My nice publisher C&R Press is offering another giveaway of my book, The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious, over at Goodreads. The giveaway closes in six days, so you should enter.

If you’re like me, you might not enter contests because you figure you’re not the lucky sort.

I know some lucky people. Sometimes I think that should make me lucky by default.

I have a friend, for instance, who won her entire honeymoon trip to Jamaica, plus a vacuum cleaner, a crate of floor polish and a lifetime supply of Tupperware.

I have a cousin who, after a lifetime of playing the lottery, finally hit it big last year, a few million dollars.  This is the pride of my family, which has a long history of bookies and numbers-running.  (I didn’t know bookies were illegal until I went to college. Until then, I figured they were like lawyers and accountants and that most families relied on them for late-night advice.)

One of my neighbors, a lifetime steelworker and union head, invested a few years ago in a bar in Tahiti. The bar did really well and now my neighbor lives in Tahiti, drinks his coffee from a coconut, and gets massages three times a day.

“Dumb luck,” he called it, but I think he was very smart, Tahiti being Tahiti and all.

And then there’s my friend Joe.

“You’ve got to play to win, sweetheart,” my friend Joe used to tell me.

Joe worked a deli on 83rd Street.  I used to go to that deli when I lived in New York.  Joe had been working there 20 years. He loved Powerball. He never hit, but he was always sure he was close.

“This time I feel it,” he’d say.

Joe made the best egg on a roll in town.

I loved Joe because he always remembered my name and he always asked about my mother and if I didn’t come around for a week or so, he noticed.

This made me feel I mattered to someone on days when I felt I didn’t matter much at all.

“I never win anything,” I used to say to Joe and I still say to whoever asks, but when I think about it, it’s not true.

Friendship, even the tiniest most fleeting one, is its own prize.

Also, I’ve won stuff.

Here’s a list:

*  A Ouija board.

I won this at a bingo at St. Regis Catholic Church in Trafford, Pa. when I was around 10 years old. Seriously. A Catholic church. With nuns. Priests. Exorcisms. Someone missed the irony back then.

*  A collection of poetry cds.

I won this when I called into a public radio station in New York and rattled off the names of five Beat poets. One of the cds featured a recording of Walt Whitman’s voice, which was magic because Whitman sounded exactly like Allen Ginsberg, one of the Beat poets whose name I rattled off. This is before Walt Whitman’s voice was used in a Levi’s commercial to sell jeans and became slightly less magical.

* A basket of wine coolers.

I won this at my 10th high school reunion. It was the only high school reunion I ever attended. Why I went to this reunion, I’m not exactly sure because I’ve never been sentimental about high school and I really hate any kind of event where you have to wear those “Hi My Name Is” tags. Still, I looked under my chair and there was a lucky number and so everyone at my table celebrated. We cracked open the wine coolers and drank them on the spot. I think we all needed to drink a lot. (Also, I’d like to thank my friend Sarah, who told me recently that wine coolers are rightfully called “cheerleader juice.” My life is better for knowing this.)

* $5 on a Scratch-Off Lottery Ticket.

Actually, this happened to me more than once, given that my family (see “bookies”) was prone to inserting scratch-off lottery tickets into every holiday card. Usually I lost the tickets before I could cash them in, but a win is a win.

*  One delicious bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream.

I won this for being the master of the chicken dance at an office Christmas party. I’m a very good chicken dancer.  I may have mentioned this.

***

What have you won in your lifetime? Write and tell me about it.

And if you haven’t won anything yet, remember to enter the Goodreads contest for my book. It’s not Tupperware, but still.

The odds are good — 10 free copies — and like Joe said, you got to play to win.

Full Pint Brewing is sponsoring the dual-book launch for Dave Newman’s The Slaughterhouse Poems and my The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious Saturday, June 29. How awesome is that?

Full Pint is in North Versailles, Pa., where I lived until I was in third grade. North Versailles wasn’t much about craft beers back then. My family lived on Bevin Road, a really steep hill not far from the Dolly Madison Outlet. Dolly Madison had cheap day-old bread and egg buns and chocolate pudding pies my dad would buy in bulk.

By the time I was old enough to notice, my mother had made my father quit drinking beer. He replaced it with pudding pies. He loved chocolate-pudding lunch pies so much it embarrassed him. He would hide in the dark in the kitchen to eat his pies and think about everything else in life that didn’t give him that kind of pleasure.

All this has me thinking about ways to map a life. I can map my own life, for instance, by snack cakes and beer. I remember my first Zinger more vividly than I remember my high school graduation. And I remember my first taste of beer.

Firsts are always important, but some are more memorable than others.

When he was very young, my dad drove an Iron City Beer truck.

My uncles all drank Iron and they’d sneak me sips. Sometimes I think they ashed in the beer first to be sure I didn’t like it too much. They didn’t mean anything serious by it. They were just rough like that. These were steelworkers and cops and numbers runners and men who didn’t seem to like their wives.

They didn’t need to worry about me liking Iron City back then. If you haven’t had Iron City, suck on your car keys. It’s pretty much like that.

As a kid, I thought it tasted like pavement and feet. I would know because one of my older cousins took after my uncles and would sometimes push me face down on the sidewalk and make me lick his feet.

It helped to remember I was adopted.

Sometimes my uncles would pretend to pick me up by my hair.

“It’ll make your hair strong,” they said, and flicked their cigarette butts off my grandmother’s porch.

“Iron,” they called their beer.

“You have to be strong to survive,” they’d say about the world.

It would be many years of keggers and frat parties — where I never gave much thought to the kind of beer I was flicking quarters into — before I’d come to appreciate great beers like the ones at Full Pint.

Some personal evolutions are easier to map than others, too.

Still, if I’m far from home and end up in a bar where they serve Iron City, I’ll probably order one. I’ll drink it for sentimental reasons. I’ll tell everyone around me I’m from Pittsburgh, that this beer is home. Then I’ll look for something wonderful from Full Pint.

It’s important to remember where you come from, you see.

***

The book launch for Dave Newman’s The Slaughterhouse Poems and Lori Jakiela’s The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious will be Saturday, June 29 at 7:30 p.m. at East End Book Exchange in Bloomfield, Pa. Free and open to everybody. Also featuring readings from New Yinzer columnist Adam Matcho and other special guests, as well as paintings on exhibit by Lou Ickes, cover artist for both books. Beer provided by – you bet! – Full Pint Brewing. Book signings and reception follows the readings. For more information, contact East End Book Exchange or e-mail dnewman1000@aol.com.

If it’s hard to be a saint in the city, it might be even harder to be your own true self in the suburbs. Here’s an excerpt from a piece the nice folks over at Superstition Review ran recently. (Thanks, Superstition Review!)

I worry a lot, you see. 

***

I liked your first book better.

This would be great if you added some wizards.

I should write a book, let me tell you.

How much did you get for that?

What did The New York Times say?

So how’s Oprah?

Where can I get a copy of that?

You know that girl who had sex with a famous writer and wrote about it and sold like three zillion copies? You should do that.

What will you do when your children/mother/father/rabbi/priest read this?

What would possess you to write something like this?

I like Nicholas Sparks.

You look better in your cover photo than you do in person.

Want to read my novel manuscript?

Snookie’s memoir was pretty good.

Wow a book. That’s something. Good for you.

Seriously. Wizards. Can’t go wrong with wizards.

Pittsburgh folks — Hope you can make it out to a dual book launch celebrating the release of my new memoir, The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious, and Dave Newman’s first full-length poetry collection, The Slaughterhouse Poems. It’s on Saturday, June 29 from 7:30 p.m. until 9:30 p.m. at East End Book Exchange in Bloomfield.

Here’s a press release with all the details:

Pittsburgh Authors Lori Jakiela and Dave Newman

Celebrate Release of New Books

Pittsburgh authors Lori Jakiela and Dave Newman will celebrate the release of their latest books at a party Saturday, June 29 at 7:30 p.m. at East End Book Exchange in Bloomfield.

The event is free and open to the public, and will feature readings by Newman and Jakiela, as well as a few special guests including New Yinzer columnist Adam Matcho. Paintings by Pittsburgh artist Lou Ickes, who did the cover art for both Jakiela’s and Newman’s new books, will be on display. Booksignings and a reception follow the readings.

Jakiela’s new book, “The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious” (C&R Press), is a follow-up to her 2006 memoir, “Miss New York Has Everything” (Hatchette).

Best-selling author Stewart O’Nan calls “The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious” “fiercely sad and heartbreakingly funny.” Jane McCafferty, bestselling author of “First You Try Everything” and more, calls Jakiela “a highly original writer who commemorates life with great humor and a radical, poetic simplicity that allows you to see your own life anew.”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said “The Bridge to Take” is “so good you’ll wonder why (Jakiela) isn’t the literary toast of the entire country by now. This is a book about taking care of a dying mother, a writing teacher’s lament about the next generation and a sideways love story. …and while this memoir may not be the last word on the volatile subject of mother/daughter relationships, it is fair to assume it is already among the most honest and best written this decade.”

Newman’s latest book, “The Slaughterhouse Poems” (White Gorilla Press), is his first full-length poetry collection.

Bestselling author Don Ray Pollock (“The Devil All the Time” and more) calls Newman “an immense talent.” Legendary poet Gerald Locklin says Newman is “the best writer of his generation.”

Poet Michael Casey, author of “Check Points,” calls “The Slaugterhouse Poems” “a great read. It is funny and grim. It is also meaningful, having a historical setting where even Volkswagen America is letting workers go and where an underemployed teenager is the richest man in the barroom. I have to call it dramatic too and truly memorable; I trust the movie option is now in the mail to the poet.”

Dave Newman is the author of the novels “Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children” (Writers Tribe Books, 2012) and “Please Don’t Shoot Anyone Tonight” (World Parade Books, 2010). He’s worked as a truck driver, a book store manager, an air filter salesman, a house painter, and a college teacher. More than 100 of his poems and stories have appeared in magazines throughout the world and his work has been widely anthologized, most recently in “Beside the City of Angels” (World Parade Books) and “The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary Poetry” (Autumn House Press).

In addition to her two memoirs, Lori Jakiela is the author of a full-length poetry collection, “Spot The Terrorist!” (Turning Point, 2012), and several poetry chapbooks. Her essays and poems have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Quarterly, The New Yinzer and elsewhere. She teaches in the writing programs at Pitt-Greensburg and Chatham University.

Jakiela and Newman, who are married, live in Trafford, Pa. with their two children. They have a lot of books in their house.

For more information about the book-release party, contact Lesley Rains at East End Book Exchange, 412-224-2847 or books@eastendbookexchange.com. To contact the authors directly, e-mail dnewman1000@aol.com.

###

Harry Crews used to say this about writing:  “You wait until you got time to write a novel, or time to write a story, or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read – if you wait for the time, you will never do it. ‘Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week.”

Trying to be a writer or any kind of artistic type while balancing groceries and bills and dishes and trash day and raising kids and showering every once in a while – plus making time for cotton candy, which is, of course, delicious– can feel impossible.

Especially the raising kids part. There’s so much guilt there.

“Shh, mommy’s working,” I’ve heard myself say for too many years now.

I worry what this does to my kids, how they take that in and in.

My son, in an end-of-year report, wrote this about my work life:  “Sometimes it seems like my mom never gets time off. She’s always working.”

By which he means I stare into my computer. By which he means he hears me say “not now.” He hears me say, “seriously, I’m trying to think here,” and, simply, “no.”

No to whatever it is he’s asking, to whatever it is he needs at the moment, to whatever it is I think can wait.

It hurts my lungs to write that.

Most true things hurt to write about.

How can I be sure about what can and cannot wait? How can I know what really matters?

Joan Didion, in her wonderful book Blue Nights, talks about this, too. After the loss of her daughter Quintana, Didion runs back through time, worrying over the moments when she paid attention to her work, the page, and shut her daughter, her heart-work, out.

“Shh, mommy’s working,” she said.

Having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside your body. The writer Elizabeth Stone said that and it’s true.

I love my children.

I need to write because writing is what I do, another kind of out-of-body heart.

There’s no way to balance this.

One of my writer friends who doesn’t have kids sent me an e-mail the other day. “For when you get away from your writer’s desk,” it said.

I read the e-mail on my phone when I took a break from mopping up a puddle of apple juice I’d just spilled on our not-so-mop-able old kitchen floor.

My writer’s desk is covered with bill baskets and Highlights magazines. I write when I can, where I can, which is rarely at that desk these days. There is no photogenic, iconic writers’ nook in our house. My husband, a writer too, and I – we write where we can, in the bathroom if necessary.

“How do you balance your life/writing/work/kids/etc.?” someone asked me in an interview recently.

It seems like such an easy question. My husband and I understand each other. We do our best to give each other time. We read for each other, too, which saves an incredible amount of bumbling-around. We’re very honest with each other and will tell each other whether something is working or not. It helps a lot.

As parents, we know how important it is to love and still corral our kids. But sometimes it’s easier than others.

One day when it was my turn to write, my husband said, simply, “go.” I went down and locked myself in my office. I swooped everything off that writing desk and settled in, determined to knock out 10 pages, just like that.

A short while later, I heard footsteps. My son and daughter snuck down and stood outside my office door. They kept knocking. They kept shoving notes under the door.

“We’re hungry,” my daughter said.

“No, starving,” my son, who’s older and more sophisticated when it comes to manipulation, said. I knew they’d just had lunch.

“We’re scared,” my daughter said.

“Terrified,” my son said, even though I knew my husband was right upstairs doing dishes and had probably glanced away from them for just a minute.

Finally, when I still didn’t open the door, my daughter said, “You know, there are bugs out here,” and my son said, “Locusts.”

There are no locusts in our basement.

I love my children.

I love my children.

But sometimes it’s important to not open the door.

Tell me how  to live with that.

Thank you to the Post-Gazette and Books Editor Tony Norman for this wonderful review of “The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious: A Memoir”  —  

“Let’s face it. Not every book written by a  Pittsburgher is brilliant. But Lori Jakiela’s painfully funny memoir “The Bridge  to Take When Things Get Serious” is so good you’ll wonder why the Trafford  resident and Chatham University professor isn’t the literary toast of the entire  country by now. This is a book about taking care of a dying mother, a writing  teacher’s lament about the next generation and a sideways love story.

“Part of the unabashed fun of reading this book is seeing familiar landmarks  through the eyes of an exceptionally talented local writer who is only one New  York Times book review away from a national reputation. While this memoir may  not be the last word on the volatile subject of mother/daughter relationships,  it is fair to assume it is already among the most honest and best written this  decade. Reading Lori Jakiela’s memoir should be on every Pittsburgher’s bucket  list. > Available everywhere.

Here’s an excerpt from my essay, “It’s Over Before You Know It.” The nice folks at Hobart published it in their May issue. It’s about writing, mortality, and of course red cake. Get a bigger piece over at Hobart.

***

Last week, my birthday passed without time to celebrate. No cake, no party. I’ve been working a lot.  My daughter refuses to believe I’m a year older because I didn’t blow out any candles.

“If you don’t blow out your candles, you’ll never be 49,” she says, a good thought.

I don’t worry about age, though I spend money on a moisturizer by a company called Bliss. The moisturizer’s called “The Youth as We Know It.”  I like companies with a sense of humor about laugh lines. I like companies named for happiness.

Still in this, my last forties-year, I do wonder about time–the way it passes without me realizing it, how much I’ve wasted by focusing on the wrong things or the wrong people or the wrong landscapes.

“It’s over before you know it,” my father used to say about living.

“Patience, jackass.” My father used to say that, too.

Every year for my birthday, my mother would make my favorite cake–red devil’s food with maple frosting. It’s a difficult recipe, at least that’s what she always said.

“Can’t you pick something else?” she’d say, and sigh.

“For Christ’s sake, do not stomp in the kitchen,” she’d say when the cake was in the oven. “This one’s sensitive.”

“We’ll see if it comes out this year,” she’d say every year, though every year it would come out just fine.

I’m not sure what the fuss was about, except that the recipe came from my grandmother, who was notorious for leaving out ingredients so no one could duplicate her recipes, which meant no one could ever replace her.

“It’s about immortality,” I said the other night to my friend, Ed. We weren’t talking about recipes. We were talking about writers, why some people wrote so many books.

“People shouldn’t write so much,” he said, but I disagree. I think writers  should write as much as they can. Not because it makes them immortal, not because, as Ed would say, they’d be trying “to write for the ages,” but because writing is work and it’s what we’re made to do. It gives us purpose. It’s useful.

It says, “I was here. Maybe this life mattered a little.”    Read more and get the red cake recipe at Hobart.

Goodreads is giving away five copies of my new book, The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious.

For serious.

Here’s the Goodreads promo:

Be one of the first to read the new memoir from Lori Jakiela, THE BRIDGE TO TAKE WHEN THINGS GET SERIOUS. A follow-up to MISS NEW YORK HAS EVERYTHING, Jakiela’s critically-acclaimed first memoir,  THE BRIDGE TO TAKE WHEN THINGS GET SERIOUS is the funny and heartbreaking story of a woman who returns to her small hometown to care for her dying mother and finds herself healing instead. For fans of books like Anna Quindlen’s ONE TRUE THING and writers like David Sedaris, THE BRIDGE TO TAKE WHEN THINGS GET SERIOUS will “knock you out with its high energy, unstoppable humor and stirring tenderness,” says Deb Olin Unferth, author of REVOLUTION. Bestselling novelist Stewart O’Nan says “Lori Jakiela is the queen of the wise one-liner. Fiercely sad and heartbreakingly funny.”

Hope you’ll head over to Goodreads and enter. Free stuff is good.