The Bookseller to the Stars Vs. Martha O'Connor

As the paperback of last year's Bookseller to the Stars Book of the Year "The Bitch Goddess Notebook", hits the shelves, I caught up with the author, Martha O'Connor for a little tete a tete about the book and revisit my world exclusive first ever review of the book, currently displayed on the author's own website. What I got was a truly original and heartfelt appasionata about Type 1 Diabetes, from which her young son suffers. He's a good kid. So, please take the time to read on and go out and buy this excellent work of fiction which I truly believe that in years to come, will become one of the Great American Novels.

The Synopsis

These are the confessions of The Bitch Posse. Cherry, Rennie, and Amy were outcasts, rebels, and dreamers. Their friendship was so all-encompassing that some would call it dangerous. This is the story of three women-as seniors in high school and as women in their mid-thirties-who formed a bond in order to survive the pitfalls and perils of their lives.

In the present day, one of them is a wife and mother-to-be, trying to live a "normal" life. One of them is a writer who engages in a number of self-destructive relationships. And one of them is in a mental hospital-and has been ever since that one fateful night fifteen years ago, when a heart-wrenching betrayal and the unraveling of relationships led them to a point of no return, where their actions triggered unimaginable consequences.

These secrets have torn them apart, while inextricably binding them to one another.

What happened to them? And can they survive their shared history, even today?

The Bitch Posse is an anthem for friendships that defy society's approval or disapproval. It's a novel of secrets, courage, sacrifice, and hope against the odds. It is both a journey back to being a girl on the verge of adulthood, and a journey forward, showing how the events of our past can unearth the best in us today.

Dare to jump in.

Here's Martha....

BTTS:

"How have the characters grown with you since publication?"

Martha O:

"It's been very interesting because the characters were once mine and mine only, and now they are everyone's. It's stunning how many women of all ages have told me they felt a very personal connection to the Bitch Posse, as if they represented themselves and their friends.

The girls do come by and say hello to me from time to time, but I can't get them to tell me what they're up to now. So I'm letting them have their way and stay quiet about such things. They always were a stubborn lot!"

BTTS:

"Who would you cast in a film of the book if you had any choice for any of the characters?

Martha O:

"I'm terrible at this stuff... If I am lucky enough for such an amazing thing to happen, I'd probably pass out first.

It's tricky because you have to find someone who can play both a17-year-old and a 32-year-old. I'm thinking maybe Clare Danes for Cherry? We could dye Hilary Duff's hair black, put her in Rennie's role and completely fuck her career. How's that? Or as a blonde, shecould be Amy and we could cast Christina Ricci as Rennie. Don't I suck at this?"

BTTS:

"Were they who you had in mind upon writing?

Martha O:

"Not at all."

BTTS:

"We spoke about this in San Francsico but has there been much confusion over about the book and it's different titles across the pond (the book is called "The Bitch Posse" in the states), do people there think the book here is a sequel?

Martha O:

"Yes, I often get this mix-up. There's nothing to be done about this, I guess! The UK publisher wanted to retitle the novel and since it's their market, I said okay. I do like the title and how it melds with the cover they created, which I think is totally refreshing and original."


BTTS:

"We get this a lot at The Bookseller to the Stars, American readers tend to get confused when they come here. Why do you think they do this to books in the industry?"

Martha O:

"Maybe cuz y'all have a different way of talkin' over yonder?"

BTTS:

"Has anyone ever come back to the states thinking that they have something else by yourself?"

Martha O:

"I have gotten a few emails about this, yes. After some initial disappointment, though, I've been able to convince them they've purchased a collector's item!"

BTTS:

"The bay area has a great tradition for angst ridden fiction, what local books have inspired you since you came to San Francisco?"

Martha O:

"You really must read the work of Stephen Elliott. It's heartbreaking and beautiful, unabashed, raw and gritty, yet so vulnerable."

BTTS:

"What other up and coming authors from the bay area have you met recently that deserve a mention?"

Martha O:

"Another Bay Area writer to watch out for is mystery novelist Cornelia Read. Her book, A Field of Darkness, comes out this spring."

BTTS:

"Your blog deals a lot with your relationship with your son and his battle with type 1 diabetes, which all your readers (including myself) believe you have so much heart for, just give us a description of just an average day you both go through and how it affects your life?"

Martha O:

"Thank you so much for those kind thoughts, Mark.

The diabetes has become part of our lives--an unwelcome guest in our homes, but one that's been here a long time, and is here to stay, like it or not. Type 1 Diabetes is an incurable autoimmune disorder that affects the pancreas. His pancreas no longer makes insulin and without it, he would die.He tests his blood sugar approximately 10 times per day by poking his finger with a lancet and holding the blood drop to a strip in a meter which calculates the amount of glucose in his blood. Most people's blood sugar is between 80-120.

Our son's target is 80-180. Below that, and he feels sick, woozy, and could pass out. This hypoglycemia can cause seizures and death also.

If he is low, he needs some sugar right away.

Above that, and he needs extra insulin. High blood sugars damage capillaries and are what cause the devastating complications of this disease.

It's a major balancing act, one that's impossible for even the biggest control freak in the world to do perfectly.

If his blood sugars are too high, he risks eventual organ damage, ketoacidosis, and eventually, coma and death.

He was in serious diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) at diagnosis. Putting it bluntly, he was a few hours from coma, a day or so from being dead. So DKA scares the hell out of me.

That's why he is still on a shot of long acting insulin, even though he is on an insulin pump, so he always has at least several hours of insulin on board. He also takes some basal insulin via the pump and tells the pump to deliver extra insulin when he eats.

In the past, he would take his insulin via a shot, sometimes as many as 8 times per day. However, he now has an insulin pump and only takes one shot of long-acting insulin per day.

This pump has improved our lives immeasurably. Every three days he must rotate the site at which the pump infuses insulin into his body, which still involves a needle (a bigger one than with the shots) and is about a forty minute process, but it still beats shots.

He always has to be conscious of his blood sugar. It could go down too low with exercise or could go too high with adrenaline. The long term complications of type 1 diabetes include stroke, heart disease, kidney failure and blindness."

BTTS:

"How has his diagnosis affected your writing and the current book you are writing?"

Martha O:

"I went through a very long period of depression following his diagnosis. Or maybe not depression-more a lack of focus. It's normal. You've lost a way of life. Grieving, I've learned from other parents of children with diabetes, is absolutely essential. And then-you reach out a hand to someone new. You raise money. You do what you can do to be positive. I've met a lot of amazing people via this.

And some "friends" showed their true colors. One person told me I was making too big a deal out of diabetes. Try sleeping with your fingers laced between the dry, brittle fingers of your son, your baby, who's drifting at the edge of consciousness, whom you've just learned was hours from death. Whom you've been told you could lose at any moment if his brain swells before the doctors can bring his blood sugars down.

Try hearing the torrent of complications for the first time and hearing your son could die in his sleep if his blood sugar goes too low. Try learning that on average, people with type 1 diabetes lose 15 years from their lives. Then look in my face and tell me it's not a big deal. I'm glad this person expressed those thoughts to me, though. It told me I did not need to be communicating with the person any longer. I sincerely hope this person never has to deal with Type 1 Diabetes in their lives.

I want a cure more than anything. I'd trade in every iota of writing ability I had for a cure.

I am working on several projects right now. On the back burner is one about a child with diabetes. I would like to really hit that one head-on when I feel much stronger about this. I believe a book dealing with this topic should make the reader come face to face with the complications. And right now, I'm not strong enough to do that. I will someday though."

I was on a lunchbreak back in January of 2005 when I happened upon an advance reading copy of this book. The cover attracted me more than anything else. For a proof, this is good sign.

A lot of ARC’s or “proofs” come to us with artwork or distorted/washed-out versions of what they are planning and none of us even give the quickly bound pages a second thought, let alone a claim until one of them wins an award a year after it has already gathered dust in the office. Then we fight and argue about who considered perhaps... maybe reading it first while the Jamaican Jehovas Cleaner snarfs it and it it turns up on Ebay.

The ones from Orion Books are particularily basic but the illustration on Martha’s book really caught my eye though, the rest of the book was a scary bright orange. Three girls, very attractive with edgy bangs and a synopsis with major attitude.

I actually sat on the book for a while and got caught up with other reading and trying to get my own book together or at least begin to form some sort of assemblance of order. It wasn’t until March that I actually picked it back up and threw it into my bag for a trip to Toronto, where I was to celebrate a very bitter and cold St.Patrick’s Day.

When I hit that first prologue though, the “Consumer Product Information” section, the same one that attracted my curiosity few months before, I couldn’t put the book down and I got myself hooked upto Martha’s fine and beautiful prose, complete with agnst ridden execution. In parts, the words flow like great poetry, a sonnet you could never forgive and promise someone never to forget. It has balls, in stacks. It’s offensive, it’s sexy, it’s arousing, it’s sad, it’s gripping but more than anything, important.

Mark my words, time will tell.


"The Bitch Goddess Notebook" by Martha O' Connor - The First Ever Review by The Bookseller to the Stars Dated March 2005

We all went to one of those schools, didn't we? The popular kids, the cliques, the bullying, the tears, the torment. I know I did and so, I suspect, did Martha O'Connor.

Chick-Lit. Now there's a topic. I can almost feel the nervous twitching of the buttholes of the large publishing houses at just the mere frightful whisper of the term. The book world, fickle and tormented in its own self, ragged in its urine stained winter clothes and pushing an old shopping trolley laden with old rubbish and a traffic cone, crawls out from under its rock after every Christmas, mumbling,

"Agenda, agenda. Summer promotional title to sell millions? Desperate for Richard and Judy's acceptance... Must see sales... Must see sales..."

So many female authors seem to have distanced themselves and their precious baggage from the tag these days, in fear to be associated with the Bridget Jones adaptations that have put Chick-Lit firmly and squarely into the stratosphere that is popular culture, giving it the long awaited iconic staus and tip of the glass of chardonnay it yearned for on screen. By the second of the films of course, it looks like Chick-Lit feels right at home in Hollywood, cosy with its slippers on and a nice cup of tea.

Everything seems rosy for now but to gain mass acceptance and to avoid the droning cynicism of the broadsheet reviewers back home, you must now submit like the slut you are to the slave names, 'genre fiction' and 'general fiction.' Lick my boots...

Then a book comes along that changes everything. It sets a whole new benchmark for "sassy" women writers and runs to a completely new ballplate, knocking over pathetic female characters in its way with its passion, attitude and clarity. The book that will do that and stick an icy finger up the ass of every unsuspecting and curious reader this year is "The Bitch Goddess Notebook."

Of all the publishers who have suited and booted for this year's assault on the Summer, Orion have a secret weapon up their sleeves and have truly hit the nail on the head.

The Bitch Goddesses are not Chick-Lit.

The Bitch Goddesses are not Genre Fiction.

The Bitch Goddesses are not General Fiction, brothers and sisters, but yet in so many ways, they are all of the above. A walking contradiction that will comfort you and make you respect the writer for what is an amazing debut. The heart and almost anti-relationship between the characters echoes of the hard schooling of our upbringing and has a sense of the dyke pulp fiction of the 50's and the Anne Bannons of this world.

Truly great contemporary feminism writing that spins subtle arias and tales of bobby socked beauty school dropouts, the pantyless Beebo Brinkers. It's storytelling that resonates some Machiavellian sense that this book will be a great modern classic in years to come, even if it means myself alone having to sell every copy to the hapless droning, promotion hunters that are so easily led,

"Here, have a taste of this sweet candy..."

"From which tree hast this befallen to my worn, rock scraped hands?"

Part intertwined friendship drama and part coming of age thriller, Martha's rock n' roll soundtrack followed me around for days as she namechecked and referenced the likes of The Sisters of Mercy, The Smiths and They Might Be Giants. Add a little touch of Degrassi Junior High and Mark's in nostalgia heaven. He's a happy man.

Ah, the eighties.... If this was a movie it would rock albeit a fairly difficult one to watch in its current format.

The three main characters are featured in both 1988 and 2003, each of them as their younger and older selves, so in essence this is 6 stories, but it's gripping in its reading and surprisingly easy to follow. Never has a book had me so eager to sneak forward and find out what has happened to each person.

But, you can't as all the stories are beautifully intense. I read it and had to read it again straight away. It's just so refreshing to see something come out with balls and spirit.

From the very first page, I was like,

"Fuck, this is good."

I really hope that this has a first class campaign behind it with some energy that the book deserves because with all the marketable dross and biographies about nobodies that came out last summer, it really stagnated the industry.

If I get to see "The Bitch Goddess Notebook" in the window of our vast bookstore next to the next Dan Brown and Michael Palin, I will have not have lost my faith in bookselling after all, thus dying a little happier.

As for the book, I'm not telling you what happens, hell, you can find out for yourselves.

"If you want something simple, you're in the wrong place. This is about revealing secrets, not tits and ass. Say it aloud: screw fairy tales and chick-lit and all forms of lying."

Stuck up middle finger punk fiction.

Martha is great for a quote and her blog totally rocks outside of the daily fight with Diabetes, she has great interviews with other authors (an idea which has inspired me) and she has great comment on culture, life and like The BTTS, the book trade... like this one about Success...

In January, the author went through another life test. One of the great things about living in the East Bay is its Eco-System and in particular, flooding.... California suffered huge flooding over the new year and Martha's family were hit pretty bad.

I am gonna let Martha herself describe the period through the power and technological advancements of cut and pasting from her excellent weblog.

Martha (dated Jan 1st): "We've been washed out of our home in Marin since yesterday morning at 5 AM. We live across the street from the Corte Madera Creek which hasn't flooded since the 80s but we were always aware it was a possibility. However, we had little to no warning of what was to come yesterday morning.

Having gone outside at 4:45 to check something in the car, I happened to see 10 inches of water in the driveway and 18 inch water rushing by in the street. My husband asked a passing firetruck what to do.

"If you have kids and want to get out, go NOW."

We took 15 minutes to pack up insulins, any clothing we could find, vital pices of identification and miscellany into large trash bags and headed back into the driveway with the kids. By that time the water was to our knees, to the kids' waists. We opened the car door and water rushed in, then we began to drive on the middle of the road, which had become a rushing river.

Cars floated by us but somehow we stayed the course, though the car took on a foot and a half of water and there were moments I thought we would have to abandon the car and swim. We finally got out though. If we had left even five minutes later we would have had to leave the car and be rescued.

We went back to the homesite yesterday.

Although we didn't take on water into the house (both our neighbor's did!) we have several feet of water in our basements and storage areas, the backyard is a lake, and the frontyard is a muddy wasteland filled with other people's debris and trash. Both cars are wrecked, although at least we have the other car to drive. (The hotel people let me shopvac out the water we'd taken on from the creek and I had to empty the thing 3 times).

It was a strange confluence of heavy rains and extraordinarily high tides. We received no warning other than the "in 15 minutes your street is going to be a full blown river." When we returned and spoke with the neighbor (who'd been forced to ride it out on her second floor) she informed us that the waves had crested 11 feet up into her pine tree.

Authorities had to evacuate the woman two doors down from us, along with her two sons, via boat, since she has special medical needs and can't be without medical access. Local businesses are devastated. Fences have come down, cars have floated down the street and crashed into other cars, a hundred year old oak crashed down in the local schoolyard, crushing the backstop to the ball field--I can't even describe it.

The kids' new Christmas toys that were in the basement toy area have been wrecked. In addition to many things we've stored there (we can't even open one of the storage areas as the items were shifted so much by the flood).

But we are alive.

Martha (dated Jan 2nd): We lost two large antique bureaus (standing in 4 feet of water, large pieces of the furniture warped and buckled), a good deal of books (some of them first edition collectible versions), papers, toys (including the children's brand new Christmas presents, a pool/airhockey table~played with only a few times, and dearly loved~! and a cardtable/chair suite for games and the brand new Boggle game sitting out, waiting to be played and never played, and tossed against the walls, mud and dice everywhere). I wish I could upload the images from the digital camera. It was like 27 large dumpsters had been unloaded into our storage room, they had been covered in sludge, and stomped on. That was where many of the above mentioned items were (even in socalled "waterproof" boxes).

Worst of all we lost many boxes of irreplaceable children's art work and school papers, at least a couple full years' worth of the children's creations from the early years of elementary school. Apparently they can try to "freeze dry" them for about $500 per box, which may or may not be covered by insurance.

It's depressing, I burst into tears today. Both cars are likely to be declared totaled. The one we drove out of the flood, that took on water, started to smell like a sewer pit this morning. We drove it anyway coz we didn't have anything else. The van, parked in the driveway, had taken on 4 feet of water. We drove it to the dealer late this afternoon and they are renting us their very last fleet car, a Town and Country van.

So, we are counting our blessings.

Martha (dated Jan 4th): I'm still in shock that this happened. What gets me is that public safety gave NO ONE any notice WHATSOEVER that this was about happen. Had we known, we would have moved stuff out of the way, moved the cars and gotten out.

We had 10 minutes notice, and that was only because we happened to be up and moving at 4:30 AM. We got our kids, our insulin, some clothes, and got the hell out.

Most of our neighbors awoke to a river outside their window, puppies wailing in crates in the basement as they were about to drown (both puppies were saved, thankfully), or dogs splashing toward their beds. What's more, a neighbor down the street called the sherriff at 1 AM to ask if they should evacuate and move their cars.

"No, go to sleep. It's fine."

Next morning they had lost both cars, their entire contents of their garage, and were marrooned on their second story. Sorry, but there are so many things about this that are so ridiculous, not least of which is the behavior of the insurance company.

Martha (dated Jan 6th): Our County Supervisor's office has adviced us to keep our ears wide open to find out when President Bush declares a state of emergency in the California counties affected by the floods. (Surely the man can do SOMETHING useful in his term in office, no?)

Gov. Schwarzenegger has asked the President to do so, and Sens. Boxer and Feinstein are pushing for it as well, but Bush hasn't yet made a move. Hopefully he will and then we can apply for aid from FEMA. Not clear yet on just what the aid is that's available, it may just be a low-interest loan, but it is worth it to apply, just to have the option.

And you need to apply QUICK because with any FEMA relief it's first come first served. So when we hear the news on the radio or wherever, our plan is to pull off the highway to the nearest public computer and APPLY.

I hope Bush comes through soon. People here are really hurting.

Don't get me wrong, we got it bad, but a lot of people did, and there were people who got it worse. A lady two doors down had to be evacuated by boat for medical reasons.

That could have been our son. It's scary.

Pictures of the damage at Chez O'Connor

Martha (dated Jan 21st): The devastation of this flood just hit me today, after several solid hours of spraying muddy/crappy sludge from ruined toys (which I don't care about~they can be replaced), books (which I don't care about, even the first signed editions), and old writings of mine and my husband's (like from high school and college~I care a bit about them, just for archival purposes~and many of mine are quite embarrassing~if there's a blacklist for certain publications, I'm on it for submitting such garbage... in those cases the flood may have been a blessing).

But the children's artwork~I care deeply about that. The artwork, most of it, just disintegrated when touched. We may be able to save 2-4 pieces per kid, per school year, by drying it and photocopying it. It is so sad picking up a beautiful valentine that says "I love you Mommy," and seeing it fall to pieces. Wet, tiny pieces, halfway digested by river mud and sewer seepage. You can't even tape them together. They're just gone.

It is just so fucking depressing. People have been generous and kind, and until now I haven't really burst into tears about it all (but some of my neighbors/friends have), but the kids' artwork--that's what really got me.

And I feel sure I won't be getting back to my writing until sometime in March. This stuff is just.. endless. Mud after mud after mud after...

I fucking hate this.

Wherever you are, go out and buy the book guys... it rocks.

Read an exerpt of the book Here

American Paperback Due June 16th