Beginning the Year with Words
Welcome to my first Weekly Update of the year. I post these because they provide a good way for me to hold myself accountable, both in terms of meeting my writing and reading goals, as well as making...
View Article“One forges one’s style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.” – Émile Zola
On Tuesday night, I forged out five hours after an already stressful day at work to make a last ditch effort to complete a chapbook manuscript in time for a looming submission deadline. I slammed into...
View ArticleLots of Love to Give
On this Valentine’s Day, as I sit here putting together my weekly update, I want to take a moment to send some love. It’s been a rough start for the year and will likely continue to be rough for a lot...
View ArticleGoing to the Movies by Myself
Going to the Best Picture Showcase has become a tradition for me. I love seeing the movies all at once and seeing good storytelling on the screen. But this year has been a strange one, in that...
View ArticleJust Keep Swimming
For the past, oh, year or so, I’ve been telling myself, If I can just get past this project or trip or ordeal or whatever, then things will mellow out and I won’t feel so overwhelmed any more. But when...
View ArticleCatching up on rest after all the FOGcon fun
My weekend was full of FOGcon in all its geeky glory. Lots of fun and thinking about speculative literature and movies. Lots of food and drinks and karaoke. It was wonderful and exhausting to the point...
View ArticleShe is Beautiful – A Walk Along the Coastline
Sunday I participated in the She is Beautiful race for the fourth time in a row. It’s one of the most delightful races I’ve been to, with beautiful women of all ages streaming along the Santa Cruz...
View ArticleLittle Disappointments
The writing life is full of its disappointments. The words are never quite the gossamer things they were in your head. Projects you spend days, weeks, years on don’t always come to fruition. The work...
View ArticleAll the Miles I’ve Travelled
Over half of last week was consumed by as work trip to Michigan. I flew in and out of Chicago and then drove across Michigan visiting industrial facilities (something I find so interesting). Over the...
View ArticleThe Voices of Spring Mother Tongue
Last night, I slipped out of my routine and to check out the Well-RED poetry showcase, featuring poets published in the Spring Mother Tongue anthology at Works/San José. The event was hosted in part by...
View ArticleSo this is what exhaustion feels like
Last Tuesday, I participated in Get Lit #10 at Ale Industries in Oakland. This is a great event for two (of many) reasons — first, it hosts a ton of great writers who are encouraged to read something...
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Running and feeling strong and beautiful
Saturday was the She is Beautiful 5K and 10K run in Santa Cruz. This is the third year that I’ve participated (starting with the 5K the first time and the 10K thereafter) and it’s always a fabulous...
View ArticlePoetry all the time
Over the weekend, my mom and I did a sleepover with the babies (i.e. my niece and nephew), who we read to and played with and climbed all over me like a jungle gym. It was a delight, as always. Other...
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Burning Tales
On Saturday, I attended the one year anniversary of the Burning Tale open mic, which was held in what is my new favorite venue, Studio Bongiorno. The studio features a fantastic mix of the beautiful...
View ArticlePlaying a game of catch up
What I’m Reading It’s still poetry, poetry, and more poetry, which you can see on my Instagram. But I’ve also started reading the first few chapters of In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination by...
View ArticleEnding Poetry Month with a Bang
and by bang, I mean the pounding of my fingers against the keyboard as I desperately worked to finish the number of challenges I set for myself at the beginning of the month. Sunday, I travelled up to...
View ArticleLegacy of Poetry
The Center for Literary Arts at San Jose University (SJU) hosted Legacy of Poetry Day at the Hammer Theatre on Thursday. The event started off with music and presentations of theater and folkloric from...
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Taking in the Sun
My weekend was filled with sunshine. My sisters, mom, niece, nephew and I spend Saturday on the beach enjoying the sun and sand and surf. The babies had so much fun splashing their toes in the clear...
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Rage Writing Through the Block
It was a frustrating week in writing, one of those weeks where you keep trying different routes to get into the words, only to come up against another wall. One night this week, I sat with a set of...
View ArticleTime Flying By
I could write about my birthday celebrations last week and wading in the river until it soaked my pants and enjoying family and friends, but I’m currently too dazzled by the fact that it’s going to be...
View ArticleI really don’t know how to write this post
The recent mass shooting in Orlando is taking up much of my heart and soul, so I’m putting my usual review down lower in the article and skipping to links I’ve found to be important and/or helpful....
View ArticleThe Goings On
Oh, my. I’ve yet again skipped a week of my weekly updates, which makes them more bi-weekly for the month of June. The goings on are going on — mostly a lot of trying to get writing done and then binge...
View ArticleSo, life
The week of Fourth of July, I alternated between lounging with family by Clear Lake to hanging out in a camper cabin on the coast for some writing and reading R&R (which I may or may not write a...
View ArticleThe Mondays Ain’t So Bad
Over the weekend, my family and I celebrated my niece’s birthday. She’s four years old and such a wonderful little princess monster. I’m back in the office after a work trip and the weekend and it’s...
View ArticleThe Big News: Pantheon forthcoming in 2017
Pantheon, my chapbook of poetry based on a series of Our Lady poems has been accepted for publication and it forthcoming from ELJ Publications in August 2017! Each of the poems speaks to a female pop...
View ArticleMoving Slow
It was a mellow week last week. I gave myself space for that, just sitting around and watching TV and old movies. I particularly loved binge watching Stranger Things — creepy and nostalgic with amazing...
View ArticleNothing Comes of Nothing
I felt like I was hermit-ing myself away this week. I don’t mean that just in the sense of hiding myself from the world (because when I think about it, since I spent time with my sister on Monday and...
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Moon Glowing and other things
Glowing with the Moon is among my favorite open mic events. It’s a summer event, hosted outdoors by Lorenz Dumuk at the beautiful School of Arts & Culture @MHP in San Jose. The combination of the...
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All Womyn’s Showcase
Admist a great many other things that happened last week, on Sunday I attended and performed at the All Womyn’s Showcase — which featured five hours and more than 20 performers of poetry, music, and...
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Writing in Chaos
Although I’ve pursued the more solitary act of writing poetry and fiction, I’ve been interested in the process of filmmaking since high school. The collaborative nature of the medium, in which a...
View ArticleSomething About Something
Between multiple birthdays, a baby shower, going to press at the day job this week, and now starting to feel energetically off (and maybe getting sick) — I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed and a little...
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Some thoughts on recent days
I was going to go into more detail, but the short version is I got a new hair cut and color, went and picked out some pumpkins with the fam, and am now resting because I’m fighting off a potential soar...
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Returning to Bird by Bird
I returned to Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life this month, although looking back I’m not really sure why. I knew I wanted to read a writing book and this was a book I...
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Coming Home
For the past several weeks, I’ve been avoiding writing much of anything, either here on my blog or poetry and other projects. I’ve been overwhelmed following the election and also busy spending time...
View ArticleReordering and Facing Change
Over the weekend I got a gumption — wouldn’t it be a great idea to rearrange my closet, flip-flopping it, so that the office supplies and the clothing would switch places. (Since, I don’t have a...
View ArticleMy Top Ten Blog Posts from 2016
I published 82 blog posts in 2016, including this one. More than one per week, which is not too shabby, but not too great either. In terms of numbers, my most popular (or most read) posts were as...
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Breathing in the Cold, Crisp Air
As we drove along the dark roads under the sheltering shadows of trees, the face of a mountain rose up before us like a monolith, ghostly in the blue moonlight, while the stars sprinkled the...
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Looking Back on 2016
Just about all the 2016 in review posts I’ve read so far have begun the same way: 2016 sucked, but there were some good things, too. I feel everyone on that sentiment. If I look back — past the...
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The 15 Minute Rule: Goals for 2017
This is the second year in a row that I’ve been hesitant to set forth concrete goals for the year, paranoid perhaps that if I set down anything specific I won’t complete them (a strange paranoia,...
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2017 in Review
It’s been a rough year — and I know I’m not alone in expressing that sentiment. Putting aside the politics and news stream (which has been a constant barrage of stress and frustration), if I were to...
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Goals for 2018
During the month of December, I had a vast number of projects and deadlines going at once. What kept me from collapsing into a quivering mess from being so overwhelmed was taking out my physical...
View ArticleWrite in the Now: NaNoWriMo 2019 Week One Check In
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is in full swing, with writers around the world diving into their novel or rebel projects. Words are spattering themselves upon page like rain — either in...
View ArticleThe Annual Experiment of Renewal: Thinking About My Goals for 2020
I’m an optimistic soul. I tend to be flooded with ambition at the beginning of each new year. THIS will be the one, I tell myself. This is will be the year when I will do better, be better, accomplish...
View ArticleMy Top Ten Things from 2019
Here doth exist a video in which I talk about my top ten favorite things from last year — books movies, games, travel, writing stuff, and more. The hardest part was choosing a single novel and poetry...
View ArticleDealing with Mental Exhaustion
Over the previous two weeks, my day job has been eating my brain. During this time, our leader was out for medical reasons — and so, faced with an an oppressive and immovable deadline, I was working...
View ArticleOn Reading and the Writing Life
Apparently, there’s communities of folks making Book and Authortube videos, in which they essentially talk about books, writing, and publishing. Since I’ve been wanting to get back into making videos,...
View ArticleHitting Different: NaNoWriMo 2020
Last year, I jumped into National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in the hopes of washing myself of self doubt and depression resulting from years of struggling through a novel that just wasn’t...
View ArticleTWELVE is Available & Other Goings On
Twelve: Poems Inspired by the Brother’s Grimm Fairy Tale is officially available from Interstellar Flight Press. I mean . . ., okay, technically, it’s been out in the world since September. I just...
View ArticleDiving into the Deep
I recently rediscovered the joys of swimming in the ocean. In Northern California, this means plunging into the Pacific, which is bitingly cold. The water when it first hits your feet is almost...
View ArticleOn Making Two Games at Once and Other Creativities
Sometimes you need to move at a slow and steady pace towards progress, dipping your toes in the pool and inching in little by little until you’re used to the chilly water — and sometimes you need to...
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