I am thrilled to announce that Riverhead Books is going to rerelease Other People We Married in February. This is exciting for many reasons, chief among them being a much wider distribution. Though I live in a city with a number of wonderful independent bookstores, many of which I frequent regularly, I know that’s not true for everyone. Now people will be able to buy the book anywhere, easily, even at Barnes and Noble, and on Amazon.

One of the other joys of having the book rereleased is the opportunity to work with a Real Live Copyeditor, which means that I got a list of every proper noun in the entire book. It struck me that this list was like a little Rorschach test of my personality. To wit:

Joan of Arc
John Keats
John Travolta
Joshua Tree
Katharine Hepburn
Leaves of Grass
Leonard Cohen
L.L.Bean
Marlene Dietrich
Marmaduke
Marshmallow Fluff

That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the collection, I think. Please pre-order the book wherever you would normally do so. I’ve set up exactly ONE event for the rerelease, and it’s a doozy. Details to follow…

Yours, breathless with gratitude and excitement and, fine, some potato chips,

Emma

I’ve been a fan of Tavi Gevinson since she was, well, even younger than she is now. For those of you who don’t know about Tavi, she’s a teenage whiz, a dynamo, a fashion sprite, and the force behind the Style Rookie blog.

Tavi has just started a brand-new, drop dead gorgeous website for teenage girls called ROOKIE, and I am delighted to say that I’m writing for it. New posts will go up three times a day–after school, after dinner, and before you go to bed. Because it’s for teenage girls. I couldn’t love it more.

Today my piece on the site is about my first day of high school. Other posts I wrote for this month are about losing your virginity and having crushes on teachers. Party time! Click, read, and then have a flashback. You’re welcome!

Wheeeeeeeee Rookie!

love
Emma

I am a horrible ham, and have a nearly impossible time keeping a straight face while someone is taking my photograph. This is fine most of the time, but it just doesn’t do for an author photo. One needs to look attractive, smart, inviting and serious all at once. Talk about a tall order. My friend Allison took my first author photo, which I am very fond of, but I knew I wanted a new one for the novel.

My friend Zack Zook came over a couple of months ago to take some shots. Zack is the Events Manager at BookCourt, and the editor of Cousin Corinne’s Reminder, in addition to being a fabulous photographer. I’m totally, totally thrilled with the author photo I chose from our shoot, but I won’t share that until much closer to the novel’s publication, which will be fall 2012. Until then, though, here are some outtakes, which prove what a terrible subject I am.

I promise the photo I chose is less goofy than these. It’s Serious, even. You’ll see.

love
Emma

It is with pride and an-only-very-minorly heavy heart that I announce that after 28 consecutive weeks, I have fallen off the BookCourt Bestseller list. 28 weeks. That is more than six months. Also known as more than half a year. It’s got to be some kind of record, right?

I’m going back to work on Thursday. You can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be back on that list next week. Also, please know that if you happen to be reading this from Timbuktu, or South Dakota, or Westchester County, you can always call the store to order a copy, and I will sign it for you. Just FYI.

Yours,
Emma

1. It has come to my attention that not all of you know about Ban.do, my main source for head tutus. If you happen to live in Los Angeles, they’re having a studio sale next week, and you should come and buy prezzies for every girl you know.

2. The season finale of The Killing was terrible, but Bill Simmons wrote this amazing wrap-up that made it all worth it. Read it for this observation alone: The Killing is destined to become the first example anyone brings up when the subject is, “What show did something that made its fans hate it the most?”

3. The new Ann Patchett book is great and the fact that she is opening a bookstore in Nashville makes me want to write her a love letter. In fact, consider it done. Okay, now I’m done. Letter written.

4. We here at M + E have been renovating our studio for the last seven or eight weeks, and it looks like tomorrow is the last day. Here’s a picture of the sink area, still in progress. Now THOSE are colors, amiright?

5. The Justin Bieber documentary. I am stone cold serious.

Yours,
Emma

Even better, they list it in alphabetical order, so I’m #9! Wheeeeeeee! Such lovely company to be in.

love
Emma “#9″ Straub

Things I did at BEA (An Incomplete, Very Random List)

-Stood on line for Colson Whitehead‘s new book (who declined my offer of gross free popcorn but then very sweetly signed another copy of his book for my dad)
-Stood on line for Susan Orlean‘s new book (who then started pimping out my story collection to her S + S publicist)
-Stood on line for Tom Perrotta‘s new book (who recognized me from Twitter, called me by name, and then hugged me)
-Jumped up and down when I met internet friends for the first time (I’m looking at you, Book Lady’s Blog, Algonquin Books, Graywolf Press)
-Handed out chocolate chip cookies (made sure my new publisher got one)
-Got lost in the Javits Center (repeatedly)
-Saw my first boss for the first time in eight years. When I quit, she gave me a kimono and a ketchup dispenser, calling me a ‘hot tomato.’ Love forever, right there. (Big ups to Artisan Books)

BEA 4 Ever.

love,
Emma

The lovely Anna North and the ladies of Jezebel have asked me to help them judge their Short Fiction Contest, and I am stoked. The only drawback is that I suppose it means I am ineligible to enter. Alas! Alas. But you can. So, do.

Yours, with a gavel and a powdered wig,
Emma

Perhaps some people celebrate in other ways–by watching nature videos, as my friend and fellow April 25th baby did, or by running around outside, or by drinking lots of beer–but I celebrate by eating. Lots and lots of eating. Here are some things I ate and some people I ate them with. The diet starts now.

Self-explanatory goodness.

Spring pea and mint ravioli, with lamb ragout.

Risotto with mushrooms. This was actually Mike’s, but I stole my fair share.

Crab cakes.

Cotton candy. (Also pictured: chocolate souffle.)

The aforementioned souffle.

A popover.

My father, onion rings.

A very dark photo of a very delicious steak.

My cute mom, some champers.

My cute dad.

My cute husband in his cute pink tie.

Cute husband in pink tie photographing dark + delicious steak.

Peanut butter and chocolate mousse with salted caramel ice cream. Happy birthday indeed.

Please send any and all salad recipes my direction. Also, thoughts of juice-fasting, artery-unblocking, and things of that sort. Especially if they involve cheese.

Yours and 31,
Emma

Over at The Paris Review Daily, it’s James Salter month. Lots of wonderful people are writing about Salter, and why shouldn’t they? The man writes the kind of sentences they make my brain want to explode. They’ve got flavor crystals, you know what I mean? And today they posted an essay by my friend Alexander Chee, who wrote about his time on porno shoots.

This got me thinking.

I am a total prude.

And it’s hard to be a prude.  I don’t mean that it’s hard for me in my daily life (crossing the street), or in my personal life (sleeping with my husband), but when writing fiction, I have Major Prude Anxiety. People love to read about sex! I know this to be true. And yet I find it challenging to write all the way through a scene in which two people (or one person) are naked and thinking sexy thoughts without backing out the way I came, gently closing the door behind me. I can get it started, even take some clothes off and describe some nice foreplay, and then I’m out. Think of it this way: on one end of the spectrum, you have James Salter, and on the other end, five miles down the road, you have me.

One of my friends, the only female butcher at New York City’s best butcher shop, greeted me thusly after reading my book of short stories: “You said ‘boobs’!” This is a woman who cuts up animals for a living, who forms phallic sausage after phallic sausage, who has blood on her hands all day long. “I didn’t know you knew the word ‘boobs,’” she seemed to be saying, as though addressing a Mennonite nun. If fiction is one of the ways that we can experience other lives, then surely having a rompingly-good sex scene should be a part of that. I felt that I had let both her and her delicious sausages down.

I reread James Salter’s “A Sport and a Pasttime” the same way I reread Norma Klein books as a pre-teen: trying to pace myself and not hurry towards the sexy bits. The book isn’t just sexy, it’s famously sexy, like “A Last Tango in Paris,” or “Jules et Jim,” and rightly so. The book tingles with sensuality, and I’ve starred passages in the margins, underlined entire paragraphs. Of course, Salter writes about the entire world with a lush tongue, not only the breath-taking sexual encounters. He writes about leaves and sidewalks and cafes and silence and somehow all of it begins to hum like a tuning fork. But it is the sex that people always talk about, the sex that makes booksellers raise an eyebrow when they recommend it.

Another friend of mine, a male writer who recently published a story about a girl having sex with a lobster, also remarked on my book’s lack of sex. “You keep closing the door!” He admonished me. Which I suppose is true. Can I be the only writer alive who occasionally wants to give my characters some privacy? I don’t show them going to the bathroom, either, unless it’s to sit on the toilet and cry a little bit. But James Salter never closes the door, not even when one of the characters gets her period or has bad breath. If we are inside the relationship, Salter implies by including these scenes, then by all means, let’s be inside it. The novel is brave and reckless, like people in love for the first time, noticing everything around them through the lens of their newly discovered parts. No one ever cares about the other’s body odor, or imperfections.

What strikes me the most about Salter’s sex scenes is the bravery, the nakedness not only of the character’s bodies but of their actions. This goes here, that goes there. He is direct and unsqueamish. Take the word ‘prick,’ for example: Salter says it and it’s just the right word, both playful and aggressive at once. I wonder if James Salter’s friends go to him for sexual advice, or whether they’re too cowed by his reputation to mention their own meager efforts. Maybe this is what my lesson should be: write the kind of the book that will make a lover have a new idea, that will make a friend blush.  It could start gradually, with a nipple pressing against the fabric of a shirt instead of an angular shoulderblade, or a bare bottom revealed underneath a short skirt. I’m working on it, James, I’m working on it.

Yours,
Emma