A Weekend in Pictures!

Words can be boring. Here's my life in pictures instead :)

First, some of my favorite things: playing with my munchkin and my favorite tree out my window:

This weekend was busy completely clearing out two rooms in our house (we're getting new carpet, getting ready to move):

And then there's all the stuff currently nesting in our living room, to get rid of in another garage sale, or Goodwill, or recycle:



I worked on my outline for my book:


and organized the tons of books I got from the university library in categories for my thesis:


And last but not least, several lovely things that have come in the mail, let's call them belated Christmas presents: kick butt new purse (it's not nearly so shiny in person) and Florence and the Machine album :)

One Seriously Cool Book Trailer - Tiger's Curse

So I just came across what I think is the best book trailer I've ever seen--Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck. So often book trailers are full of amateur footage or lots of boring still shots with ok music in the background. But the book trailer for Tiger's Curse seriously kicks it to the next level:

Tiger's Curse, by Colleen Houck from Sterling Publishing on Vimeo.

And Out It Goes!

So, my novel GLITCH is officially out on submission to editors! Agent Dude has gotten some bites on it, and now it's just wait time (in my head I'm assigning a month or two wait time so I don't go bananas in the meanwhile). I'm wiggin' out a little bit, but mostly am keeping my brain busy with other things like finishing my thesis proposal and getting the house ready to sell. And devouring newly obtained YA lit:

Unearthly by Cynthia Hand: This is one of the MOST GORGEOUS COVERS ever. Seriously, maybe you have to see it in person for the full effect, but the matte purple backround, raised image of the chick in the foreground and silver script--so gorgeous. And the book inside sounds pretty exciting and I've heard good reviews too. I've been excited about this one for awhile and bought it yesterday. I'm diving into it tonight!

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl: I know this was released a few months ago, but I just finally got my hands on a copy from the library. I liked the first one, we'll see how the author's keep up the tension and story in book II.

And last, thoughts from the always-inspiring-and-sanity-reminding Natalie Goldberg:

The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world, and why not finally carry that secret out with our bodies into the living rooms and porches, backyards and grocery stores? Let the whole thing flower: the poem and the person writing the poem. And let us always be kind in this world. -Writing Down the Bones (120).

Zen & A Tree in Winter

This month long break from grad school has been immensely different than I'd anticipated. Full of tumult and crash and quiet. It's been far less about getting work done and instead working on me. Working on some transformative practices (meditation, reading and soaking in Natalie Goldberg and Alan Watts), and in a strange way, learning how to let go and not think all the time, letting go of that chaos mind, or at least, like Goldberg says, developing a relationship with it.

I barely got any fiction writing done, and only now, a week before classes start, am diving deeply into working on my thesis. Oh well, 'the best laid plans of mice and men'...

There's this tree outside my window that I've been spending a lot of time with. In Writing Down the Bones, Goldberg's friend says to her: "Natalie, you have relationships with everything, not just people. You have a relationship with the stairs, your porch, the car, the cornfields, and the clouds." (118). I love this, and it's not in some cheesy new-age way that we are one with everything in the world (well, in part it is exactly that, but not in the cheesy way!). So me developing a relationship with my tree is about... well, I don't know exactly what it's about, part of the beauty of all this is not having to fight to put things in words anymore.

I might not know what it's about, or what it means, but I love looking at this tree. I love the way, that no matter how heavy the branches, every one curves up at the end of their arm, reaching up toward the sun. I like it's naked winter form, the way the tiniest wind can shake all the hundreds of little twig branches, different ways all at the same time. I like the way that near mid-trunk, there are these two branches that look exactly like a ballet dancer or a gracious host or entertainer with arms outstretched to the tips, beckoning you forward.

Anna and the French Kiss - Review

First of all, I LOVED THIS BOOK. I have not found a contemporary romance so compelling in a long while. The characters are complex, but the author slowly builds a layered picture of all thier underlying motivations, even the unconscious ones that compete with what they know they should do. Not to mention that the relationship between Etienne and Anna is sexy and realistic and full of delicious tension. Even apart from the romantic aspects though, this story was just so well-written. Paris was more than just a romantic backdrop, it was a character.

My one hick-up with this was it's title--Anna and the French Kiss--it makes it sound so fluffy and kinda cheesy, but this book was so much more than that! Paris was a real place, full of culture, and landmarks and, I don't know how to describe it other than to say it had a real sense of place. Perkins made it come alive instead of doing what so many others have done with location-based novels. It's great the way Anna gets to know the city slowly, the culture shock she goes through, and the way she slowly develops a relationship with Paris itself. So, so good. It's the first book I've read in 2011, and I think that it's one that will stick with me and end up in next year's top ten list! Four stars!

Click here for John Green's YouTube post about this book. Nerdfighters forever!

Winter Meditation

My house is the opposite of serene lately, but I'm still trying to find some meditational space. We're getting new carpets in half the house, after which, we want to put said house on the market, so we've been doing some deep cleaning, organizing, and--the most cathartic--getting rid of sh#*. We've taken two trunkfulls of old paper and cardboard to the recycling center, and have a living room full of stuff to sell in a garage sale, and if it doesn't sell, cart to goodwill. We're finally not holding on to random nicknacks or old school folders, only keeping the really meaningful things, and chunking the rest. Lightening the load feels excellent, makes me feel like we're ready for fresh beginnings, for change.

I'm in mid-process of change too, trying not to figure out what I want, but how to want what I should want. I want love and compassion to grow in me organically, not trying any more to force myself to feel something, which only produces guilt and bad feelings. So I'm trying out meditation again, or as Natalie Goldberg describes, getting to know one's own wild mind.

I love the trees in winter, and winter as a whole in Texas. It feels clean, fresh. I know those are adjectives usually reserved for spring, but winter in Texas is a whole other animal. The grasses turn golden in the hills, like fields of wheat, and when the wind blows, they move like an ocean. It's quiet, serene. I want to let it soak into me, to live in my expanding chest. It's beauty, and it is very good.

Between Stasis and Expansion

A week far too crazy and emotional. New year really starts tomorrow with the first Monday of the year. I don't know if it's the nature of the holidays or the fact that artificial cycles like holidays we mark on a calender have real psychological effects, but the end of last year was... momentous, I guess that's the word for it, when everything that had been in stasis is shaken up, tumbled around, the after-effects of which are still rippling through the pond? I find more and more that life is about learning to live in the balance between order and chaos, stasis and change, structure and infinite expansion.

We're doing a lot of purging around here, taking trunk-fulls of old paper and cardboard to the recycling center, putting stuff aside for a big garage sale next Saturday, listing furniture on Craigslist--taking all the tangible steps to lighten the load of STUFF to prepare to sell the house. It feels cathartic getting rid of the old, and looking forward toward the new.