Organizing your writing life

IT'S STILL BETTER TO TRAVEL: I'm fully booked for travel to the west coast and to the UK in late October and early November. AirTran was offering good prices online to San Francisco and LA and British Airways is currently doing a sweetheart deal to London from Atlanta - $680 for round trip tickets and three nights at the centrally located Royal National Hotel. Couldn't pass that up!

So, I'll be in San Francisco on Oct. 26 for a reading at Modern Times Bookstore in the Mission District for the Red Light anthology, and then I'll fly down to LA for the Beyond Baroque reading on Oct. 27. This is going to be a quickie trip to the west coast, but I am going to arrive in SF early for a bit of touristy fun. Here's the details on the anthology reading:

Red Light: Superheroes, Saints and Sluts launch event Wednesday, October 26, 2005 at Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia Street (near 20th), time TBA. Featuring Anna Camilleri, Collin Kelley, Daphne Gottlieb, and Barbara Jane Reyes for more information visit www.mtbs.com or call 415-282-9246

I've been grinning from ear to ear all evening about my imminent return to London. While I hope to pick up a reading there, the main reason is to attend the listening party for Kate Bush's new album, Aerial, which is released on Nov. 7. I'm going to be meeting up with friends and basically just hanging out. If a reading doesn't materialize, oh, well. I don't even care. Just being back in London with new Kate music buzzing in my head will be just the tonic. I've never lodged at the Royal National, which is up by Russell Square in Bloomsbury, but it's a good location and not far from where my friend Carrie works. I haven't been to London since 2001, just before the terrorist attacks here in the US. Four years is a longtime to be away from your spiritual home, which is what I consider London. I always learn something new about myself when I'm in the UK and it always makes me want to write. I can already feel the poetry churning in my brain.

The only trifle I have about this trip is having to do yet another overnight flight to London. I just cannot sleep on a plane. I fell asleep once back in 1999 after Tina gave me a couple of her pills. We were crammed in the center of the plane and I was so uncomfortable that total sensory deprivation was the only solution. I slept for two hours and woke up with my chin on my chest, drooling. Lovely. The trip with Tina was one of the most memorable. I need to blog about it...perhaps I will over the weekend. It was so bizarre and full of crazy characters that we even considered writing a musical about it. I'm not kidding. And, oh my god...we stayed in one of the shittiest hotels in London. I can't even remember the name of it at the moment. I'm still trying to erase its shittiness from my mind. Inconvenient location, a hike to the nearest tube, no lift and we were on the top floor and a bathroom so bloody tiny that you could only wash half of your body at one time. I was a hotel snob then...I'd splurged before and checked into nice hotels (and I've got the credit card debt to prove it), but things have changed lately.

After travelling as much as I have in the last two or three years, you get used to less than stellar accommodations and learn to enjoy "just being there." Hell, I'll even sleep on someone's couch. I ain't picky. Life's too short to worry about the thread count of your sheets (or if you even have sheets!) and room service.

On a final note, looks like a good part of New Orleans will open for business again this weekend, including the French Quarter. I see Mardi Gras in my future for sure!