My Poor Deserted Blog...

How can I do a blog round up this year when I barely posted here?

Well, I posted once in June. Thank you for reading my culmination address to the class of 2018. It was my most read post of the year and the only post to make my most-read all-time list.

Then, I posted to the blog three times in the last two days. I had to get my favorite books and publishing summary for 2018 out there. Then, I had to tie together two ideas that have been on my mind for the past few months: Lynell George's Image/After: Los Angeles Outside the Frame and the upcoming UTLA strike.

If you kept up with this barrage of posts, thanks so much.

I had a few other blogs in drafts. I was going to write about teachers and gun-violence and the ridiculousness of arming teachers, but I didn't. I was going to write about my niece's journey to play division one basketball, but she got hurt, so I didn't pursue that either.

Laters, 2018, from Team Nakada-Gantt (and Jane). 

I did start editing the Breathe and Push column for Women Who Submit, an organization which supports women and non-binary writers submit their work into the world. A few posts that might have gone up here went there, so if you'd like to read any of those, you can find them on the Women Who Submit website.

2018 was a full year. I wrote about running my first marathon on Throwing Cookies and was able to get up to the Wellstone Center for Writers three times. My time and the space there has helped me bring three manuscripts to completion.

I will be looking for representation this year for Rice Paper Superheroes, a young adult novel that follows the Nakamura family from the Sawtelle Nihonmachi to Manzanar and back again.

Dispatches from a High School Feminist: Rising Up from Rural Oregon, is the high school memoir that will complete the Through Eyes Like Mine trilogy. I hope to release that this summer.

And finally, Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop: One Family's Experience with Mental Illness has moved from poetry to prose and I will be looking for a publisher for that as well.

After a move in August from our Mar Vista condo to a Home in View Park, we are settling in and loving our new space and neighborhood. What is on the minds in this two-teacher household most is the upcoming UTLA strike. If you have followed this blog you know my commitment to public education. This work stoppage could turn the tide for our schools, not just here in LA, but in our nation. Let's hope our city demands that our district do the right thing and fund the schools our students deserve.

With that, 2018 moves today from the front window and into the rear-view mirror. Happy New Year, y'all.