kremena Publishing” site abruptly folded (and later reappeared as something completely different, bearing no resemblance to the original site). It remains a mystery to me.
The Greek magazine never paid me for the excerpt they published, but they did promise to send me a copy of the Greek version of the magazine. I never received it.
So, eventually I took my book The God Children and published it myself in the U.S., on the site www.lulu.com. But I discovered that I’m really, really shy - and terrified of public speaking.
A few years ago, I mustered enough courage to do a one-hour interview on a local radio station, and from that, I sold one copy of my book. But www.lulu.com has a policy where they do not send an author any royalties until they’ve sold at least $20 worth of material. (My site does post a number of reviews of the book, but these were posted by kind friends to whom I had given review copies.) And so, now that the book has been for sale for more than three years, I still have not yet sold enough copies to earn any royalties. (Although the person who did purchase that one copy did send me an email to thank me for my “brilliance,” so it was satisfying to know that the only person who actually bought the book also loved it.)
Meanwhile, a few years ago, my husband and I decided to self-publish a novel we co-wrote - a love story called The Wet Tao, because it’s a great love story. And doesn’t everyone love a great love story? But then he realized that he’s just as shy as I am, and neither of us can bring ourselves to promote ourselves.
So I’ve begun to ruminate on the concept of being an unsuccessful novelist and what that means.
I started writing my first novel when I was 15, and completed it when I was 18. The story concerns a teenage Catholic girl, deeply confused by dogma and desire. Although I am fond of this story, I feel it is so visceral that probably only my literary executor will publish it.
I started writing my second novel, The Unlikely Child, in 1983, when I was 24 and my oldest daughter was three. I used to wake up at five each morning to have time to write before dropping her off at daycare and going to my job as a tech writer. Then I’d work on my novel all during my lunch hour. Alan, my former creative writing college professor, loved this novel (at least he told me he thought it was “a real novel” and “more than worthy” of an MFA).
After a lot of effort, I finally found a Toronto-based literary agent (Larry) for The Unlikely Child. Larry represented the book for about five years. At first Larry told me the book would be an overnight bestseller – he said it “haunted” him - and that he chain-smoked his way through it. But over the years and the myriad of rejections, he finally told me that I was “a poet who wrote novels” and that the only novels being sold and marketed were either “category, brand name, or schlock” and so we ended our relationship.
At some point, I’ll read The Unlikely Child again. (An excerpt from the first chapter was published in Apsaras Review in 2002.) And maybe I’ll make some changes to it and maybe I won’t. It’s a beautiful book, but it’s very sad and very intense. My friend Amy once said the only reason it wasn’t published was that all the publishers are too chicken. (Because it takes a lot of chutzpah just to read it, let alone publish it!)
Here’s my “official” description of this novel: The Unlikely Child is about an abuse survivor’s surfacing memories, and an American divorce and its transpiercing effects – an emotional allegory for the biblical story of Solomon and the division of a child.
Heavy, yes.
So for my next novel, I decided to write a love story. And my husband (who decided to publish using his first and middle names, John Fairbanks) wrote a few passages and poems throughout it. I wrote the first draft of this novel in 1992, while pregnant with my second daughter. This love story (set in the computer industry), eventually became heavier than I’d originally intended, and was, for us, a Taoist experience. And we decided to call the book The Wet Tao, which sounds like “the wet towel” because even the deepest and truest love sometimes feels like a wet towel - or a wet blanket. (My husband disagrees with this assessment of “the wet tao” – he feels that “wet” implies passion and “tao” implies “in the moment,” so the whole phrase to him means, “passionate moment.)
Alan (my former college creative writing professor) had started a literary agency with some of his colleagues in the mid-1990s, and he asked if I’d like him to represent this book (although we used a different title then, because he hated the title The Wet Tao). Alan had thought this novel would be very marketable (sort of in the “Moonstruck” niche). But after representing the book for about a year, Alan discovered that the agency work was more time-consuming than he’d expected, and he dropped this endeavor.
And so The Wet Tao languished until 2003, when Apsaras Review published an excerpt from it. And a few years ago, John and I decided to self-publish the entire novel on www.lulu.com, where it still sits, patiently waiting to be discovered and purchased.
In September 2005, I published a story called “Tomorrow Sometimes Knows” on www.lulu.com (and later I added more stories to create a collection). The idea for the title story came from a dream I had on January 23, 2005. The dream was so vivid that I wrote about it that day and sent it off as a short story to The New Yorker magazine the following day. On March 9, 2005, I received a rejection from the magazine. My dream was about someone who dreams of Howard Cosell announcing John Lennon's death during a Monday night football game and, haunted by his premonition, this person goes to the Dakota to try to stop the murder he has foreseen. In September 2005, my husband emailed me a news article about a movie being made about someone who befriends the person who pulled the trigger on Lennon. And to prove that my short story came first, I immediately published it on www.lulu.com, where it still lingers, waiting to be discovered and purchased. (Although, I must say, unlike the film, in my story Lennon lives, which represents the fulfillment of one of my fondest fantasies. And someone I don’t know actually did purchase a copy of this story, but they purchased it at a time when I had the thing listed for free, so I did not receive any royalties from it!)
Last year I wrote my newest novel - Notes For My Mother - my first attempt at young adult fiction. Told from a ten-year-old girl’s point of view, this book is inspired by the years that my mother lived with me and my oldest daughter, when I was a young, single mother, and my own mother was battling degenerative dementia.
That’s enough of an introduction.
As a novelist, I am unsuccessful, because I’ve been writing novels for the past 35 years and still haven’t earned any money from all the work and effort. And the fact that I keep trying – with little hope of ever being successful – is that a symptom of insanity or brilliance? Or both? Or is there even a difference between the concepts that underlie those two words?
This is my first attempt at blogging, so please be kind to me, and please allow me to introduce myself.
In the spring of 1977, when I was 18, I was published for the first time. It was a poem called “The Riving Rite,” which was published in my college literary magazine (The Onyx).
Because I was such an ardent admirer of Edgar Allan Poe (who had published as “E.A. Poe”), I decided to follow his example and publish my work using my first initials and last name, which was “L.A. Law.”
The following spring, in 1978, The Onyx published two more of my poems, and one of my short stories (called “The Joker”). And again, these works were published using my name, L.A. Law.
Also in 1977-1978, I worked as a disk jockey on my college radio station, and my on-air name was the same as my pen name: L.A. Law. (Strange aside: once, at a radio station party, a former “lover” – who also worked on the radio station – handed me a large manila envelope and a glass of champagne. As I perused the contents of the envelope and sipped the champagne, I was shocked, first to find that the envelope contained many documents talking about “L.A. Law” – all with headings that copied the fonts of major magazines and newspapers – this perplexed me because this was in the days before personal computers; therefore, professionally produced fonts like those were not easily generated – but also, I couldn’t grasp what was happening in general - and everything around me became terribly strange. When I asked the person who’d given me the envelope - and champagne - what was happening, he responded, “Read The Electric Cool Aid Acid Test. Maybe that will help you.” It was the champagne. And so my one experience tripping was not by my own will.)
In 1982, I read about Sylvester Stallone’s plans (he and I have the same birthday, except I’m 12 years younger) for a Hollywood film on the life of Poe, so I wrote to the Chartoff-Winkler production company to ask about the film, signing my name, "L.A. Law." In August of 1982, I received a letter from Stallone’s assistant, saying that he had asked her to write to tell me that they would “definitely” be in touch when and if “Poe” ever went into production. I still have that letter. And I’m still waiting.
In 1983, when I began my career as a technical writer, I also published technical materials under my name, “L.A. Law.” Then, a few years later, when my boss told me that a television show was going to premier with my name, I didn’t believe him.
Not long after the television show appeared, I stopped publishing under my name L.A. Law, because it was no longer uniquely mine and had become equated with some other entity. I thought about trying to get attention about this – maybe by appealing to Oprah?
I felt indignant in my frustration. It was my name. But did that matter? Does that matter? Do names really matter?
That’s where the unsuccessful novelist discussion arises.
After I stopped using my name, L.A. Law, I decided that I wanted my publication name to be unique – not something that could ever be confused with something or someone else, or copied. Inspired by the Icelandic convention of “Dottir,” I began publishing under the name “Leda Joandaughter” (because my mother’s name was Joan, and Leda was originally the Goddess Nemesis – a most important Goddess whose time has come to re-emerge).
I’m not Icelandic, but when I first got published by the name Leda Joandaughter in 2002, it was in Iceland, on a zine called Apsaras Review. And now, in 2008, oddly enough, when I do an internet search on the name “Leda Joandaughter,” most of the sites that appear have nothing to do with me. Somehow my pen name “Leda Joandaughter” has gotten picked up and flung around in the cyber-muck and then stuck in all kinds of sleazy, unsavory, seedy places.
So maybe it’s time to change my pen name again. But for now, it is "Leda Joandaughter" (because that’s how I’ve been published internationally, in Iceland and also in Greece, in a science fiction anthology).
And now to the unsuccessful part: even though I’ve been published internationally, I have not yet earned a penny from my novels.
I’ve written five novels so far. Two are published. The God Children was based on my longing to make sense of suffering (this is the one that was first published in Iceland - and an excerpt from it also appeared in the Greek anthology). But neither of those publications ever paid me. And isn’t money the metric one uses, in our society, to determine success?
Paul Fontaine-Nikolov, the editor of Apsaras Review (the Icelandic zine), had advertised for writers in a national writer’s magazine. So after submitting some novel excerpts and emailing back and forth with Paul, he eventually asked me to be a(n unpaid) staff writer for the zine.
Apsaras Review described itself as a literary/political journal that focused on promoting humanitarian issues; it featured many writers from the international community. From its inception until it folded, Apsaras Review published works by approximately 50 writers from diverse locations, such as France, Wales, Jordan, and Cambodia, as well as the U.S. and Iceland. Article topics were wide-ranging and included the Palestinian water crisis, Cambodian reparations, psychology, theology, anarchy, politics, and epigenetics; fiction included both absurd vignettes and serious novels in installments (such as mine). (You can see sample pages from the original Apsaras Review site, documented by www.archive.org.)
As a staff writer for Apsaras Review, I was one day surprised to encounter an entirely new link to the site, which appeared in late September 2004:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040924003404/http://kremenapublishing.com/
Following this unexpected transmutation from the peace-promoting Apsaras Review (not so little voices of the world) to the Direct Method, the “Apsaras Review, Kremena Publishing” site abruptly folded (and later reappeared as something completely different, bearing no resemblance to the original site). It remains a mystery to me.
The Greek magazine never paid me for the excerpt they published, but they did promise to send me a copy of the Greek version of the magazine. I never received it.
So, eventually I took my book The God Children and published it myself in the U.S., on the site www.lulu.com. But I discovered that I’m really, really shy - and terrified of public speaking.
A few years ago, I mustered enough courage to do a one-hour interview on a local radio station, and from that, I sold one copy of my book. But www.lulu.com has a policy where they do not send an author any royalties until they’ve sold at least $20 worth of material. (My site does post a number of reviews of the book, but these were posted by kind friends to whom I had given review copies.) And so, now that the book has been for sale for more than three years, I still have not yet sold enough copies to earn any royalties. (Although the person who did purchase that one copy did send me an email to thank me for my “brilliance,” so it was satisfying to know that the only person who actually bought the book also loved it.)
Meanwhile, a few years ago, my husband and I decided to self-publish a novel we co-wrote - a love story called The Wet Tao, because it’s a great love story. And doesn’t everyone love a great love story? But then he realized that he’s just as shy as I am, and neither of us can bring ourselves to promote ourselves.
So I’ve begun to ruminate on the concept of being an unsuccessful novelist and what that means.
I started writing my first novel when I was 15, and completed it when I was 18. The story concerns a teenage Catholic girl, deeply confused by dogma and desire. Although I am fond of this story, I feel it is so visceral that probably only my literary executor will publish it.
I started writing my second novel, The Unlikely Child, in 1983, when I was 24 and my oldest daughter was three. I used to wake up at five each morning to have time to write before dropping her off at daycare and going to my job as a tech writer. Then I’d work on my novel all during my lunch hour. Alan, my former creative writing college professor, loved this novel (at least he told me he thought it was “a real novel” and “more than worthy” of an MFA).
After a lot of effort, I finally found a Toronto-based literary agent (Larry) for The Unlikely Child. Larry represented the book for about five years. At first Larry told me the book would be an overnight bestseller – he said it “haunted” him - and that he chain-smoked his way through it. But over the years and the myriad of rejections, he finally told me that I was “a poet who wrote novels” and that the only novels being sold and marketed were either “category, brand name, or schlock” and so we ended our relationship.
At some point, I’ll read The Unlikely Child again. (An excerpt from the first chapter was published in Apsaras Review in 2002.) And maybe I’ll make some changes to it and maybe I won’t. It’s a beautiful book, but it’s very sad and very intense. My friend Amy once said the only reason it wasn’t published was that all the publishers are too chicken. (Because it takes a lot of chutzpah just to read it, let alone publish it!)
Here’s my “official” description of this novel: The Unlikely Child is about an abuse survivor’s surfacing memories, and an American divorce and its transpiercing effects – an emotional allegory for the biblical story of Solomon and the division of a child.
Heavy, yes.
So for my next novel, I decided to write a love story. And my husband (who decided to publish using his first and middle names, John Fairbanks) wrote a few passages and poems throughout it. I wrote the first draft of this novel in 1992, while pregnant with my second daughter. This love story (set in the computer industry), eventually became heavier than I’d originally intended, and was, for us, a Taoist experience. And we decided to call the book The Wet Tao, which sounds like “the wet towel” because even the deepest and truest love sometimes feels like a wet towel - or a wet blanket. (My husband disagrees with this assessment of “the wet tao” – he feels that “wet” implies passion and “tao” implies “in the moment,” so the whole phrase to him means, “passionate moment.)
Alan (my former college creative writing professor) had started a literary agency with some of his colleagues in the mid-1990s, and he asked if I’d like him to represent this book (although we used a different title then, because he hated the title The Wet Tao). Alan had thought this novel would be very marketable (sort of in the “Moonstruck” niche). But after representing the book for about a year, Alan discovered that the agency work was more time-consuming than he’d expected, and he dropped this endeavor.
And so The Wet Tao languished until 2003, when Apsaras Review published an excerpt from it. And a few years ago, John and I decided to self-publish the entire novel on www.lulu.com, where it still sits, patiently waiting to be discovered and purchased.
In September 2005, I published a story called “Tomorrow Sometimes Knows” on www.lulu.com (and later I added more stories to create a collection). The idea for the title story came from a dream I had on January 23, 2005. The dream was so vivid that I wrote about it that day and sent it off as a short story to The New Yorker magazine the following day. On March 9, 2005, I received a rejection from the magazine. My dream was about someone who dreams of Howard Cosell announcing John Lennon's death during a Monday night football game and, haunted by his premonition, this person goes to the Dakota to try to stop the murder he has foreseen. In September 2005, my husband emailed me a news article about a movie being made about someone who befriends the person who pulled the trigger on Lennon. And to prove that my short story came first, I immediately published it on www.lulu.com, where it still lingers, waiting to be discovered and purchased. (Although, I must say, unlike the film, in my story Lennon lives, which represents the fulfillment of one of my fondest fantasies. And someone I don’t know actually did purchase a copy of this story, but they purchased it at a time when I had the thing listed for free, so I did not receive any royalties from it!)
Last year I wrote my newest novel - Notes For My Mother - my first attempt at young adult fiction. Told from a ten-year-old girl’s point of view, this book is inspired by the years that my mother lived with me and my oldest daughter, when I was a young, single mother, and my own mother was battling degenerative dementia.
That’s enough of an introduction.
As a novelist, I am unsuccessful, because I’ve been writing novels for the past 35 years and still haven’t earned any money from all the work and effort. And the fact that I keep trying – with little hope of ever being successful – is that a symptom of insanity or brilliance? Or both? Or is there even a difference between the concepts that underlie those two words?
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