So Much Stuff! (including chocolate)

I'm still catching my breath after finishing THE DESIRE PROJECTS, but I want to share a bunch of great and interesting things with you:

Step up, Sotomayor fans, and get your hot pink "Wise Latina" t-shirts here--with props to the UT Latinas for making it happen.

Scroll to the bottom of O Magazine's "How to Write Your Own Memoir" (redundant title? but okay, whatever) for ten good exercises.  (Thanks, Rachel Rinehart Johnson!)

Here's some really smart advice on writing memoir--from an agent, no less.  My favorite bits are these:

Memoir is a tricky category, one that I love but one in which the bar for writing is high and the demand for platform still higher. . . .   [N]ot only had you better write very, very, very well, but do so in service of a story in which the whole is somehow greater than the sum of its parts.

And again:

[Good memoir is] work that has drama, that surprises, that toggles between the personal and the universal, and is also very, very well written.

I couldn't have said it better.   But there's more on the site--and she links to another site she likes--so check it out.

Speaking of agents, some of you have asked me about mine, and I'm excruciatingly proud to show off Curtis Brown's pretty new website.   I love the image at the top.   (And guess which one my agent is!)

For instant humility, scroll through "Bestsellers & Awards," as I did.  Feel immediately wee.  Resolve not to care.  Fail.  Sigh.  Resign yourself to caring.  Turn to chocolate. 

Which leads me to . . . 

At Pine Manor, writer Anne-Marie Oomen gave me a taste of Grocer's Daughter chocolates (which she hand-carried with her from Michigan to Boston), and I am now in love.  They make Godiva taste like wax.  Sorry, but they do.  They're now my go-to gift for special occasions.  (Note that I had to add a new category, below.)

Last but definitely not least, the launch party for Belinda Acosta's new novel (which I blabbed about here--and Belinda and I gabbed together about here) is coming up in Austin, Texas.  Who wouldn't want to celebrate at Cuba Libre for an evening?  If you're in town, you should so go.  (Yes, you too, Julie.)

Tuesday, August 18
6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Cuba Libre
409 Colorado

So you don't know Belinda.  So you haven't read the book.  So what?   If you were throwing a launch party for your first novel, wouldn't you love it if an enthusiastic stranger showed up?