Grad School!

So I just finished Day 4 of my MFA adventure at Antioch University in Los Angeles. I've got 5 more days of seminars and workshops to go. So far it has been, well, awesome. I'm sure that I should be able to come up with a more evocative and compelling way to describe, but I'm using all my words in workshop.

It's kind of like being at the very best writers' conference ever. The seminars have been amazing. I attended one this morning given by Francesca Lia Block where I actually cried while doing the writing exercise. Richard Garcia gave one about poetry that was so good that I wanted to go back to my hotel and wrote a poem. I never write poetry except goofy jokey rhymes. I wanted to write a real poem. I might actually write one.

Then the workshops! Amazing, insightful input. Riffing ideas back and forth. Forcing me to dig deeper. It's like heaven.

Last night, I went to reading by Mary Gordon. Yes. Final Payments Mary Gordon. Then I went to a talk she gave this afternoon.

And here's the icing on the tasty MFA cake. For the next 5 months, Tannanarive Due is my mentor. Every month she'll be giving me input on my work and we'll be discussing books.

I'll keep you all posted on how things continue, but if the beginning is any indication, this is truly going to change my life.

Winner of Wild Child Pre-order!

Mary Jo Burke!! It's you. Please contact me at molly @ Molly - okeefe . com (no spaces) and let me know if you prefer digital or paper and I will order it and in several months when Wild Child comes out it will arrive like magic at your home!!

In other news, we saw Superman last night - AWFUL!!! So terrible.

Read an AMAZING book The Painted Girls about Degas' Little Dancer Aged 14 and the criminal and artistic events surrounding the Paris Opera House at the time - AMAZING.

What's new with you?

Book recommendation

I've been telling everyone I know about this series, The Chronicles of Elantra by Michele Sagara.

I've read the first and am half way through the second book and they are both great. I have a hard time explaining what they are - I think they're fantasy, with a definite urban fantasy edge to them, most especially in the voice of the heroine.

The world building is seamless and immersive and the cast is large, but every character seems really well fleshed out. The mystery element of the first book was gripping and the resolution was exciting, and the heroine is, in a word, awesome.

She's great. Vulnerable, snarky and capable. As Molly and Stephanie get ready to blog about great romance heroines, I'd throw Kaylin into the mix as a great heroine.

I have seven more books in the series, which I'm really looking forward to reading. If you haven't read it, give it a try and let me know what you think.

We've forgotten them so much we need a week to honor them!

Brie at Romance Around the Corner  (romance-around-the-corner.blogspot.com) is hosting Heroine Week in July. When I heard about this I immediately volunteered to post a blog. Of course the idea I had was shared by a number of other writers, so I picked a different topic and I'm really in love with it.

Molly too is going to blog and I thought how great is this, we're going to spend a whole week talking about Heroines. Really focusing on their story.

Then it smacked me in the head! Wait a minute. Romance Around the Corner is primarily a review site for romance books. Romance books are written primarily by women. Every romance novel must feature a heroine (with the exception of m/m romance obviously.)

But we need a week to talk about what we're not talking about currently? We're not talking about WOMEN characters in this genre! A genre built by and sustained mostly by women and suddenly it seems we only care about the heroes.

I just finished reading Bossy Pants by Tina Fey. At one point in her career at SNL the women writers were despairing that they weren't getting the "good" parts. Tina's point was you're a woman writer, write a good woman part! 

We're women! We should be writing amazing unforgettable heroines that are getting talked about all the time!

I love that Brie has shed light on this and I can't wait to read all the posts about heroines but I'm making a point of finding those amazing female characters and blogging about them more often!

(Sorry about the number of exclamation points - I'm obviously a little worked up!) 

Mud

So I didn't yarn bomb anything this week. Maybe next year?

But I did go to see a movie! Yay! I miss movies.

I went to see the unlikely Matthew McConaughey (and Reese Witherspoon and Sam Shepard and Michael Shannon and Sarah Paulson) starring movie, Mud. (Great cast.)

And what a great little movie. It did so many storytelling things so well. It was tightly told and no little detail offered up didn't end up important in the end.

One of the main foreshadowing moments/details I saw coming a mile away. Two miles. But I actually think that might have been masterful too. Because it meant I was distracted by that detail and didn't see how the other small detail from the beginning was going to be relevant. And even the obvious foreshadowing detail (okay, it involves snakes) came into play at a moment when I wasn't expecting it, or at least, the instant I realized it was going to come into play it was perfect, because I was cringing and praying that I was wrong. Great moment of suspense and anticipation.

Mud is a quiet "kid-driven" movie that ends up exploding in tension and violence. In that way, it reminded me of Danny Boyle's Millions. But I as much as I love Danny Boyle, I think I liked Mud better.

And I need someone else to see it, because I can't decide who the protagonist was. The obvious answer is Mud, the McConaughey character, but I actually think the protagonist was Ellis, one of the boys.

And speaking of the boys, the two young teen actors in this film were astoundingly good. Amazing. And neither of the boys' characters were stereotypes, at all. And neither were their families. With the setting of people living on riverboats in Arkansas it would be so pat and easy to give the boys terrible parents, or make them all hicks, but all the parental figures, even the one boy's unconventional uncle, played by Michael Shannon, were interesting *and* good parents.

Plus, it was so awesome to see a 14-year-old boy character, Ellis, who was such a pure romantic at heart. Romantic on so many levels. And that's why I think it was Ellis's story. His realizing that the world maybe isn't as perfect as he thought, love isn't as pure as he thought, and the line between right and wrong isn't always as super clear as he thought.

But then as soon as I'm sure, I think that it's Mud's story, but told through Ellis's POV.

Still not positive.

Has anyone else seen this yet? Would love to discuss.

Plarn Bomb!

International Yarn Bombing Day was this past weekend. If you happened to see knit or crocheted items covering trees, posts, buses or benches, it was part of the celebration of fiber arts.

I have wanted to yarn bomb for a while. Specifically I wanted to plarn bomb with yarn I'd made from plastic grocery bags. Once I heard there was a specific day set aside for a celebration of yarn bombing, I totally wanted to be a part of it.

So off and one for over a year now, I've been working on some clothing for a sculpture in downtown Davis.



For some reason, a lot of people hate this piece of sculpture. They think it's ugly or stupid. I figure it's par for the course for public art. I felt like I could do something a little different than a standard yarn bomb and make clothing for the figures.

It was time consuming work and took a ridiculous amount of plastic bags, but I was able to make hats, a poncho, a scarf and a sweater. I put them up this weekend with a sign wishing everyone a Happy International Yarn Bombing Day.



It's been great. My kids are telling me that a bunch of their friends have been posting photos of it on Facebook without realizing they know who did it. I've driven by a couple of times (it's not stalking! they're inanimate!) and have seen people stopping, laughing, taking pictures. I drove by today and it looks like some pieces have been taken, which makes me laugh a little. Plarn is seriously scratchy. I would not want to wear that beret no matter what.

All in all, it's been even more successful than I'd hoped. My only worry is that I'm going to get a call from the cops and have to pay some sort of vandalism fine, but until the 5-O catches up with me, I'm feeling like a proud a proud guerrilla crocheter. Kind of like a Grandma Banksy.

Some Excellent Parenting By Molly O'Keefe (And a WILD CHILD contest!)

A few weekends ago my husband was off on a much needed cottage trip with some friends and I was solo with the kids for a few days. On the last Sunday by myself, I must admit - I was killing it. I was a mom on fire. I got some work done, we did a huge amount of gardening, we walked down the street to the Farmer's Market for some waffles and seventy-million dollars a cup organic, fair trade, made with the tears of Russian Elves, coffee. It was exhausting - all that engagement, the non-stop referring, the endless questions about what would happen if Mario from Mario Brothers ended up in the Skylanders Game. By the time we were walking home from the Market, I was looking forward to the late afternoon movie (theirs) and nap (mine). I got home and thinking about dinner, looked at the clock.

It was noon. NOON!

At almost the same time a friend texted to say that she was going with her daughter to meet another friend and her two kids at the Art Gallery of Ontario I immediately signed on. I hadn't been to the AGO since the first time I visited Toronto to see Adam. He enlisted the help of a friend to show me around while Adam worked. The friend altered his consciousness a bit and we spent an hour in a white room with silver mylar balloons being blown around by a fan.

As much as I imagine my kids digging those balloons, I had heard that in the big Frank Gehry renovation, they'd made an amazing kid's section.

Did they ever.

In the basement of the AGO, there's a giant room with picnic tables, ping pong tables, a life size version of snakes and ladders and bins of building materials. Straws, blocks, etc. In another room it's arts and crafts heaven. A wall of different papers. A giant table with three lazy-susan type trays in the middle filled with every art supply a kid could want - glitter, tape, markers, crayons, feathers, etc. A reading nook, a games nook. A dress-up room. It was amazing.

The five kids played for nearly four hours. Mick made a giant bug suit he could wear made entirely of straws. Lucy did the project of the day - and Illuminated Manuscript page - and actually wrote a story. It was a beautiful day. High fives all around.

So, of course I decided to ruin it.

Upstairs was the Renaissance exhibit and I thought it would be a great idea to take the five kids, ages 2 to 8, up to a nearly black room, filled with serious art folk talking very very quietly, about priceless 700 year old art. What could go wrong?

Well, the two year old could smack her hands against the 1000 year old fresco from Florence, sending every guard into cardiac arrest. That could happen. Lucy, exhausted by the day could throw herself on the ground and roll around because she didn't want to hold my hand. That could happen.

What I didn't really realize is that all the Renaissance art work was entirely biblical. Focusing largely on the crucifixion. Lots and lots of blood splatter. Mick was absolutely fascinated. However, one of the moms and her daughter are Jewish and the mom walked into the room at the end of a long day and whispered "I am not ready to answer these questions." I had gone a few rounds with Mick about Jesus and how he wasn't Santa Claus or Zeus but another guy altogether - and while my children have perhaps stepped into church twice in their life, I felt fully capable of explaining that everyone believed a different kind of story. I volunteered to take the girls around and talk about the story the paintings were telling while my friend kept the two-year old from setting off alarms.

Clearly, this was a bad idea.

Half-way into the story of how Jesus died (bloody, very bloody) my friend's little girl, who has hit overload, starts yelling "we don't believe in this!" People are beginning to look at us. Lucy gets upset, because despite absolutely ZERO christian education she is now fully invested in Jesus. So Lucy is screaming - "he's Jesus! God's son!" and the other little girl is screaming "We don't believe in him!"

We quickly get the girls out of the exhibit, but of course you have to pass through the gift shop where Lucy decides her life is not complete without a Jesus and The Disciples set of cheese knives.

I realize at this point, I've lost Mick.

Back into the quiet dark serious art room I go. He's not at the beheading of the saints. Or the strange picture of Jesus with what looks like a dragon. No, he's in the far corner surrounded by a tour group looking at a series of panels. Jesus carrying the cross. Him on the cross. Being taken down from the cross. Put in the tomb. And then, of course rising from the dead. Mick has no inside voice and he yells "did she kill him?" pointing to Mary Magedelan, I tell him no, she's sad. We talk at length about the blood splatter. And finally at the last one I explain how people believe Jesus, three days after being buried, rose from the dead.

My son nods sagely, as if it is all making sense to him now, turns to the tour group behind us and tells them as if they were worried and confused; "Jesus is a zombie."

I grabbed Mick, caught up with my friends who were surrounded by a circle of hyperventilating guards trying to get the kids off the giant Inuit sculptures - and left.

Please, readers and friends - share a bad parenting story - at the end of the week I will pick a winner and preorder a copy of WILD CHILD for you!