I'm working on four new stories right now.
Currently I'm reading:
I'M COMING TO TAKE YOU TO LUNCH: A FANTASTIC TALE OF BOYS, BOOZE, AND HOW WHAM! WERE SOLD TO CHINA by Simon Napier-Bell. This is an immensely entertaining memoir which is exactly what the subtitle says. It could have benefited from an editor who would have brought out its latent odd poetry, but no harm done--it's still well worth reading. You do not have to be a fan of Wham! at all to appreciate this book; in fact, the band is almost incidental to Napier-Bell's globetrotting efforts on its behalf. Napier-Bell's anecdotes of early-80s China put me in mind of IRON AND SILK by Mark Salzman. That book is a classic, but my favorite of his is definitely...
LOST IN PLACE: GROWING UP ABSURD IN SUBURBIA. This is Salzman's chronicle of his childhood in Connecticut not too far from where I was born. The book is a gem. I'm not sure I can pick a favorite anecdote, but the one where he and his friends went to see Laserium and forgot where they parked their car is definitely up there.
THE PERSIAN BOY by Mary Renault. This is one of those books I'm just utterly in love with. It's a historical novel about Alexander the Great as told through the eyes of his (historical) eunuch concubine, Bagoas. I don't know how many times I've read it. It's not the kind of thing that would be published today; it's of a different time, but no less worth reading for that. When I first read it, I didn't know Mary Renault was a lesbian, because in this book she's so obviously in love with Alexander. Bagoas expresses her own feelings. Her desire as a writer was just to be near him as much as she could allow herself to be by pouring herself into this shadowy historical vessel. She was Alexander's belated Homer, the one he always wished for to immortalize him in a great ballad.
Back to work.
