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album: same as it never was
year: 2008

Is it okay to have a favorite among the books you wrote?

I have a running joke with my kids.  I’ll say something about how one of them is my favorite, usually adding,  “and that one knows who I mean.”   The kids are well aware that parents aren’t actually allowed to have favorites, so they go along with the joke and will take turns saying things like, “Yes, I DO know who you mean.”

Of course, I don’t really have a favorite–or at least not a consistent one since my favorite at any given moment is the one being most helpful and least needy.  Or cutest.  Or strongest (depending on how much luggage we’re toting).  Or willing to listen.  Or emotionally supportive.  Or kind . . .  Luckily, they’re all great.   And all deserving of equal attention, love, and time investment.

I was thinking about the whole concept of favoritism because today someone made a comment on my blog, saying that she had read my first novel Same As It Never Was, but not the others.  I was about to write back in a comment that SAINW was my favorite novel of the ones I’ve written when I stopped myself.  Was I allowed to say that?  Was picking a favorite among my novels similar to picking a favorite child? 

You do occasionally hear an author refer to his or her books as “my babies.”   You won’t hear me saying that, though.  Someone once asked me that question in an interview, i.e. did I feel like my books were my babies?  I thought about it and wrote back an emphatic no.  I have both kids and novels and there’s a huge difference.  Sure, you put a lot of time and effort into nursing both along, but once you’re done with a book, you’re done with it.  Kids are endlessly interesting, endlessly changing, endlessly mutating and growing and keeping you on your toes.  They wake you up in the middle of the night and tell you they hate you and give you wonderfully awful presents on Mother’s Day.

Not like books at all.

So, now that I’ve established that books aren’t like kids and we all agree they don’t have feelings I can hurt, I should feel free to proclaim from the rooftops that SAINW  is my favorite novel, right?

Only . . .  It still makes me slightly nervous. 

I was trying to figure out why, and I think it’s for this reason: I’m worried that people who like my other novels will think they’re not quite as good if I come out in favor of this other one.   It will sound like I’m dissing the other two.  Which I’m not.  I mean I like them. They’re just not my favorite.

See?  This is why you can’t call a kid your favorite.  As soon as you name a favorite, you get into all sorts of defensive maneuvering that makes your feelings about any non-favorite sound ever more feeble.

Still, if I had to sit down and reread one of my novels, SAINW would be the one I would chose.  And definitely not to relive some success–it sold a fraction of the copies the other two sold and was a solid flop.    I just like it.  I like the story, I like the characters, when I read it I feel I almost captured what I was going for, and I also remember what fun it was to write. 

I like my other novels, too, of course.  Just not as much.  Maybe it’s a first time thing: there’s something special about that first time that keeps you tender and loving.

Oops.  Don’t tell my three younger kids I just said that.

Zee French, Zay ‘Ave Good Taste, Non?

So I got a royalty check recently.  That alone is big news: I haven’t gotten a lot of royalties in my eight-year career.  Some.  Not a lot.  Royalties are much cooler than advances, by the way, because a) they mean the book is actually selling and b) they’re “free” money–you can’t count on them and you don’t know how much they’ll be, so anything you get feels like a bonus.

ANYWAY, as I was saying, a royalty check in and of itself would make me smile.  But this royalty check made me smile more than most because it was for the French book club edition of my book.   (If you want to see what the cover of this one looks like, check out my previous post about covers.  It’s very funny and silly.)

Now, my first novel (Same as It Never Was) wasn’t what you’d call a huge seller in America.  (It does say “national bestseller” on the cover of the paperback, but I’ll let you in on a trade secret: if you just make any local bestselling list ONCE, you get to say that.  I had a big party, sold a lot of copies to my generous good friends and just managed to drag the book up onto the bottom of the LA Times bestseller list for that one week–and, bingo, the book is a “national bestseller.”  I’m not sure I ever sold ANOTHER copy after that.  Now, “New York Times bestseller”–that’s another story.  That’s what you want.  And I’ll never have.)  So it’s kind of wild and weird and fun that it’s sold enough copies in France for me to earn almost as much as I earned when I first sold the book.   Which isn’t much at all.  Remember, we’re talking book money here which is to real money what gluten-free bread is to a baguette from the La Brea bakery–eating it only makes you wonder what having the real thing would be like.

Man, that was a weird metaphor.  I’m losing it.

Anyway, the fact that my book appears to have sold way more copies in French leads me to believe that either the translator vastly improved on the original or my sense of humor just appeals more to the French. 

I can’t tell about the translation.  I’ve tried reading it–and it does crack me up to decipher my own writing through the veil of foreign phrases and punctuation–but my high school French isn’t quite up to doing more than a line or two.   I’m going to assume, though, that the translator translated and didn’t improvise.  It seems like the same book, more or less.

Which leaves me facing the painful truth: I am the literary Jerry Lewis, the crazy–or should I say kooky?–comedian whom I find unbearable to watch but who the French hail as an unappreciated comic genius.  I guess I should be grateful.  But I don’t want to be in bed with Jerry Lewis.

Mickey Rourke is another guy whom the French claim the Americans don’t appreciate, although “The Wrestler” just turned things around here for Mickey.  (Side note: I loved “The Wrestler.”  That was a good movie.)  But up until this year’s renaissance, it was the French who still considered Rourke a star, not the Americans.  He seemed kind of scary-crazy, a guy who made a couple of great movies, then a bunch of bad ones, and then became a boxer and had his face pummeled to pieces.  

I guess I could bear being the literary Mickey Rourke, except for the face being pummeled to pieces part.  He is genuinely talented, if a little, um, kooky.  

Maybe kooky’s the linking trait?  Maybe I’m kooky, too!  Which is okay if I can be Goldie Hawn circa 1972 kooky and not . . . Jerry Lewis kooky.  My friends would tell me if I were that, right?

RIGHT?????

Lectia de azi este “Compozitia muzicala ca un spritz de vara”. E de soi, curge din cel mai apetisant album al verii. Turnati fara frica.

The Herbaliser have had a lot going on of recent – their new album Same as it Never Was is out, vocalist Jessica Darling has joined the band’s spotlight, and the band has expanded its sound to something musically broader and creatively more collaborative than it once was.

But after spending months working non-stop with co-founder Jake Wherry, Jessica Darling, and Easy Access Orchestra collaborators Ralph Lamb and Andy Ross, DJ Ollie Teeba doesn’t have too much time to bask.

This summer, Ollie is leaving the continent to pay a short visit across the pond and starting July 28th, he is scheduled to hit New York, DC, Cali, Colorado, Washington State, Oregon, Illinois, Maryland, and Georgia all in under two weeks.

On tour, Ollie is going to be playing tracks that largely influenced the making of the new record, which means that a lot of Soul and R&B is to be expected.

You can read more about the Herbaliser’s new record on our website or check out DJ Ollie’s full tour schedule on theirs. But before buying your tickets, make sure to check out this live interview with Ollie, Jessica, and several of the orchestra members in their recording studio: