5am insomnia

So it has come to this. I cut short the family visit in order to enjoy a few days of R & R before goingback to work and here I am wide awake at 5 am for some inexplicable reason, making a batch of green apple soap and reading blogs. I would normally blame the Peach Nehi sugar rush, but I actually just cracked open the 2 liter now to combat the dryness everywhere, my throat, the apartment, the ridiculous static when I add yet another sweater to combat the radiators that never run quite enough during these terrible bleak days of winter. Of course, I can alway go back to bed later, but there are so many other things I should be doing. I should be cleaning the bathroom or doing laundry. I should be making something or working on a poem. The building is unsually silent with all the Loyola students on break, so no bad music and screeching drunk girls. The dorm building across the way is completely dark and for all I know, I may be the only person awake in the universe. Only 80 or so days til spring and I'm counting every one of them.

I am currently chilling out in post holiday stupor at my parents having endured a couple of days with iffy electricity, so I figured I'd better take advantage of the internets while I can. Besides going it pioneer style on occasion, the holiday was good. Lots of family, presents, and food, and there's still another gathering this evening. I wound up a little mini-fridge for beverages in studio, a mortar & pestle for grinding herbs for soapmaking, some new towels, some luscious lotions, and a wealth of bookstore and Starbucks gift cards that will probably be used up in a week.The weather has been awful, an ice storm on Wednesday that made getting out of the city a nightmare and glassed over the trees until they split. Today, a white blanket over everything and giant, thick snowflakes. I've had my fill of winter and the direct flights to Myrtle Beach for the Rockford Airport seem ridiculously tempting, though I fear if I went, I might not come back.

I also had some unfortunate news from Ghost Road that they are, for all intensive purposes, putting on hold new publications due to a combination of factors (health problems of the editor and the economy), and will thus be canceling my contract and won't be releasing girl show after all this year, which gives me a couple of choices. I can either resubmit it elsewhere (though I'd really like to focus on submitting the new book this year) or just bring the thing out as a dancing girl title later this year. The latter is especially tempting since I would have full say over layout and design, which makes my inner control freak very happy. On the other hand, even though I thankfully have gotten past that self-publication self-doubt and definitely believe this mss is ready to be released, I'm not sure, since I am definitely a newbie at the full-length book business, how much I can get the book successfully out there enough in the way that Ghost Road and Dusie have done such a good job with the previous books. In February dgp will be releasing Robyn Art's photog/poetry collab, and I was hoping to solicit a couple more mss I have my eye on for the coming year, but it's all very much in it's infancy. Of course, perhaps the best thing is trial by fire and just to go with it.

new from dancing girl press

Land Wide to Get a Hold Lost In / Shelly Taylor




A Classic Game of Murder/ Katie Cappello




The Plath Poems / Nava Fader





Silt / Erica Wright





The Chainsaw Bears / Erin Elizabeth Smith





People Who Are in Love Will Read This Book Differently / Cindy St. John


Also, I have about 5 more 2009 titles that will be released over the next few weeks, including books by Elizabeth Barbato, Laura Madeline Wiseman, Melinda Wilson, Stephanie Goehring, Eva Schlesinger, and Renee Angle..check back soon...

finally...

a new decade

It occured to me this week, and probably for the first time, that we are on the verge of closing out a decade. I guess maybe it seems sorta anti-climactic after the whole Millennium brou-haha..or maybe it's that people don't exactly know what to call this decade (the 70's, th 80's, the 90's, the what? Two-thousands sounds sort of clunky.) All in all, it's been a pretty great decade for me. I moved back to Chicago and found a job I rather liked. Managed to write enough to finish 4 books and somehow miraculously get three of them released(or will be soon). Started an online lit mag, then a chapbook press, then an art & design studio. Finished my MFA and finally learned not to take po-biz so seriously. Somehow aquired three more cats and lost one to old age. I read probably hundreds of books, commuted over 5000 times. Ate alot of Thai food and Starbucks. Have probably assembled close to 8000 chapbooks. Learned to like my body and love my sometimes godawful hair. Learned how I like to dress, what I like in bed, where to find the best thriftstore stuff, and how to fix my computer. Also, how make jewelry, code HTML, and how make a poems not suck so much. Developed an affinity for vintage pyrex and discovered that I was wrong for years about not liking guacamole.

It's been a pretty great 10 years..

last minute gifts?

From December 12th-December 18th, we will be shipping daily and upgrading all US domestic packages FREE to Priority Mail to help ensure pre-holiday delivery. Visit dulcet...

merrily along...

It's been a bit quiet here at the blog the past couple weeks as I've been making and packing things and working on a whole batch of new dgp books. I will be doing a GIANT press update next Friday, and depending how many titles I have done, is shaping up nicely, including titles by Erica Wright, Erin Elizabeth Smith, Katie Cappello, Shelly Taylor, Cindy St. John, and Nava Fader, all ready to print, and others in various stages of completion (about 6 or so) that will hopefully be nearly finished by then. I will also be, before Christmas, announcing the full-on lineup for next year as soon as I iron-out something like a schedule, but I can tell you now, it's pretty freakin awesome. There will also (FINALLY) be the full-length poetry/photo book by Robyn Art & Robin Barcus coming in February, as well as titles by Mary Ann Samyn and Jessica Bozek coming right after the first of the year..also a really interesting quirky little project from Ariana Sophia Kartsonis and Caleb Adler. And, of course, that is merely the beginning. I've resigned myself to lots of early mornings and late nights in the coming year, but what else is new?

Last week's open studio, which was paired with a big holiday celebration in the Fine Arts Building, was a huge success, but I find myself this weekend rushing to restock all the goodies that sold. The soap has been selling like hotcakes anyway, so that's what I will be working on mostly this weekend, in addition to some more flasks, some candles setting as we speak, and a couple other little things. I also have big plans for the shop after the holidays, including a line of wedding invites, some spiral journals and planners, those pesky pillows that I'm still perfecting, and new line of soaps that are more "manly" and less "girly" in all sorts of scents like wild sage, black currant, and sandalwood.

I am going to try, once again to get my Christmas tree up tomorrow..I've talked myself out of it twice now, but hopefully this time I will actually get it up. I think I am down to only the gifts I still have to make. The hardest of course were all the wee ones that seem to have started sprouting in the family, all of which need to be bought for, as well as the usual gifts for the immediate family, and the name exchange ones for both sides (both pretty easy ones). For the little ones, all under 2 years old, I got these puffy little fabric books (yeah, it's a little early for reading, but it's never to soon to start them off on a book addiction). For the oldest, who's 4 and unusually precocious apparently, I was thinking a totebag or pouch filled with all sorts of notebooks, pencils, and art supplies. When I was around 6, my aunt gave me something similar and while I barely remember all the Barbies and the gadgets I amassed at Christmas gatherings, I distinctly remember how I enamoured I was of the pens in different ink colors. Not much has changed. I was looking for cute kawaii stationery stuff on etsy and realizd I had about $40 worth in my cart and figured the 4 year old won't really care whether it came from Japan or the dollar store (where it probably comes from China). But, hell, I wanted the Japanese stuff for ME..(the scented highlighters wand decorative tape were especially covet-worthy.)

december1 by wickedpen featuring Rupert Sanderson shoes

That little sale below made for a very successful Black Friday/ Cyber Monday in the shop, so to keep the holiday momentum going, I've decided to offer free shipping worldwide on all jewelry and accessories all through December. Things are starting to get a little nuts as they always do, so I will most certainly be pulling some earlier mornings in the studio to get done everything I need to get done.

The weekend was the usual mess of family and too much food, and I was definitely feeling the cabin-fever restlessness that might mean cutting my Christmas visit a little shorter than I'd initially planned. I was so happy to sleep in my own bed last night. Plus I always feel like I'm just postponing the inevitable amount of work that I'm not getting done while I'm away, so it's hardly relaxing, not to mention actually getting ready to go out of town, the tying up of ends, the packing, the last minute prep is way too exhausting and I usually wind up spending the time away recovering from that which could have been avoided had I just stayed home in the first place.