Having spent the past weeks loading up on social networking sites... I'm now available on myspace, linkedin, facebook, etc.; I confess I have little or no idea what to do with it all. I mean, does one really need ALL these cliques? Even I high school, I only had ONE clique, and that was more than enough. Is there a site called "cliqueme"? Just wondering.

If anyone has ideas for what they'd like to see on MySpace or elsewhere, let me know!

I'm in the final round of edits on My Name Is Will. Should be seeing artwork soon, probably next week. I'm going on a little fact-checking trip to Santa Cruz and Berkeley next week, visiting pet-friendly hotels with the Cutest Dog in the World, Orson. And look for a new Food Crazy post, very soon.

I'm beginning to think about my my next novel, too. I've found a program called FreeMind that I'm using to organize my thoughts. But more importantly, it's time to get back in the writing rhythm. This means waking, eating, showering, dressing, and knocking out work before posting, surfing, answering e-mail. It also means scheduling break time. It also means blogging, to get the fingers moving. Here are my fingers... moving.

I'm trying to keep myself in Back To School mode. I tidied up my office, filed my files, paid my bills, and now I'm diving into the last round of revisions on MY NAME IS WILL. This is the highly un-glamourous portion of the process. People are shocked when they hear my book won't be out for a year. Why does it take so long, they wonder. Getting an editor to acquire the book for a publishing house is just the first step. Said editor then has to convince publishing house it's worth promoting, excite the sales force, make it a priority. Copies of the book go out to opinion makers for jacket cover blurbs. (I've already got a great one from a somewhat surprising source, given our respective politics... Christopher Buckley, editor of Forbes, author of Thank You For Smoking and former George HW Bush speechwriter, has called WILL "witty, hilarious, and brilliant"). I have a passel of letters to write requesting permission for use of various song lyrics and the like that are used in the book. I've been updating websites, writing bios, etc. And then there are the revisions to the book itself. Suddenly, July 2008 is looking all too soon!

On another front... my friend Michelle sent me to a website this morning which left me a little shocked. Did you know that the No Child Left Behind Act has a provision that gives the military access to records of teen and pre-teen students, including mental health history and home telephone numbers, for recruitment purposes? Yeah, why "leave 'em behind" in our schools? Instead, we can draft 'em while they're down about breaking up with that last girlfriend, send 'em to Iraq and leave 'em there. Michelle supports an organization called "CAMS" -- Coalition Against Militarism in our Schools. This is the way to truly leave no child behind.

My novelist friend Alex Sokoloff forwarded me a plea to help the Jena Six this morning. In case you aren't familiar with the story (I wasn't), six black youths age 16-18 are on trial in Louisiana for attempted murder. The story begins when black students at a Jena high school sit under the "white tree" on campus. Later, white students hang nooses from the tree in warning. Black students protest; there are several incidents of white violence against black students in the town, none of which are prosecuted. But when black students eventually retaliate against a white student in an on-campus scuffle from which the white student walked away relatively unscathed, the black students are charged with, incredibly, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. An all-white jury has already convicted one of the boys of a somewhat lesser charge of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit battery, the others are still awaiting trial. I joined colorofchange.org and contributed to the defense fund. You can read the full story and add your own voice here.

It truly sounds like an incident from 1961. But we've become used to watching our social and cultural clock move backward. This morning's L.A. Times details the Democratic congress' fight to overturn the Bush Administration ban on supporting overseas family planning clinics that counsel on abortion. I couldn't help noticing that on the next page, the Times notes that suicide among teenage girls is on the rise for the first time since the last Republican adminstration. Apparently, not happy with ruining the lives of young people in our country with false 1950s moralism, our President wishes to ruin the lives of those overseas as well. Kudos to Senator Barbara Boxer for leading the fight to rescind the "global gag rule."

Tags: politics, race, abortion

Today I'm launching my new website. Between adopting RapidWeaver, to which I am now officially addicted, and my new webserver at Machighway, I hope to have a more dynamic and regularly updated site. I hope you enjoy. In addition to my food blog at L.A. Food Crazy, I'll be posting here on whatever tickles my fancy. Politics, Shakespeare and the process of publishing my first novel and writing the second one will surely be regular topics.

Note to self: do not take Ambien before posting.