Wednesday, June 01, 2016

there are giants out there in the canyons

I am thoroughly in love with Provincetown.

The blog post could probably end there, but then there would be complaints, and I am not feeling like dealing with complaints at the moment - everything is too idyllic. So I'll recap my day...I slept in, showered, and then had breakfast at the same place I ate yesterday. I know it's too soon to repeat, but I was starving, and it's close by, and I knew it had exactly what I wanted (organic eggs and tater tots, along with coffee and gluten free toast). Also, the server I had today told me that she has a variant of celiac that manifests solely as a skin condition rather than a digestive condition...which was interesting to me, because I tested negative for celiac based on the endoscopy into my digestive system, but am always itchy and eventually develop hives if I have any gluten. So that was a great octogenarian-type conversation with which to start my day!

Then, I spent the afternoon strolling around + working. I had some extremely key realizations about Rafe that I wish I would have had six months ago - I've had a lot of trouble pinning down his character, which matters less at the end, but is crucial in the beginning when you're trying to establish motivation and get readers to care about following the character through the rest of the book. I accomplished all of that while scribbling in my journal, first at the local library (gorgeous - three stories, with a schooner in the middle of it), and then at a waterfront bar with a glass (or tumbler) of rosé.

But eventually I came home and took a break. Then I went out for an early dinner, which turned into 3+ hours of dinner. I went to Front Street, which is an old-school-feeling Italian place, dimly lit and partially submerged, and I sat the bar and wrote for an hour. But eventually I fell into conversation with the woman near me, and it turns out she writes erotica, so we got real real deep into publishing conversation.

Of course, I never meet normal strangers; she spent the winter in Provincetown (which only ~2000 people do, even though the summer population can get up to 65,000) because her now-ex-husband had been going to Amsterdam and sleeping with an eastern european prostitute whose boyfriend threatened to kill him and her and their dog, and the husband broke up with her and told her to leave Europe without actually telling her about the death threats until much later. Whoa. It's almost romantic to get a divorce because of a prostitute's boyfriend's death threats, right?

sssanyway. She wouldn't tell me exactly what she writes, even though she has a blog, because she didn't want me to be scandalized. I wanted to pat her on the head and tell her about all the porn I've seen for all the jobs I've held, but I refrained. But we talked about writing and publishing and life, and I had several glasses of wine and some burrata and some delish gluten free pasta, and it was all wonderful. I may meet her tomorrow for another drink + extreme early bird dinner there (the hostess gave me her card and told me to all ahead and she'll save me a seat at the bar)...but I have other plans tomorrow night (which I shall leave you in suspense for), so we'll see if the timing works out.

So that was all totally fun and ridiculous, and I left feeling mildly tipsy and majorly happy with the world. And now I'm going to go to bed earlier than I have on any night while on the east coast, and attempt to get up tomorrow and be productive throughout the day before my evening derails me. Goodnight!

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