Order Lavina Today!
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Novels by Mary Marcus
New on the Blog
A Real Bookstore
I went to a an old fashioned bookstore the other day in Santa Barbara. I’d gone there to visit my cousin and taken Henry because unlike here they let dogs on the beach in Santa Barbara. Chaucer’s Books, what a place it is! They have new books and used books side by side. And what a selection. Everything from the complete works of Betty Smith to practically everything William Burrows wrote. They had John O’Hara, Upton Sinclair, Oscar Wilde, obscure English mystery writers, how-to’s written in 1913. I bought a little book on tips for wives first published in the early twentieth century and one for husbands too. I’m writing a book about a woman who writes an advice column and maybe they’ll inspire me. I also bought a set of haiku dice with complicated directions that I know I’ll never use. But I couldn’t resist it. There were lots of people in the store buying lots of books. And the sales people knew about books too. I felt like I was in the freaking twilight zone. I have a long standing fantasy which is to be in a room with all the books I’ve ever read, on clean dusted shelves in alphabetical order and in the original edition I read them in. And it seemed in Chaucer’s Bookstore, this might be possible. I saw a shelf with every major literary journal and many I had never heard of. Not that I read literary journals, but I’m glad they were there casually, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, instead of the rarer and rarer...Unhelpful
A while ago, I was thinking about giving up writing. I imagined how great it would be not to have to sit alone most of the day, not worry so much about getting enough sleep, eating healthy food, not drinking, exercising all so I’d be clear headed enough to write every morning. I didn’t want to go back to advertising; even if I could get a job. I thought about going back to school and becoming either a teacher or a shrink. But the idea of going back to school did not appeal to me. I was visiting my friend Lisa in New York during this time and she said, “why don’t you look in the paper?” One ad caught my attention right away: EXECUTIVE HOUSEKEEPER, MUST LIVE IN FIVE DAYS A WEEK. Starting pay 75 thousand plus benefits. WOW, I thought, not a bad gig. I could certainly be an executive housekeeper. It was a 212 number. Which meant it was probably some huge apartment on the east side with a servant’s wing. I remembered when I was just out of school writing fashion promotion how the dragon lady Eleanor Lambert, the woman responsible for the BDL, had hired me to be one of her “live in” assistants. She gave one a back room in the giant apartment on Fifth, a couple of hundred cash for spending money and a limo at one’s service when it wasn’t serving her. She was compiling some encyclopedia on fashion and I was one in a long line of ingénues who did the actual writing of the book. I don’t think it...Easy come, easy go
The other day I found a hundred dollar bill plus a five and a few ones balled up on the grass in the Palisades Park on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. I’d gone down there because it’s Henry’s favorite place to walk, and mine too. Palm trees, the ocean, lots of other dogs, and now I was a hundred dollars richer. I’ve found money before. A fifty once, in front of my apartment; a twenty in front of the Condé Nast building when it was next door to Brooks Brothers on Madison. But never a windfall that size. I looked around and no one appeared distressed. I told myself that if someone were frantically searching for this wad I would return it. I suspect it was a minor dope deal and the dealer dropped the cash. When we got home, I put the bills in a little bowl I keep for loose change in the top drawer of my desk wondering what to do with it. Alas, a hundred dollars wasn’t as exciting as it used to be. When I was 18, my rich Uncle Herman threw a hundred dollar bill at me and when I bent to pick it up he laughed and told me he wanted to see me grovel. Not exactly an elegant avuncular gesture but pretty much in character for him to want to mess with my head like that. Still, the hundred-dollar bill was way too powerful for me to resist. I could wait tables all night and only come home with twenty-five bucks. I was a practical person even back then in my...
The New Me
Lavina
Amazon • Barnes & Noble • Books-a-Million • iBooks • Indiebound • Indigo • The StoryPlant