Yoga Book Baby is Born!

It's another Book Baby Girl! Born shortly after midnight, August 30, 2017, she's tiny, weighs just a few ounces, but big on LOVE! After five long years of juggling work, relationships, and family, while striving to find time to write to my heart's content, and all the tears and fears that went along with the process, this book baby has finally been born! I am grateful to you all for celebrating her birthday with me! Proceeds from the sales of this book will go toward various animal welfare organizations. Really appreciate everyone's love and support. Much gratitude goes to Alexandra Corral for the beautiful cover art! Thank you for embracing this book with an open mind and a compassionate heart! ☺❤

A Book Publishing Dream Come True!

One word to describe my entire creative writing life journey so far: GRATEFUL. I am grateful for all the beautiful loving, living beings who have supported me since I started this journey as a child of three writing on my Mom's cookbooks and recipe notebooks. I have immense gratitude to all the books, authors, teachers, students, fellow writers, readers, family, friends and furry and feathered creatures who have been there for me and whose love has sustained me through it all. I literally have to pinch myself each single day I face the blessed reality: "I'm a published author!" Fiction writing has been my first love ever since I put pen to paper, composing my own mystery stories inspired by reading those lovable Nancy Drew mystery series as a kid growing up in New Orleans and the Bay Area. And now, it's come to this: still celebrating the birth of Pretty as a Picture, Book Two of the Pretty Princess Trilogy and I'll say it's been nothing short of an amazing ride! Right on the heels of Book Two's release, I find myself still reveling in the literary universe that is the Principality of Moradonia! How blessed can one be to still have passion for all these characters and to revisit the fabulously scenic (some real, some imagined) locales along Western Europe and the Mediterranean! I truly wish for everyone to be embraced with the blessing of being able to create art and live life doing whatever it is you're passionate about! Stay inspired! Blessings and love to you all!

This Girl is going to have a Baby Sister joining her soon! Stay tuned!

Not Just Another Pretty Face Kindle edition now available!

My new novel is now available in the Kindle edition for only $2.99! Visit Amazon.com to purchase an e-book for yourself and as gifts for your friends. Happy reading!

A Literary Baby is Born!

At last! After incubating for most of the holiday season 2014, my baby is born---today---Friday, Jan. 9, 2015, weighing a few ounces---time of birth: 10:06 a.m. It has been a labor of love. I started writing this book in the summer of 2005 when I took time off from work to heal my bum leg after a bike accident---an incident which turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it gave me the opportunity to take a break from my hectic career as a newspaper reporter to devote time to my true love---fiction writing!

So, I embraced that chance and at that time, the novel practically wrote itself as I got into the characters and the plot. It was also during this time that I applied for grad school, hoping to get an MFA in Creative Writing. I submitted an excerpt of this novel as part of my application packet. But when I had to go back to work and got accepted into grad school the following year, I had to put this novel aside. All the while I kept working on other manuscripts---two novels for grad school---and thereafter, started a new novel and a collection of short stories and had thought about Not Just Another Pretty Face from time to time. But, it wasn't until my dear friend, John Duley, who had traveled with me to France a couple of times with our French class, became ill last summer, that I was transported back to Paris, at least in my dreams. It was then that I resurrected the manuscript for Not Just Another Pretty Face, and finally wrote the ending by summer's end. The rest of the year was spent rewriting, revising, editing, and editing some more, and proofreading. I appreciate all those who helped make publishing my first novel a dream come true, including my parents, my family, friends and my editor, Stephanie LeAnn, and my Creative Writing students. I'm going to treasure this experience forever!

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A Writer's Journey Continues...

So what's been going on in my (Literary) world? Where do I start? Since the publication of OmStruck, I immediately dove (head first!) into a novel--an "experimental" novel. As in, it's totally my art, where I color outside the lines and make up my own rules along the way, remove my "journalist's hat" as well as my "editor's hat," and paint with words, experiment with Point-of-View and yes, add broad strokes of color, a.k.a. free verse into the mix. Is it an abstract, expressionistic, impressionistic, realistic, idealistic novel? It's sort of all of the above. That's why it's experimental! I won't go into too much detail just yet, except to say that it's told in four voices, takes place in the Bay Area and Boston and practically wrote itself all of 2011 and parts of 2012. I'll at least share the novel's working title: Pull. I shared excerpts of this novel in a class I took at Stanford,Winter 2012 and the critiques from my writing peers as well as from my professor Lynn Stegner, were decent and validated my decision to remain on this artistic course. Now, all I have to do is decide on a satisfying ending. Stay tuned!

I always encourage my writing students to "stay as committed as you can" to your long-term project, your baby, be it a novel or a memoir but don't be afraid to take a break from that long-term relationship with your project to delve into a few short stories. You may find you'll return to your project refreshed and ready to tackle it anew. That's what I did in late 2012. I started writing a slew of short stories, really getting into the lives of different characters whose lives all shared a common bond--they were all people practicing yoga. So, I stayed true to the yoga theme and now I'm nearly done with the editing and revisions of my manuscript and hope to publish Tadasana: Yogis Living and Loving On and Off the Yoga Mat sometime this year. In this collection of short stories, all the characters live, love, laugh, cry, fall, get up, fall again, get up again, cry some more, live, live again, love again, laugh again, and love some more! My wish is that readers can relate to most or all of the stories in some way, whether or not they practice yoga, because, I believe, all of life is yoga. We're all just trying to find a deeper meaning to our existence and discovering love along the way. Ultimately, the characters discover, that love, true love, heals not harms. And real love, not fear, prevails.

This May, I'll be celebrating five years of teaching Creative Writing (Yay!) since getting my MFA. I'm so blessed to have a core group of awesome students who've stayed on this writing journey with me since the beginning and we've garnered more writing "groupies" along the way! I'm proud to say that a group of my writing students are currently working on publishing an anthology of their literary pieces. Way to go Saturday Word Painters from Central Contra Costa County and the Diablo Valley area!

At some point, I'll finally start "putting pen to paper" on my writing memoir which will include writing exercises I created for my classes. Kind of like favorite recipes in a chef''s cooking memoir. Truth is, the writing memoir is being written as we speak (or write!) but it's all in my head. Now, if I can only get those words on the page already!

On the journalistic side of things, life is awesome! So blessed to have the support of my two editors, Catherine and Sam, as well as the freedom to write the kinds of stories that hope to inspire, educate and enlighten people because that's what our world needs right now...more love and healing light.

I have also had the honor of conducting two Yoga and Creative Writing workshops at The Yoga Company in San Ramon since getting my Yoga Teacher Training Certification in October, 2013. Looking forward to offering more. Stay tuned! My goal is to have a Web site up and running by the end of the year which will include my articles, literary works-in-progress updates, yoga and Pilates classes as well as Creative Writing classes and workshops I'll be offering.

Before I sign off, for now, I'd like to extend my gratitude to all those who attended my talk "Writing in Different Genres," last Feb. 8 at the California Writers Club--Mt. Diablo Branch in Pleasant Hill. Much love to you all for your support.
Namaste.

I wish to post more often since I realized so much has happened since the publication of OmStruck and since my two booksignings. I want to first (belatedly) thank everyone who attended my booksigning at Orinda Books last May. Much gratitude and love to those who weren't able to make it---I felt your presence and support. Just wanted to share this photo taken of me with Liz Turlington, mother of Christy Turlington-Burns, whose book, Living Yoga, I mentioned in my book. So thrilled and honored that Liz, who's also a yoga devotee, came to support me and my mission to spread the wonderful healing benefits of yoga!