One of the lovely people responsible for selecting, editing, publishing, and sending Couch on its way into the world is going to be in town this Thursday.

Jedediah Berry is an editor at the prodigiously talented Small Beer Press where there they don’t even let you answer the telephone unless you have several books to your name.

His first novel, The Manual of Detection, is a fantastically good read and it’s freshly out in paperback. I love the new cover and after reading it it was hard not to imagine it set in Portland, what with our bicycle obsessions and drenched climate.

He’ll be at Powell’s Books on  Hawthorne at 7:30 this Thursday (3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd.) and it’s sure to be a great reading. Ask him about bicycles, umbrellas, first novels and getting your book considered at Small Beer Press. We’ll be there — hope to see you. Yes, you.

Just look at this beautiful cover:

Researching a novel is tremendous good fun. A lot of the time I have no idea where I’m going to end up. Today’s adventure led me, among other places, to this post on neighborhood secession by Matthew Mullenix.

It’s a quick read and not very in-depth, but has some sound ideas. Essentially that by focussing your consumption, trade and energy in your own neighborhood, you can largely opt-out of the system. And if a whole neighborhood does it, it can be a quiet sort of secession. I was particularly moved by his April 1st follow-up comment:

Who will regulate the safety of the food and our health? I think that’s an interesting question and prompts us to ask if regulation of food safety is the same thing as ensuring food safety? It also begs the question: From what does federal regulation protect us?

Today’s case of pastacio contamination, much like the recent peanut scare, offers an important role for federal regulation; but it only becomes so important because our food system is based on interstate commerce and the industrial-scale blending of basic ingredients (like nuts, or corn) into thousands of other food products that will be sold around the world.

Such a system entails tremendous risk, chief among them the fact that once a contaminant is found to have sickened one person, hundreds of thousands have been exposed. It is a huge corporate system that requires a huge layer of government oversight, both at odds against each other and neither capable of managing the inherent risks.

Compare this to a local food system, the smallest being the production line that extends from my garden to my kitchen. That supply chain is short and secure. The producer (me) and consumers (my family and friends) are a limited group who know each other well. We insure food quality by tending personally to its production and preparation, and we share whatever risks that entails. Worst case scenario (a soft tomato?) is that only a few will ever suffer from a system failure.

Thus, my garden is in the best interests of national security. Albeit, the nation that is our family.

Apparently Amazon.com pulled all books by Macmillan yesterday in order to threaten them over an ongoing spat about ebook pricing, as they work toward cornering the market in ebooks.

I think this is officially not-cool.

John Scalzi makes some excellent points about it.

It seems like a generation of heroes are on the move this week. Howard Zinn and now JD Salinger. Ah – on the same, sad day – Jan 27. You’ll be missed.

I really enjoyed this letter from JD Salinger regarding the denial of movie rights for Catcher in the Rye. via Letters of Note. You cannot say the man did not care about his characters.

“Not to mention, God help us all, the immeasurably risky business of using actors.”

For some reason in this posting at the Portland Mercury I am talked about first, but I assure you I just happen to be a sidecar at the Portland Fiction Project’s reading at The Maiden.

The reading is themed:

Love is Not Punny, It’s Surrealist

So maybe I’ll read something along those lines that somehow is contained within this new mss I’m working on? It’ll be at The Maiden, Monday February 1st at 7pm. The Maiden is a great venue for reading and I hope to see you there.

Here are some links to the Portland Fiction Project:

Portland Fiction Project on Facebook

portlandfiction.net

Like I mentioned last year, I’m interested in becoming a morning person. I am by nature a night-tinkerer, a fiddler and futzer, a midnight walker and a just-one-last-thing-er. And these night meanderings can last easily until 2, 3, 4am in the morning.

My logic goes something along these lines:

- I’m happier when I’m creating something — specifically, writing every day

- Because of kids and work obligations, I don’t really have time until after the kids are in bed

- at which point, I’m tired enough that I feel like consuming media, not creating it.

So the logical time to do this — when I have no other concurrent obligations — is early in the morning before anyone is awake.

For the last ten days I’ve started my writing schedule at 5:30am, and I’ve been faithfully churning out a thousand words a day. It feels fucking great — partially because I’ve really begun to like the project, but also because no matter what happens for the rest of the day, there’s this pillar of accomplishment there, first thing.

I’ve tried several times to become a morning person and failed — but now I believe I may have found a secret, back-door entrance to being a morning person. I’ll come right out with it, with no extra cost to you. It’s called: SIX HOURS OF JET LAG. Pretty awesome secret, no? All you have to do is have a nice long stay in Brazil (UTC/GMT -3 hours), and then try like hell to preserve that jet lag when you get back.

No, it’s not the cheapest way to becoming a morning person, but it works great and the weather is nice. I find I can barely keep my eyes open by about 9:30pm (3:30am in Rio de Janeiro), and that I’m awake somewhere between 4 and 5am, ready to go. And for whatever reason, months of non-productivity have suddenly given way to a wonderfully vigorous writing routine. Sweet.

I miss Salvador, though.