She Who Controls the Spice Controls the Universe
AS MANY OF YOU PROBABLY ALREADY KNOW, Dune by Frank Herbert (and the three sequels) is one of my favorite books of all time. It has a lot of stuff going on that’s worth loving (and a few problematic things but that’s for another conversation), but one of the main things that drew me to it was […]
The Pie of Life
So, I graduated on July 18th, and immediately followed up with two weeks of non-stop family visiting from out of state/country. Once things were finally back to “normal,” I realized I have no idea what my new “normal” looks like. I’ve made a pact with my classmates to finish a solid first draft of my thesis […]
Burning Bright in a Garbage Fire World
I recently attended and returned from my second residency at VCFA (and my first winter residency). It was in many ways even better than the first residency, and in some ways it was less, but it was incredible to be surrounded by so many creative, insightful, inspiring people, especially after the year we’ve all had. […]
Thoughts from the Inside of an Egg
(Yeah yeah I haven’t updated in ages. 2016 sucked, end of story.) Of all the slang to come about in the last decade, “no chill” has bee the best phrase to apply to my general state of existence. I’ve always been an excitable, overly anxious person, over-thinking, over-processing, to the point of wild emotional instability. […]
I’m floating in a most peculiar way.
(This is not a memorial post or an obituary. There are hundreds, thousands of those published by now. This is a personal reflection on what David Bowie meant to me, individually. Your mileage may have varied.) It took me a while to get my thoughts around David Bowie’s passing. See, he was an unusual important […]
Happy New Year
It’s still the beginning of the academic year for lots of people. It’s the beginning of Persephone’s descent into the Underworld. It is the end of the Days of Awe–the stretch of days between Rosh Hashannah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur. To me, it feels like new beginnings. Maybe it’s because these past […]
2015: The Empress (Part 2)
(For Part I, click here) All my life I’ve been enchanted by the mystical, mythical world. I love, even if I do not wholeheartedly believe in, the idea of fortune-telling and psychics and second-sight. (You may have gathered that from my tarot-based book series.) I’ve even joked with my friends that I collect psychic readings, […]
Secrets! Or: I Got Fired From My Day Job and I Liked It
I’m going to tell you a secret: I think I’m actually a fucking AMAZING writer. Did that make you feel uncomfortable? Did you just think, “wow, someone’s full of herself”? I wouldn’t blame you if you did. We’ve all been programmed to think that if a person is proud of their ability, then they don’t […]
Spring, Sprang, Sprung
It’s officially SPRING! No, don’t look at the snow outside. Or the thermometer. Or the clouds obscuring the precious, golden, lemony sunlight… it is officially spring! JUST GO WITH IT. Spring, like many things in our calendar and in our world, is rife with symbolism and meanings that have been liberally applied by human beings since […]
The Art of Giving Up
Have you ever tried, and tried, and tried, until you were blue in the face, and all the world felt stale and useless and without-purpose all for the fact that you could not succeed and it was making you miserable? And have you ever, actually, given up? Because I did. And as it turns out, […]
Abusing the Use of Sexual Assult in YA
If you haven’t seen this article on The Victimization of Lara Croft, read it. It brings to mind an issue I have, specifically about YA novels, that has been bugging the hell out of me lately: there is too much god damn sexual assault. Before you get upset and say “it’s a real thing and YA […]
5 Reasons Why Aspiring Authors Should Not Trust The Internet
Call me a hippy, or an optimist, or whatever you like, but I have a personal rule about any kind of advice: if it makes you feel good, take it; if it makes you feel like shit, it’s probably wrong. At least, it’s probably wrong for you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve […]
On the Road Again
I’d like to take a moment here to wax philosophical on the idea of The Road to Publication. Depending on how long and deep you dig into the over-flowing informational pool on “What to expect when you try to publish a book,” you’ve probably come across all kinds of stories, and have been told to […]
In Like a Lion
It’s MARCH. WHAT? Winter has been shockingly–shockingly–mild here in Buffalo. For the first time in years, we can accurately say at the beginning of March that spring is right around the corner. For me, spring always brings with it a surge of passion and determination. My To-Do list quadruples, but so does my Got-Done list (and […]
Wailing at the Wall
Life has been a whirlwind. Let me tell you about the past few weeks as succinctly as I can. Nothing major has happened, not by certain standards anyway. But my brain and my heart have been on a strange journey that can’t quite be captured in words. Perhaps that’s the reason behind my blog-silence–it’s certainly never […]
On Words, Human Creativity, and the Ineffable
Friday night I was driving from South Buffalo to a friend’s house in Amherst. The radio was playing all kinds of awful music, so I turned it off and just drove. I kept being struck by how familiar the roads were–the roads I grew up with, that I know like the back of my hand […]
The Artist as Batman
Like most of you, I have a day job. I happen to work at a pharmaceutical telemarketing group from 8:30 to 5, not using my degree in media study whatsoever. Maybe I’m using a little bit of my anthropology minor when dealing with a bazillion unpleasant receptionists (however, the cross-cultural appearance of generic job dissatisfaction in a particular segment of the working population is […]
Things Never Said
If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. ~Meister Eckhart I was inspired by a post on twitter that my friend made about writing to her old college professor, the one who helped her to believe in her writing. It reminded me of the people in my life […]
Con brio
Imagine that the world revolves around music. Some of us play, some of us listen, most of us are critics or fans in one way or another. We exist in an auditorium with a stage that, over time, has evolved to become almost infinite. Not only infinite, but open to anyone, at any time. The […]