My new tiger lily tattoo and free cupcakes at tonight's Powell's reading

I'm in Portland, Oregon, lying in my cozy hotel bed, armed with to do lists but enjoying the quiet at 5:41 am. Yesterday I went to New Rose Tattoo and my friend Mikal inked these gorgeous tiger lilies on my shoulder:



Tonight I'm reading at legendary bookstore Powell's at 7:30 with Best Sex Writing 2012 contributors and legendary writers Tim Elhajj ("An Unfortunate Discharge Early in My Naval Career"), Kevin Sampsell ("Pottymouth") and Lidia Yuknavitch ("Love Grenade"). Join us for these compelling true sex stories and a Q&A and booksigning and, of course, free cupcakes! Here's the Facebook invite if you want to pass it along (no RSVP required). All have written memoirs of their own I recommend: Dopefiend by Tim Elhajj, A Common Pornography by Kevin Sampsell and The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch. Tomorrow night at 7 Kevin, Lidia and I are reading at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle (Capitol Hill), also with free mini cupcakes (by Cupcake Royale). If you know anyone in Portland or Seattle, please please please let them know about these readings! And yes, I know it's Passover...now. I didn't realize that when I booked these readings, and my apologies for those who will be at seders.

April 6, 7:30 pm
Best Sex Writing 2012 reading
Powell's, 1005 W. Burnside, Portland, Oregon
Free and free cupcakes! Reading and discussion featuring editor Rachel Kramer Bussel and contributors Tim Elhajj (author of Dopefiend, contributor to Guernica), Kevin Sampsell (author of A Common Pornography) and Lidia Yuknavitch (author of The Chronology of Water). 503-228-4651.



And as seen on the wall at New Rose Tattoo:

Powell's loves Please, Sir!

I'm blogging from the cafe at Powell's Books, where I bought two books by the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, whose work I've been eager to read but wasn't sure where to start, so getting to browse the shelves helped, and the new Ms. magazine and ogled the extensive erotica section and saw this:



Plus I walked by Voodoo Doughnut but will save a taste for Sunday. I am sleepy and heading off to Eugene and will have some exciting publication news to announce soonish.

Snapshots from Seattle

No way to fully capture the trip (or rather, trips), plus I have less than 48 hours at home before going to Minneapolis (NOT a smart move in any way on my part, and I'd cancel if I weren't doing a fantabulous book party on Tuesday night that better be crowded for the free music/sex toys/cupcakes). I just don't travel that well, not for such extended periods. I had fun, but ate too much and was a bit mopey and didn't write. Working on changing that, starting now.



You can now get autographed copies of Best Sex Writing 2010 at Powell's in Portland by mail order or in the store, and at Elliott Bay in Seattle.

Saw this on my way to Elliott Bay on Tuesday:



After a day full of cupcakes, I ate at Barrio in Capitol Hill and it was AMAZING:


Taquitos


Queso fundido


Calamari


Goofing off (with a little help from iPhone app The Best Camera) with Carrie of Bella Cupcake Couture, who was my tour guide, and Jody Hall, owner of Cupcake Royale, who's done, you know, a few little things like be invited to the White House to talk about health care. Such amazing people and if I lived in Seattle, you'd see me with my laptop at Cupcake Royale's Capitol Hill outpost A LOT.

They gave me a t-shirt that says "Rock out with your cupcake out." Then I bought one for my baby cousin.


Trophy Cupcakes not only made the amazing cupcakes with my face on them but also hosted a cupcake meetup yesterday that was well-attended, fun, and gave us some insider scoop on running a Seattle cupcake business. And fed us with s'mores cupcakes that had a graham cracker bottom! This frosting was seriously to die for. Marshmallowtastic.

At Bluebottle Art Gallery, to be owned April 1st by my friend Jessie Oleson of Cakespy, I not only got some Matthew Porter monkey magnets but lusted after this painting called "Miss Petits Gâteaux" of a topless girl with cupcakes by Julie West, whose work I now covet.


There was a lot of being tired/nauseous/emotionally overwhelmed/missing people in hotel rooms, thinking about the past and the present and the future, thinking about both the book A Spy in the House of Love and the reality.


The view around 6 am looked like this from my room at the Westin.


I pack heavy stuff.


You might've heard...it's snowing in New York. My friend Heidi likened it to powdered sugar. I'm so thrilled to be back.

Portland, I heart you

Portland has been nonstop - stayed at Hyatt Place, because I was antsy about coming to a residential neighborhood at 1 am sans phone, and had a lovely time. For $85 I got a giant room with couch and bed and there was a pool - obviously if I forgot my phone I didn't think to bring a bathing suit, but anyway, then I took the light rail to the Apple Store, got a new phone that is so fancy I barely know what to do with it, went to Saint Cupcake for a meetup, hung out with my friend Douglas who showed me some of the many food carts in Portland and we caught up.


Hello Kitty greeted me in the mall (I am a Jersey Girl at heart so of course my first stop was in a mall to get a new phone)

Then my friend Irena picked me up - I spent almost all of the summer of 1999 hanging out with her and her then-girlfriend having the time of our lives. Now she lives in a house that reminds me of a friend's in Silverlake, completely with cute little dog and guest room and we go to catch up and hang out with her wife and talk baby names, good (and bad) tattoos, cupcakes and life. And eat at Mio Sushi, where I was introduced to sushi pizza! Yum.



Tonight our pro-affair, pro-cunt sexual outlaw Best Sex Writing 2010 mini book tour with me, Kerry Cohen (Loose Girl) and Janet Hardy (The Ethical Slut) hits Tsunami Books in Eugene from 7-8, Monday night we're at Powell's on Burnside at 7:30 in Portland and Elliott Bay in Seattle at 7 on Tuesday (the latter 2 with free cupcakes). You don't want to miss it, I promise. I'll be talking about the book and what I think it means to be a "sexual outlaw."


Loose Girl author Kerry Cohen ("Anatomy of an Affair")


The Ethical Slut co-author Janet Hardy ("The Portal")

Are books "broken" on the web?

Tim from LibraryThing, in a post about their partnership with Portland's famed Powell's Books, writes:

The big picture. On the web, books are broken. A few small parts are solved or on their way—Amazon, Abebooks.com, Google, Powells—and this gives many the illusion that books are a solved problem. But the rest of the "bibliosphere" isn't where it could be. Libraries and publishers, authors and most bookstores are adrift, and not part of the conversation.*...

*My correspondent at Powell's asked me for examples. Here's my rant/reply:

You can't Google a book and find out where in town to get a copy. You can't Google a book and find out whether your public library has a copy. Your library doesn't know the author is touring the area. The author doesn't know which independent bookstores are selling the most copies, and so where to read. Bookstore software is crap and most independent bookstores aren't online at all. The second-largest US bookstore chain—Borders—is less online that Powell's! Libraries are absolutely *terrible* online; you will rarely get a library in the first ten pages of a Google search because search engines can't "see inside" library websites. Library data is largely inaccessible and dominated by an inflexible data monopoly. Book data is mostly from Amazon or from a welter of other companies that don't or can't help any but the largest providers. Publisher websites a seldom more than 1990s brochure-ware. Small presses sometimes have good websites, but aren't included in the book-data game. There's no online network for authors and agents. There isn't even a decent "works" system for books—and to the extent there are systems like this, publishers and libraries have completely different systems.