Stacey Jay is a rockstar

And I mean it. Stacey Jay is a super mom and a writer who can slip into an impressive range of voices, characters and settings. I'm so excited to interview her right here as the very first guest in the 2009 Debs Blog Tour... where I'll interview a series of amazing debut authors, we'll talk to each other in fact. All year long. Keep coming back for more...

So Jane magazine used to do this spread 'the same five questions we always ask' when interviewing celebrities… so my Debs blog tour page is Jane magazine inspired… below 'the same 5 questions I always ask' for Stacey Jay, author of You Are So Undead to Me which debuted on January 22nd. Buy it here!



1. What is your preferred writing brain food?

Coffee! Does that count as a food?

2. What is the soundtrack to your debut novel?

"In over my head" by The Fray. Megan's in over her head and I'll be honest, this hasn't been an easy road. I was pregnant or had a new baby for most of the process and, at times, it's felt like I wasn't going to make it to the next step. I'm just so excited to finally see it releasing and be able to say "yes! I did it!". And I'm hoping the baby will start sleeping through the night before my first signing so I can manage to stay awake until 9pm. Lol!

3. Describe your perfect writing space.

Small, cozy room, bookshelves on the wall all around and the smell of books filling the space. There's a coffee machine that spits out cappucinos on one wall and a massage chair on the other and time stands still inside so that the time I spend writing doesn't eat up my time with my kids or my hubby. That sounds like the best space ever. Sigh...

4. Tell us about one of the secondary characters in your debut novel. How did he/she come to life?

Monica is Megan's nemesis and she's just a big, hairy B. But also very smart and great at her job and, at times, helpful and nice. She's just the perfect bad girl, the kind you can't quite bring yourself to hate but drives you absolutely insane. I wanted to make her more than the stereotypical meanie and I hope I succeeded.

5. What did/will you do on your launch day?

I'll probably take my baby out to the bookstore and stick the copy of YASUTM in the stroller with him and take a picture of my two new arrivals and then scream and nerd out and...then go home and get back to work so I get to do it all again soon. Lol. :) I'm really looking forward to it!

Check out Stacey's site and her upcoming projects and seriously... read about her zombies! She knows her stuff!

How to save the world

"I had a routine. It was every minute. I knew the things I wanted to do. This year I quit the food pantry. I actually really liked being there, Molly or no Molly—there was something therapeutic about stacking can after can of green beans, box after box of Stovetop, and something comforting about packing boxes for distribution… one of everything, knowing the meals that would come out of that box would be so much more important than any meal I ever ate."


Nadio feels better, somehow, when he is doing for others. Whether his mother, his sister, his girlfriend or the town's aging Vietnam Vets. He can't explain what drives him to the work he does but it makes him feel full somehow and he can set the rest of the things that confuse him aside. Something about being around him, you want to do the work he does. Check it out: you can volunteer with the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, to help affect policy, serve and deliver meals, or use your professional skills to promote the organization's mission. What are you doing this weekend? They could use your help and you'd maybe get a taste what Nadio means... that peace he feels.

Little One

In 2008 my brother and I both finally achieved something we had dreamed about for most of ever. I sold a book and he became a dad. While I admit, watching my brother and sister in law grow a family has been INFINITELY cooler than selling a book, it has been a big year with so much to celebrate. I can't believe that it has been a year since I wrote this post and since This Is What I Want to Tell You was called Permanent Ink and Parker had a different name.

But yesterday Ruth Nightingale turned 1 and she is freaking amazing.



Happy Birthday to my favorite girl!

Stuff Keeley Likes

"I saw a flash of Keeley, years of Keeley, little kid Keeley—taking off on her bike, leaned into my sister’s ear whispering, leaned over a pile of construction paper, scissors, torn magazine pages, she was always making something. A collage, a poster, on her knees over a pile of paper and glue in our kitchen and then her eyes welling up when her parents would come to get her. I don’t wanna go, she never wanted to go."

Some of you who read this page may not know that Keeley is Noelle's best friend. Keeley is Nadio's first love. Keeley is at the heart, or at least the core, the hard to find center of This Is What I Want to Tell You. And she's an artist. Her handmade books and photographs and collages paper the walls of the story and remind the twins about days and moments they'd forgotten. She thinks you should check out this very cool site on diversity in photography, meet some new artists and delve into the history of photography. It's maintained by a beautiful Brooklyn-based artist named Qiana Mestrich. You should check out her work too. Keeley thinks so.

Back to Life

This blog is confused. It is forging it’s identity. It is quiet and outgoing all at once.

No longer. As of today, Permanently Inked has officially been re-imagined within the dawn of 2009, the year This Is What I Want to Tell You hits the world.

Permanently Inked will, from now on, bring you:

-Regular entries
-Thoughts from Keeley, Nadio, Parker & Noelle
-Playlists, art, recipes, musings
-Thoughts, excerpts, characters and questions from the recently revived No Happy Endings.
-Street art
-A full year of interviews with fabulous debut authors brought to you by the International Debs Blog Tour
-And of course, some pictures of my nieces, birthday tributes to my dearest, and the inevitable musings on writing and working in high schools all at the same time.
-No more confusion. At least not all the time.

Welcome.

Aches and Resolutions

I don't believe in resolutions, not really. But it is seven days in to the new year and I'm lying in bed wrapped in quilts surrounded by tissues and teacups and I can't help thinking about the things I should be doing instead of being sick in bed, the things I must do this year, the things... you know.

So I have this book coming out. In less than two months. I'm sure there are things I should be doing. Can I come to your school? Can I read in your bookstore? Can you buy a copy? And, most importantly, can I get over this crippling fear of reading in public? It's time.

My head hurts.

When it snows it snows

I started something brand new.

And its a sad story. I'm not sure why it is that I'm best at writing sad stories, but I am.

On Friday there was a snowstorm and Queens was blizzard white.

It looked like this.



I think the graffitied streets of Rome are officially on hold.

Loss

I've been thinking a lot about loss. When we lose someone to death it is often a slow, loud, tragic wrenching loss. But one we can begin to understand.

We don't always talk about the other kinds of losses; the quiet drawn out losses that come because of geography, growing, leaving, loving... the losses that come because your lives go in different directions and the things that were important become... replaced. By other things that are important.

I'm not very good with loss. The way I pack suitcases and boxes and move from coast to continent, you'd think I'd be better at it. I never seem to get better. And the saddest losses are inexplicable. We grow up. We need different things. We move. We gain. We lose.

I'm sad. But it's in a reflective way. Loss is part of it all. Part of the lives we live and the people we become.

GRIEF by Matthew Dickman

When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla
you must count yourself lucky.
You must offer her what's left
of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish
you must put aside
and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,
her eyes moving from the clock
to the television and back again.
I am not afraid. She has been here before
and now I can recognize her gait
as she approaches the house.
Some nights, when I know she's coming,
I unlock the door, lie down on my back,
and count her steps
from the street to the porch.
Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,
tells me to write down
everyone I have ever known
and we separate them between the living and the dead
so she can pick each name at random.
I play her favorite Willie Nelson album
because she misses Texas
but I don't ask why.
She hums a little,
the way my brother does when he gardens.
We sit for an hour
while she tells me how unreasonable I've been,
taking down the pictures of my family,
not writing, refusing to shower,
staring too hard at girls younger than my sister.
Eventually she puts one of her heavy
purple arms around me, leans
her head against mine,
and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.
So I tell her,
things are feeling romantic.
She pulls another name, this time
from the dead
and turns to me in that way that parents do
so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.
Romantic? She says,
reading the name out loud, slowly
so I am aware of each syllable,
each consonant resembling a swollen arm, the collapsed ear,
a mouth full of teeth, each vowel
wrapping around the bones like new muscle,
the sound of that person's body
and how reckless it is,
how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.

I have to say it

There is so much that tells me I am not supposed to wear my political beliefs on my sleeve. As a teacher and as a writer I am around young people every day and all the time, around those of you who are gathering information, understanding truths, forming your opinions, and that these truths and opinions and beliefs have got to be yours. And I believe that. I know that. But I don't think it can hurt to just say a little bit of what I believe. To tell you that each night as I walk home from the subway, the long stretched out blocks from Flatbush to Franklin, and these posters



illuminated by bedroom lights and dining room lights, framed by curtains and fingerprint streaks, in barbershops and brownstones, these posters, I can't lie, make me crazy with delight and, well, hope. Every night. Without fail.

When your book hits a brick wall

So I was thinking about this project I'm working on, called There Is No Happy Ending, actually, I'm thinking about this project most of the time... and what I'm thinking is. I lost it. I was SO in it and I lost it... what does one do now? It is in the hands, just now, of a reader who might breathe some life into it. But until then. I've never been one to work well on many projects at once. I think it might be time to start another. I feel guilty. But I have this idea. It's about journals and the year Kurt Cobain died. It's about the unexpected relationships that can only happen in secret... but I feel strange abandoning Jacob... can I bring him?