After the publication of Soul Kitchen and before completing the next planned Liquor novel, Dead Shrimp Blues, I became unsure that I was ready to visit the post-Katrina places this novel needed to go. Due to this uncertainty, recurring health problems, and business conflicts, I severed my connection with Random House and am currently taking a hiatus from fiction-writing. (Before doing so, I published the Liquor-related novella D*U*C*K and the short story collection Antediluvian Tales with Subterranean Press, and hope readers will check them out.) I do hope to return to the Liquor world one day. In the meantime, I'm still writing short nonfiction pieces, including guest op-ed pieces for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and an article on the lesser-known sweets and desserts of Louisiana for Chile Pepper Magazine.

I'm also doing freelance editing, sometimes known as book doctoring. While my previous work as a professional editor is limited to the two Love in Vein anthologies, I have edited manuscripts for friends who subsequently found agents and publishers, and the clients I've had so far have been pleased wth my work. My service includes an extensive line edit of your manuscript (correction of punctuation, grammar, syntax; suggestions for improving word choice and sentence structure; notations on sections that are unclear or extraneous) and a detailed written evaluation of how I believe your manuscript's plot, characterization, and general structure might be improved to increase its chances of being published. If interested, please visit my Book Doctor Page.

I truly appreciate all the help, kindness, and encouragement I have received over these past two extraordinarily difficult years. Friends and readers have kept me afloat and made it possible for me and Chris to purchase a new home in the Central City neighborhood of New Orleans after losing our previous one to the failure of the federal levee system. Chris is enjoying great recognition and success as the head chef of The Delachaise, and was named Best New Chef of 2006 by New Orleans Magazine. It's still a rough time, but we're surviving, and we remain deeply committed to the rebuilding and rebirth of New Orleans. I hope you do too. If so, please spread the world that while our city is not OK, it is alive, kicking, and still well worth visiting (and living in).

Thanks for reading.

Poppy Z. Brite
September 2007

11/06/07

Updates to News, Cats, Bibliography