That Bloody Girl

So, I started Without a Doubt , Marcia Clark's memoir of the Orenthal James Simpson murder trial, kind of thinking I had an idea of what went down. But, damn it, I was so, so wrong. First of all, let's address the negative media attention Marcia got throughout the trial. Oh, I'm sorry, a woman prosecutor is hard to swallow? What, can't comment on her questioning but oh, god, she changed her hair?!  Yeah, America. DEAL WITH IT. The most sickening part of all is that nothing has changed (see: media reaction to Hillary's pantsuits). It is unbelievable to me that something so benign as the reproductive organs of a particular person can completely paint the way the media portrays them. I guess it shouldn't be unbelievable. It's been happening this way for centuries. But, c'mon, aren't we all a little bit grossed-out by now? She is more than her hair or her clothes or her goddamn vagina. Get. Over. It. Anyway, moving on.  HOLY SHIT OJ ...

So, once again, I am behind. Blogging is something that I enjoy, but rarely make time for, and I am really going to try and rectify that for the rest of the year. I whittled down my reading list to sixty-eight books--I've read twenty-five so far--again, still hopelessly behind--which makes for about two books a week until New Years Day. I have plenty of books in my house to accomplish this, I just desperately need to make the time. I spent a lot of time at the beginning of the year chastising myself for not writing. And a lot of time in the middle of the year trying to find the motivation to write. Gonna be honest, friends, it isn't coming to me this time around. I have the whole book plotted out,  but when it comes to writing it, there is a lack of inspiration. It falls flat, and so I am thinking of setting it aside for a moment and focusing on my other great love--reading. Last time, I reacted to reading Jurassic Park . I seriously enjoyed reading Jurassic Park . If you h...

Just got home from a very long road trip following two months in Boise. I think I may have slept for twelve hours straight. Now, I am having carrot cake for breakfast--leftover from last night's pizza delivery--and amusedly watching my dog's holy-shit-we're-home, early morning shenanigans. My espresso machine is still in the car, but the whole thing is a moot point without milk, and I have none in my fridge. I have nothing in my fridge, except a large jug of purified water and probably some horseradish sauce. Before I left Boise and went on an insane road trip--Boise to Canton, Canton to Seattle, in six days or else because I had a job interview yesterday afternoon--I was thinking about starting to review--and when I say "review" I mostly mean "react"--the books I am reading here on this blog. Like I said, they would be reactions, more than anything. I am terrible at reviews. Usually, I don't do them at all, but the books I have been reading this...

I have officially started Book Two! It feels great to have a chapter down, but honestly, I am still feeling really overwhelmed. What if I can't do it again? What if I am taking on too much this time? Even though I have successfully written one good book that people are really responding to, I am still terrified that this little dream of mine--becoming a full-time, well-selling author--is just a fantasy. As much as I like having the freedom to create my own look and run my own social media, I worry that if I don't ever get a publishing company interested in me I will never make it. I want so much to do it on my own--well, with the help of some wonderful friends. But will success come my way? Clearly I worry and think too much. Maybe that is why I am a writer. I am excited about the story I want to tell. There are a lot of elements that I have yet to really hash out, but as with TSF, I know most of that will come along as I write. I'm going to be focusing on isotope analys...

So, here is a little snippet of what I have written so far of book two. It's short and my first draft, but I am finally getting started. Let me know what you think! The Skeleton Girls Sometimes I still dream about sirens. The echo of them—bouncing against houses, reverberating off of sidewalks and asphalt streets—a melody on repeat. The corresponding colors, the memory of them dancing, penetrating the black city sky, play like a series of disjointed home movies on the insides of my eyelids, haunting my sleep with the weight of melancholic nostalgia. I usually wake with a cool sweat dappling my forehead, names of lost friends on my lips, the vision of blood spatter dancing in my head. But, not tonight. Tonight there will be little sleep. And the sound of sirens will be reality, police and emergency vehicles rushing to another scene of another crime in this city. The blood spatter that will stain the streets will be fresh and fragrant, the body it came from still very much...

Well, I'm still insanely and upsettingly exhausted. I have a feeling that isn't going to change for a while. Yesterday morning I was up--I kid you not--at two. In the morning. Twointhemorning. And I didn't go back to sleep. My lovely friend had emailed me the formatted version of The Skeleton Friend, so early yesterday morning, I put it up on Amazon. And that was it. It was official. I wrote a book, and now you can buy it and read it and it's a real thing. It's something I actually did. Not just something I would talk about doing for years, not just something I would dream about at night while I waited for sleep--nope; it's a real goddamn thing. A real thing that I did. I just--honestly, I cannot. I cannot believe it. I wrote a book. And you can go read the book I wrote!   It's so crazy. I don't even know what to say about it, anymore. It's just fucking crazy. So, yesterday I was up well before the crack of dawn. I took Zoscha to the dog p...

Something new I am working on, just a little short story that I will have available for download before the end of February! Blue Lips My hands are cold. Freezing. The beds of my nails are purple, tiny vessels constricted. The blood is being drawn away from my limbs, being kept for the survival of my most important organs. My body reacts without context, and my fingers are chilled to an aching point while the rest of me is wrapped up tight in my coat. The rain is relentless; the city lights shining reflections in slick streets. There has been a death, on this Pacific Northwest night, and I have been called out to the scene; but, for the life of me, I cannot figure out why. I haven’t been a cop for two years now, and my pathology residency is still just in the hospitalist phase—just an intern in the lab, looking through the magnifying eyepieces of microscopes, trying to discern one type of tissue from the next. Every day I leave work with a neck ache and the soreness of stra...

I'm supposed to be doing this more. To be fair, technically this is more because, before my last post, I hadn't posted in almost two years. So, this is progress. It doesn't feel like progress, but it actually is. So, I spoke with my mentor today. We are getting the book done tonight for Kindle, so it should be available very soon--tomorrow is the goal--for download. I am going to make it for $5.99. Eventually, there WILL be hardback copies available--they are already formatted and ready to sell, but until I can buy a bulk batch, I won't be able to reduce the price to a reasonable level for all you lovely people that want one. So, look for that announcement in a few months. In the meantime, I am going to start writing more. I want to get at least one short story up a month. And, of course, starting today, my part of The Skeleton Friend is done--other than actually uploading it on Kindle, which takes very little effort or time. This means I will start on Book Two off...

So, here's the thing that's been bothering me the most, the thing that I can't get out of my head: that dream I had when I was six-years-old? It's actually come true. My very first "when-I-grow-up" dream I had as a little girl writing little short stories in my first grade class, is happening. Twenty-two years later, and that very first thing I ever want to be, I am.  I can't get over it. When I was six, I wanted my name on a book. I wanted to write a novel and publish it in hardback and see my name across the front and know I made this.  This last year, I wrote that book. Finally, after a decade of debating whether I even had the merit to be a true writer, I wrote that book.  Something Carrie Bradshaw said in an episode of Sex and the City --that I can't at this time properly reference for you, because it's been half a decade since I watched the show last--has stuck with me all of these years, has gnawed at the back of my mind, a reminder tha...