My Favorites from 2010

Music
Ellie Goulding: The singer/songwriter is just now starting to make inroads in the US, but she's a big star in the UK with a string of fab pop tunes – "Under the Sheets," "Starry Eyed," a cover of "Your Song" – from a fantastic album called Lights.
Robyn: The Swede released three albums this year – Body Talk 1, 2 and 3 – containing sophisticated dance and pop music.
Tracey Thorn: Everything but the Girl remains on mothballs, but Tracey Thorn released her third solo album of melancholy music, Love and Its Opposite.
Laurie Anderson: Her long-awaited Homeland concept album – rife with politics and social concerns – is not only her best record in years, but one of the best of 2010.
Massive Attack: A brilliant return to form for the trip hop pioneers on Heligoland. The song "Paradise Circus" featuring vocals by Hope Sandoval is a new Massive Attack classic.
Adele: Her new record isn't out until February, but if the fabulous single "Rolling in the Deep" is any indication of the album as a whole, then it's going to be a huge hit.
Kylie Minogue: Despite boring videos and her inability to pick the right single, Kylie's Aphrodite album is full of great dance songs, especially "Get Outta May Way." The album kept me grooving through the UK, France and back to the US this summer.

Movies
True Grit: The Coen Brothers re-imagine the John Wayne classic with Oscar-worthy results. Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon are great, but young Hailee Steinfeld is the real star.
White Material: Isabelle Huppert is superb in Claire Denis' tension-filled story of a coffee farmer in Africa who refuses to give up her land in the face of civil war.
The King's Speech: Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter give excellent performances, but the Oscar goes to Geoffrey Rush for his portrayal of the teacher who helped King George overcome is speech impediment.
Black Swan: Natalie Portman's acting, dancing and transformation is the real star of the movie, which makes the The Turning Point and The Red Shoes seem downright quaint.
The Kids Are Alright: Annette Benning and Julianne Moore as lesbian parnters whose lives are rocked when their precocious kids seek out their sperm donor father. 

TV
Ashes to Ashes: The final season of the UK series wrapped up with a stunning, emotional storyline that was head and shoulders above anything else on television this year. Although you knew Detective Alex Drake was probably dead, the revelation about DCI Gene Hunt and his motivations in this series and its predecessor Life On Mars were mind-boggling and brilliant.
Doctor Who: My fear that the show would slip with David Tennant's departure were unfounded, because Matt Smith is a great Doctor.
Fringe: If The X-Files had kept up this kind of writing, acting and tension, it would have probably gone on for a few more seasons.  Fringe's premise of invasion by a parallel Earth – where JFK was not assassinated and the World Trade Center still stands in New York – is one of the best sci-fi twists ever.
Glee: I'm not a fan of musicals, but the clever writing, song choice and acting (especially Jane Lynch an Chris Colfer) has made this must-see TV.

Books
Earthquake Came to Harlem: Poems by Jackie Sheeler: Her second full-length poetry collection, Earthquake Came to Harlem, is raw, gritty and a harrowing journey through abuse, heartbreak and post-millennium tension.
Inheritance: Poems by Steven Reigns: Like Jackie Sheeler's collection, the poems in Reigns' Inheritance follow a dark trajectory of a young gay man coming of age during the AIDS crisis.
By Nightfall: A Novel by Michael Cunningham: No, it's not as good as The Hours, but this tale of a New York art dealer's midlife crisis and exploration of his sexuality is sensually written in Cunningham's unmistakable prose.
Tinkers: A Novel by Paul Harding: Released in 2009, this little book rocked the literary world when it unexpectedly won the Pulitzer Prize. The writing is sublime and the story of three men coming to terms with fatherhood, responsibility and death is simply beautiful.
The Year of the Flood: A Novel by Margaret Atwood: Atwood goes sci-fi again in this sequel to Oryx & Crake, which sees Earth transformed into a dystopian nightmare after a string of environmental disasters.

Adieu, 2010

The year 2010 is winding down and I'm already looking ahead to 2011. My calender of readings and events is starting to fill up and I have projects galore to finish or begin. My goal of having a complete draft of Remain in Light completed by tomorrow has fallen by the wayside. Since a good portion of the last part of the book takes place in 1968, I've found myself being more particular about making sure my "historical fiction" has basis in fact. That means more research and reading to steep myself in the time period. It's critical for the second novel, so I'm not going to rush through it for the sake of a deadline I imposed on myself.

The year is ending on an up note with the acceptance of two poems – "Victoria Gate" and "Saint Death" – for the next edition of the fab online journal Press 1. I'll have a portfolio of 10 poems in the second issue of Assaracus coming out in the spring. The poems are a mix of new and old work, including prose poems and my flarf experiment of crafting a poem out of x-rated junk e-mail. I've also got a new poem called "Mr. Rogers Made Me Fat" forthcoming in The Chattahoochee Review, so 2011 is already shaping up to be a good year for my poetry. Oh, and I'm co-editing the fourth Java Monkey Speaks Anthology with Kodac Harrison for Poetry Atlanta Press. 

On Jan. 1, I will post my first video blog (or vlog, as they're called) here and on YouTube. I've found myself watching more content on YouTube than on my actual television, and while I've used YouTube for promotion and occasional posting of readings, I want to explore further. I'm not setting any kind of schedule for the vlogs, but will post one as the spirit moves me. It will also give me a chance to hone my editing skills. I'm using the camera and mic on my MacBook, so it won't be HD quality, but if Apple and Verizon get off the pot in the first quarter of the year, I'll be using the camera on my shiny new iPhone to make videos. Have you seen some of the videos made with the iPhone? They're gorgeous. We've come along way, babies.

The highlight of 2010 was my adventures in the UK and France over the summer. From guest lecturing at Worcester College at Oxford University and reading with my BFF Karen Head and Ivy Alvarez in Cardiff to spending time with great friends in London and working on the novel in Paris, it really was one of the most amazing trips of my life. Those weeks gave me ideas for poems, fiction and fodder for the memoir.

Tomorrow I'm going to post my Top 10 book, music, tv and movie list for 2010.

Ooo la la la

I was very sad to learn that the great Teena Marie passed away over the weekend at the young age of 54. That unmistakable, soulful voice was part of the soundtrack to my childhood. I used to dance around the living room to "Square Biz," "I Need Your Lovin" and "Lovergirl." The clip above is Teena dropping some serious ballad funk on Soul Train singing the fabulous "Ooo la la la." RIP Lady T.

Atlanta had its first white Christmas since 1882 on Saturday with around half an inch in the city and more in the northern burbs. I had lunch with my parents and grandmother, but then headed back to the city when it really started coming down around 4 p.m.

Nevertheless, I went with Cleo to see a matinee of White Material starring Isabelle Huppert. This tension-filled movie from Claire Denis is set in an unnamed African nation during a bloody civil war. Huppert's character runs a coffee plantation and stubbornly refuses to leave despite warnings from all around her. Is she a racist, stupid, or an out of touch colonial bourgeoisie? It's an enigmatic film that calls much into question and offers no simple answers. Definitely not a feel good film, but one that will cause much debate.

After the film, we drove through the nearly deserted streets of Midtown over to the Waffle House (because this kind of weather requires a grilled cheese and hash browns plate). Snow was starting to accumulate, so we ate quickly and then wandered up and down 5th Street taking photos (that' me at left). Pretty, isn't it? 

I was home in time to watch the delightful Doctor Who Christmas Special, which I loved and a lot of the fanboys did not. Yes, it was sentimental and all a bit silly, but like all the new Who episodes, it had moments of darkness and real emotion. Matt Smith really is great in the role. 

Oh, I almost forgot that I saw True Grit on Christmas Eve. Wow -- it is fantastic. I see Oscar nominations galore including the three stars, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and the amazing Hailee Steinfeld, who carries the whole movie on her young shoulders. And, sorry purists, but the Coen Brothers version is 100 percent better than the original. This version of True Grit is not a remake, but a total re-imagining of the story. Bravo!

Since I've written this blog totally out of sequence, let me double back again to Sunday. I spent most of the day working on Remain in Light. I wrote some of the end chapters over the summer while I was in Europe and now the narratives have joined. That means I'm about 98.5 percent finished with the novel. Woot!

Happy Christmas!

Miss you Kirsty.

Christmas Eve report

Spent the morning doing my annual Christmas Eve blogroll clean-up. Ten blogs and literary sites disappeared during 2010 and I also tried to update everyone who had migrated to new blogs or websites. If you're in my blogroll check the links in the sidebar and make sure everything is kosher. I appreciate all my fellow bloggers who link back to Modern Confessional and have kept the conversation going for so many years.

One new link worth mentioning is Sibling Rivalry Press, which is now publishing poetry collections and the gay men's poetry journal Assaracus. Fab poet Bryan Borland (author the new collection My Life as Adam) is the mastermind behind Sibling Rivalry, so check out the site and support a new indie press.

Tomorrow night is the premiere of the Doctor Who Christmas Special on BBC America. It's the first time in Who history that the special has aired in the US the same day it airs in the UK. Can't wait!

I hope everyone has a great evening and fantastic day tomorrow!

Christmas Eve eve

Shopping is complete, I'm off work and snow is expected on Christmas Day in Atlanta. I'm spending the next four days reading, writing and relaxing. I've got a novel to finish! I'm also planning to see the Coen Brothers' take on True Grit – I do love a good western. I watched the original with John Wayne last night on TCM, so I'm ready to see how Jeff Bridges interprets Rooster Cogburn.

I've written a new article for AOL Travel about Literary London. I've been going to London for the last 15 years, so I think I've hit most of the famous (and infamous) spots, and a few off the beaten path. For the last five years, I've stayed at the Tavistock Hotel in the center of Bloomsbury, which was London's literary epicenter. The hotel sits on the site of Virginia Woolf's house that was destroyed in the London Blitz. I love the area and always feel inspired to write and explore. You can read the article here: Literary Hot Spots: London.

On Saturday, Feb. 26, from 1 to 4 p.m. I'll be teaching an afternoon poetry workshop for The Atlanta Writers Club at the Dunwoody campus of Georgia Perimeter College. The cost is $75 and I'm limiting the class size to 10 poets. This will be a critique and generative workshop, so each poet can bring in a draft in progress and then we'll move on to writing exercises. For more information and to register, visit this link.

State of social media & blogging

About a year ago, I decided to keep Modern Confessional with Google's Blogger rather than switch to WordPress. I went so far as to pick and redesign a template and transfer all my blog posts to WordPress, then discovered that seven years of comments did not make the jump. That was unacceptable. At the same time, I decided to try Blogger in Draft - a new set of tools and template designs. After creating what you see now, I decided to stay put. But where do blogs stand in the greater scheme of ever-evolving social media?

The death of traditional blogging has been predicted since the rise of Facebook, Twitter, video blogs (vlogging) on YouTube and other quick and easy blogging platforms like Tumblr and Posterous, but Technorati recently released a State of the Blogosphere 2010 report that shows social networking sites have actually helped keep blogging alive.

There's an upward trend in bloggers posting more frequently and expanding their topics. With easy ways to link blog posts to your Facebook wall or link on Twitter, the blogosphere continues to grow rather than shrink. More and more people are getting their news and entertainment from blogs. You can see the full State of the Blogosphere report from Technorati at this link.

One of my new year's resolutions for 2010 was to blog more and actually enjoy it. I averaged 15 blog posts a month this year, and my traffic averages 600 to 1,000 visitors per week depending on what I'm ranting about. I've become pretty savvy with headlines, tags and keywords to get the blog found in search engines. That's been an eight-year learning experience and I don't regret a second of it.

Another personal milestone was reaching 2,000 followers on my Twitter account, @collinkelley. Taking part in 32poems weekly #Poetparty helped push my followers over the mark a few weeks ago, not to mention allowing me to interact and discuss poetry with a great group of folks every Sunday night. Here's a bit of advice: if you're using Twitter to do nothing but market your book, art, music, etc. then you're wasting time and bandwidth. While I do tweet when there's something significant about one of my books, the majority of my tweets are sharing links about interesting stories or conversations with other users about books, music, weather and more. The value of Twitter is building a community of like-minded folks. So, yes, trumpet your work and accomplishments, but don't have a one track mind.

A few other notes:

Facebook's new profile pages suck. The homogenized look and feel leaves users very little room to express personality. The famed status updates are gone in favor of sharing information about work, education and photos. While I don't like it, I've already grown used to it, which Facebook knows will happen. I have been assimilated. If you haven't been asked to update your profile (or voluntarily agreed to upgrade), it's coming.

I was disappointed last week when it was leaked that part of Yahoo's layoff plan would mean the end of social bookmarking site Delicious. That news was leaked online and people rightly freaked out, so now Yahoo is back-peddling saying Delicious will live on "outside the company."  Like Stumble Upon, digg and Pinboard, social bookmarking allows you to store, manage and share links to favorite sites, articles and other online resources in one place. I have hundreds of sites bookmarked on Delicious, and I don't want to have to transfer all those, so don't screw it up Yahoo!

You've also probably heard a lot of rumblings and mumblings about "the cloud." Microsoft even has a new series of advertisements where the actors say, "To the cloud," in a very important and portentous way. "The cloud" is basically a metaphor for how we're using the Internet today – from applications to storage services. Rather than downloading programs onto your computer, you can use web-based programs that run on the providers' infrastructure. If you use web-based email like gmail or hotmail, you're already "in the cloud."

I mentioned last week that I was bidding on iPads on eBay. I gave up after losing used iPads that people were willing to pay the same amount you could buy a new one for at Target. With Verizon set to get the iPhone in early 2011 (that's the rumor/prediction now) and a new iPad coming next summer (another rumor/prediction), I'm just gonna sit it out a bit longer.

Vanilla Heart Dine-A-Round Celebration

Just in time for the holidays – books and food! What more could you want? Vanilla Heart Publishing authors have planned a scrumptious menu for an elegant dinner party. The recipes for this Dine-A-Round Celebration Sale are inspired by VHP titles, so I chose something essentially French since Conquering Venus is set in Paris.

While I was in the City of Light over the summer, I stopped by rue Rampon and asked Irène Laureux to share her crème brulée recipe. She was busily editing a manuscript and chain-smoking Gauloises, but she rummaged through a notebook in the kitchen and found a faded piece of paper with the following recipe. As part of this fun event, you can buy the ebook version of Conquering Venus – as well as titles by fellow VHP authors – for just $3.99! See all the books at this link.

Ingredients
6 egg yolks
6 tablespoons white sugar, divided
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups heavy cream
2 tablespoons brown sugar

Directions

• Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (or 150 degrees C).
• Beat egg yolks, 4 tablespoons sugar and vanilla in a mixing bowl until thick and creamy.
• Pour cream into a saucepan and stir over low heat until it almost comes to boil. Remove the cream from heat immediately. Stir cream into the egg yolk mixture; beat until combined.
• Pour cream mixture into the top of a double boiler. Stir over simmering water until mixture lightly coats the back of a spoon; approximately 3 minutes. Remove mixture from heat immediately and pour into a shallow heat-proof dish.
• Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and cool to room temperature. Refrigerate for 1 hour, or overnight.
• Preheat oven to broil.
• In a small bowl combine remaining 2 tablespoons white sugar and brown sugar. Sift this mixture evenly over custard. Place dish under broiler until sugar melts, about 2 minutes. Watch carefully so as not to burn.
• Remove from heat and allow to cool. Refrigerate until custard is set again.

Irène said this recipe will serve five – or one if you're a "cochon." Ahem! While you're letting your crème brulée set, check out the recipes from the other VHP authors – and buy their books!

An Elegant Dinner Party

http://bit.ly/gklZbA   A complete menu from To Be Continued by Charmaine Gordon

Main Dish recipes

http://tiny.cc/6ocas   Tranoc’s Lecho from Forest Song: Letting Go by Vila Spiderhawk

http://bit.ly/g2ZWY3 OR  http://bit.ly/dXQoTn Crispy Cobb Salad from No Easy Way by SR Claridge

http://bit.ly/hy7s5E  Chicken Pot Pie from Within the Law by Chelle Cordero

http://bit.ly/f6XQKH   Pot Roast from Appalachian Justice by Melinda Clayton

http://bit.ly/dgk2mD  Purple Platter Meatloaf from Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire by Malcolm Campbell

Dessert

http://bit.ly/glJHHT  Pecan Pie from Sabbath's House by Marilyn Celeste Morris

http://bit.ly/eoNgaF  Poppy Seed Cake from Opal Fire Barbra Annino

http://bit.ly/dMNNTS  Gingerbread from Frank, Incense And Muriel by Anne K. Albert

http://bit.ly/i2bI0m  Creme Brulee from Conquering Venus by Collin Kelley

Beverage

http://bit.ly/gBBw4K  Russian Czar Drink from Bartlett’s Rule by Chelle Cordero

A sneak preview of 'Remain in Light'

Here is the prologue to my second novel, Remain in Light. If you've read Conquering Venus, you'll instantly recognize the characters, but if you haven't that's okay. I've written this novel to be a continuation and a standalone story. I welcome your comments.


Prologue: Time Ticks

Hands in motion. Fingers fly over letters and numbers, type out a message, a brief history of self, of time, of need and directionless desire. The screen bathes those hands in bruised light, flickers on a face in the darkness. A face grown two years older, forehead scarred by a bomb blast and more tiny lines around the eyes. There is an unmistakable tattoo on the left hand: two interlocking crosses, equal but opposite.

Here is how the monster is kept at bay: he surfs through pornography, lurid images and chatrooms, searches for the lowest common denominator. There’s a picture of a beautiful young boy, only eighteen, on one side of the screen and an open dialogue box on the other. 17 Rue Ferrandi, the boy types. I am Christoph. What is your name?

He types back: Martin.

He leaves the apartment on rue Rampon silently, makes sure not to wake his roommate. But she is awake. She hears the almost imperceptible click as the laptop switches off; his feet pad down the hardwood floor of the hallway. Then there’s the other click, the one that makes her mouth go dry with dread and disappointment. It’s the sound as the door softly opens and closes, a maneuver only she hears. Even the cat at the foot of her bed, with preternatural senses, sleeps through his leaving. These late night disappearances happen at least twice a week, and they’ve been going on for months. Every time he leaves, it’s still a surprise, as if it’s happening for the first time. She gets out of bed and opens the doors to the balcony.

It is late summer, the tourists have gone home, the city is quiet, but there is expectancy in the air, something or someone she cannot name. She feels it as intensely as when Martin Paige’s arrival was imminent just two short years ago. It is early morning; Venus is visible overhead. It rivals the moon for the sky. Irène Laureux leans on the balcony, the tattoo on her pale left hand in sharp relief against the metal railing even in the weak light. Equal but opposite – the same ink she shares with Martin. Irène looks up, summons the inevitable with words that have served her well in the past: Paris, Paris, Paris.

Buy Books for the Holidays!

I'm offering a special Holiday Pack with signed editions of Conquering Venus, my chapbook After the Poison and a certificate for a signed copy of the new edition of Slow To Burn when it comes out next summer from Seven Kitchens Press. The price for all three: $25! If you bought them all separately with shipping, it would cost you $40, so this is a bargain! Your copy of Slow To Burn will be shipped as soon as it's available in July. You can purchase them via PayPal by using my email address collinkelley@gmail.com. If you have questions, send an email to that same address or leave a comment.

If you'd rather buy Conquering Venus for your e-Reader, Vanilla Heart Publishing will be offering it for just $3.99 this Friday as part of the Dine-A-Round Celebration. Characters from VHP titles will be offering up their favorite recipes, and VHP authors will post them on their blogs. You can collect them all to make a tasty holiday meal. Irène will be offering up her famous crème brulée recipe, so you don't want to miss it.

Happy Birthday, Emily Dickinson

Today would have been Emily Dickinson's 180th birthday, so to celebrate her poetry and its endurance into the 21st century, qarrtsiluni co-editor Dave Bonta asked a group of poets to record their favorite Emily poems for a special Woodrat Podcast. You can hear me, Kelli Russell Agodon, Ivy Alvarez, Nic Sebastian, Christine Swint, Dick Jones and many more read poems and talk about how Emily has impacted our own work. Hats off to Dave for pulling this together so quickly and for asking me to participate. You can listen at this link or download it and listen at your leisure. The whole podcast is a little over an hour. 

Bits & Bobs

I'm bidding on iPads on eBay. If I can get one for under $400 it will be a victory. I've already lost four to other people. I bought my trusty MacBook brand new on eBay two years ago for $700, so I know it's possible to get a deal if I'm persistent.

Traded in some books and movies yesterday to make room on my shelves for more books and movies. About to start reading Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall. In one sitting, I re-read John Guare's play Six Degrees of Separation. If I were to ever go back to theatre, this would be the play. I'd love to play Flan (especially if Stockard Channing would reprise her role as Ouisa). Chaos, control, chaos, control – you like, you like?

Sent new drafts of four poems to Seven Kitchens Press for next year's re-issue of Slow To Burn.  The title poem is significantly different (i.e. better), while the other three just have minor punctuation and correction of one spelling error that slipped through in the first printing from MetroMania.

Bryan Borland at Sibling Rivalry Press kindly asked me to submit work for a future edition of the new print literary journal Assaracus, which will feature the work of 10 gay male poets in each issue. The quarterly will continue the tradition of the great lit mag, Ganymede. The debut issue of Assaracus comes out in January and will feature poems by Matthew Hittinger, Christopher Hennessey, Shane Allison and more!

And the sequel title is...

Remain in Light

Yes, that's the name of the sequel to Conquering Venus. I've been working on this novel for more than a year. Actually, if you want to get technical about it, I've been working on it for eight years.

The title comes from a poem written by the main character, Martin Paige, that appears toward the end of the novel. And the line itself, of course, was inspired by Talking Head's 1980 album of the same name. While I mulled over a list, Remain in Light has been the working title since 2002 when I wrote an outline and the first five chapters for my then-agent who was sending Conquering Venus around to publishers.

While Conquering Venus sat in a drawer from late 2002 to 2008  – occasionally being dusted off for a contest or publisher who feigned interest – the chapters and outline of Remain in Light were buried on a floppy disk that I rooted out of my file cabinet.

To be honest, my then-agent didn't like the first five chapters of Remain in Light. She expected Martin's love interest, David, to return to Paris so they could live happily ever after while helping Irène solve the lingering mystery of how her husband died. Yeah. No.

Remain in Light begins with a letter written by Martin to David that recaps the events in Conquering Venus and then moves at a pretty fast clip to set up a storyline that does not require you to have read Venus to "get it." Irène has hired a detective to help her track down Frederick, who holds the secret to her husband's unexplained death during the 1968 Paris riots. Martin is in a tentative relationship with Euan, a Brit who owns a bookshop on the Left Bank. That is until Martin meets Christian, a young poet who seems almost too good to be true. Then Diane whirls back into town – more crazy and foul-mouthed than ever – with the news that David has gone missing.

While Conquering Venus is a mood piece, Remain in Light is more of a literary thriller. There are detectives, clandestine meetings, a bigoted Paris police inspector, stolen identities, drug dealers and all sorts of unsavory characters who inhabit the city's underworld. What remains from Venus is a sense of magical realism and poetry. Irène is having a strange series of backwards dreams, which continue the theme of synchronicity that began in Venus, and Martin's poetry features throughout.

My goal is to have the first draft complete by year's end (I'm very close now) and then it goes to my friend and editor Kathy Vogeltanz, before going to Vanilla Heart for their input and suggestions. My fingers are crossed for an early 2012 release, but that's not up to me.

While you're waiting for Remain in Light, I'm offering a special Holiday Pack with signed editions of Conquering Venus, my chapbook After the Poison and a certificate for a signed copy of the new edition of Slow To Burn when it comes out next summer from Seven Kitchens Press. The price for all three: $25! That's a bargain, if I do say so myself. You can purchase them via PayPal by using my email address collinkelley@gmail.com. If you have questions, send an email to that same address or leave a comment.