Alisa Kwitney is the daughter of science fiction writer Robert Sheckley and journalist Ziva Kwitney. She grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, back when you always carried a bit of spare cash so as not to disappoint the muggers.
At Wesleyan University, Alisa failed to get accepted to various creative writing courses but found a mentor in SF/Fantasy author Kit Reed. Alisa went on to receive the Horgan prize for best short story, but to her eternal regret, she dropped out of Joe Reed’s film course, not realizing that A) she would really need to perfect her visual storytelling skills or that B) one of the TA’s was Joss Whedon, future creator of Buffy and Firefly.
After graduation, Alisa worked as a newspaper reporter in Miami before returning to New York to attend Columbia’s MFA program in fiction, where she continued to supplement the required reading with comics and romance novels. Her MFA thesis, Till the Fat Lady Sings, was published by HarperCollins and reviewed in The Sunday NY Times.
While her classmates went on to work for literary publishers and magazines, Alisa applied for an assistant editor position at Silhouette and DC Comics, where she wound up working for Karen Berger on titles such as Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.
Alisa went on to become a full editor at Vertigo, the mature/dark fantasy imprint of DC Comics. For seven years, she enjoyed the luxury of a window office and the indescribable pleasure of being paid to tell other people what she thought.
Then she left it all behind to write full time.
These days, Alisa Kwitney lives in the Hudson River Valley, two hours from her beloved Upper West Side with her husband, son, daughter, two emotionally dependent Burmese cats and a big, extroverted Chinook dog.
Alisa has written some half a dozen novels, two coffee table books, and assorted comics and graphic novels. Her novels, which have been described as “romances laced with satire and a mainstream flair” (Library Journal) have been translated into Russian, German, Japanese, Norwegian and Bahasa Indonesian.
She also writes dark fantasy/paranormal romance and science fiction under the name Alisa Sheckley.
Want
to learn more about Alisa and her
writing? Read
her full interview with Tim O'Shea!
 Photo: copyright Trix Rosen |
Valentine's Day
Admit it: Sometimes it’s difficult to forget the kids, the bills, the aches, the dead mouse smell from somewhere under the floorboards. But it’s Valentine’s Day and everyone should try to get a little action – with a partner, a lover, or one’s own imagination.
Of course, it never hurts to read – or reread – a romance novel to get in the mood. But sometimes you just feel like a little audiovisual action. Here are some of my favorite on-screen love scenes:
10. Richard Gere and Debra Winger in an Officer and a Gentleman. Sure, they hated each other in real life, but boy, does their animosity sizzle.
9. Spike and Buffy bringing down the house in Smashed, their season 6 fight/love scene. Jenny Crusie has a brilliant essay on her website about how the writers of Buffy The Vampire Slayer thought they were creating a metaphor of destruction, but viewers saw a different story.
8. True Blood’s Bill coming out of his grave, naked, to ravish Sookie. My favorite line: “Not the neck.”
7. True Blood’s Eric playing vampire mind games with Sookie.
6. The Bull Durham love scene montage: Toenail painting, bathtub sloshing, wild dancing and ropes. What more could anyone want?
5. The Big Easy, with Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin. May they never try to remake it.
4. Secretary, with Maggie Gyllenhall. Quirky, kinky, singularly sexy.
3. The fiercely conflicted Guy of Gisborne in the BBC Robin Hood television series (Richard Armitage, in black leather no less.)
2. The two love scenes, one tender, one desperate, in A History of Violence. (Look for the the fraction of a moment where Viggo pauses and his wife drags him back down.)
1. The unbeatable “You know how to whistle” scene in To Have and Have Not.
February 2010
For my birthday this year, my husband bought me a Kindle. At first, I wasn’t exactly overjoyed. I felt as though I were a carriage driver who had just been given a shiny newfangled automobile as a present.
“I’m sorry,” I told my husband, “but I don’t want to read my books on a little screen.” Reading on screens makes my editing brain kick in. Reading on screens isn’t so great in the bathtub. And if readers like me start going digital, print books will die, and being published won’t result in an actual physical object, and pretty soon there won’t be any bookstores with actual books in them.
For me, that’s like contemplating the death of the sun.
But in the end, I kept the Kindle. Why? Well, first of all, because of Wolf Hall. My mother bought it in hardcover, and the mammoth doorstop of a novel about Henry the Eighth was exactly what I wanted to take on vacation. Except it was too big to lug around England. I’d probably get charged by the airline for going over my weight allowance, and then throw my back out trying to shlep it through the English coutntryside in my handbag.
And then there was my realization that even if I didn’t keep my Kindle, I wasn’t going to stop the barbarians at the gate. I went through this with computers (I clung to my typewriter until I was 23 and actually applied to Columbia’s MFA program by cutting and pasting with scissors and glue). I went through this with cellphones (I was always bumming one, like a smoker who doesn’t buy her own cigs).
So, for once, I’m going to be an early adapter. Or a late early adapter. I’ll be right there, after the innovators, learning to deal with change before the middle majority and the poor laggards who cling to the hope that people will stop listening to ipods because the sound is so crappy.
But I’m hearing that in the music industry, vinyl records are making a comeback. Buy one, and you get the download for free. I hope that’s the model for the book industry, as well.
Because half the fun of reading Wolf Hall is catching the eye of other readers and having them say, “I just read that,” or, “Is that any good?” Reading on the Kindle or some other reading device is like having headphones in your ears: It may be convenient, but it’s also isolating.
And that may be the new marketing tool for paper books. It’s hard to start a conversation with a blank grey metal shield in front of your face.
Have any thoughts about e-readers vs. print books? Send me an email at .
January
2010
For the first time since high school, I’m performing in a play. It’s a humbling experience. I had no idea I was so untalented. Well, actually, that’s not entirely true. Back when I auditioned for the High School of Performing Arts, I did get an inkling of my limitations.
“How did you do?” My acting coach inquired.
“A girl ate me,” I said. “We were told to be animals, and I became
a dog, and she became a snake, and she ate me. On stage.”
And in my non-performing high school, I never got a leading role in
a play. So I can’t say I was completely ignorant of my lack of talent.
Still, I can carry a tune. I even have a nice voice, so long as nothing
happens to shake me off key. And I can dance. To be precise, I can belly dance,
having taken lessons after giving birth to my son in an attempt to get my tummy
flat.
So when my pilates teacher told me she needed a belly dancer to shimmy
in the temple scene in Jesus Christ Superstar, I didn’t think too hard about
it. I have always loved JC Superstar, ever since I was nine and wailed “I don’t
know how to love him” at my bathroom mirror every night for a year.
And this was regional theater, for crying out loud. So why not say yes? I said yes. A month later, I am a proud member of the Ensemble, joining in three big dance numbers plus the belly dancing, four quick costume changes, a few bouts of choral singing and a finale of discordant wailing, which I am actually quite good at. Along the way, I have learned that I have much less talent than I have ever suspected. But a whole lot of other people have a lot more talent than I could ever have guessed. Special Ed teachers. Postal workers. High school seniors. Seniors.
I may not be bound for thespian glory, but I figure there’s got to be a novel in this someday. Until then, I’m going to keep practicing that damn ball step transition, and trying to hold onto my feeble sense of alto self as I pass by a compelling tenor.
September 2009
I’m not canceling my plans to have a Madmen-themed birthday party in December, but I am beginning to wish I could go up to Matthew Weiner, the show’s creator and chief writer, pour us both a couple of stiff Manhattans, and tell him to cut the crap.
Matt, I’d say, it’s terrific that you get all the little details right – cane backed seats on the subway, the sleek, almost pettable look of sixties modernism, so much more charming than the eighties version. But Matt, even though “the past is a different country,” what you did best was remind us that it wasn’t inhabited by aliens. Pre-revolution sixties folks weren’t the quaint, two-dimensional characters we’re used to from old sitcoms. And just because women wore girdles didn’t mean that they didn’t have sex.
So what’s up with Don and Betty’s melodramatically bad parenting? Yeah, I know early sixties child-rearing didn’t involve the degree of kid-centric thinking that it does today. And sure, my mom (pregnant with me) was told to smoke a cigarette to help digestion by her doctor. But in Madmen, you show Don and Betty as completely indifferent to their children’s emotions. I mean, not even a stiff smile and an inadequate “Mommy will buy you a new doll” or “you have to be strong, son”. Hell, no one even smiles at the kids.
And Matt, while you may still give me the ironic pleasure of watching Grandpa let little Sally drive the car (my uncle Paul did this with me, albeit on a country road) I can’t help but feel that I’m being manipulated. You don’t need to hit me over the head, Matt.
As the legendary adman David Ogilvey once said, “the consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”
Summer Reading List
This Kwitney report is way overdue, because June’s almost over, but it’s been so cold and rainy that I can’t believe summer has begun.
Still, since it’s officially summer (I was going to put milk our for the fairies, but the solstice was rained out) I thought I’d do my very own SUMMER READING LIST.
BOOKS TO STIMULATE THE MIND, OR IMPRESS ONLOOKERS ON THE BUS:
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell.
Yeah, it’s Victorian, but like Jane Austen
and Charlotte Brontë, Gaskell is romantic, psychologically sharp and a keen observer
of human nature. Watch the BBC production with Richard Armitage, too.
Origin of the Specious by Patricia T.
O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman
Does
for grammar what Beyond Heaving Bosoms does for romance.
BOOKS TO STIMULATE:
The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie by
Jennifer Ashley
Intelligently written,
compelling hero with Asperger’s.
Anybody Out There? By Marian Keyes
Women’s fiction, done with
wit, insight, a light hand and a slight brogue.
BOOKS I’M PREORDERING FOR AUGUST:
Lord of Pleasure, by Delilah Marvelle
A courtesan-run school
for heroes in training. Humorous and sexy, this historical is the second book
in the series, which looks like it’s ending prematurely. Does this mean I never
get to read the story of my favorite student, a scarred and broodingly masculine
virgin?
The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss
Percy Parker by Leanna
Renee Hieber
Victorian heroine, gothic trappings and ghostly goings on. The
perfect anti-beach book.
Critique vs Criticism
To get an MFA or not to get one? I used to tell people that it was an awfully expensive way to go about getting a bit of writing experience. Nowadays, I think it may be worth it.
What I remember most from my two years at Columbia was the exquisitely painful process of being critiqued by a bunch of other writers, or, as I like to call it, being tried by a jury of your peers. In an MFA program, you endure the writerly equivalent of hell week in Navy SEALS training, where people you trust try to break you down and discover the hidden fault lines in your psyche.
Looking you straight in the eye, people you know and drink beer with will say words like "inauthentic", "unearned", "manipulative" and "derivative." But damn it all, you become stronger from the experience. You learn when to take the blow, because the criticism rings true, and when to tighten your stomach muscles and soldier on. You learn never to have a character look in the mirror and think about her eyebrows. And most of all, you learn to never defend, never argue, never explain. (In writing workshops, you may state your intention, but it's considered a form of whining.)
And why is this all so useful? Because of the internet. I guess it's a fair trade off -- with the internet, authors can reach out and touch readers as never before, and readers can reach right back.
And let me say it straight out -- some of those touches draw blood. And since most writers work alone -- for months or years -- it can be pretty tough when feedback finally arrives, and it's so negative it makes the high school shower scene in Carrie seem newly poignant.
I'm not talking about measured criticism here, along the lines of, "I love this writer's other books, but this one didn't quite live up to my expectations," or, "This book had a lot of things going for it, but I just couldn't get over the murder of the hamster in chapter three."
No, I'm talking about the kind of review that the inquisition would have included with the strapado and the iron maiden to cause maximum damage. There's basically three kinds of negative reviews that a writer can expect: The Drive By Shooting, The Poison Stiletto, and The Passive Aggressive. The Drive By Shooting is full scale character assassination, attacking author's intelligence, prose, plotting, moral development and command of basic grammar. The Poison Stiletto purports to offer some positive comments to offset the negative, but the positive comments seem strangely superficial, as in, "I rather liked the font the book was written in," while the negative comments seem gleefully vindictive, as in, "I considered using the book as toilet paper, but then realized I didn't give a sh*t."
The Passive Aggressive category encompasses all readers who state that "this isn't their type of book", "I had to force myself to finish this" and "I suppose this was mildly enjoyable, if there wasn't anything better to read, like cereal boxes or legal notices."
No wonder absinthe drinking has come back
in fashion. At least, in an MFA program, the critiquers take their turn being
critiqued. My advice to fellow writers: Maintain cockpit hygiene, stay focused
on the work and don't google yourself.
May 2009
I head off to Orlando to the Romantic Times Convention for four days, and what happens when I return? Swine Flu, that’s what. But while I was at the convention, I was blissfully unaware that my galloping hypochondria was about to become the hot new story on CNN.
Here were my personal highlights:
1. Rooming with total stranger who turned out to be the fabulous, funny and talented Delilah Marvelle. Delilah, who will be presenting a “sex through history” workshop at RWA this summer, had one of those newfangled bulbous pink razors that she kept on the top of the toilet tank. Since the blade side was hidden, I mistook the thing for a sex toy, and didn’t mention it until the last day.
2. Liz Maverick coining the term “Grinchdog” to describe a certain state of fearful anxiety, that occurs during the dark moment of conventions. (You didn’t know cons had dark moments? Well, maybe you never get grinchdoggy.)
3. Talking to a leprechaun in a big green hat and novelty shades and learning that she was really Heather Graham.
4. Meeting lit prof turned YA author Melissa Marr at the comics panel I did with Anne Elizabeth and Jade Lee.
5. Watching some very enthusiastic women play musical chairs, with the chairs occupied by male models in Spartan costumes at Deirdre Knight’s Midnight party. I am assured that no males were permanently harmed, although there were probably some sore thighs that night.
~ Alisa, thinking that next year, I have to pack wings for the faery ball
March 2009
Just back from a two week vacation in England, where the family and I gypsied from house to house, visiting friends and family. We went from my mother-in-law’s pristine East Sussex home, where the silver service is Georgian and you can look out the window at the fat, wooly sheep, to Bohemian Brighton, where the lanes are filled with funky clothes and sexually suggestive chocolate. We met up with horror writer Mike Carey and his wife at comics and sci fi mecca Forbidden Planet in London, where I spotted The Better to Hold You and my daughter picked up a toy Rex the coelurosauravus from the BBC series Primeval. (The kids and I are big fans of the Whedonesque show.)
All went out for a Thai lunch and Mike and I reminisced about how we met (I discovered him in the slush pile, one of my proudest editorial moments). I lost my dignity attacking curried lobster in its shell, and Mike gave me the two latest Felix Castor novels (in addition to his many comics and graphic novels, Mike writes an incredible supernatural detective series drenched in hard-boiled London detail.)
We also spent a night at artist Dave Mckean’s house. I first met Dave when I was an assistant editor on The Sandman (he did the amazing covers) and since then, Dave has gone on to illustrate children’s books (Varjak Paw, The Graveyard Book) movie posters and album covers and to write and illustrate his own graphic novels. My daughter was thrilled to get her copy of Varjak Paw signed and doodled; my son wanted to sleep in the guest waterbed. As for me, I was most impressed with the dinner -- Dave’s done a cookbook with culinary alchemist Heston Blumenthal, and although he didn’t serve us up snail porridge or bacon and egg ice cream, he did do something Beetlejuician to watermelon.
My brother-in-law and sister-outlaw, who have eaten at Blumenthal’s pricey Fat Duck restaurant in England, insist that the food may sound strange, but is delicious. We visited them at their graveyard caretaker’s cottage in Ramsey, where the kids played frisbee between Victorian tombstones.
All in all, it was a wonderful trip -- aside from one late night panic when I got an email about Moonburn. Turns out that some of the corrections I thought I’d made earlier had devolved back into the manuscript -- guess I must have saved an older version over a current one. Aaaarrgggh. But in the end, I made sure that Red’s jeans were off when they were supposed to be off, and that the right number of hypodermics are strapped to Abra’s thigh. I still can’t believe the book’s due out in May -- this is the shortest gap I’ve ever had between books.
Kwitney Report: Alisa's Wisdom
In the past month, I’ve gone to two sci fi/fantasy conventions, one comic book con and two different universities (Fordham and Vassar) to talk about writing, and I have learned so much. Here, in bite sized digest form, is the sum of my new wisdom:
1. If you miss the Mass Turnpike turnoff twice in a row, you should turn off the radio
2. Corsets need to have space between the lacing in the back
3. On Lost, when Desmond asked his wife to call him in eight years and she did, she closed a temporal loop and re-anchored him in time
4. You can watch recent missed episodes of many shows for free on hulu.com
5. There’s basically a mini record player in your laptop hard drive, but instead of needle in a groove, there’s something that reads the magnetic field
6. Avoid sleeping on the party floor in a con hotel
7. The shuttles that go from the spillover hotel to the main con hotel are just an urban myth
8. Almost everyone under the age of 20 can text one handed, without looking at the keypad. Something to keep in mind when teaching a college course, as I will be doing next year (in Graphic Novel writing).
9. Marshall Mcluhan said that at first, each new technology uses the old technoogy as format
10. The hotels have a big box of cell phone chargers
left by previous guests, and you can rootle through them if you have lost your
own
February 2009
All right, I have to admit it: Alisa Sheckley is having a whole lot more fun publicizing The Better To Hold You than Alisa Kwitney ever did. I’m not sure why – perhaps werewolves lend themselves to offbeat venues – but I’m learning to accept that my alter-ego leads a far more interesting life than I do.
Take readings. As Kwitney, I did bookstore readings. As Alisa Sheckley, however, I drove off to Arisia, a regional Science Fiction convention, with rebels of romance writer Liz Maverick. I’m not sure what Liz expected, but here’s the titles of four different panels:
What is Live Action Role Playing (LARPing)?
The Big Fear: Genre Fiction as Social Commentary
No Capes! Non-Superhero Comics
Poly 175: Is Polyamory For Me?
The No-Capes was one of my panels, by the way, along with one on trends and another on women in comics. I’ve left out the hundred of other wonderfully bizarre selections, including Munsters vs The Addams Family, Filking (singing folk songs with alternate lyrics), Buffy The Vampire Slayer sing along, Steampunk from a Costumers Perspective and Guilty Pleasures: Defending the Books You Adore. That last one listed Militaristic Science Fiction from the seventies as a much-maligned sub-genre. Who knew? At first, I think Liz and I were a little bemused, but when I learned that there was going to be a late night screening of Westworld, a seventies SF film that could seed a whole new sub-genre in android romance, I knew I had to stay.
You can check out Liz’s pics of our lost weekend here, and find out how the con seemed from her pov at www.rebelsofromancecom.
Next week, it’s on to New York City for Comicon, then back to Boston for Boskone, another (more literary) Science Fiction and Fantasy convention. I wind up near home in Poughkeepsie at Vassar for their “Non-Con”. If you’re in the area, hope you get a chance to drop by.
Kwitney Report: New Year’s Resolutions Status Report
1. Do not buy any more jeans in ongoing search for perfect comfortable-yet-sexy-ass-lifting pair that does not produce camel toe or muffin top. Eight pairs of jeans are more than enough. I must embrace my jeans and accept their imperfections. Perhaps ass-lifting and comfort just cannot be achieved in the same garment.
Status: Bought Seven jeans Jan 3, on sale at Filene’s
Basement.
2. No more purchasing magazines. It is a waste of money, because deep down, I already know the sex act that all men secretly crave, the best way to apply foundation, and the future of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s romantic experiment.
Status: Did hold off buying People but purchased Rolling Stone and Reptile magazine for kids.
3. Stop agonizing and begin new writing project right away!
Status: Still agonizing
4. Do not go into bookstore
and roam the aisles like passenger on Titanic, moaning, There’s too many of us,
they’ll never save us all.
Status: Still moaning
5. Stop the obsessive compulsive news watching and channel surfing; finish Great Expectations, The Great Stink and Margaret Atwood’s Payback. Also, do not begin another book.
Status: Channel surfing from news, saw special on doomed cannibalistic Arctic expedition; started rereading Peter Freuchen’s classic Book of the Eskimos.
6. Get better about updating my website with fresh material
Status: Well, at least I got one right!
December 2008
Once upon a time, I had club clothes. A flapper dress from the 20’s. Patent leather go go boots. My grandmother’s 1940’s hat and beaded sweater. An Edwardian bombazine jacket.
After getting married and having kids, my club clothes became Halloween costumes. And then they were forgotten in the back of the closet. But thanks to my friend (and fellow author) Liz Maverick’s move to Manhattan, my club clothes have a new (night)life, and so do I. One night, not long ago, Liz and her posse of romance writers set out for an evening of seventies-roccoco revelry. Honestly, I hadn’t realized how limited my life had become until I got out to see a handome young man singing “I am der polar bear” in a faux German accent – and stripping.
Best of all? Ending the evening with a midnight run to the Utopia Diner (seventy-something street and Amsterdam) to eat corned beef hash and eggs. Feel like a little fin de siècle fun ? Check out www.dancesofvice.com -- and if you’re in the area, come party like it’s 1899.
November 2008
I’m never going to see that stupid bear.
Everyone else has spotted him: My kids, my neighbors, the postman, people I meet in the supermarket. There are numerous reports of him galumphing across the road out of my driveway, heading for the nature preserve across the street. This morning, my husband left a message on my cell: Watch out when you get back from dropping the kids off, the bear is sniffing around the front door.
I get home, and what do I see? Nothing. Nada. Bupkiss. It’s just like last week, when I was walking in the nature preserve with my neighbor, my daughter and our dogs. My daughter shouts, “Hey, look at that giant owl!” My neighbor says, “Jeez, it’s enormous!”
I squint into the sun and see a dark shadow for a millisecond. And then the owl is gone.
Nobody much sees the coyotes, of course, but we all
do hear them, yipping like crazy and making us call the cats to make sure they’re
both home.
I’m not sure why I’m never around to see the bear, but I’d really like to – there’s
a bearlike (yeah, I know, the correct term is ursine) creature in the second
of my werewolf novels, and I figure this would be good research. On the other
hand, I don’t want to see the bear when I’m not expecting him, or to see him
close up. When I step out of the house now, I find myself checking out the yard
and walking quickly and assertively toward the car. I figure my I’m-not-a-victim
walk, which I learned to ward off muggers in Manhattan, is my best defense. Other
advice on dealing with angry bears seems contradictory: Run, even though he can
catch you in a second. Climb, but he’s faster up a tree than you are. Drop into
a fetal position, and he won’t maul you. Or he won’t usually maul you – there
have been exceptions.
Wait – I have a better idea. From now on, I’m going to carry some honey in my pocketbook, the way I used to carry around extra cash to mollify irritable muggers.
Who says a city woman can’t survive in the wilderness?
FLIRTING WITH MANHATTAN (August 2007)
Like the heroine of Flirting in Cars, I left Manhattan a couple of years ago for a big old house in the country. And like my heroine, I didn’t go all that willingly. In fact, for years I called it the Green Acres Marital Dilemma: One spouse wants urban pleasures, the other prefers rural delights. After more than a dozen years of living my way, my husband and kids insisted that we experience the latter.
After an adjustment period, I learned to love the country – the springtime when I hike with my Chinook dog, Magnus, the summertime when I check out the fancy chickens at the county fair, the autumn when I volunteer at the local haunted house.
In the winter, I head off to the city a lot.
Well, to be honest, I go back to the city a fair amount even when the weather is fine. But even though I don’t live in Manhattan anymore, I still spend my city days like a native New Yorker. Which means no Broadway plays, no visits to the Empire State building, no major museums unless there is a special exhibit, and absolutely no eating at trendy restaurants, even if they do have those futuristic Japanese toilets in the restroom.
Here follows my extremely subjective guide to where to go and what to do in New York:
Where to Stay:
Absolutely no idea. I stay at my mother’s on the Upper West Side, but this probably won’t work for you. Pay $300 a night in most places in the world and you get a little luxury; in Manhattan, be prepared for mid-level security lockup.
Morning:
Breakfast on the go: The best bagels in NYC? Lenny’s on Broadway and 98th. Yeah, yeah, I know you heard that H&H are the best, but they’re not. Get an oat bran with everything and a shmear of cream cheese and feel semi-virtuous.
Best Brunch: If I have more time, I head on over to Barney Greengrass on Amsterdam and 87th for their legendary smoked fish platters. My mom likes a cup of borscht with hers, but I feel that’s taking things too far. If I’m in a more elegant mood, I might go next door to Popover’s. If you’ve never heard of a popover before, trust me, they are sublime. I have mine with apple butter, (which isn’t really butter).
Mid Morning:
Head on over to Madeleine’s at 134 W 72nd Street to get a cleaning (my skin is too prone to breakouts for a facial). There’s no big sign on the building and you have to walk up a couple of flights of stairs to get to the salon, which gives the whole excursion a slight speakeasy feeling of adventure. Sure, you can go to some fancy shmancy place and pay to have them blow oxygen on your skin, but Madeleine’s offers the kind of high quality, gimmick free service you’d get from family. They’ll also give you family-type honesty (like telling me when I was overplucking my eyebrows). Have I mentioned they pluck eyebrows, dye eyelashes, bleach those pesky dark hairs around your hairline, and wax those hairs that didn’t get plucked?) Cynthia Nixon goes here, and the girls who work in those nail salons that do waxing sneak up to Madeleine’s in their lunch hour to get their own legs waxed.
Lunch:
Your skin is clear and you’re around the corner from Gray’s Papaya, where celebrity chefs rub shoulders with budget conscious folks on lunch break and newly discharged mental patients as they gobble down the crispy hot dogs and drink papaya juice.
Or else you could stroll up Columbus Avenue – there are lots of cafes and restaurants, along with some of my favorite little clothes boutiques all along the seventies. When I need a dress for a special occasion, I always check out Lianna, where they have infinite variations on the little black number, and the most elegant costume jewelry around.
I’ve Just Noticed My Roots:
Every fashion magazine in America tells you where to go to have your hair cut and colored in NYC, but if you don’t like the idea of some self-assured snipper telling you he knows what’s best, go to Pentomo. It’s so good I break my self-imposed boycott on the East Side to have Jeremiah listen carefully to me as I explain what I want to do this time, and to have Walter painstakingly add just the right amount of highlights.
If the weather is nice, I walk back across the park: You can head into Central Park at 66th street, check out the Central Park Zoo, and walk across to the West Side. At the midway point, there’s the carousel, which goes particularly well with a new cut and highlights.
Okay, Now My Feet Hurt.
One of the best things about Manhattan is that there is always somebody else in the movie theater, no matter how outlandish the time. I love Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, on Broadway and 63th street, where you can see the latest European or Israeli films along with offbeat American indy selections. (Bonus: Good place to pick up foreign guys.)
My Whole Body Hurts.
If I’m not in the mood for a movie, I might head downtown (I do leave the Upper West Side on occasion) to get a hot stone massage at the Great Jones Spa. This is a fun place to go with friends, because you can hang out before or after your spa treatment – they have a steam room, sauna, hot tub and cold plunge pool. Although one friend complains that the place does have a faintly sinister air -- there’s a hint of industrial space underneath all the New Agey touches – I still like it. (Bonus: Good place to pick up Russian entrepreneurs).
For a more yoga-wholistic experience, I go to Carapan, which is a very upscale version of a nuts and granola place. As DVD yoga guru Rodney Yee might say, Feel the inner peace here. Relax your inner eyelids. Relax your groins. (You’re not picking up anyone here.)
To Really Relax Your Groins.
I always like to take my newly divorced pals to a sex shop. Downtown, there’s Babes in Toyland; in midtown, there’s Eve’s Garden, cleverly hidden in an impressively ritzy office building (as featured in a scene in my novel, Does She or Doesn’t She?) Don’t be embarrassed, no one will know you’ve got ben wa balls in your purse…unless you drop them.
Or Maybe You Want to Isolate Your Groins:
For years, I took belly dancing classes at Serena Studios in midtown Manhattan. The beginners’ classes were fun and not in the least intimidating, and brought together a fascinating mix of post-partum Mamas, middle aged movers and shakers, ex-ballet dancers, strippers and women of every shade, shape and level of dance experience. I’m not sure what their current schedule is (you can check online, as with all these places except for Madeleine’s). You can pay for just one lesson, and then go wild and blow your money on a hip scarf with bangles.
Enough With the Groins, Give me Some Culture.
If your ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, you might pay a visit to the Tenement Museum. The gift shop has some great nostalgic stuff, along with an all too realistic rubber mouse. The recreated slum apartments remind you too much of your hotel? Relax. The best gelato in town is right downstairs at Pharmacy, and Chinatown is just a short walk away.
All Right, Enough Activity. Time for Food and Drink.
If you don’t have a Zagat guide, get one – you can choose a bar or restaurant by neighborhood, type of food, level of poshness or likelihood of picking up somebody cute. You absolutely do not have to pay a lot of money to have an incredible meal in Manhattan, especially if you go ethnic. My advice? Unless you really are too tired to move, pick an regional cuisine – Indian, Vietnamese, Moroccan, Turkish – and let Zagat narrow it down.
Nightlife:
Obviously, there are cooler choices, but if it’s been more than a decade since you last gyrated on a dance floor, you might check out My Totally Awesome Eighties Prom. It’s an Off-Broadway interactive show at the Limelight, scene of many of my youthful follies.
In general, Off and Off-Off Broadway theater is stranger, cheaper and easier to get into on short notice, and some of the selections are anarchically funny. On the other hand, you might also suffer memorably, but this makes a better story than telling people you saw The Drowsy Chaperone.
Hey, Why Didn’t That Cab Stop for Me?
Around 4 pm is when a lot of cabs go off duty and they will not take you anywhere, because they are tired and they have to pee. Do not get stuck in midtown, where everyone wants a cab, at 4 pm if you have to be somewhere in a hurry.
So there you have it – my very biased list of where to go and what to do. Let me know if you have anything to add to the list so I can check it out in my next city day.
MAKE WAR NOT LOVE? (February 2007)
I feel so betrayed. Here I was, big fan of Maureen Dowd, loving the fact that she looked like Maureen O’Hara in the Quiet Man and was funny enough to write for The Daily Show. The heroine of my next book, Flirting in Cars, is a journalist and I used Ms. Dowd as a partial model.
And then came the bitch slap – Ms. Dowd’s Op Ed piece, “Heels Over Hemingway.” If you missed it last Friday, Feb 9 in the New York Times, you can check it out online if you’re a member. If not, here’s the gist:
Walking into a big bookstore, looking for Nostromo, Dowd is appalled to find that “chick lit was no longer a niche. It had staged a coup of the literature shelves. Hot babes had shimmied into the grizzled old boys’ club, the land of Conrad, Faulkner and Maugham.”
Dowd goes on to complain that she found a copy of Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” with a pink cover.
Now, I was perplexed. Was Dowd annoyed with bookstores, because romantic comedy and satire, a.k.a. chick lit, gets shelved alongside works of classic literature? Or was she irritated by the fact that most of the contemporary books she sees on the shelves are not destined to be classics? Wait, no, maybe she was unsettled by book publishers, who have slapped sexy new covers on Grande Dame Lit.
Then I read on, and understood: It’s all the woman reader’s fault. According to Ms. Dowd’s friend, New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier, “America’s reading women could do a lot worse than to put down “Will Francine Get her Guy?” and pick up “The Red Badge of Courage.” Especially since we’re at war and all.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I know America’s Reading Women. Is it a chick-lit only reading group? A cabal? A coven? Is it me? And if so, do I really have to stop reading all insular books about relationships in favor of hefty war tomes by men? What about “Shipping News” by Annie Proulx, or “On Beauty” by Zadie Smith – do those get dispensations? Maybe I’m allowed to read Suzanne Brockmann, because she writes about Seals.
Then Dowd mentioned the “feminization” of literature, and I thought, hey, this isn’t Frank Rich here, this is Intellectual Hot Babe Maureen Dowd, she of the scarlet hair and matching lips. Hell, her own book* had a pulpy, tart-noir cover. Then Jennifer Crusie explained it all to me. “She’s doing it to generate letters, so she looks popular.”
And I thought, That’s not a bad idea. I could pick on a subgenre and attack it, and then post it on my website, and get lots of passionate responses. But what to focus on – cozy mysteries? Detective novels set in Florida? Food writers’ memoirs?
I’ll let you guys decide. Please send in a genre for me to attack, along with one reason why it should be reviled.
p.s. I don’t believe she was really looking for Nostromo, do you? But if she’s still looking, I have a copy. Right next to Liz Maverick’s Crimson Rogue. (Swear to God, this is true.)
*(A a collection of essays, mildly amusing, but not about to shove Mark Twain off his…hey, what the heck is that doing on the table next to Roughing It?)
Alisa Kwitney
COUNTRY VS. CITY FOR THE HOLDIAYS (December 2006)
Lights, lights, many, many lights.
This, at age two or so, was my very first sentence. Clearly, I am hard-wired for urban living.
I don’t know how it is where you are, but here in the Hudson River Valley it gets dark around 5 pm, which is when most people seem to retire for the night. Whoever invented Daylight Savings Time didn’t understand that it’s more depressing to have the day end abruptly than it is to have it start slowly.
It’s gotten so bad I’ve started watching Sex and the City reruns without the sex. I have a vague feeling that something is missing now that the show’s been edited for basic cable, but really I’m just tuning in for all the soft-porn glossy images of Manhattan.
Which is ironic, since all my city friends are thumbing through their L.L.Bean Catalogues and fantasizing about spending the holidays in rustic splendor, complete with fetching wool sweater, blazing fireplace, cross country skis and golden retriever. And yeah, it is awfully pretty around here, what with all the gently rolling hills and old red barns and grazing sheep and horses.
But the hills are filled with tiny lyme-disease bearing ticks, which are now in the throes of a final mardis gras surge of activity before the winter frost.. The ticks are so ubiquitous that nearly everyone I know has had lyme disease, and it’s not unusual to see a woman with an IV strapped to her arm to keep the antibiotics flowing. I remember as a teenager hearing that in the 1700s, an alarmingly high proportion of the population was walking around with syphilis, and being horrified.
Lyme disease is an awful lot like syphilis, the main difference being that you have less fun acquiring it. The ticks all come from the deer, which are suicidal with lust and keep flinging themselves in front of my car.
And, last but not least, there is the frequent sound of high-caliber firearms discharging near my backyard. Not that I’m against hunting – I’ve changed my mind about this since learning how bad the deer and tick situation is. I am, however, against the city guys who come up here with a few six-packs and start blasting away at anything that moves. My big Chinook dog, Magnus, is deer-colored, and I’ve started dressing him in an orange bandana to make him look less like venison. I’m contemplating adding a hat and scarf.
I tried to take Magnus back to the city for a nice, safe weekend of window shopping, but two cops called me over to inform me that I was a walking thief magnet, with bags hanging off me and a vacant expression on my face as I ambled through the holiday crowds.
“This ain’t no small town, Lady,” they said. “You better get with it.”
Oh, well. Maybe I’ll just head over to the Amenia Tractor Company to see if they have a light-up moose for my lawn.
ADVICE FOR WRITERS
(November
2005)
Hubris and Humility
Every writer I have ever met has two invisible friends, Hubris and Humility, who take turns whispering in said writer’s ear. Hubris tells you that despite all the billions of books that exist, you have a specific way of looking at the world that is of interest to people, most of whom are not related to you, or friends with your mother. Humility tells you that, after rereading that page you wrote last night, you should probably wait before showing anything to anyone except for your mother. And maybe not even her.
Both these pals are useful. You should just make sure that you are listening to the correct voice at the appropriate time. For example, when you are actually sitting down and writing, listen to Hubris. Hubris will let you get some work done. When you are waiting to hear from an agent or an editor, or when you have just gotten through a terrible critique session where everyone in your writing group called you “derivative”, listen to Hubris. And never, ever read any negative review of your work, particularly ones that begin with the word “Disappointingly,” without ending up with a good, bracing dose of Hubris.
When speaking to fans, agents, editors, reviewers and, above all, when schmoozing with other writers, listen to Humility.
Finding Your Voice
When I was a comic book editor, I used to have a lot of aspiring artists handing me pencil drawings in the style of bigger, more established artists. Some would use very fine pencil strokes, lots of them. Some would use heavy shadows. Some would make every woman look as if she had armadillos projecting from her chest. Nice style, I would say, but when you are starting out, you need to master the basics first.
In comics, this means clear, realistic, visual storytelling. And it works for prose, as well. So don’t try to find your voice. Find your story, and tell it as simply and realistically as you can. If you are writing a fantasy, that may mean describing realistic unicorns. If you are working on a historical set in the middle ages, that means finding your own method for capturing the flavor of Medieval speech in a way that is easily understandable to a modern audience. Don’t strive for a particular effect. Don’t try to make your words pretty. Or, to put it another way, don’t worry about sounding like you. You will sound most like yourself when you just write the story.
How to Write Funny
Humor, real humor, is always a little subversive. This is why puns are not funny. Sorry Shakespeare, sorry British people, but they’re not. Richard Pryor is funny. John Stewart is funny. Helen Fielding’s Diary of Bridget Jones is hysterically, wonderfully funny. Laughter is a startle reaction. If you see it coming, it’s not funny.
Which means that in order to be funny, you have to be a little raw, a little revealing, a little risky. If you are satirizing something, and classic chick lit is basically satire mixed with romance, then you need to be the kid who says, Hey, the emperor has no clothes, and not the guy next to the kid, saying, He’s right.
The big test is this: Is your humorous sentence or observation safe? Could you read it to the PTA? Would your mother in law approve of it? The writer Fay Weldon once advised me to write something that would offend everyone I knew. I don’t think I’ve managed that yet, but it’s a good reminder for anyone who wants to write satire.
How to Write Sexy
What makes sex sexy in real life – trust, privacy, a firm mattress, at least an hour of free time – is just boring in fiction. To keep fictional sex interesting, think of it as serving the same purpose in a novel that a fight scene serves in a superhero comic book. In comics, you want each fight scene to highlight a different use of the hero’s power. So Batman shouldn’t clobber the hero the same way each time, he should use his ingenuity and skill and experience to solve the problem differently this time than he did the time before. And at the end of each fight, there should be a shift in power, meaning that the person who walked into the fight looking like the likely victor should wind up defeated or humbled. In my books, that means I aim to have the hero and heroine connect differently in each love scene, and I strive to have the balance of power shift from the beginning to the end of the scene. I also think of sex scenes as turning points for my characters, and structure them accordingly.
Other than that, the trick to writing sexy is the same as the trick for writing humor. You can’t play it safe and write sexy sex.
Physical Description
Lots of books tell you not to hack up a big bolus of exposition, but nobody says much about physical description.
Personally, I like physical detail. I have a pet peeve with literary authors who never let me know what the protagonist looks like. I want to tell those authors to read some detective fiction, because detective novels always have the best descriptions.
Imitating detective novels, I try to reveal a character’s physical details bit by bit, as he or she goes about the business of living. If I am in the character’s POV or close to it, I try not to describe them in ways they wouldn’t describe themselves, such as, “lustrous honey blonde hair” and “delicately pretty features.” And after a particularly cutting comment by a literary magazine editor in the late eighties, I don’t have my characters catch sight of themselves in a mirror and then give a detailed, top to tail inventory of their physical attributes.
And Last but not Least
The biggest single lesson every writer needs to learn, and then relearn, is when to listen to advice and criticism and when to ignore it. No one can teach this to you. It’s like learning when to follow a new fashion and when to accept that even if everyone around you wears kilts, you know what they do to your calves.
Whether you have never been published or have published dozens of books, whether the person critiquing or advising you is a powerful editor or the author you most admire in the world, you have to ask yourself, Do I suspect that this is true, or does this just feel like the other person doesn’t get what my story is really about?
If your inner voice says the latter, then ignore the advice. Even if it’s mine.
HARD WORK
(Summer
2005)
I’m not supposed to say it was hard. Saying that writing the book was hard is like admitting that you took two hours to get ready for a date. You’ve spent all that effort trying to make yourself look like a natural beauty, and now you’ve blown it.
Well, to hell with it. I’m out of the closet – this last book was damn hard to write. And you know what? Even the books that weren’t this hard to write were damn hard. I think that after about six months or so, post-birth amnesia sets in, and I forget the grinding pain and the mounting panic that something is going terribly wrong, and I think, Look, a perfectly healthy book. That wasn’t so hard.
Except it was.
Trying to get dialogue to appear natural, sound clever and at the same time, actually reveal things? As easy as getting the look of just-out-of bed, sexily tousled hair. Figuring out how your own book ends? As simple as waxing your own legs.
There is a reason so few people actually wax their own legs or finish their novels. It’s messy, it’s painful and it’s stressful, even when you are doing it right.
And yet, rereading it a month after putting the final period on the final sentence, I’m shocked to see that everything reads quite effortlessly. No sign of blood and sweat at all.
And now that I’ve gotten a glimpse at the cover, which I really like, I can almost make myself to believe that the process of writing wasn’t really that bad, in fact, maybe there was only that one bad patch, when the snow was really piling up and I couldn’t get out of the house, even to sit in a café for a few minutes.
But I won’t lie to myself, either. It was hard. But right about now, it begins to feel worth it.
Which is good, because it’s almost time to get started on the next one…
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Friday, February 19
Graphic Novel Writing Workshop
Vassar University
Poughkeepsie, NY
> Alisa will be giving a graphic novel writing workshop at Vassar University’s
non-con in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Wednesday, April 28 - May 2
Graphic Novel Writing Workshop
Columbus, OH
> Alisa will be at the Romantic Times Convention in Columbus, Ohio, giving
a graphic novel writing workshop, appearing on a steampunk panel and signing books.
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