Website!

My dear friend Anthony has been kind and patient enough to create an author's website for me. Here we've posted the first three chapters from my *debut* novel, tentatively titled Dancing is Sex with Your Clothes On. It's the young adult novel I'm currently pitching to publishers... This website is part of the marketing.

Anyway, take a gander!

www.erin-dale.com

:)

Some flash fiction

Mass Make-over

Hottest man alive? Noam Chomsky.

Hottest to ever walk the earth? Ernest Hemingway.

My friends say I have issues, starting with my taste in men. This is why Angie, Charlotte and Lilah are lined up outside my dorm room, poised to stage an intervention.

“Open up, Norah!” That’s Angie’s shrill soprano. “We know you’re in there!”

I open the door, grumbling. All three girls gasp.

“My God, Norah,” Charlotte sighs. “Do you ever leave your room? It’s Saturday night!”

She gestures to my rumpled clothing: a 2004 Ralph Nader for President t-shirt and holy sweats. I’m wearing my “smart girl” glasses, my brown curls are unbound, and my feet are bare.

“We have got to get you out of here,” Lilah insists. She opens her multicolored Louis Vuitton purse and reveals a pink Clinique makeup bag. I start to sweat. “Norah…it’s time for a make-over!” she squeals.

My tattered copy of Farewell to Arms lays abandoned as the girls force me into my desk chair and begin their experiment. I close my eyes and can feel my curls being brushed out and straightened, my eyebrows getting plucked, my face becoming covered in foul-smelling goop.

“Ta-da!” Angie spins my chair around to face my full-length mirror. I take in my reflection and wince.

“New and improved,” Lilah says triumphantly.

“How do you like it?” Charlotte asks.

I touch my newly-straightened hair and am surprised that it now hangs below my shoulders. And it’s all swishy, too. My now-plucked brows somehow alter the rest of my face—my brown eyes look bigger, brighter. And though the foundation they slapped on me smells like liquid soap and old people, it’s smoothed out my usually blotchy skin.

I look less like a political science major that helped campaign for Nader and more like a regular on Laguna Beach.

I hate it.

But I’m not about to dissuade the girls’ good intentions. I let them dress me in a fashion-forward outfit and steer me to one of Boston’s hippest clubs. I manage to sneak my book in the Coach bag they’ve made me carry. As the girls dance the night away, I sit at the bar, face successfully hidden in my book. I don’t look up until someone taps me on the arm.

It’s my philosophy teacher, Professor Randall.

“Norah Baumgartner.” He smiles and shakes his head. “You’re the only woman I know who would read Hemingway at a bar.” I notice he does not say “student.”

He sits down beside me and we begin a long and engaging discourse on how Hemingway’s alcoholism affected his writing. Professor Randall is probably in his mid-forties and quite the charmer. He’s no Brad Pitt, but he does have a certain attractive quality. I’m reminded of Ralph Fiennes or Liam Neeson. I like the way Professor Randall’s blue eyes crinkle when he smiles.

We talk for at least an hour, but the girls don’t notice. Nor do they see Professor Randall and I slip out of the club.

It’s Sunday afternoon. Angie has just called to ask what happened to me last night. So nice that she cares. I answer vaguely and let her fill in the blanks. Then Charlotte and Lilah call to congratulate me and deem their experiment a success.

All four of us have philosophy together on Monday morning. With a subtle wink, Professor Randall hands me my paper on Kant’s Practical Philosophy.

I got an A.

Over lunch, Angie, Charlotte and Lilah complain about the respective D, C and F they earned. I smirk.

Stupid girls.

Fresh starts

Bienvenidos to my blog. I've used other sites in the past, including xanga, myspace, and live journal, but I'm eager to start afresh. I'm an aspiring writer (aren't we all?) and am in the midst of a publishing project. I plan to post a lot of original material here in hopes of getting constructive feedback ... something all authors crave.

What am I working on, exactly? I'm trying to balance on the fine line between memoir and fiction; we'll call it "fictional memoir." I'm writing in first-person from the perspective of a character who's a lot like me, but is also an amalgam of people I know. Right now I'm facing an ethical dilemma of good fiction; how far can one go when writing about true events in a fictitious manner? Where is the line, and when do we know we've crossed it?

I want to write about a significant relationship I had. And by significant, I mean shell-shocking, soul-rupturing, heart-bursting-into-tiny-pieces-important. And no, I won't hyphenate that much in an actual manuscript. ;) But, I digress. He was everything to me, but the whole thing exploded and, well ... I'm over it, but I never really wrote about it. I'm too poor for therapy, so written catharsis is the next best thing.

However, I'm not writing this piece to simply get a load off my chest; I have a story to tell, and I feel like the lessons I learned could make a good impact on readers. It may not be the most dramatic story, but the drama was real to me, so much so that characters have sprang from my experiences. "Out of chaos, a star is born," after all.

I should be posting something more literary in the next few days. If you're reading this, feel free to introduce yourself to me. I love talking to new people, especially fellow writers. I hope we can help one another and glean from different perspectives, experiences and expertise.