Another new clay season

A little scare just now when I sat down to write a fresh entry and found myself signed out of my Blogger account after two years away. I could see my two little old sites still reading "me" but couldn't enter to refresh them, this one and Reading Les Miserables at Work out of my control only drifted there, like junked space stations, relics. I sat bewildered. Then I thought, Would it matter? What if What is Famepunk? ended randomly, years out of date, out of carelessness? Couldn't it go on that way, an old attachment, always linked? Old and dead, yes--but would it matter? With a lynch-pin of my creative life (even if it hasn't looked like one lately) not just threatened but gone, snatched away, rationalizing like crazy, I kept calm. My mind formed ideas for going on without it, unencumbered by women's tennis blogging. But I was self-disgusted. I felt the loss I'd brought on myself through inattention. In the end I tried another sign-in, the right one. I'm grateful to be back.

Аутсайдеры

Ostapenko versus Kasatkina. These are the outsidery finalists in this year's Charleston green clay tournament. Neither player seeded, none of the top ten seeds made it to the semifinals. Women's tennis continues down the path it's set itself.

Paying too much for not playing, paying too much attention to "storylines" over substance. And pampering, primping, pimping, party-dressing its "stars" for consumption--by whom? Who is even watching the WTA now? They haven't got a broadcast contract, they'd rather pay their executives than shell out for coverage. Who would want to watch? The outfits are all alike and all equally horrible. Meanwhile a virtually all-male coaching galaxy hovers over the enterprise sucking up cash and leaving blasted confidence.

As an outsider myself, I salute the young players (and the older over-the-hill but not players) who are looking at this situation as the opportunity it is. Good for Ostapenko! Good for Kasatkina! Good for Mirjana Lucic and Jo Konta and Elena Vesnina, good for the underdogs, all the "ovas" the others might mistake for nonentities. I'm not watching them either, but that don't mean a damn thing.

Sales update: All Famepunk books are now $2.99 each across all digital platforms. Writing update: I'm in year four of a book that takes place in the Soviet Union around the time of World War II; it isn't a tennis novel. But it will be good! Stay tuned for more about it.

Extended Quadruple Doubles Sale

In celebration of the world's greatest player, her doubles partners and the rest, the sale continues at Smashwords.

 

 

On Super Grand Slam Sale

For the duration of the 2015 US Open ALL THREE volumes of Famepunk are ON SALE FOR HALF PRICE at Smashwords. Will there be another calendar year Grand Slam winner in women's tennis--the first in 27 years? While you wait to find out, you can relive the last time with a strong dose of fiction in Part 2: Middlemarch. It takes place on The Tour in 1988.

 

Congratulations to the winners I watched on-line tonight--Nicole Gibbs (USA! USA), Kurumi Nara and the divine Petra Kvitova in her first night match in New York.

 

 

 

Lesbian Bar Scene / New Excerpt

Since last November, so for a year now, I've been working on a novel that takes place in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era. It's not Famepunk, in other words. I'd hoped to have finished it by now so that I could return to writing "the tennis novels" but it will take a while longer. And it will be good, I think!

 

Meanwhile, to celebrate the relaunch of my main website under its new name--liz-mackie.com--I'm posting an excerpt from the upcoming (someday not too long from now) Part 4 of Famepunk, which will be called Against Theodosia. This is the COMPLETE chapter excerpted in the "coming soon" scene that's included at the very end of Part 2: Middlemarch. It takes place around Thanksgiving in New York City (so, seasonal) in 1990, and it's called "In the Cubbyhole."

 

 

The picture here is from New York City in 1990 (except, summer) to set the tone. I had those shorts! The Cubbyhole is a lesbian bar in Greenwich Village which MAY OR MAY NOT have existed as I've depicted it in 1990; I thought it had but lately heard otherwise.

 

Picture source is Ann Bannon's site; here is a link, she is a hero of mine. Another interesting site I've found lately, also on Blogger, is devoted to Lost Womyn's Space and it's worth a long visit.

 

Happy Holidays dear readers--for me it's back to Odessa, 1941...

On Sale in July at Smashwords

Until the end of July, customers at Smashwords can get all three volumes of Famepunk for one low price of $7.50. The first two books are 50% off and the last one is FREE! Use code SSW50 at checkout.

After Wimbledon | Ladies

The scary Canadian tennis player Eugenie Bouchard hasn't managed to inspire any warm feelings in me in the couple of years since her star began to rise. She is aggressive and antique portrait bust pretty, very Gilded Age; other fans of Edith Wharton might have noted her exact-in-many-points resemblance to Undine Spragg. Yesterday at Wimbledon she played and was flattened 6-3 6-0 in the Ladies Single final. Even though I am a major Petra Kvitova fan, here was my chance to loosen the heartstrings and sympathize with the kid a little; I didn't, I enjoyed watching North American princess type Eugenie Bouchard get thumped and sent packing in less than an hour by "my" player. Very much!

 

Petra Wins Again

But ever since, when I think about what she was up against, thinking back on that match, I've felt more and more sorry for Genie Bouchard. In my mind's eye I can picture her, a pretty blonde girl with visor, braid, racquet, white multi-million dollar Nike contract tennis dress, the works--she's on one side of the net. And on the other side, I know, is Petra Kvitova, I've watched the match twice (on-line, via ESPN embedded on the Wimbledon site all the way through the finals, all courts, with replay, very civilized and great despite buffering problems). And I see Petra Kvitova; she just hit a crosscourt forehand. At the same time a spirit photography-style double exposure occurs in my memory and hovering all around her I see white brick walls and parts of industrial structures--concrete loading docks, power plant smokestacks, thick steel beams with rivets for their alien double spines. As I recall, I see poor Genie Bouchard with no weapons but a strong chin versus some kind of dark Satanic Mill, a human female mega-factory for the production of another Wimbledon title.