Tag: Ask Me Anything

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and just like that, it’s June

I’m not really sure where January, February, March, April and May have all gotten themselves off to, but I hope they’re having fun.  It seems like just a day or two ago I was struggling to remember to write 2017 on things instead of 2016 (or the inexplicable occasions where I wrote 1996….what?), and here we are on the first of June.

We sent May out with a bang though.  My niece graduated high school on Tuesday.  She is the youngest of my brother’s kids, and I couldn’t be more proud of the woman she is becoming.  The school she graduated from is one of the top 1% of schools in the country and her classmates are all amazing students, most of whom will be attending four year universities and colleges in the fall.

I got back from all of that frivolity last night, and when I woke up this morning it was June.  Already, my calendar is jam packed for the month.

babf_logoStarting this weekend when I will be at the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley, California signing (and selling) books.  I will have copies of my two novels, Forever and Through Shade and Shadow as well as my small collection of poetry.  Sale pricing is $12 each for the novels and $2.50 for the poetry collection.

I can take cash, credit cards and paypal.  It should be a fun day for the whole family.  With all of the vendors and authors, there should be something for everyone!

San Francisco Pride is at the end of the month, for a completely different festival to bookend the month.  Pride likewise has something for just about everyone.  If you come out to one or both days of Pride remember to wear sunscreen, dress in layers, wear comfortable shoes, and please consider dropping a dollar (or more) into one of those pink buckets.  Every penny goes to support the organization that creates the festival and/or the organizations that take care of our community.

Somewhere between those bookends, I will be taking a couple of days to head out to Yosemite with my mother, to enjoy some nature and some truly breathtaking views, like this one, which I took on my last trip to Yosemite in 2010.

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But for now, I should go pour my second cup of coffee and get to working the day job.  Hope you all have a pleasant day!

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out from under

This has not been a good week.  I get migraines, and this week I had one doozy of a migraine. It came on during the day at work Tuesday, and I left work early.  Stayed home on Wednesday, tried to work on Thursday, but only got to about 1pm before I called it quits and came home.

Yesterday was the first day I had some relief.  I worked from home because I was afraid the sunlight would set it off again.  Today I am finally out from under it.

That means that all my grand plans for getting stuff done during the week didn’t happen and that leaves me with a fair amount of things to do this weekend, from Pride prep to writing and housework.

I suppose I should get busy doing some of that.  But before I go, let me remind you that I will be holding down a table at the Bay Area Book Festival on Sunday, June 4!  If you’re in the SF Bay area, you should come down and say hello!

Hope all of you have a fantastic weekend.  I’ll pop in with something for Mother’s day tomorrow.

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donations, community, partners

Sometimes I think that the Mondays that follow productive weekends are harder than the ones that follow lazy weekends. We’re heading into the time of year when I have little time for lazy.  There are obligations and volunteer duties, family time and other crazy stuff.

I have volunteered with San Francisco Pride for better than ten years, working in the Donations Partners department.  Essentially, we are the people who greet festival goers with big pink pickle buckets asking for donations to help support the parade and festival. This year I have stepped up to manage the Donations Partners.  It’s a huge task, and a lot of responsibility, but I confess that I love the challenge.

You may wonder where that donation money goes.  And who are all of those people with the buckets anyway?

We partner with community organizations, non-profit groups that work with the LGBT community in some way.  They come from all sections of the spectrum, from groups that work with the homeless, to social organizations, from youth groups to cheerleaders, from churches to other religious groups, from local community centers to drag queens and their courts. Each of these organizations provides volunteers to do the bucket thing.

It’s a long day of work, but each hour that a volunteer works earns money for their organization.  At the end of the festival, the donations money is tallied up, and some of it goes back to the Pride organization to help pay the bills.  The rest is divided up into an hourly rate, and each of the partner organizations gets a grant based on the number of hours their volunteers put in.

Unfortunately, the work puts a bit of a quash on my writing.  Which was my long winded way of saying that I didn’t get much writing done this weekend.  But I did get to take my 68 year old mother to a tattoo shop for the first time in her life.  We took my niece to get her ears pierced.  It was an experience, I’ll say.

But no writing.  I guess I’ll have to try harder through the week.  I need to finish my short story so I can start editing for the anthology, and then I can get back to the world of Shades and Shadows.

 

 

 

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gregarious green

There’s something about going green…I mean, it’s not like it’s strange these days to see people with wild colors in their hair.  On a daily basis I see blues and pinks and purples in a variety of shades and styles.  But green isn’t as common.

I’ve always loved the color, from a faded mint to a dusty sage to a deep emerald to a dark hunter…it reminds me of the earth, of things that grow, things that are natural.

I tried it out back in February, when I wore a green wig to a convention.  I got so many compliments that I determined that one day I’d just do it. Go green.

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as just grabbing some green hair dye.  No, not when I’ve been dying my hair some shade of red for at least 6 years (since the last time I decided to go nuts, bleach it and do fun things with it).  I took me 3 bleachings and a color stripping to get to a blond enough blond that I could dye it green.

I had some moments of apprehension.  What if my work place wasn’t as progressive as I thought it was?  What if I hated it once it was done?  Didn’t stop me though.

Funny thing, this green hair.  I find my self-confidence bolstered,  I find myself happy when I look in the mirror, I find my anxiety levels a little less than they were.  And, people seem to like it.  Sure, I’ve had a few people look at me as if I’m nuts, but most of them smile and nod.  Some even tell me they like it.  People at work love it.

That too makes me smile.  Sure, I’ll be forty-nine in September, but numbers will never prevent me from seeking out what makes me happy.

I hope you can say the same.  Be yourself and put a little color in your life!

In the sequel to Through Shade and Shadow, we meet Zero, a teenage character who expresses herself through wigs that range from the mundane to the outlandish. None of them have been green yet.  I may have to fix that!

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on the need for coffee

I’m a big coffee drinker.  I like mine dark and fairly strong.  And yes, I freely admit my caffeine addiction.  A day without coffee is a day without sunshine.

As I have many friends who are also authors, it is fairly routine for us to get into conversations where we imagine ourselves in the worlds of our characters, or in the worlds of favorite books.

Recently we started talking about dystopian futures and post-apoc worlds.  It got us talking about living without the common modern conveniences we take for granted. We talked about our survival skills, how we would cook without stoves and ovens and microwaves, how we would hunt or fish, etc.

There was one thing we all agreed on, however.  That one thing was coffee.  We could survive any apocalypse, as long as there was coffee and a way to make it. How about you?  Coffee-fiend? Or is there something else you can’t do without?

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#amwriting and ask me anything

I have to admit that I love my weekends, especially weekends like this where I get to live in my pajamas and my big fluffy bathrobe and write without worrying about other commitments.

I’m working on the second book in the Shades and Shadows series at the moment.  I’m nearly through what is technically the first draft, in that large sections of this were written quite a while ago, but the plot has shifted and turned since then, so I’m working on stitching things together and cutting stuff out.

Of course, I will need to start at the beginning again and make sure I’ve weaved in all the ends and that the story is smooth, complete before I send it off to my editor who really does a good spit polish on the whole thing.

Oh, right.  In other news, I woke up yesterday morning to a coveted five star review from Reader’s Favorite, a web site that many Indie authors seek a good review from.  You can read that review on the Reader’s Favorite website.  I was fortunate enough to also get a five star review from them on Forever.

So, since I’m writing, I’ll be sitting at the computer for quite a bit of time today.  Have anything you want to ask me?  I can talk about my “process” such as it is, or answer any questions on Forever or Through Shades or Shadows, though I reserve the right to let you know the answer to your question will be found in the next book so as not to spoil folks.

The comments section is open, ask away!