A few of my writing
projects, for you to judge without having read them…
Graphic Novel
Huntress: Year One
An exciting, high-quality six-issue miniseries published by DC
Comics, it was be released issue by issue beginning in May 2008,
then collected and released as a graphic novel in January 2009. The “Year
One” concept, invented by comics legend Frank Miller in Batman:
Year One, covers the year a hero first became a hero—the
early struggles, the first costume, how they got their name, where
they came from, what their mission is.
It is truly an honor to be helping shape pretend history.
Huntress: Year One is the authoritative telling
of how Helena Rosa Bertinelli became The Huntress. Some of the
story you already know. Some you don’t. Because comics are
a secretive business, I can’t tell you much right now, except
that it will permanently alter the DC Universe as we know it. (In
case some non-comics geeks are reading this—that’s
an industry joke.)
To get the latest news on Huntress and other Ivory Madison
comics, sign up for our mailing list. If you like my work,
or just love Huntress, I want to know who you are. You can even
imagine you’re forming a personal relationship with me,
and I’ll encourage that.
Children’s Literature
The Mice of French Laundry
An elegant, droll children’s picture book for grown-up foodies.
I originally wrote the story and presented it in the form of a
handmade book, to Chef Thomas Keller, in (gasp!) 2000. Finally,
in 2006, Thomas and I decided we must get the book published, and
thus it is currently in negotiation with a major publisher. Let
us know if you want updates on The Mice of French Laundry.
Two mice become best friends and open up the first restaurant
for mice in the world, in the baseboard of the world’s finest
restaurant, French Laundry. In case you’re not a foodie,
French Laundry is Thomas Keller’s famous restaurant in Yountville,
California, considered by many food critics to be the best restaurant
in the world. It is my favorite restaurant, and Thomas is, in my
opinion, the most sophisticated and gracious gentleman chef of
the century. That is my unbiased opinion.
Our book begins, “French mice appreciate good food. Olivier
was a French mouse…”
Literary Short Story
The Time I Attempted to Assassinate
the Poet Laureate of the United States
This edgy, self-satirizing piece of autobiographical fiction was
a huge success at Litquake (San Francisco’s annual literary
festival) in 2005. So much so that subsequent readings have been
anticlimactic. I’ve been meaning to get around to submitting
it for publication, somewhere. I just haven’t decided where,
as an excuse to avoid rejection.
Some of my favorite excerpts:
“I am the Squeaky Fromme of my generation…”
“Look, I don’t like to whine about my childhood, except
in therapy, to my friends, strangers, and on my blog, but….”
“I would dress up in Batman Underoos, hang upside-down off
the couch and call my foster father “Alfred.” I used
to steal matches from restaurants and try to light the living room
curtains on fire. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, just to make
a statement against tyranny.”
“This envelope would later surface in the trial, and my
notes, such as ‘Do laundry—darks!,’ ‘Call
Dave, ask for Wednesday-Thursday off to kill Pinsky,’ and
a tiny drawing of myself dressed as Batman, were entered into evidence
as the proverbial ‘Exhibit A.’”
“When I handled a .38 Special police revolver, George said, ‘that’s
your natural gun.’ Like we all have a natural, god-given
gun that we are meant to hold someday. He said I looked just like
Angie Dickenson in Police Woman pointing that gun…”
“Thus, when I turned eighteen and could actually register
to vote, my strategy was to register Democrat and sabotage the
party from within by adhering to its own hypocrisy…”
“On day seven of the trial, the judge said that he would
put me away for life if I used the term “Kafkaesque” even
one more time. I took to wearing a gold felt star on my jacket,
to teach him a lesson about underestimating someone like me.”
“Derrida said, in a lecture at NYU (which was quoted in Foreign
Affairs) that my assassination attempt was really ‘about’ the
struggle between post-structuralist French feminist semiotic
theory vis-à-vis the New Criticism movement of the 1950s
at Yale. Maybe.”
“I do worry sometimes that individual historians will project
their own issues and the fashionable theories of the day upon my
story, and I will be dead at that point, unable to send them death
threats. So I have prepared a few in advance. Social and literary
theory follows a predictable enough cycle to have done this. I
have addressed them to particular chairs at certain history departments,
post-dated decades into the future.”
If you want to remind me to submit this story for publication,
or to hear about it when I finally publish it, let me know. I really
should submit it.
Novel
The Imperial Tea Garden of Sorrowful Cranes
My first completed novel, which I am currently adapting to screenplay/graphic
novel format. It centers around Godfrey, an earnest, recently homeless
man in search of a mythical underground temple in Chinatown where
he hopes to get a job doing laundry. His only friends are Mr. Lucky,
an alcoholic pawn shop owner who thinks he is Frank Sinatra, and
Beatrice, an intellectual Wiccan librarian whose partner was murdered
the day before the mayor began granting marriage licenses to gay
and lesbian couples. All three characters are seemingly trapped,
in the seedy Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, by their
own self-imposed limitations. The story flirts with magical realism.
Academic Paper
Feminism vis-à-vis Marxism :
An Uneasy Affair 1848-The Present
This is an unedited academic article I wrote and delivered at
the Marxist School of Sacramento in 2002. It explored the repeated
incidents of socialists co-opting powerful feminist movements and
then betraying the feminists who helped them win their socialist
revolutions or political gains. It’s pretty interesting.
The most amusing part is about Marx sponging money off Engels,
and the most surprising part is about how significant the influence
of the invention of rolls of paper was on pamphleteering, how ideology
was transmitted, which in turn had a profound effect on the level
of support for revolutions throughout Europe in the 19th and 20th
century.
If I would just double-check all the footnotes, I could submit
it to an academic journal. But after law school and clerking, I
never want to check another footnote again. I should probably adapt
it to a popular article. Not that the intersection of Marxism and
feminism is a “popular” topic in any magazines. Maxim?
Kind of sounds like Marxism. Field and Stream? Kind of
sounds like feminism. Yes, yes, I know The New York Review
of Books might consider it. I will just call up Noam Chomsky
and ask him to hook me up.
Coming soon: links to my published and unpublished works.
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