I don't know how fashion photographers do it. Even when your models are dolls, they're hard to photograph in a group. You know nobody will have her eyes closed, or be making a weird face, or sneeze, but during this shoot, I had several hair disasters, a couple of models who insisted on falling over (if they were real, I'd be wondering, poor nutrition? substance abuse?), and two bracelets broke and had to be repaired. Then I thought I had them all posed the same, and only after I saw the photos did I realize a hand is misplaced here, the legs aren't the same there--even plastic models are a pain! Of course, most photographers have assistants to take care of the details, and I only had Margot and Guinness. While they offer loads of moral support, they can't ensure that no model has a stray hair in front of her face.

Here are the Birthstone Barbies I used for my Halloween shoot in order of the months of the year. I combed out the ridiculous curls Mattel gives the dolls and put them all in black body suits that I sewed for them. (I like the way the models on Project Runway look so uniform in their black slips; this is my version of that.)

Patricia, Katie, Dandy, Natalie, Tajma, Toni,
Olivia, Emily, Sarah, Gina, Lily, Ava

If you click here, you can see an embiggened version. Lisa asked the other day how I remember their names, and the easiest answer, for these twelve and the thirteen Top Models I own, is that I give them names that mean something to me, and once named, they become characters. Their characters aren't fully developed with storylines, but every name has a few details connected to it, and enough of them are named for real people to make those connections more memorable to me.

I had the greatest conversation in Jo-Ann Fabrics with a four-year-old boy the other day who was just dumbfounded that I had a doll with me and NO DAUGHTER. That's YOUR doll? You PLAY with it? And though I assured him that I don't play with her, just dress her, I did realize later that in a way, I do "play" with the dolls, and that my year of not writing hasn't really been that at all. The writing is going on in my head as I make stories to match these dolls and their fashions.

I've stopped feeling guilty about all the e-mail that's come to me and Timothy James Beck this year about what's next, when another book will be out. In ten years, I've written or partially written nine published novels, gotten a couple of short stories into print, written some unpublished poetry, co-edited an anthology, and edited or copy edited several writers' novels and short stories. I've come to understand that it's okay--even necessary--for a writer to take a break. One thing this break has allowed me to do is to read novels in wide-ranging genres. While I've enjoyed all this reading, I've found that I still don't want to "write one like Author X." I can only write what I write. But I haven't retired. I don't have writer's block. I'll write when the next story is ready to be told. I assume Timothy James Beck will, too.

That's the most honest answer I can give.

We've recently switched our thermostat from air conditioning to heat. A couple of times since, I've heard this odd, part musical, part moaning sound late at night and tried to determine if it's coming from the furnace.

In looking through my photos, I found one of several stuffed owls (cropped to a single owl in the above photo). It occurred to me that maybe what I'm hearing is an owl. Tom said he's seen one recently near The Compound. Of course, now that I want to hear the noise, I haven't heard a damn thing.

This window display reminded me of another book I think might be interesting: The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse. Because, as certain characters in a novel called The Deal could tell you, mocking bad poetry is a good time.

A long time ago, in a small town far, far away...

My first love (his name is Tim, because there are a limited number of men's names in my personal history of love and friendship) found someone else over the summer, a girl from a nearby military post. This often happened when a new batch of Army families moved in--they brought pretty teenage daughters with them. So my hero, the boy who'd been the center of my life, my beautiful, motorcycle-riding, leather-jacket-with-fringe-wearing, blond-haired, green-eyed Tim, broke up with me just before my sophomore year in high school. The Other Girl (whose real name I'm stealing for a character because I like it), was not in school the first six weeks of that year. She had mono.

For the first time, upperclassmen could choose our English courses in six-week modules from several topics, which meant that sophomores through seniors might end up in the same classes. That's why Lynne and I shared an English class with Tim and my friend Riley, though they were older than we were. Riley and Lynne would watch with rolling eyes as Tim sat behind me and played with my long hair, braiding and unbraiding it, or rubbed the back of my neck with his thumbs, or leaned forward and whispered nice things to me during class. They rolled their eyes because once we walked out of English, where people who knew The Other Girl might see us, Tim ignored me. And I let him get away with it.

Those were the most miserable six weeks of my young life--not just because of the romantic roller coaster, but because an expiration date loomed. My parents were moving to a community a few miles away, where my father was the assistant principal of the high school. They couldn't wait to transfer me there, in no small part to get me away from Tim. The big breakup wasn't enough for them; they also wanted inaccessibility. It was as if they had a camera in my English class.

Looking at photos of myself from those months, I can still feel tears lurking. Even when I'm smiling, my eyes are pools of misery. There's nothing quite so intense as the loss of a girl's first love. When she's also taken from all her friends and put in a new school where she feels different from everybody AND is the assistant principal's kid--not a good time.

After I was transferred, Tim and The Other Girl broke up and he began calling me. Maybe it was a case of absence making his heart grow fonder. Since I didn't have a driver's license, and he wasn't allowed to come to our new home, we devised a scheme to see each other one weekend. Lynne's older sister would pick me up and take me to Lynne's house to spend the night. Lynne and I were supposedly going to their high school football game. Lynne actually had a date, and the two of them were dropping me at the stadium before they went somewhere else. I'd be meeting Tim there, which would give us a chance to talk things out and reconcile before he took me back to Lynne's that night.

I can still remember how I looked and what I wore that Friday. My hair was shiny and hung board-straight to my waist (it was the style). My makeup was light but applied to set off the big brown eyes Tim always complimented. I had on my favorite jeans and a new shirt that I loved. I took my brown suede jacket with me because of the chilly autumn night. Everything went according to plan...

Except that Tim never showed. I kept thinking maybe I got our meet-up place wrong, so I walked around the stadium during the whole game. Riley, who was a drummer in the band, watched from a distance, occasionally shaking his head but restraining himself from saying anything that might upset me more. When the game was over and the crowd was filing out around me, Riley went with the other drummers to put up their equipment. I didn't move, sure that Tim would never stand me up. Finally Riley and his girlfriend Carol came back for me and made me leave with them.

I couldn't go to Lynne's, since she was supposed to be with me, and I sure wasn't going home. Whatever their plans had been, Riley and Carol gave up their date that night to drive me around until I could meet Lynne. I was sitting in the back seat when Carol changed the radio station just as Carole King's "So Far Away" began to play. I finally broke down in sobs, and I can still hear Carol saying, "Awwww. Riley! DO something!"

He couldn't, of course. Sometimes you just have to let a friend's heart break. And though it wasn't the last time I'd have a broken heart, because it was the first time, I had no context for it. I didn't know that I'd eventually get over it. I didn't know that Tim and I would reunite and break up several more times before we both moved on. All I knew was that it felt like I was being turned inside out, my world was ending, and life would never be good again.

Though I never had teenage daughters of my own, my memories of being that naive and feeling that fragile--though of course, I actually had the strength and resilience of youth on my side--are sharp and fresh. Along with all the other versions of me I'd grow into over the years, that girl still lives inside me.

Maybe she's the one who was so bewildered when I read Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. I was genuinely reluctant to buy it. I even told the bookseller as much. Why? Because so many people have written such terrible things about it. Some people would say they liked the story but the writing was awful. Others would say the writing was passable but they still despised it and couldn't fathom its success. I'm not going to get into more specific criticisms of the books. Anyone can find them on the Internet, and many of them were written by people who also write books, including people I know and whose books I read.

But the books are written for the very audience that Bella is part of: the adolescent girl. Bella is completely believable to me, with her insecurities, her stumbling attempts to do the right thing, her love-at-first-sight for exactly the wrong boy, her sense that the weight of the world rests on her young shoulders. Meyer makes Edward her protector, maddening though he may be. He adores her, he rescues her, he watches over her. Theirs seems a hopeless love, never to follow a normal course, perhaps never to be consummated. It's safely dangerous love, and to Bella, her first love plays out on a sweeping, sometimes agonizing, sometimes thrilling scale.

So did mine, and Tim wasn't even a self-sacrificing vampire.

Bella is every teenage girl who ever felt hopeless, passionate yearning for a rock star, or the school's most popular jock, or a teacher, or a gay best friend. It's exquisite torment, and again, someone as young as Meyer's Bella has no context for her feelings other than what she might find culturally, for example, in movies or literature.

And all those young readers and moviegoers who are infatuated with Bella and Edward are doing the same--falling in love with a love story that's set up to have a certain physical purity while packing lots of emotional drama.

I'm not sure why Meyer has been singled out as a bad writer by writers that other people have also ridiculed and belittled. Maybe Meyer's novels aren't to everyone's taste, but are any of these sharp-tongued critics being forced to buy and read her books?

It delights me when I see young people reading. And if they are led by Bella and Edward to read Romeo and Juliet or Wuthering Heights or any other literary classics, how can this be a bad thing?

Finally, if it's not Meyer's writing which people find so objectionable, but the swooning, over-the-top reactions of adolescent girls and 'tweens, I can't help but think of girls' frenzied reactions to Rudolph Valentino, Frank Sinatra, James Dean, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio, to mention a few teen idols. Furthermore, in my life and certainly online, there are plenty of examples of people who exited their teenage years long, long ago, both male and female, who practically live in a ménage à trois with a couple of lovers named Angst and Drama.

So this is my confession. I read Twilight while I was reading Moby Dick, and I didn't fall down dead from the literary dissonance. I was waiting to rent the Twilight DVD because a couple of other people said they might read the book, too, before watching the movie with me. But I couldn't stand the wait. Not only did I buy New Moon and read it, but I dragged The Brides and Tom into my depravity by persuading them to watch Twilight last weekend. Today, I bought the last two books because I want to see how the love story of Edward and Bella plays out.

And I don't feel one moment's shame for any of this, because my heart remembers and celebrates that exquisite torment that is falling in love for the first time.

September 26 - October 3, 2009 is Banned Books Week.

You get two buttons today, because this issue rates high on the Becky List of Importance. It should rate high on anyone's list. Not every book is for everybody, but once we allow a group to dictate what we can't read, the next book on their list may take YOUR intellectual freedom away. Thank every librarian, teacher, parent, citizen, attorney, publisher, bookseller, and organization who has protected your precious right to choose your own reading. Please understand that every time a "crazy liberal" speaks out to protect And Tango Makes Three, that effort stems from the same passion that protects some of the books pictured below in a display from the Montrose location of Half Price Books in Houston, Texas.

	Some titles seen in these photos: The Secret History of the English Language The English Illustrated Dictionary Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Brave New World English Literature Sayings Usual and Unusual New Pet Vocabulary Builder The Adventures of Tom Sawyer The Great Gatsby Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Uncle Tom's Cabin To Kill a Mockingbird The Pearl The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Rings The Two Towers Catch-22 A Farewell to Arms Harry Potter (series) The World in a Phrase The Koran Song of Solomon The Color Purple The Holy Bible Merriam-Webster's Advanced Learner's English Dictionary The Da Vinci Code Angels and Demons The Catcher in the Rye Lord of the Flies Ginsberg's Journals The Red Badge of Courage The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsburg Some banned books not pictured here: 1984 A Clockwork Orange A Separate Peace A Wrinkle in Time All the King's Men Always Running An American Tragedy Animal Farm Annie On My Mind Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret Arizona Kid Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture As I Lay Dying Beloved Blubber Boys and Sex Brideshead Revisited Bridge to Terebithia Cat's Cradle Charlotte's Web Crazy Lady Cujo Daddy's Roommate Earth's Children (series) Fade Final Exit For Whom the Bell Tolls Forever Girls and Sex Go Ask Alice Go Tell It On the Mountain Gone With The Wind Goosebumps (series) Gossip Girl Halloween ABC Heart of Darkness Heather Has Two Mommies I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings In Cold Blood In the Night Kitchen Invisible Man It’s So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families James and the Giant Peach Julie of the Wolves Killing Mr. Griffin Lady Chatterly's Lover Lolita Naked Lunch Native Son Of Mice and Men On My Honor On the Road One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ordinary People Pillars of the Earth Private Parts Rabbit, Run Rebecca Satanic Verses Scary Stories (series) Schindler's List Slaughterhouse Five Sons and Lovers Sophie's Choice Summer of My German Soldier Taming the Star Runner That Was Then, This Is Now The Bluest Eye The Boy Who Lost His Face The Call of the Wild The Chocolate Lover The Dead Zone The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things The Face on the Milk Carton The Goats The Grapes of Wrath The Handmaid's Tale The House of Spirits The Jungle The Kite Runner The Naked and the Dead The Old Man and the Sea The Outsiders The Perks of Being a Wallflower The Sound and the Fury The Stupids The Sun Also Rises The Wish Giver The Witches The Wonderful Wizard of Oz The World According to Garp Their Eyes Were Watching God Tropic of Cancer Ulysses We All Fall Down Whale Talk Winnie-the-Pooh Where's Waldo? Women in Love
Here lies originality and thought, loving progenitors of imagination.
RIP Invention, Ideas, Progress, Imagination, Originality, and Thought

Before I take my book to bed for a few more pages of searching for that wacky white whale before I sleep, I have to pass on this link to those who love libraries. Thanks to jamjar_girl for sharing it.

Of course, it's not as if The Compound doesn't have its own fabulous library. ;)

I love Wisconsin because it's the home state of some old friends of mine whose names you might recognize: Daniel Stephenson, Blaine Dunhill, Adam Wilson, Sheila Meyers, Nick Dunhill... We've been getting a ton of letters from readers wondering when there'll be another Timothy James Beck novel. I wish I had an answer to that question.

Quick. Need a diversion.

Speaking of Wisconsin, our friends Rhonda and Lindsey went to Milwaukee for the Gay Softball World Series, and all we got...
( Quick! Click here! )

I thought it was interesting that the theme for Photo Friday was "Fear." Even if Friday hadn't been the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, I still would have thought first of tall buildings. During my twenty years in Houston, I've worked in skyscrapers downtown and in the Greenway Plaza and Galleria areas. (In fact, it's been my plan for a while to go around Houston and photograph the many buildings I've worked in.) Before that day, I liked the views that being on high floors offered, because Houston has so many different skylines and its flatness makes them visible from great distances.

As it happened, most of the corporations I worked with prior to September 11, 2001, were severely impacted by that event, as well as the subsequent economic woes of Compaq, Enron, and Continental Airlines. As a contract employee, my work went away. It was probably for the best, as images from that day were so burned into my brain that just getting into an elevator made me break into a cold sweat. I'm not sure I could have handled ten hours a day twenty or more stories above ground.

The second thing "Fear" brought to mind was jets. I was never a good flier to begin with, and September 11 pretty much sealed the deal. Of course, I've flown again--including to Manhattan three weeks after the attacks, and as I've mentioned on here before, when Tom and I walked into the terminal at IAH and I saw the National Guard standing inside the door with weapons, I burst into tears. And, sadly, I then started profiling all my fellow travelers. I'm a flawed human. Regarding jets, however, the only photos I might be able to get would be of jets landing or taking off, and I actually love those two sights--as long as I'm not on the jet--so shots of that wouldn't speak to my fear of flying.

Fear... I thought of sharks and cemeteries, but since I don't actually have any photos of sharks, and cemeteries don't really scare me--unless maybe I was trapped in one after dark, and I'm not in a horror movie or a gothic novel, so that isn't likely--I tried to think of something else. One of my worst fears is losing anyone else I love to AIDS, but any photos I have related to AIDS are either sad or hauntingly beautiful--not the same as "Fear."

I was talking to Lynne on Friday, trying to decide what to shoot, and she told me I could take pictures from the twentieth floor of her building. That would work, because looking straight down really does scare me. Then Tim came over, and since he and I share many of the same fears, he'd been thinking of buildings, too, only he wanted to shoot them from outside looking up. Off we went, and he took some amazing shots of the building I insist on calling Transco Tower, even though it's actually Williams Tower now. If you haven't seen the one he picked for Photo Friday, check it out here, because I'm all kinds of awed and envious. Great photo.

I got some good shots from inside Lynne's building, but not exactly what I wanted. Still, I got to see Lynne, so no complaints. After coming home and starting dinner, I went out to shoot the American General Center. In spite of its tallness, I appreciate that building and the flag on top of it because whenever I'm out wandering and lose my way, it's my landmark to get home. When I saw that its flag was at half mast, I knew I had the photo I wanted.

All these years later, my memories of September 11 still evoke so many emotions--fear and horror, of course, but also pride and compassion--and especially hope, because my family got a new baby on that day in 2001. Steven has always helped me look toward the future, as do all the beautiful children in my family.

On a lighter note, I could have used this photo--little sea creatures laughing at me as ONCE AGAIN I vow to conquer Moby Dick. I've gotten further into it than I ever did on previous attempts, but Ishmael still makes me laugh, and I still wonder if the novel's supposed to be funny or if I'm just strange. It still rocks my world that I got A grades on every essay question I ever answered on the book, or every paper in which I referenced it, in spite of the fact that I didn't read it. Students, this is what LISTENING to your teachers and developing your WRITING skills will do for you--turn you into a CHAMPION bullshitter with the pen. I may be afraid of tall buildings and jets and sharks and palmetto bugs and dogs I don't know and people who text and drive or talk on their cell phones and drive or hell, just drive--have you been in Houston?--and I'll probably end up afraid of white whales, but when it comes to writing a literary essay, I am FEARLESS.

Note: Kroger-brand cranberry juice is crap. I'm sorry, Kroger, but it just is. The grape juice and apple juice are okay, though.

Second note: If there's anything Hewlett-Packard does right, it's the way they set up a return/recycle feature with their printer cartridge packaging. Holla.

For the past couple of weeks, I haven't felt...me-ish. I haven't felt sick, though there were a couple of little indications that I might be. But because I like to self-diagnose with my degree in An Aries Knows Everything, I sort of ignored it. I felt fine on Tuesday night when I got to see my friend Lisa (she who my writing partners call Big Hair Lisa to separate her from other Lisas) for the first time in forty forevers. (Hi, Lisa! And the other Lisa, too!)

( click here for more )

What a great venue Houston's Té House of Tea is for an artist. Paintings by our friend Lindsey are hanging there throughout the month of August. If you're in Houston, go by and check them out (corner of Woodhead and Fairview in Montrose). Also, check out Té's web site for information about this aesthetically pleasing, environmentally conscious tea house. I've been Tweeting back and forth with them, and now that they've assured me they have free wifi, I can't think of a more tranquil spot to take my laptop and get some writing done. I've always enjoyed writing in public places with good energy. Back in the day, the wonderful bookstore Crossroads was my chosen location--many scenes from It Had to Be You were written there. I've never really found a permanent home since Crossroads closed, so I'm looking forward to seeing if Té may be it.

If you'd like to see some shots of Lindsey's work (I wish I could buy ALL of those paintings!) and the eighty-plus art lovers who were there Thursday night, check out my flickr set. It was nice to reconnect with some friends (Hey, Kathy!), plus Lindsey introduced Tim and me to a couple of TJB readers, always a pleasant experience.

From Sophie's Beads' Etsy shop:

Since I've always loved charm bracelets (my own charm collection requires a necklace), the idea of wearing my favorite book covers tickles my fancy.

Look at this idea for a gift for the 'tween reader in your life:



Hmmm, maybe I should see if she can expand that bracelet to allow for nine book cover charms and add this to my Christmas list...