I've been busy for the past weeks getting a manuscript in shape for the publisher--so much so that all I can hope now is that it doesn't suck--but I hope to return to blogging soon. In the mean time. let me call your attention to "Some films in which Kitty Dawson appears," a chapter from Sarah Falkner's upcoming novel Animal Sanctuary which the Brooklyn Rail has put online. Sarah is my daughter, but my recommendation is completely objective. In awarding her the 7th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction, Stacey Levine wrote, "Sarah Falkner creates this work with a deeply-hued palette, incorporating specific notions of film theory, film stardom, visual art, human relationships (which in this text have no magical edge and are burdened by insanely difficult moments), and the ways in which animals are held under human control. Animal Sanctuary is an intensely focused, ambitious work with a wonderfully insistent sense of obsession. The novel brings together weirdly disparate elements in the same surprising way that life does. Returning continuously and seemingly helplessly to animals as a point of reference, Animal Sanctuary suggests that obsession may be the only way of pinning down the truth. This is a rich, interesting, multidimensional book that knows fragility and maps it."