Pura Vida: a Golden Birthday, big cats, and The Springs

We were in Costa Rica for Becky's Golden Birthday.  IE, she turned 29 on the 29th (don't worry, I'd never heard of that, either; but it's a thing).  We started the day by walking to a bridge some miles from the hotel.  I say we walked, but with the landscape down there it's really all hiking.


Becky and I wanted to find a local artist, a husband and wife team with a wood art shop just up the road from the  tree house hotel.  Of course, "just up the road" is relative.  It wasn't brutally hot compared to Miami, but we're not used to being under the sun for that long.  The sun and the bags we carried made us feel every step.

People kept stopping to offer us rides.  Much as in the US, some of the the locals are just being helpful.  Others offer you a free ride and then demand payment before they'll let you out.  A few want to drive you to a remote area and take everything you have.  We had been warned so we kept to walking.  There was plenty to see along the way.

Pura Vida: Local Flavor

In an interview with Knight Arts, Miami poet Emma Trelles said "Anything can thrive down here. You could fling a tadpole into a gutter puddle and have a colony of frogs a week later. That kind of insistent life is inspiring."  This is true about Miami.  It's true in Costa Rica a hundred fold.

Geckos cover the streets of Miami, those little ones people up north buy at pet stores.  In Costa Rica, we saw these bad boys outside of a restaurant:  

That black triangle in the upper-left corner is the edge of the patio roof.

Iguanas like plaintains.

Pura Vida: Horseback riding, La Fortuna Waterfall

We met Alberto the day after an accident at his stables.  A stallion, angry at Alberto for inviting another stallion to the ranch, knocked the horseman to the ground, pinned him down, and bit his upper arm.  Shirtless, broad-featured, barrel-chested, fresh bandage glaring white against his tanned skin, Alberto looked tough as rock.  He walked with obvious pain.  Not only did the run-in with the stallion injure his back, he also suffered from a chronic ailment.  With my limited Spanish (as in, limited to understanding at about a middle-school level and speaking hardly any) I couldn't tell if it was sciatica, chronic back pain, or an old leg injury.  Riding horseback was one thing, but how was our guide supposed to make it down 492 steps to La Fortuna Waterfall, let alone back up?

"You look at me and you think, 'That's crazy, how could he do that?'" Alberto said.  "If I worked in an office, it would be crazy.  My job, this is just part of what you do."

Pura Vida: Arenal Volcano, Baldi Hot Springs

A short walk from the Tree House Hotel, Becky and I found lunch on the side of a mountain at a restaurant called Lomas del Mapache (translation?  "Raccoon Hills").

Their driveway is long, winding, and gravel, with a breathtaking view that goes on forever.  This is a good example of one of my favorite things about Costa Rica; you didn't need a building to have a restaurant.  If you had a kitchen, a bathroom, a roof, and maybe a wall or two, you were good to go.  Lomas del Mapache had no walls.

The food was too salty and waaaay too buttery (I got the feeling they were trying to appeal to American palates, or their idea of the American palate, but I've seen some positive reviews so maybe we just got the wrong cook) but the fresh juices and the atmosphere made up for it.  At the raccoon restaurant, we met another couple from the US who would be hiking Arenal Volcano with us. Our guide, Juan Carlos, picked us up after lunch, and we were off.  

Pura Vida: Zip Lines, La Fortuna, and Pizza Delivery

After breakfast at the Treehouse Hotel, our first foray was to Ecoglide for a zip line tour of the base of the Arenal volcano.  I lost track of how many platforms they had, but thankfully Becky took a picture:

This.  This many platforms.

Pura Vida: One Hell of a Honeymoon

Becky and I registered at Deposit a Gift.  We wanted to go to Italy for our Honeymoon, which not only sounded  romantic as hell, but would be a nice cushion for turning halfway to heaven (a phrase I only recently discovered and instantly hated; for all I know, I was halfway to heaven at twenty and I’ll die next year choking on an M&M).

Even with the generous gifts of friends and family, Italy turned out to be more than we could afford.  Becky looked closer to home and came up with Costa Rica.  Which is great, because Costa Rica looks like this:

SnApp Shots Photo Contest

Proving that Becky loves photography and books the most, or that six months of paper folding gave us more than a kick-ass wedding bouquet, she's won a contest sponsored by Chronicle Books.

Here's the pic.

Yes, I married that.

June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012

A recent survey declared Goodnight Moon the best picture book of all time, but for me it begins and ends with The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  I loved that book so much, almost as much as I loved Snowy Day.  It takes a lot of effort to admit that Where the Wild Things Are comes in third, because Maurice Sendak's death is clouding my judgment.  But can you really compare degrees of love?  People don't make you pick a favorite child, so I can't really pick a favorite childhood memory.

It doesn't take a degree in children's literature to declare Wild Things the best of the three.  It's a paean to imagination, it understands children in a way the others don't, and it's a perfect example of using illustration to represent emotion in a picture book.  Sendak was one of the greatest (and easily the most reluctant) children's author / illustrators ever, and the landscape of children's bookselling that he helped create has muted colors over his passing.

As loyal Sweet Readers know, Maurice Sendak has a special place in our hearts that he has enjoyed for some time.  Apart from the homage and the semi-serious pleas in those posts, Becky and I have been working behind the scenes for some time to make a Max tattoo drawn by Sendak himself a reality on Becky's famous arm.  Becky and I work in the book business at an indie with a lot of clout.  We don't know people, but we know people who know the right people, and we wanted to make it happen.

A couple of months back, we got our answer; Sendak said he "couldn't commit to something like that at this time."  I didn't blog about that because we never gave up hope.  Now, well.

I'm not trying to make this about me.  The loss to books is greater but the loss of the dream hits closer to home.  Everyone I've spoken with has their own memory of his work, and their own sorrow at his death.  This is just mine.  We may not have a tattoo to remember him by, but at least we have his work.

On Tuesday night, Becky and I put Dylan to bed with In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, and Where the Wild Things Are; all three read just fine.  Mighty fine, in fact.  Dylan did say he was "too sad" to fall asleep, but he was probably just trying to delay his bedtime.  Or sympathizing with his sad sack parents.

Eventually we'll enjoy his work without the taint of sadness.  In the meantime...

World Book Night 2012: A Raging Success

April 23rd is the day Shakespeare was born, and the day he died.  Cervantes also died on April 23rd, and UNESCO marks it as World Book Day.  This year, volunteers in the UK, Ireland, the US, and Germany spent the day giving books away.  I don't know how others fared, but Becky and I had a hell of a time.

In the United States, 53% of males and 39% of females are re-incarcerated after they're released from prison.  The recidivism rate for inmates who read in prison drops to 20% (couple that with a GED, and only 4-5% of inmates return, but our fucked up prison system is a post for another time).  So Becky decided to drop a box of Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle at a women's detention center in downtown Miami.  

It was all razor wire and defeat, smaller and dingier than it looks from the highway (you drive past it all the time on I-95), but that's no reason not to deliver books with a smile.

So... How's the Writing Going?

Well. . . I'm in bed at ten.  I set the alarm for five am.  If I'm lucky, I'll have two hours to myself before Dylan gets up.  I wake up around midnight on my side, my hip in a pool of cold wetness, wondering if I've pissed myself.  My bladder is bursting so it's entirely possible.  But I wasn't drinking (and even at my most drunk I've never pissed the bed, I've just heard that's what happens, and that's the first bleary thought I have, I'm not even drunk), I wasn't dreaming that I couldn't find a toilet (which is what I dream about when I need to get up and pee in the middle of the night), and if I pissed the bed then why would I still be able to get up and pee?  But my bladder is sizable, so maybe I have enough storage capacity to piss the bed and still need to use the toilet.  Maybe this is just a surprise my body has unleashed as I approach forty.  Maybe all forty-year-old men start pissing the bed, but they're ashamed of it so no one talks about it; it's just something you discover alone, in the cold watches of the night.

Shaq: Uncut... or is he?

I often forget how special Books & Books is.  Every bookstore is not minutes from South Beach or Venetian Pool.  Every bookstore does not get shoppers like Sir Paul McCartney, Michael Moore, and Shakira.  Every book store does not host author appearances with Bill Clinton, Barbara Walters, and Shaquille O'Neal.

Does Clinton do candid shots?  Of course not. . . only if you're Becky Quiroga.

Yet there's a dark side to the celebrity-studded bookselling lifestyle, one you've probably never heard about but which claims the good moods of half a dozen booksellers a month.

Don't see it?  Let's take a closer look.

Yes, that's right: autograph theft.

If Shaq knew people were doing this to his books, he'd go Punisher.

I first came across this phenomenon when Gina and Dann Gershon visited for their book Camp Creepy Time in 2007.  For a few years, selling signed copies online became a lucrative business for us (if you're interested in a signed copy, email me; I'll hook you up).

I can't find my picture of Gina Gershon dressed as a naughty nurse for the appearance, so enjoy this instead.

Apparently, Gina Gershon's autograph is worth money on its own and paying $16.99 for the hardcover children's book would blow the resale margin all to hell.  It's much easier to take a razor and slice her signature out, making the book unsellable and killing our sale in one shot.  Thanks, asshole.

Since then, we've found slashed copies of Jerry Rice's Go Long, Alonzo Mourning's Resilience, Elizabeth Berkley's Ask Elizabeth, and Condoleezza Rice's No Higher Honor.  Apparently, sports figures, people with the last name Rice, and people from the movie Showgirls are high-risk groups.

Why not just steal the book altogether?  Sure, it's easier to sneak a piece of paper out the door but I think the real reason is that the thief likes to rub our faces in it.  There's a place in hell reserved for this perpetrator (perpetrators?) wherein paper-thin slices of skin are removed from portions of his/her body over the course of years.  S/he will plead for death but find none.

But that's just my opinion.  In the meantime, I'd like to catch this asshole in the act.  It would almost be worth him doing it, just to catch that asshole doing it.

Girl with the Pigeon Tattoo & Anna Dewdney, Too

Yesterday at Dylan's after-care program, two girls with eyes and a flair for the obvious told Becky she was the most beautiful girl they'd ever seen.  As Becky walked away, one of them pointed.

"Llama llama!  Llama lama!" she shouted.

This led to a tour of Becky's arm, a few minutes of book talk, and the near kidnapping of two girls from Dylan's after-care program.  

I'm sorry, kidnapping is never funny.  There was nearly a Forceful Non-Blood-Related Family Expansion, but we had to leave in a hurry to beat traffic.

Llama llama is a character from a beloved series of picture books that have been flying off the shelves for about seven years now.  Is it llama llama's sweet naivety?  The fact that llama llama can always count on Mama?  Or some magical combination of charming rhymes and gorgeous illustrations?  Whatever the secret, llama llama is one of Dylan's most-requested bedtime stories.  When author / illustrator Anna Dewdney came to Books & Books, Becky had the spot on her arm all picked out.


The tattooing has already been covered in depth by Publishers Weekly.  I love the picture I took with Llama Llama Red Pajama in the foreground, tattoo artist Dicky Magoo in the center, and the Miami Dolphins playing in the background.  I especially love that we just returned from our honeymoon and the last name "Curtis" was all over the place.

But since Shannon Maughan was so thorough, I'm reduced to this:

Look how cute!  Buy it.

I said, BUY IT.

Please buy it?

I'll also share some pictures which weren't in Publishers Weekly.

Signed by the artist; that arm is worth money.

There was a good deal of blood involved, but Becky was determined to get llama llama picture-ready.

All that scrubbing was worth it to see the look on Anna Dewdney's face.

This is why Dewdney looks so pleased; sweet job, Dicky Magoo.

One Reason My Wife Is Awesome

Yes, she is.

On Sunday night, Becky got back from New Orleans for the American Booksellers Association's 2012 Winter Institute.  Exhausted from meetings, loggy with shrimp po' boys and beignets, it was all she could do to keep her eyes open long enough to tumble into bed.  Mere hours later, she was sitting at the computer in her pajamas, on her day off, listening to the ALA webcast.  She had an open purchase order for Books & Books ready to go.

If you check out Newbury Winner Dead End in Norvelt and Caldecott winner A Ball for Daisy, for example, you'll notice that both titles say "special order - subject to availability."  That's because they're in reprint.  Every time a book wins an award (or an author dies), you can bet the publishers and wholesalers will go from hundreds of available copies to nothing in a matter of hours.

But we've got them.  We've got the winners, because Becky is so dedicated that she spent her one day off in two weeks ordering them.

If you wonder what makes Books & Books continually successful. . . well, sure I'm biased.  But Becky Quiroga is a big reason.

The Girl with the Pigeon Tattoo Gets a Tractor to the Forearm

Barack Obama's daughters loved Drummer Boy so much that when Obama wrote a children's book, he picked Loren Long to illustrate it.  The result is Of Thee I Sing:

Buy it, coz.

But toddlers couldn't care less about that.  When you need to entertain a five-year-old, you want something a little more funkengrooven.  You want a friendship between a tractor and a calf.

If that sounds dumb, it's because you're old and your heart is a brittle, numb thing.  It sounded dumb to me when Dylan requested it as his bedtime story, the first time I ever watched Becky put him down. When she read the gentle purring of the tractor's engine that lulls the little calf to sleep, Otis's putt puff puttedy chuff, I fell in love.  Being a family is mostly making things up as you go.  There are very few moments you feel you're getting it right, while they're happening.  That was one.

Also, when it comes to matters of the heart, Becky is my Otis and I am her calf.  In fact, when Loren Long scheduled appearances at Books & Books Bal Harbour and Coral Gables, I wanted to ask for the calf to go with her tractor.  It would have represented her saving me, us as a couple, and the father I became when she brought Dylan into my life.

But I didn't ask, so we'll have to come with another couple tattoo.


You know how this thing with Becky's arm works, right?

First comes the drawing.

While Mo Willems scribbled the Pigeon in about twenty seconds ("The thing is to capture the energy!"), Loren Long was meticulous.  He stopped several times.  He'd stand, step back, stare, erase, and start again.  "I wasn't this nervous for President Obama," he said.

Then comes the tattooing.

Dicky Magoo of Tattoos by Lou (seriously) loves the challenge of replicating other artist's work, trying to get the same effects in tattoo as they did in whatever medium they originally used.  He did Becky's first illustrator tattoo, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and returned to the scene of the ink for Otis.

Side Note: That last link is to the Los Angeles Review of Books, where Lisa Jane Persky writes, "Becky Quiroga’s “Very Hungry Caterpillar,” drawn on her arm by Eric Carle himself, is a piece of body art that soccer moms from Sandusky to Timbuktu would find it [SIC] hard to disapprove of."  But people see what they want.  The more ink Becky gets, the more strangers are wary of the badass tattooed chick.  Few look closely enough to see that they're pictures from children's books.


So it's a tattoo artist's rendering of an illustrator's actual drawing on Becky's arm, get it?  Stop saying, "I guess you'll never wash that arm again."


Becky was able to get Otis between Loren Long's first and second appearances, so he was able to see the finished product.

Pictured: Natural behavior.

Long was soooo nice.  He's the type of nice guy who's so nice that I walk away thinking, "Why can't I be more like him?"  Most people who meet me immediately think I'm an asshole.  Which is 1) not far off 2) why hand-selling books is difficult for me.  So this asshole thinks I should buy "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet;" whoop-dee-freaking-whoo.

The Otis tattoo made Shelf Awareness as well, on September 19th.  Yes, that's how topical I am.  More to the point, that's what Miami Book Fair International 2011 did to me.  It took over all three of my lives, the internet one, the writing one, and the breathing one.

With the presidential credentials on her forearm, can Maurice Sendak's Max be far behind?  Are you listening, Mr. Sendak?  Say the word and we're Connecticut bound.

Miami Book Fair International Day 6: The Party Starts Today

This year opened with Christopher Paolini's Inheritance on Sunday afternoon.  The Miami Writers Institute, Student Literary Encounters, and the heavy hitters - Dorothy Alison, Harry Belafonte, John Sayles, Ron Suskind, Calvin Trillin - have been hitting all week long, but these next three days are key.  The Street Fair is its own monster, and Books & Books is 90% ready.

It's ten minutes to six am.  Becky and I are dropping Dylan off at school in the dark so we can finish the job of getting the tents set up.

Some retailers have the holiday season; at Books & Books, we have Miami Book Fair International.

Tensions are high.  Illness runs rampant.  Three of us have almost quit this week, including me.  When the gates open in about four hours, we'll find out if it's all been worth it.

There have been more cancellations.  I read an apologetic email from an author just recovering from the flu.  This author knew that flying down to Miami for the weekend would cause the flu to return, so... he can't make it, sorry.

Not everyone at Books & Books is or has gotten sick but there's a fairly sturdy illness making the rounds on some key players.  I worked a sixty-hour week, spent a miserable Friday night and all day Saturday in bed, and then worked another sixty hour week starting Sunday.  14 and 16 hour days are just as beneficial for your health as you'd imagine.

I'm putting more effort into stocking Authorton McFluwhiner's books than he is into promoting them.

As Becky says, "His loss, don't it so personally."  I don't.  Much.  I just get annoyed when people have the kind of jobs where they can make those choices.  I wonder what it is about me that I have never had the kind of job where I can take a sick day.  It is me, refusing to take one?  People call out all the time at every job I've ever had, so maybe it is just me.

Anyway, I've gone off topic and now the alarm is going off.  My point is, there's stuff I wanted to do.  I haven't written in forever, and not just blogs.  I've been sleeping in until seven, because waking at five would be pushing myself too hard, and this cold keeps nipping at my heels.  I wanted to morph that post about the wedding books into something Book Fairish for The Heat Lightning, because a ton of those authors are appearing.  I wanted to interview someone awesome like Vera Brosgol or Hillary Jordan for THL, too.  I wanted to drink juice and eat soup.

Well, I did that last one.  Just not enough.

By the end of every day, I'm in that mode where I have to keep moving, because if I stop, I'll crash.  It was over a hundred degrees in the tent yesterday.  I think I lost ten pounds of water.  I know I didn't pee once.  It's supposed to rain all weekend.

Wish us luck.

The Best Day of My Life

Living in a culture were everything is the "Best.  _______.  Ever." makes it tough to call something your best experience without it getting swept up with the rest of the hyperbole.  I'll take that risk and dub my wedding day the best day of my life.  

A nice surprise from the folks at Onondaga County Parks and Recreation greeted us on Thursday.
My sister's wedding gift was renting Camp Brockway on Thursday so we didn't need to rush the day of the wedding.

A good thing, since it took us six hours to put together everything we've doing over the last few months.  

Becky and I drew and labelled place settings.  Becky and her sister made dozens of flowers from book pages.  That's 10 pounds of Starbucks Espresso Roast holding them in place (whole bean; we have coffee for months).  We wrapped the books so they'd match and printed labels so our families would know what they are.  Those are Proust Questionnaires in lieu of a guestbook, which led my seven-year-old 2nd-cousin to say, "Why do we have a test?".

Our troubador, who performed Bob Dylan's You Ain't Goin' Nowhere.  

Our troubador, canoodling our officiant from the First Nation Church.
These folks are also known as Becky's parents.

Sometimes you need a little help getting dressed.

It might even be a two-parent job.

But it's worth the effort when this is your ring-bearer.

When getting married, try not to have too much fun.

I DO!

Our menu was pulled pork sandwiches, mojo chicken, tomato-cucumber salad, mashed potatoes, and cornbread.
I love me some Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.  You can order the sauces and spices to your home, or you can make them yourself. Their cookbook recipes are the same recipes they use in the restaurants, and they taste just as amazing.

Nonpareils baked our cupcakes: Red Velvet with cannoli cream filling and ice butter cream frosting, Chocolate Espresso   filled with espresso ganache and topped with mocha butter cream frosting, and nut-and-raisin-free Carrot Cake topped with cream cheese butter cream.  Basically, you're looking at a lot of cream.

We weren't quite sure how we were going to pull off the cake-toppers, images of books we love cut from old publishers catalogs, and mounted on our cobalt blue.  Jen from Nonpareils suggested spray adhesive on card stock, then attaching those cards to coffee stirrers.  It worked like a charm.  They're stacked on books from my parents' shelves, wrapped in white, cobalt, and black.  I'm pretty sure Jen suggested that as well.  She was awesome.

We let folks take the leftover barbeque, but we took the cupcakes for the road.  I wish I had one right now.  

After our first meal as a married couple...

We repped 305 during a Pratts Falls photoshoot.

When we returned, we found many in the family had already left.
These are my parents, trying to sneak off.  Luckily, we caught them before they missed our first dance.

Becky thought we should do Judson Laipply's Evolution of Dance.  If you're unfamiliar, check it out.  You're in for a real treat. 

We rehearsed for several hours and several Coronas one Saturday night and decided that, apart from "The Worm," we could pull it off.  For the couple of weeks leading up to our wedding, we rehearsed when we could squeeze some time in.

As an introduction, Becky told our families, "We couldn't pick one first dance, so we picked them all."  

I must say, we rocked the Evolution of Dance.  Our families could not stop talking about it.  For six minutes, Becky and I were dancing machines.  Unfortunately, no footage of our efforts survive except for these grainy, poorly-lit, disposable camera shots.

The twist...

The Brady Bunch...

The Billie Jean...

The Robot...

This shot is clear proof that we know how to "Ride the Pony," but this next photo is a real shame.

We couldn't do The Worm, so this a picture of the up-rock grande jete salsa break we did instead.  It's a sort of Bob Fosse meets break beats meets Cuban Casino.  We couldn't decide on a name, we just called it, "that thing," as in, "Oh man, that thing you guys did?  It was fucking awesome."

Dylan finally met his cousins, Rylee and Sophia.

In lieu of keg stands, they did trash sledding.
Also, I got to use "in lieu of" twice in one post.

Then folks got changed into casual dress for the after-party, and to get the place cleaned up. 

While Becky ran around the mountain screaming, "I'm maaaaaaarrrrrriiiiiiieeeeed!" I stayed on the dance floor, rocking out to Becky's Ipod.  

It wasn't a good look for either of us. 

Ultimately, a good time was had by all.  Becky and I got cupcakes, Dinosaur Barbecue condiments, and some awesome reading material in the form of our family's answers to their Proust Questionnaires.

Some people took home paper flowers in glass vases filled with coffee, some took paper lanterns, and everyone got a book or two.

At this point, the only Curtises left were me and my brother. . . and Becky. 

A wedding doesn't make a marriage.  A marriage is created day-to-day as you and the person you've chosen learn what your love will hold.  Sometimes it means living in the moment.  Sometimes it means putting the mistakes of past relationships to rest so they don't cloud this one.  Sometimes it means having coffee brewed when your spouse wakes up.

But now is not the time for wondering about how our relationship will evolve, it's the time for enjoying each-other.  It's been thirty-seven lovely days that feel like an eye blink.  I intend to play the newlywed card for as long as I can.