SILK EGG ... IS IN THE HOUSE!

Aww...Santa Woof is bringing gifts!



So lookit what was brought!


Thanks Santa Shepherd! SILK EGG is divine on hand!

BORGESIAN MOI

Yah, I know -- I've gotten beyond moiself. "Eileen Tabios" is confirmed to be a "persona".

Isn't it synchronistic that my forthcoming SILK EGG (yes that book description in link is truncated) takes its cue from Borges' "La biblioteca de Babel"?

Fictions may require an author, but I'm the author that's fiction.

Do allow Moi to introduce you to my latest nickname: La Babel!

BABAYLANISM

OurOwnVoice's newest issue is rather historic by focusing on the Babaylan.

I've got three poems innit, which isn't the most important detail but which I note for moi Blog-File ("Hay(na)ku with Ducktail for Leny", The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon," and "Sacred Time"). Again for the Blog-File, I also have the novel "Dear Cloud" innit.

Having gotten Housekeeping out of the way, I found this essay by Cynthia Arias, "An American Babaylan: Living in One's Own Truth" quite useful. It's useful because modern-day Babaylanism is controversial in some circles as people grapple with the effect of the diaspora (and the resultant separation from "land"). Anyway, here's some excerpts from Arias' essay:

The concept that the Babaylan is defined by factors that override an individual’s direct experience of the originating land, the Philippine Islands, is vital to understanding the presence of the Babaylan in the Diaspora and the ways that sacred practices of the Babaylan have, as well, bridged the seas of consciousness that Pilipinos have traversed in their journeys around the world.

...

If we accept that Culture is a human construct, by which a group of individuals agree basic concepts of values, morals, mores to form a worldview, then it follows that Culture evolves as humans evolve.

...

While many may provide their perspectives, and assist in our discoveries, through critical analysis founded in scientific methodology, it is up to us to decide who we are and where we are headed.

Modern-day Babaylanism is empowering.

The Babaylan Conference, which seeded this issue, also empowered Mom to write her first book (which I'm reviewing now). But here is also one of her narratives, a memoir from 1939 entitled "Dawac". Good for Mom!

Also useful is the essay "Ways of the Babaylan" by Katrin de Guia. It's clear from her essay that empathizing/understanding (in my opinion, if you understand Babaylanism, understanding cannot occur without empathizing) cannot occur without that thing that many folks are scared to discuss: love. I do think Ben Okri's quote relevant: "Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment. Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery."

It takes courage to love as a Babaylan would/does. For, as de Guia puts it, "The first priority of the babaylan is the community."

I appreciate Babaylanism because it requires intelligent innocence.

CHRISTMAS IN JULY!

That's right! It's July and it's Christmas! How, Toi asks? Moi invites your gaze over HERE where, for a mere two bucks, you can get a copy of my latest novel entitled, you betcha,

Christmas

!! C'mon--for less than a Starbucks, you get a novel! No wonder it's Christmas!



Christmas' publication is made possible by Dan Waber's tiny series from chapbookpublisher.com. Am delighted to be part of the inaugural booklets which also include The Great American Novel by Michael Aro, Rain, O’er Me by Rachael Goetzke, Heat by Martha Deed, and Wool by Chris Tiefel. If you go to the tiny site, I think you'll agree that these tinys pack a HUGE impact, even on just one tiny page!

HAVING SIPPED "TEARS OF CHRIST"...

Am back but horribly jet-lagged. Good to return to my publisher Marsh Hawk Press being hailed by Huffington Post (as a press who takes risks -- yadda: how many poetry presses publish bricks!) and MiPOesias kindly giving a venue to my novel, Pewter.

Meanwhile, here's my latest Recently Relished W(h)ine List which, of course, is heavy on airport reading and Italian wine:

SPRING/SUMMER HARVEST:
1 stalk of "miner's weed"
100 stalks of green onion
77 strawberries
2 artichokes
2 cherries
7 zucchini
4 stalks of scallions
3 summer squash
6 cucumbers


PUBLICATIONS
OBSERVATIONS FROM THE HILLSIDE, 25th anniversary book celebration of Harlan Estate winery

SLEEPERS, autobiography by Lorenzo Carcaterra (gut-wrenching; a must-read for everybody)

WAR OF THE WORLDS, novel by H.G. Wells

FIRST BORN, novel by Lindsay McKenna

THE HAMMER OF EDEN, novel by Ken Follett

61 HOURS, novel by Lee Child

THE KILLING, novel by Robert Muchamore

CONTACT, novel by Susan Grant

DEAD WATCH, novel by John Sanford

AGAINST THE WIND, novel by J.F. Freedman

THE PIED PIPER, novel by Ridley Pearson

RAPTURE IN DEATH, novel by J.D. Robb

VISIONS IN DEATH, novel by J.D. Robb

MEMORY IN DEATH, novel by J.D. Robb

THE BODY FARM, novel by Patricia Cornwell

ILL WIND, novel by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason


WINES
1997 Sandrone La Vigna
2000 Bierzo "Corullon"
2008 Lacryma Christi del Vescorio Il Continiere (Tears of Christ, sipped right on Vesuvius -- a moment)
2005 Carfe Sant' Alda Amarone della Valpolicella
2006 Az. Le Ragose Valpolicella Classico Superiore "Le Sassine"
2009 Villa Rocca Soave
2009 Villa Rocca Valpolicella
2008 Brolio Toscana chardonnay
2008 Brolio Chianti Classico
2005 Brolio Casalferro Toscana
2004 Gaja Remaina
2006 Fattorie Parri Ribaldaccio Chianti
Ripalta San Giovese
Ripalta chardonnay Tuscan
Foscaro Prosecco
2008 Fattorie Melini Chianti San Lorenzo
2006 Arnaldo-Caprai Montefalco Rosso

SILK EGG: COLLECTED NOVELS!

Well. I was sitting on the mountain this weekend amidst a swarm of bees wondering what next to do with my boring life...then this happened:



Isn't this ink and acrylic work on paper lovely?!!!! 'Tis by brilliant artist Maureen McQuillan!

And it's the front cover image for my next book! (Yes, I know....I was supposed to taper down...but moi blather's got huge inventory....to wit:)

WOOT! I'm delighted to announce that SILK EGG: COLLECTED NOVELS (2009-2009) has been accepted for publication by the illustrious Shearsman Books of Exeter, U.K. Publication Date: Spring 2011!

SILK EGG, of course, began with the first novel Novel Chatelaine! Thanks to Amanda Laughtland and her Teeny Tiny Press for early encouragement--you encouraged the literal seed to this project! SILK EGG (you can see the title novel HERE) will present a dozen novels!

Thanks to Shearsman editor Tony Frazer for welcoming me into the Shearsman fold, which includes many authors whose works I admire -- heck, I thought I'd first have to be dead to be on a list that includes Stéphane Mallarmé, Du Fu, or Fernando Pessoa (grin).

Pessoa: that's one to chase...Food for thought: did you all know that "Eileen Tabios" also has written and published under other names...? (wink)

Anyhoot--this will be one of my slimmer books. After all, these are novels, not poems...(grin & wink).

A TOTALLY UNEXPECTED NOVEL MOVE!

Well, I never thought I'd be nominated for BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES!

That's right -- short stories. [Pause for HUGE GRIN! Scratch that: Pause for HUGE CACKLE before she slips offa her chair and lands on the floor as she's laughing so hard...]

Thank you to the editors of Cerise Press -- that be Sally Molini, Karen Rigby, Greta Aart -- for nominating SILK EGG, my mischievous prose poem-turned-novel and now turned-short story for its briefness.

SILK EGG, by the way, is the title novel for a larger manuscript entitled SILK EGG: COLLECTED NOVELS. I've been too busy to work to submit novels from this manuscript, but the first and only other novel to be published from it is NOVEL CHATELAINE. The whole thing just makes Moi purrrrrr.......

SILK EGG & OTHERS

My second novel, SILK EGG, has just been published by Cerise Press, and you can read it without cutting down a tree OVER HERE!

Thanks to Cerise Press' editors: Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Sally Molini and Karen Rigby! It's a lovely journal, with its second issue revealing how quickly and deservedly it has grabbed the attention of some lions and candles in the literary world -- check out their Fall//Winter 2009-2010 Issue's offerings of poetry, translations, essays, fiction, photography & art, interviews and reviews.

Speaking of lovely reads, Otoliths continues to deliver Halloween and post-Halloween treats, as deftly-edited by Mark Young! Always wonderful to see several of my favorite poets!

IT'S PRE-PHYLLOXERA!

It's sweet, isn't it? How my teensy novel got me the chops to do a blurb for THIS?! Well, do check out indeed Michelle Cruz Skinner's IN THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS!

Meanwhile, here's another newly-concocted blurb, this one for Lars Palm's forthcoming chap good behavior:

These are wonderful parenthetical novellas. Within "a snap of ... fingers," these inquisitions -- ranging over Pinocchio to addressing cats to white colonialism in Zimbabwe -- provide a welcome "kick in the head".
--Eileen Tabios

And speaking of recent relishes, here's my latest Relished W(h)ine List:

PUBLICATIONS
FOR GOOD BEHAVIOR, poems (in manuscript) by Lars Palm

1000 VIEWS OF "GIRL SINGING", multi-genre anthology of translations/collaborations edited by John Bloomberg-Rissman

BOSQUEJOS / SKETCHES, poemas by Edwin Agustin Lozada (am re-reading these poems by a former member of Rosa Montoya Bailes Flamenco as we'd chatted flamenco during Litquake when I read from my flamenco book Nota Bene Eiswein)

SUENOS ANONIMOS / ANONYMOUS DREAMS, poemas by Edwin Agustin Lozada

ERNESTA, IN THE STYLE OF THE FLAMENCO, poems by Sandy McIntosh

CATCH LIGHT, poems by Sarah O'Brien (what a lovely luminescent debut of a collection!)

THIRD BODY, poems by Michel Delville, Trans. by Gian Lombardo

LEAFLETS: POEMS 1965-1968 by Adrienne Rich

NAVIGATE, AMELIA EARHART'S LETTERS HOME, poems by Rebecca Loudon (every word in this collection is necessary -- which is amazing because, as a project-oriented collection and given its nature, it stood the risk of containing poems-as-placeholders. The vibrant energy here does not cancel discipline.)

THE METHOD, poems by Sasha Steensen

THERE'S THE HAND AND THERE'S THE ARID CHAIR, poems by Tomaz Salamun

PLAY, poems by Liz Waldner

EVEN BEFORE MY OWN NAME, poems by Tracy Koretsky

BY WAY OF, four-chap collection of poems by Matthew Nienow, Emily Carr, Diana Woodcock and Diana Alvarez (I really like Toadlily Press' publisher's concept of four chaps in one book)

MAID OF HEAVEN: THE STORY OF SAINT JOAN OF ARC in verse by Ben D. Kennedy

BEATS OF NAROPA edited by Anne Waldman and Laura Wright

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, artist's book by Ben Luzzato

FOOD AND WHINE: CONFESSIONS OF AN END OF THE MILLENIUM MOM, comedy/memoir by Jennifer Moses

THE DUGGARS: 20 AND COUNTING! RAISING ONE OF AMERICA'S LARGEST FAMILIES--HOW THEY DO IT, tell-all by Michelle & Jim Bob Duggar

BUILDING A HOME WITH MY HUSBAND: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE RENOVATION OF LOVE, memoir by Rachel Simon

THE RETURNS, fiction shorts by Dennis Barone

REACHING OUT, novel by Francisco Jimenez

SHADOW MAN, novel by Cody McFadyen

THE DARKER SIDE, novel by Cody McFadyen

A PLAGUE OF SECRETS, novel by John Lescroart

THE SCARECROW, novel by Michael Connelly

PACIFIC BEAT, novel by T. Jefferson Parker

STORM RUNNERS, novel by T. Jefferson Parker

MOST WANTED, novel by Michele Martinez

THE FINISHING SCHOOL, novel by Michele Martinez


WINES
1994 Serafini & Vidotto
1997 Behrens & Hitchcock syrah Napa Valley
1991 Chateau Reynella "Basket Pressed" Cabernet McLaren Vale
2003 Rausan Despagne
2007 Acacia Pinot hour NV/Carneros
1994 Dow
2005 The Grail of Liss Shiraz
2004 Peter Michael "La Carriere" chardonnay
2005 Fritz Haag Brauneberger Juffer Sonnenuhr Riesling-Spatlese
2002 Chevalier Montrachet "La Cabotte" Domaine Brouchard Pere & Fils
2004 Dancing Hares
1989 Gaja Sori San Lorenzo
1982 Ch. Ducru Beaucaillou
1997 Jones Family Vineyard cabernet
2001 Thierry Allemand Cornas
1853 Whitwhams Millenium Port Royal Reserve (a pre-phylloxera wine!)

"BLUE AND SILK SPUMES / A KEY IRON"

My first published novel, NOVEL CHATELAINE, inspires a poem by Jeff Harrison first posted on WRYTING-Listserve! Thanks Jeff! (And thanks for the heads' up, Anny!) You can see the poem HERE.

Btw, one of the most interesting online ongoing conversations about is Jeff and Allen Bramhall sharing ANTIC VIEWS-check it out!

THE INCONSEQUENTIALITY OF BLURBS

I know I've got direct credentials as well as having edited fiction, not to mention just having released a novel (grin), but it still feels weird to be working on a blurb for a fiction book.

I sort of think asking a poet to blurb fiction is to give up on the idea of its commercial possibilities, possibilities that have always rarely existed for poetry. Perhaps this is a sign of the times?

Maybe fiction is just following in poetry's footsteps. To wit, have you noticed more and more that -- no doubt with the proliferation of printing technologies that ramp up the number of published poetry collections -- more blurbers are not necessarily "established" poets (however one defines "established") but simply other poets who've mustered respect in their own quarters of the poetry world? Nor does it matter anyway in terms of sales as the impact of blurbs on sales is insignificant when poetry sales in general is insignificant (?).

Now, we get to a situation like I'm in where Moi is giving a blurb to a fiction work. Hey, I like the writer's work and don't mind doing so. But ...

... Or maybe just another possibility exists. Perhaps the fiction world is just dying to hear from Moi! Maybe I'm HOT! and didn't know it! (Ah the stuff I say before that proverbial first cup of java....)

Or, I need to focus on novelizing THIS!

!

A NOVEL DEMAND

Well now. Apparently the second printing (grin) of MY NOVEL (grin) is due to stuff up moi country lane mailbox this week.

So those waiting for their copies should get it soon....and those still interested in seeing what the hoo-haa is about can still email me for a free copy viz GalateaTen@aol.com. This tiny novel has traveled to nine (Update: eleven!) countries so far ... tiny but big-hearted!

Thanks to Amanda Laughtland for her literally manual press!

"GLOBAL LITERARY IDOL" -- HOW TO BE A FAMOUS, MAINSTREAM WRITER

On the Flips Listserve, some discussion on mainstream publishing (vs, cough, poetry publishing). Since, while a poet, I also am now a novelist (grin), I deem moiself an expert on such a topic. So, in response to this TIME Magazine article about Modern Book Publishing and Culture (see link below), I suggested in an email entitled "...how you can be a famous mainstream writer", and replicate here:

[Re.] http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1873122-1,00.html

Ahhhh....this aspect! So one of the questions, logically, is -- especially as more authors do the smart thing and publish their own works by leveraging off technological advancements -- how one rises from the soup of so many offerings out there. One way is grass roots, as described in the TIME Magazine article, where word-of-mouth can bring attention to a deserving work that initially was self-published but then ended up getting an agent, a mainstream publisher and so on. But, certainly, one can be more proactive. Here's my idea -- a revision of the AMERICAN IDOL talent contest television show! Of, I should say just IDOL since I think the IDOL idea is not original or unique to the U.S....

Anyway, what if we have a GLOBAL LITERARY IDOL talent show conducted through the internet. Anyone can first audition by sending in the first chapter of the novel. These could be whittled down, as they do on IDOL, to the most promising (perhaps by a judge of established literary authors -- please, no Paula equivalent, okay?)....and then, the whole internet world can participate! The semi-finalists or finalists can keep posting subsequent chapters. After each chapter, the internet audience votes....and so on until a winner is declared (presumably, many but not all of the chapters would have been posted so that the winner then would still have the entire book to release....and it'll be released to much attention and curiosity about it based on the IDOL-whittling down process....

And, like the T.V. IDOL, the beauty of this talent contest is how it creates the audience by the time the (winning) book is to be released and it, economically, probably isn't that expensive to do ....

Laugh if you have no vision. Personally, I think this idea would work! Feel free to co-opt, ye struggling mainstream publishers!

BREATHE WITH MOI...

right HERE...in the Netherlands no less (grin)...


.

A NOVEL DISCOURSE...

Thought I'd take a photo of NOVEL CHATELAINE on moi hand, because its Tiny-ness is part of its charm, courtesy of Amanda Laughtland's book design--to wit, in Ron Silliman's words: "Seven chapter, 8-page novel with great color graphics ingeniously printed on a single piece of 20-lb weight copy paper":



More joy! Here's John Olson -- who, by the way, brilliantly used one of the Oulipo N + 7 techniques to respond to Steven Fama's fun reworking of Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem HERE -- as regards my first novel (grin):

Your novel arrived in the mail yesterday. I hope to have the first chapter read by mid-February, maybe March.

Just kidding, of course. I read it as soon as it emerged from the envelope. What a delight. It has a certain tragi-comical zest. A shovel breaking earth and a neglected garden and a plot in which tendons bend and bones bend and antlers bear the gold of narration. It is rather amazing how much gestalt and atmosphere can be condensed into a few small paragraphs.

Are you familiar with Yasunari Kawabata's "palm stories"? Or Ernest Hemingway's six word novel? "For sale: baby shoes. Never used."

Oddly, your novel reminded me of the Rolling Stone's "Jumping Jack Flash." The song was inspired by Keith Richards' gardener. He jumped over a mud puddle or something and Keith shouted "jumping jack flash"!" He and Mick decided that was such a cool phrase they had to make a song out of it...

Gardening?!--guess that's where the fiction arises for Moi. Speaking of novels, John Olson's SOULS OF WIND arrived in today's mail -- here's how it begins:

He stood with his hands resting on the taffrail gazing at the water boiling up from the stern of the S.S. Egypt, a steamer with one funnel and six masts rigged fore and aft with nearly two thousand square yards of canvas. The ship was doing eighteen knots and leaving a long trail of foam, diffuse and mesmerizing in its quiet undulations. A girl sneezed, and he turned around instinctively to see who was behind him. The hard, chiseled lines of his face frightened the girl and she ran to hide behind her mother's skirt. He gestured with apology, but neither the woman or her husband--an immigrant couple from Bucharest--revealed acknowledgement. They feared this man.

From that excerpt, you can glean why I almost cried at John's comments over my novel (grin -- I'm sorry, whenever I think of that phrase my novel, I just put on a major sh*t-eating grin) for he knows of what he speaks. He also improves my reading habits -- after his novel, I'm off to read Yasunari Kawabata's Palm-of-the-Hand Stories....

I haven't read Yasunari Kawabata in over a decade, but still remember how his House of the Sleeping Beauties was one of those evocative reading experiences that tips one into a dream where Poetry held sway... Another poet had recommended this book to me....how logical of course that poets recommend Yasunari Kawabata....as I also do...

SOME NOVEL REVIEWS & 2ND PRINTING OF NOVEL UNDERWAY!

Wow. In a couple of weeks, my FIRST NOVEL (grin) has sold out its first printing! Uh, okay, I mean "given" out its first printing....to peeps in nine countries so far! But not to worry, publisher Amanda Laughtland of the veeeery charming TeenyTiny Press is fast-and-furiously wielding colored pencils to do a "second printing"! So, still: details for FREE NOVEL HERE!

My novel is textually encompassed by a single (8 X 11") page. But oooooh peeeps seem to love its BIG HEART!

Even though I continue to shy away from it, the NOVEL CHATELAINE has no such compunction and has showed up on FACEBOOK! I can't access its lovely face but there's apparently an oenophiliac statement that goes..."weighs significantly less than five ounces of wine. The prose, however, is robust and well-decanted (i.e., no deadwood)." Yeeee-hah! I ain't deadwood!

Then, Jesse Glass reviews my novel and, in the process, reveals my secret relationship with Jack and the Beanstalk. It begins:

Let it go down in the record books of eternity that Amanda Laughtland, of Teeny Tiny Press, has cracked the sound barrier with the aplomb of Sam Shepard in the Right Stuff, by bringing out Eileen "Bean" Tabios' first novel in a teeny Tiny edition with a hand-colored bunch of grapes on the cover! CLICK HERE FOR ENTIRE CHEERFUL REVIEW.

Just for that, Jesse, I'll mention that JESSE GLASS IS THE DESERVING FEATURED POET THIS WEEK AT POETRYVLOG.COM! Wink.

Then, comes this response-letter -- longer than moi novel! -- extrapolating from said novel to outline a path for my future (heh). From John Bloomberg-Rissman:

Hi Eileen—

I was away at a conference in Denver so didn’t get the mail til last night. First thing, of course, I devoured your novel, which is 1) great and 2) will require many rereadings and is 3) great. I do have a question and a thought (or, rather a fantasy …)

The question first, which I ask as a person who spend 1.5 decades immersed in the 17th century: without asking you to reveal any anything not in the novel, I just wonder what that century signifies for you? I mean, why c17 instead of c18 or c19??

And the thought, which is less a thought than an imagined trajectory your work, at least one aspect of it, seems to be taking. OK. First (maybe not first, but …) there was your Tiny Books project. Now this Teeny Tiny Book. Kind of like the Incredible Shrinking Woman’s Incredible Shrinking Works …

Here’s how I imagine your next project:

24 small bottles. 24 because that’s the number of the “books” in the Iliad, the archetypal epic. And because 24 is a hay(na)ku number (4 “stanzas”). Bottles somewhat a la Kiki Smith’s Untitled 1987-90. But in this case the bottles are clear. Inside each is a http://www.greenandstone.com/v2/i/p/gelcap.jpg clear gelcap. Inside each gelcap is a grain of rice, engraved with a single word (I know there are plenty of people in SF with the requisite skills …).

All in all, an epic.

I mean, now that you’ve conquered the lyric, the serial poem, the essay, ekphrasis, the novel, etc what’s left but to go after the biggest game in all western literature, something that’s supposed to have become impossible: the epic?

Unless you’d prefer to tackle a gesamtkunstwerke … out-Wagnering Wagner … but why not do both at the same time, since you seem to have no problem producing “bricks” and “infinitesimals” at the same time?

Of course, if you do create a rice sized piece, then next thing you know you’ll need to get one of those things that can engrave atomic particles … but I suppose there’s plenty of room for a nuclear lab up on top of your mountain …

In any case, you can see what your novel has done to me, at least formally speaking. I’m not yet ready to address the bildungsroman embedded within, the love story, the time travel “fantasy” (which may not be a fantasy), etc.

I would be envious of your talents and charms and chutzpah if I didn’t like you so much. Instead, I’m just happy for you!

Cheers,
John

PS, please congratulate the artist/publisher for me next time you get a chance. The presentation is perfect. [INSERT, CONGRATULATIONS AMANDA!]

PPS. It occurs to me that you live with Achilles. So writing in the epic tradition should be easy. “”Sing, O goddess, the wagging tail of Achilles” or somesuch. Isn’t that how these things begin?

PPPS. Of course the usual English translation where I put the wagging tail is wrath. I was thinking after I wrote that "I sing the woof of Achilles" is much better ... right sound, right metrics, etc. And then he goes ahead and say woof!

PPPPS. Do you have Lee Harwood's Collected Poems? There's a piece in there he wrote with Ric Caddel called Wine Tales: un roman devin, and, no shit, it takes place in part in a chateau. It's about 15 pp of prose, so your novel is shorter, but ... uncanny, eh?

PPPPPS. ...my idea of the bottle with the gelcap in it is stolen from my son’s girlfriend Rebekah May, who’s an artist currently getting her MFA at CCA. A few months ago she made something for me, which I keep by the side of the bed. My dazzling brilliance was to turn her piece into a series, a la Kiki Smith), to turn the gelcap clear, to include the grain of rice, and to see it as epic. But you should know about Becky. // Much of her work since he problems began revolves around embodiment, pain, etc., kinda like Frida Kahlo’s. // ...and I know Becky’s a fan of Damien Hirst, and Hirst’s been working with (depicting, that is, not to taking, at least not that I know of) pharmaceuticals for a while now. I’ve been to a show of that stuff with her.

John, in case you can't tell, is what I want to be: a librarian! Thanks for the gratuitous advice, John! It's an honor of course when my work elicits such names as Kiki Smith's.

As for that 17th century reference, well, it's because the Chatelaine's wine cellar door is a BIG IRON DOOR from a 17th century Loire Valley chateaux, complete with matching 17th century key. Well, yes, this of course relates to authenticity, to wit:

I may write fiction, but I never lie.

Would you expect anything less from Moi....?

And:

THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT TO SPREAD HAPPINESS. Worry! But be Happy!

MOI IS ALSO QUITE GRAPHIC

Well now. So, as a novel, I apparently extend the "Theory of the Novel", to wit:

I was gladly surprised to discover [NOVEL CHATELAINE] not only a novel, but a graphic novel. In a way it's also a kind of paper-based hyper-novel, because it very cleverly questions the boundaries between codex-based literature (to use a term I have been repeating throughout a thing I've been writing), digital information, poetry, visual art, performance art and narrative.

Thanks Ernesto. Illustrations in NOVEL CHATELAINE courtesy of the big-ly charming Amanda Laughtland! And I'ma tellin' ya, Peeps: FREE NOVEL OFFER HERE. So far, NOVEL CHATELAINE has winged its way to seven countries [UPDATE: eight countries!]....thanks for the interest!

Purrrr....

THAT DANGER INCITES ANOTHER FIRST!

Hah! Wasn't expecting it but I'm DELIGHTED over the first review of MY NOVEL (grin) entitled NOVEL CHATELAINE. 'Tis by Poet-professor Leny Strobel over HERE. It begins (and Moi preeeeens):

Novel Chatelaine is not harmless.

Then it ends

There is a lesson here for me.
The time for being harmless is over.
No more timidity.
No more excuses.

Thank you Leny. Glad to see MY NOVEL's impact!

And, speaking of genre-subversion, now that someone's reviewed MY NOVEL, I do believe that this could be the first time where a review of a novel would be LONGER than the novel itself.

Yep. That's gotta be another first!

Preeeen....then Purrrrrr.

GENRE? WHAT GENRE?

Hi there. This is Eileen R. Tabios, NOVELIST.

So far, my first novel (grin), NOVEL CHATELAINE, has been mailed out to five countries [Update: nine countries! Yay!]. A second mailing goes out today.

It's not too late for you. DETAILS FOR FREE NOVEL HERE.

One peep has queried whether I meant "novella" because my novel is small enough to lie prettily against an open palm. No, this ain't no novella. This is a full-pledged novel. I didn't plan it this way, but I don't mind saying: I do love the idea of making THICK BRICK poetry books and teeeeeeeeny novels!

This has been a Genre-Subverting Public Service Announcement.

You're welcome.

DISTRIBUTING JOY

The first mailing of NOVEL CHATELAINE goes out today.

Oh blessed blessed JOY!

Please indulge me as I want to see this in writing given that it took over a decade of effort to get here:

EILEEN R. TABIOS IS A NOVELIST...

My novel -- indulge me as I repeat that: My NOVEL... -- is also enchanting. The book fits and lays prettily against one's open palm...oh that open hand!

Purrrrrrrr....