The Hurricane touches down on land

Introduction -- Welcome to Hurricane Laura

After keeping an extensive journal for almost seven years, I finally decided to hell with it, time to consolidate my writing and my journal in public space. So here it is, the Hurricane Laura blog. At some point, this will all be updated into a website, with links to my writing, my CV, some pictures my cousin is taking of me, as well as anything else I feel like adding, but for now, this will be a placeholder where I can post things I'm doing or just thinking about.

A note on the name "Hurricane Laura" -- this is a joking nickname my mother and my brother have called me since my adolescence. It refers to my ripping-up-your-trailer-park style temper, as in: "Uh-oh, here comes Hurricane Laura. Everybody take cover in the basement!" I used to get irritated by this nickname, but now I embrace it. Whatever, ya'll, I'm a tempest in a teacup. Goes with the territory when you're a) a Southerner and b) a redheaded Southerner.

Recent Reviews Available Online

My first review is up for the Brooklyn Rail, available here. It's a review of Mackenzie Wark's book "Gamer Theory".

I filed my second review, about post-apocalyptic fiction, this month and that will be out in the July/August issue. I'm excited about that one because I've been doing a lot of summer research about post-apocalyptic fiction. I have an annotated bibliography in the works -- at nine pages and counting -- and I am busily going through and refreshing myself on the major works or reading some things for the first time. Currently, I'm in the middle of Paul Auster's In the Country of Last Things (1987) and Tatyana Tolstaya's The Slynx (2002). I have to say, I wouldn't recommend reading a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction for months at a time -- you do start to get very world-weary and a little paranoid. I'm cleansing my literary palate with a variety of other things whenever I feel like I just can't take it anymore.

By the way, two other ways to find me: here I am on Goodreads and here I am on myspace. I don't really like 'the myspace' so much -- someone mentioned to me the other day that it is 'growing like a weed', and I thought, yup, that's why I don't like it -- it's a weed. But you can't exactly prune the Internet.

What I'm Thinking About Today

I just read this review by Chris Beha about the whole Oprah book club thing and the Cormac McCarthy interview. I "joined" the book club for the exact same reason -- just to see the interview -- and I agree with Beha: McCarthy shouldn't have to talk about the book if he doesn't want to. Get him going about something parallel, something he's interested in that (perhaps) informs the work. But he's far too intuitive and private to be capable of a good interview about his own books.

Well, that's it for post one -- pretty milquetoast for me, but I'm just getting warmed up.