My piece on writing and reading literary thrillers is broadcast on NPR’s All Things Considered tonight!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90890695

Please tune in if you have a chance.

And if you’re in Miami, please come on over to my reading from the new paperback of ORIGIN at Books & Books this evening and stick around afterwards for some vino. Which is the whole point of attending a reading, right?

www.dianaabujaber.com

It’s deep spring in South Florida. The birds are in a general agitation all over the neighborhood and the blue jays are nesting. They get indignant: I just watched them harrassing a squirrel as it ran for its life. Yogi, however, didn’t notice a thing.

Italian greyhounds are such a wonderful, silly breed. It must have to do with the fixity of racing, but Yogi is great at focusing on one thing (like staring soulfully into your eyes just before dinner) and oblivious to all else. So she was blithely going about her business out front when a jay dive bombed and, for the first time in ten years, I saw her jump straight up in the air. Now she is hovering warily in the doorway and refuses to go back out….

I don’t blame her. In fact, this strikes me as a perfect time to go on book tour– let them eggs hatch! Tomorrow I’m off on a series of events and readings and the paperback publication of my new thriller ORIGIN. Please do come and introduce yourselves.

April 30– Talk, Linfield College, McMinnville, OR

–May 1st, Signing, Third St. Books, McMinnville, OR

7:30 pm — Talk, Linfield College

May 2nd– Talk, Linfield College

May 3rd–2 pm, Coos Bay Public Library, OR.

–7 pm, Bandon Public Library, Bandon, OR.

May 5th– 7 pm, University of Washington Bookstore, Seattle, WA.

May 6th– Iconoclast Bookstore, Ketchum, ID

May 7th– 7 pm, Powells Bookstore, Beaverton, OR

May 28th– 8 pm, Books & Books, Miami, FL

June 8th– Printers Row Book Fair, Chicago, IL

October 4th– 5 pm, Sunriver Books, Sunriver, OR

Okay, well maybe we’re not EXACTLY traveling together, but we’re all on the road at the same time, and I’m spending a lot of time in hotel rooms staring at them on the TV. How do these politicians do it? Who irons their clothes? How come they never look like they just stumbled out of a Kansas dust storm? I bet they never live on peanut M&Ms for three days running, either. Last week I was in Spokane, the week before it was Northern New York, and next week it’s going to be all around the Northwest: somehow, it seems that you can just take one look at me and tell.

So with no further ado: here’s some of my reading dates for the paperback publication of my new thriller, ORIGIN–available all over the place on May 5th. Please come and introduce yourself–I’ll bring the peanut M&Ms….

5.6 – Iconoclast/Ketchum ID

5.7 - Powells Bookstore/Beaverton/Portland – 7pm

5.28 - Books & Books/Miami – 8pm

6.8 - Printers Row Book Fair/Chicago

10.4 - Sunriver Books/ Sunriver, OR – 5pm

I just got back from a week in Watertown, NY and points North, and what an week it was. I worked with a group of high-powered volunteer dynamos and their SUVs, to speak to public schools and libraries around northern New York State about my memoir, The Language of Baklava. These incredible women and men pulled together to donate somewhere around 2,000 copies of my book.

The students were smart and funny and sweet. After I spoke, I turned the tables and quizzed them on my talk. Then we gave out highly random prizes like mardi gras beads and teddy bear keychains for answering correctly– I couldn’t believe how many of them were paying attention! (At least as long as lame prizes were involved.) There were so many surprises that came out of this week: the culinary students at Jefferson CC who made an entire lunch from Lang of Baklava recipes; the tenth grader who told me she’d decided (right then and there) to become a writer; the woman who burst into tears, recounting how much she missed the family dinners of her childhood….. There were also slightly less sublime moments, like the dude at one reading who insisted that The Language of Baklava was a secret coded message to him. Oh, so that’s why I wrote it!

It was an enchanting time, driving along the St. Lawrence Seaway, its deep Arctic blue, filled with ice floes, or looking out over the wintry amber fields, or passing Amish inside their horse-drawn carts. I won’t forget any of it.

And some new links to share:

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20080405/NEWS03/198782059

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ie5NgdUyKXI

Miami, our neighbor’s enormous inflatable Santa is lying in a prune-faced puddle in the yard. Up and down the block, dried out Christmas trees glitter in the garbage. And the wreathe on our front door is sun-crisped and brown as a roasted turkey. Hm. Time for a new day.

I want to make a plan. In fact, I LOVE making plans—but the follow through, well…. I recently tried to write a piece for NPR. I’d just been re-reading David Sedaris’ wonderful Holidays On Ice, and had an idea of attempting a witty, light-hearted take on the holidays. Instead, I ended up with this sort of broody piece in which I make lots of complaints about lake-effect snow. If you tune into All Things Considered tomorrow (January 2^nd) for “You Must Read This,” (www.npr.org) you’ll hear my segment.

Earlier in the year, when I tried to write a somber, meditative piece on family for the Washington Post Magazine, I ended up writing about my obsession with a pink shag rug bedspread instead. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/27/AR2007112702303.html

So I give up. When I think I’m going to one thing, I turn around and do something totally else.

In which case, I think this year’s resolutions should be as vague as possible. Also, this year, I’ve decided to write Non-Diet and Exercise Resolutions (no, no, not Anti-diet and exercise. I’m just not going to be all about the D and E, which is stuff I know I should do anyway, so why waste a perfectly good resolution-making opportunity on the same old boring struggles?)

This year, I’ve resolved to take more chances. Yup, I think that’s what it’s all about, really. No stodginess, no complacency.

I want to talk to more and different sorts of people; do more things that scare me; take more risks; do more new stuff; and basically look for opportunities to push myself.

Recently, I saw an episode of the Dog Whisperer, in which my hero Cesar Milan, in trying to help a dog through his fears of thunder storms, trains the dog to walk toward the frightening sounds in order to get his reward. I thought that was a wonderful model for living, and would even push it to the next place for people: learning to walk toward the frightening thing is its own reward.

And living larger is not just about risk and courage, it’s also about drive and creativity. I want to push myself into new places—not just geographically, but also in terms of the ways I relate to others, to myself, and where I take my writing. I do think travel is hugely important because it’s so demanding (again, thus, so rewarding.)

Perhaps I’ll try coming up with challenge or risk lists for myself, at least until I think I’m getting the hang of it. Maybe it’ll be specific goals like learning to scuba dive, but I also like the idea of “directions,” like:

Pick up the phone more often

Give Yogi longer walks

Spend less time on the computer

Experiment more, with art, politics, food, whatever is available

Learn more (one of last year’s favorite things–belly dancing!)

And so forth

I realized last night coming home from a New Year’s Eve party, that it’s too easy to let our lives settle into the paths of least resistance. I drove along the Miracle Mile and realized that I don’t even bother strolling around our little downtown any more. The world is there, beckoning, and somehow, sometimes it becomes too easy to forget to answer. I want to start to answer again.

Yup, that’s how it goes, crazy ol writing life. I’m tickled pink: a reader just sent word that ORIGIN was mentioned as a Favorite Mystery Book of 2007 in the LA Times. Last week it made the top 100 Books list in the Washington Post, and the week before it got an Editor’s Pick in the New York Times Book Review.

Suddenly I forget about all the times I felt grumpy and sorry for self and given to saying things like, “I bet this never happens to John Updike,” etc.

But maybe it’s not just writers, maybe it’s everybody: that feeling that when you’re happy, you’re going to feel happy forever and ever. Ah yes, it must be everyone feels this way– think about all those crazy weddings one attends. As my favorite auntie liked to say, hope springs eternal.

Thank goodness.

I’ve fallen off the blog wagon recently, but I like to always check in on my birthday– if only to try and keep myself honest.

My blogging has dwindled a bit due to a sudden increase in, well, work. The fall term is underway at Portland State and once school starts, so does that rip current that pulls us into the tide of teaching. At readings, I’m sometimes asked what the secret is to balancing teaching and writing. But I’m afraid there isn’t much of a secret. This is, very simply, the question and challenge that all artists face: how to support one’s habit?

There’s almost ten years between the publication of my first two books. Part of the reason is that I’d spent over five years working on a novel that I ended up shelving (yes!) But an equally big part of the reason for the gap is that I’d been up to my elbows in teaching and advising and the general business of making a living. I take teaching very seriously, but academia can be enormously taxing, between classes, advising, committee work, and the general, day-to-day dash of campus life.

It wasn’t until I’d published Crescent, my second novel, that things began to turn around for me. I’m wildly grateful for the readers’ enthusiasm for that book, because it meant I could finally make some big changes. I cut back on teaching; I quit most of my journalism; and at last I had time to focus on novels. My third book, The Language of Baklava came out two years later, and my most recent novel, Origin, came out two years after that. Just last month, I turned in the manuscript for SilverWorld, a young adult novel.

The reality is that all art is intimately connected to economics. Without a means of support, it can feel almost impossible to create. There seems to be a popular belief in the purity and spontaniety of art– a notion (or wish, perhaps) that art is such lofty and high-flown stuff that somehow it must exist independently of gritty monetary concerns. But many of our best-known writers and artists are from wealth or otherwise subsidized situations.

Which leaves the rest of us facing sometimes overwhelming and confounding situations. The failure to create can feel like failure itself. But if you’re too tired, too busy, too worried (or even worse,) the muse will flitter away into the cares of the day. Everyone needs time and a place to make their art.

I like to do something different on every birthday– so tomorrow I will try to find some new art– perhaps attend a reading for a writer I’ve never heard of, or step into a gallery I’ve never visited before. I want to create art, but I also want to try and help make sure that the world I live in is always filled with art– that the forest is filled with as many types of birdsong as possible.

After all, at some level–whether we’re writing it, hearing it, painting it or reading it– a world of art and beauty and fascination is something we all make together.

I’ve fallen off the blog wagon recently, but I like to always check in on my birthday– if only to try and keep myself honest.

My blogging has dwindled a bit due to a sudden increase in, well, work. The fall term is underway at Portland State and once school starts, so does that rip current that pulls us into the tide of teaching. At readings, I’m sometimes asked what the secret is to balancing teaching and writing. But I’m afraid there isn’t much of a secret. This is, very simply, the question and challenge that all artists face: how to support one’s habit?

There’s almost ten years between the publication of my first two books. Part of the reason is that I’d spent over five years working on a novel that I ended up shelving (yes!) But an equally big part of the reason for the gap is that I’d been up to my elbows in teaching and advising and the general business of making a living. I take teaching very seriously, but academia can be enormously taxing, between classes, advising, committee work, and the general, day-to-day dash of campus life.

It wasn’t until I’d published Crescent, my second novel, that things began to turn around for me. I’m wildly grateful for the readers’ enthusiasm for that book, because it meant I could finally make some big changes. I cut back on teaching; I quit most of my journalism; and at last I had time to focus on novels. My third book, The Language of Baklava came out two years later, and my most recent novel, Origin, came out two years after that. Just last month, I turned in the manuscript for SilverWorld, a young adult novel.

The reality is that all art is intimately connected to economics. Without a means of support, it can feel almost impossible to create. There seems to be a popular belief in the purity and spontaniety of art– a notion (or wish, perhaps) that art is such lofty and high-flown stuff that somehow it must exist independently of gritty monetary concerns. But many of our best-known writers and artists are from wealth or otherwise subsidized situations.

Which leaves the rest of us facing sometimes overwhelming and confounding situations. The failure to create can feel like failure itself. But if you’re too tired, too busy, too worried (or even worse,) the muse will flitter away into the cares of the day. Everyone needs time and a place to make their art.

I like to do something different on every birthday– so tomorrow I will try to find some new art– perhaps attend a reading for a writer I’ve never heard of, or step into a gallery I’ve never visited before. I want to create art, but I also want to try and help make sure that the world I live in is always filled with art– that the forest is filled with as many types of birdsong as possible.

After all, at some level–whether we’re writing it, hearing it, painting it or reading it– a world of art and beauty and fascination is something we all make together.

You walk down the streets of this city, the city you realize, you have fallen in love with, as hard and giddy as falling for any lover. Is that possible? You touch a concrete wall. In this city, you smell the river which smells like the ocean. You think: my rainy city. Stop that, you think, try to curtail the love drug in you. But again you think, my rainy city. You watch sparrows slant through the plum blossoms, clouds everywhere. You’ve just returned.

It was last spring when you decided to leave your city. Spring rises up from the earth; in this city, it is like dipping your fingers in the icing. Spring feels like you are getting away with something. Spring—how is this possible? Spring in the softest city in the world—where people don’t like to get up so they wear clothes like pajamas all day. Where the sky is gray and soft as flannel.

A year ago you were walking back to a hotel, explaining to yourself why you had to leave your city. It’s time, you’d said. You’d sold your house, packed your things, now you were staying in a hotel room, waiting to go. Outside a bookstore, you ran into your friend S. You told your friend S. everything, about how it was time, how you’d decided to leave your city, and he laughed. And of all of the people you know, his is your favorite laugh, a sweet sss, a wisp of breath. He said to you, don’t go. You shook your head, smiling, walking backwards toward your hotel, waving.

A city is a city is a city. But in this city, everyone is in love. People lean toward each other during conversations, as if they will kiss. You look at your hands, they look round and bright as pearls under this marble sky.

Last year, outside the hotel, a young girl had asked you, where do I get the number 15? And you, who had no idea, you could not bear to disappoint her, so you turned around and gestured and made up detailed instructions that would make her unimaginably lost. Finally you confessed; you said, don’t listen to me, I’m moving away. Why, where are you going? she’d asked, as if she did not want you to go.

The heavy glass doors to the hotel had swung open when you pressed on the gold bar. In the elevator, the young man with the big white tray on his shoulder blushed and told you it was only his second day delivering room service. He was bringing room 438 their coffee. You told him this was your last night in town; you were spending it in a hotel room. For some reason, he’d said to you, don’t go.

In the window of your hotel room, the rain has gotten great and round as pearls, it fills the glass with its shining. You put your head down on the smooth gray sheets—this hotel smells of a thousand years—and you hear the rain and inside the rain you hear something speaking. It says: home.