Play Along at Home!

Today I join the roster of writers who’ve contributed to the “Daily 5 Minute Writing Exercise” on C.M. Mayo’s web site. There’s a lot of fun stuff there for aspiring writers; of course, I had to go and choose a theme connected to the impending publication of The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane!

“Choose one of your favorite films. Write a scene in which a character explains what he or she loves about it to another character. Now choose one of your least favorite films, and write a scene in which one character tries to persuade another that they should watch it.”

1 November 2005 | uncategorized |

Tara McCarthy: Read It in Spite of Yourself!

You might remember that post this summer where I mentioned the website for the Sparks Sisters, the fictional conjoined twin pop sensations who star in Tara McCarthy’s novel, Love Will Tear Us Apart. Well, now Tara’s come along to tell Beatrice readers a little more about her book and about a problem she didn’t anticipate having in getting people to read it. It just goes to show Oscar Wilde was right: The only thing worse that being talked about really is not being talked about.

Some of you may remember me. I wrote a book—Been There, Haven’t Done That: A Virgin’s Memoir—back in 1997. I was on the Howard Stern show; Leno made jokes about me; People magazine put me on their top ten worst books of the year. Radio interviews, print publicity, local news crews in my very own apartment . . . Ah yes, I had it all! But I was naive, unprepared, easily flustered…I thought maybe it was a bit overmuch. I remember crying a lot and wishing that the book hadn’t gotten quite so much attention.

So I toiled away in isolation for years, hid from public life and wrote two bad half-novels and then one complete one that I felt was worthy of publication. Love Will Tear Us Apart was released last month and the media who’d once critiqued every aspect of my non-sex life (“She wants to know why she’s still a virgin? Look at her!”) couldn’t have cared less.

Like most first-time novelists, I now spend a good portion of my days marveling over the near-complete lack of publicity I’ve managed to scare up with this book. In addition, I bemoan that my fifteen minutes were used up by a sensational memoir that lacked artfulness and literary merit. I’m saddened that my novel—so much more interesting than the memoir to talk about, as far as I’m concerned—is struggling now to be “a sleeper hit” or “word of mouth sensation”… if it’s lucky.

(more…)

1 November 2005 | uncategorized |