Improv

I signed up to take an improv class at Second City. Something I've been meaning to do for years. This should be interesting.

Writing conference

Writing Conference, Macon, Georgia

Georgia

Hotel Room, Macon, Georgia

Story of my writing life

This is the outline of the presentation I'm doing at the Crossroads Writers Conference this weekend as part of the Freelancers Summit on Friday.

THE FREELANCE LIFE

-- Born and raised in Berkeley, CA
-- HS drop out, UCB grad, UIC writers program
-- Gypsy scholar, Father dies
-- Book publicist, The Internet, The Postfeminist Playground
-- Porn, politically incorrect, punditry
-- Move to LA, start freelancing, TV
-- Beat: culture, sex, adult movie industry
-- 2002: Leg injury, launch RCB, traffic junkie
-- 2003 – 2005: New Orleans, mental breakdown, suicidal
-- 2005: Hurricane Katrina, move to VA, waitress
-- 2008: Time Warner editor, the art of online outreach
-- 2009: They Shoot Porn Stars, Don’t They?
-- 2011: Downsized, Forbes blogger, digital copywriting
-- 2011.5: Marriage, cancer, work as identity
-- 2012: Stop everything but Forbes, reinvention, novel
-- Tips: Pick a beat that isn’t boring, get rejected a lot, learn to hustle

Advice from me

I'm going to be speaking at the Crossroads Writers Conference in Macon, Georgia, October 5 - 7, 2012.

I'm part of the Freelancers Summit headlined by Kevin Maurer, coauthor of No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden.

I'm be talking about how to thrive in the gig economy.

Here's their interview with me: "Don't Be Boring."

M: You talk a lot about ‘the hustle’ specifically that being a good marketer, traffic pusher, and editor of your own writing is increasingly important in the freelancing world.  Any specific tips and/or suggestions on how to become a kick ass and take names hustler and/or improve one’s hustling skills?

S: Your article isn’t going to read itself. You published something online, and nobody’s reading it. That’s probably because you thought writing it was enough. It isn’t. Send out the link to your piece to anybody of influence who may be interested in it. That’s networking on behalf of your prose. It’s not enough to write. You must also work to be read.

[READ]

Webinar

Here's how many times I've done a webinar: never. I don't even like the word.

But I'm very excited to have signed up for Vickie Pynchon's Negotiation Webinar Series.

I want to be a better negotiator in all facets of my life -- professional and personal -- and I'm really looking forward to this taking me to the next level. Vickie is awesome. I highly recommend.

If you sign up, we can all role play together.

[SIGN UP]

Buy this book

Today is the publication day of my awesome friend Lydia Netzer's terrific novel: Shine Shine Shine.

Buy it immediately.

It's already critically acclaimed, having scored a rave from Janet Maslin in the New York Times: "it is so full of oddities that no simple summary will do it justice."

It has something for everyone: a bald woman, a lost astronaut, math equations, robots, strange children, and time travel.

Tonight, you can attend the book's virtual launch party from the comfort of your very own home. Lydia's got the info here. I will be there.

It took Lydia ten years to write it, so get a copy, dammit.

See me read

If you live in the Chicagoland area, come see me read tomorrow night -- that's Wednesday, March 14 -- at 7 PM at The Book Cellar in Lincoln Square.

I'll be reading with my friend Anne Elizabeth Moore, author of Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh, and Terri Kapsalis, author of Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum.

I'm not sure what I'll be reading, but you can only found out if you go.

Come join us as local author Anne Elizabeth Moore discusses Cambodian Grrrl: Self-Publishing in Phnom Penh, a book the Portland Mercury calls "moving, hilarious, and unbelievable in a way that only true stories are." Combining memoir and journalism,  Moore chronicles her work in Southeast Asia and its impact on young women in a globalizing culture.   

Also reading with Moore is freelance journalist and award-winning columnist from the Pink Slipped blog Susannah Breslin and writer, performer and cultural critic Terri Kapsalis. 

[INFO]

I'm reading tonight

If you're in the Chicago area, I'm reading tonight at the Hopleaf at 5148 N. Clark. They have exotic beers and mind-blowing French fries. I'll be reading upstairs along with three other performers. The show starts at 7:30 PM, although apparently it's SRO by 7:00 PM. The reading series is This Much Is True, and I'll be reading a true story.

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This is true

Next Tuesday, October 11, I'll be reading at This Much Is True. It takes place upstairs at Hopleaf, which is awesome and located at 5148 N. Clark, Chicago, Illinois. Doors open at 6:45, and apparently it is often standing room only by 7:00. The show starts at 7:30.

You’ve been warned and yeah sure, this headline could be hyperbole or it could actually happen. We suggest you secure your socks tightly to your feet just to be sure. Tuesday, October 11th This Much is True is packing the room with so much talent you will wake up furious on the 12th if you miss it.

[INFO, IMAGE]

Reading

This Sunday, September 18th, I'll be reading at The Whistler's Orange Alert Reading Series. The literary-and-booze starts at 6 pm. The location is 2421 N. Milwaukee, Chicago, Illinois.

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Tomorrow, Saturday, July 23, at 11 AM, I'm a late add to a TechWeek panel in Chicago: "Blogging as a Career: Building an Audience and Making a Living."

Everyday millions of blogs are launched and everyday millions of blogs die. There are now blogs covering every sector, niche and idea. Blogging has changed the way that publishing works and thrown the traditional media world on its head. But can blogging be a career? Our panel features four entrepreneurial power-bloggers who have turned blogging into a career -- one reader at a time. This isn’t a conversation about SEO and spammy sites that fill the internet, but about creating a blog with quality content and building a solid readership that translates into a paycheck.

[TechWeek]

The latest on my Forbes blog PINK SLIPPED: I go to SXSW Interactive

Here's the latest post on my Forbes blog PINK SLIPPED: "At SXSW Interactive, Recruiters Are Pimps, Fameballs Are Sad, and Big Business Doesn't Listen."

The session starts. LaPierre announces that during her session no one can blog or Twitter. If they want to do so, they should leave. I find this strange, seeing as LaPierre is the head of social media at Kodak. Social media is the blood coursing through SXSW’s veins. In every session, attendees are typing away on iPhones, iPads, and laptops. This is the means by which SXSW becomes a conversation not with itself, but with the world. This is part of how people process their experience here. Through social media.

I get up and walk out.

Also, I find out how freelancers are like drug dealers, what Julia Allison's thoughts are on the "cyber police," and why Kodak thinks I'm an idiot.

[Read it]

I'm going to SXSW Interactive

I'm going to South by Southwest Interactive today. What will happen there? Find out in tomorrow's PINK SLIPPED.

I'm reading tonight

To remind, I'm reading tonight as part of the Five Things reading series. The evening's theme is freaky families, and I'll be reading a story that involves an oversharing holiday card. It's not be missed, surely.

Five Things, 7 pm
Wednesday, December 1st
United States Art Authority
2906 Fruth Street
Austin, Texas

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Watch me read

Next week, I'll be reading at Five Things, where five readers read five minute stories based on a theme. The theme is dysfunctional families, and I'll be reading a story about over-sharing holiday cards.

Five Things, 7 pm
Wednesday, December 1st
United States Art Authority
2906 Fruth Street
Austin, Texas

[Five Things]

I am Ed Gein's widow

I had a great time reading as part of the Encyclopedia Show last night. There was singing, there was dancing, and since the theme was Serial Killers, there was a lot of gore. Thank you to Ralphie and Mike for having me.

Here's the story I read, "I Am Ed Gein's Widow." The people seemed to enjoy it.

I am Ed Gein’s widow. Not a lot of people know that Ed was married. Even fewer people know that I am his widow. It’s not something you tell people at dinner parties. Ed was not a well-understood man. He was passionate, and he was reserved, and there were certain things about his life that when they came to light were not looked upon entirely favorably. In fact, when the spotlight shown down upon him, the world was horrified. But the man I knew was a different man, and that is what I have come to discuss here today: my Ed Gein.

You can say a lot of things about Ed that may or may not explain him. That he lived in Wisconsin. Plainfield, to be exact. Really, there isn’t much to say about Plainfield other than that Ed lived there. Everything else sort of pales in comparison. His real and full name was Edward Theodore Gein, but no one ever called him Teddy. After it all came out, they called him The Plainfield Ghoul. He loved his mother, Augusta. Augusta did not love his father. Augusta had strong feelings about things. For example: all women are whores. This is the background in which Ed was raised.

Augusta was not kind to Ed or his brother, Henry. Eventually, Henry turned on his mother. Then Henry turned up dead. Some people say Ed did it, but it’s hard to say when you weren’t there. Eventually, Augusta died. And that’s when the trouble began.

On November 16, 1957, a local Plainfield woman, Bernice Worden, disappeared. One way or another the police investigators ended up at Ed’s house. There, they found Bernice. She was strung up by her ankles in the shed, naked as a jaybird, and no head. She had been cut wide open, like a deer. In the house, they found things: a collection of masks made from human skin, four noses, nine vulvas in a shoebox. Bernice’s head. The heads of ten more women, their tops lopped neatly off. Human organs in the ice box.

Ed wasn’t a serial killer. He was an artist. He didn’t want to kill. He wanted to transform. He wanted to be his mother, he wanted to become a woman, he wanted to be someone other than who he was. Haven’t you dreamed of the Resurrection? Of some kind of total transformation? Of waking up one day and finding you are not a giant cockroach but a beautiful, beautiful butterfly? That’s what Ed was after. Unlike most of us, he was willing to get what he needed from the graveyard in the middle of the night, if that’s what it took. To make suits of women. To transvest himself.

After the trial, they sent Ed to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He died in 1984. For a time, those who visited Ed’s grave would chip off a little piece of his headstone, like a trophy. Like they wanted a piece of him for themselves. Finally, someone stole his tombstone. When it turned up again, they put it in a museum. I haven’t gone to see it. It’s not the same. Ed wasn’t some slab of stone.

Our love story is a simple one. We met in high school, and we married in secret when I was 19 and Ed was 23. We never consummated our relationship. We never lived together. We told no one. Ed didn’t think people would understand. He was a man who needed his space, so I let him have it. I didn’t go over to his place much, and when I did, I focused on him, not what was there, or what he did or didn’t do. That’s how it is with men. You have to let them be.

So, you can talk to me about those four noses, those nine masks made of human skin, those hollowed out skull bowls, those heads that lost their tops, those chairs upholstered in DNA, Mary Hogan's head in a paper bag, Bernice Worden's head in a burlap sack, those nine vulvas in that shoe box, those skulls on those bedposts, those human organs in that refrigerator, and that pair of lips on the draw string for the window shade, but you can’t tell me about love.

People say there are good men and there are bad men, but it’s because of Ed that I know there’s no difference between the two. Good men do what bad men do to somebody other than you.

Come see me live and in person

Tomorrow, Thursday, November 18, I'll be reading a new story, "I Am Ed Gein's Widow," at the Encyclopedia Show in Austin, Texas. The event takes place at ND at 501 Studios. The evening's theme is Serial Killers. The show starts at 8 PM.

Ed wasn’t a serial killer. He was an artist. He didn’t want to kill. He wanted to transform. He wanted to be his mother, he wanted to become a woman, he wanted to be someone other than who he was. Haven’t you dreamed of the Resurrection? Of some kind of total transformation? Of waking up one day and finding you are not a giant cockroach but a beautiful, beautiful butterfly? That’s what Ed was after. Unlike most of us, he was willing to get what he needed from the graveyard in the middle of the night, if that’s what it took. To make suits of women. To transvest himself.

[Info]