I'm Sorry, Again: Doing Right by Overdue Apologies...

I work at Emerson, a wonderful little middle school in Los Angeles. I've taught here for twenty years, and it's where I've gotten to know so many young people and learned so much about myself as a person, a teacher, and a writer. And it is at Emerson that I learned to forgive the Pilot Butte Junior High School girl from the second book in the Through Eyes Like Mine series: Overdue Apologies.

When this book first came out, there was no big release, no launch party, no readings. I wasn't ashamed of the book, no, I think I was still just a little unsure of the girl I was in middle school and of the choices I made. But I forgive my students every day, and I believe that is what makes a good middle school teacher: thick skin and short-term memory. But I'd spend years thinking about the girl I was in middle school, so my memories were raw.

But you know who loved that girl and this book? My students. They gave me feedback, created book projects, and talked with me about my book. They wrote summaries about reflected on how they saw themselves in the pages. They checked out my book, they read it, and passed it on to friends. They stole it. Through them, I learned to love and believe in my middle school memoir.

So here it is again, this time with a wonderful foreword from my oldest brother, Chet, who is living with his middle-school-aged daughter now.

Since publication, "Challenger" appeared in Specter and "Winter Ball" in Sky Island Journal.

If you've read Through Eyes Like Mine, but have been scared to read Overdue Apologies, I get it. Middle school is scary, but on its re-release, I hope you'll be brave enough to go back. Let me know if you need a copy of this or of the trilogy.

Tomorrow, I Tried.

Vying for Mom's Blessing

Nine years ago, I sat in a coffee shop and wrestled words into their final form in Through Eyes Like Mine. I believed in the work. It’s a non-traditional memoir. It exists even though I’m not famous and haven’t survived a cult or unspeakable tragedy. I’m not a recovering addict or childhood star. It is a quiet book, a child’s story, told by a not-so-old writer. I shared it with my mom and the rest of my family, and with a few corrections and clarifications, they all stood behind it.

Christmas: 1981

When Overdue Apologies came out two years later, I tried to hold my middle school memoir to the same standard, but it is a different book. It is about a time most people would rather forget. I teach middle school, so I know it’s cringy because adolescence is cringe-worthy. My family laughed awkwardly throughout Overdue Apologies, but along with my middle school friends, they helped shape the work. My mom wondered what she was up to during my middle school adventure, but she supported its release. It came out just as I was about to have a baby, so I didn’t give it the launch it deserved. I was expecting, but I also wasn’t sure the world wanted a middle school memoir.

Now, as I ready I Tried for publication, the process feels the same but different. I am still pouring over the words, attempting to make it as perfect as possible. I have to steal time, just like before, but now there are two kids vying for my attention. The world is a different place with widening gaps between the haves and have nots, rural and urban, white and other, but these differences make these books feel more important. I shared the manuscript with family and friends who again influenced it, but the biggest difference this time is my mom isn’t here.

Summer: 1991

My mom was my first reader. She was my first ask about memory accuracy. She helped clarify my recollections. She framed the events in my early books, but with I Tried, I couldn’t ask what she remembered about my sixteenth birthday or Dad’s fall off the roof. She would have hated reading about the limits of white feminism, but I still think she would support this book. She would correct a few facts, tell me which parts were hard for her to read; which ones made her laugh or cry. She would love the snapshots of our family from the porch in Bend, and question the choices she made along the way.

I hope Mom can help me find a few last typos. I hope she will fact check my memory like she always has. I hope in some dream tonight or in the nights to come, she will look up from the rushing white water of the Deschutes and forgive the white feminist she was and the flawed feminist I am. I hope she will somehow give this last book her blessing and know: I tried.

10 years of blogging later...

Ten years ago, I started this blog. August, 10, 2009. Well, clearly I missed that anniversary.

Back then, I had the idea that maybe a publisher would stumble upon my blog, want to publish my book or at least my thoughts, and I hoped a blog could help me build a readership. It's been ten years, and not a single publisher has come knocking on my door, but I have found readers. Thanks for tagging along.

In that first year, I wrote about visiting China, fertility, the Dodgers, and then excerpted a bunch of a novel in progress, New LA Life, that still isn't done. I started a second blog, Throwing Cookies, for writing about sports, and I wrote a lot about food and education.

Nine years and 250 blog posts later, so much has changed since 2010. Back then, I was five years post MFA. I was teaching, eating at LA food trucks, and playing lots of beach volleyball. David and I were working hard to get pregnant, but we were not getting pregnant. The country was living in President Obama's first term.

In 2010, I wrote about my decision to self-publish Through Eyes Like Mine and included a mixtape. In 2012, I wrote about my middle school memoir, Overdue Apologies. Then, Kiara arrived, and although I tried to keep reading and writing and reclaiming my brain, it was hard. When Gabe showed up, it was even harder. But now, nine years later, I'm finally ready to complete the coming of age Through Eyes Like Mine series.

I Tried: Tales from an Emerging High School Feminist explores what it means to be a young woman of color growing up in rural America. In the final installation of the Through Eyes Like Mine series, Nori teeters on the edges of adulthood and navigates shifting expectations of her community, her family, and herself. I Tried examines the challenges and isolation a multiracial girl faces in small-town America.

Stay tuned. More in the next couple of weeks.

She said she would publish the books herself.

It's been almost nine years and two kids since the release of Through Eyes Like Mine, my early childhood memoir. My decision to publish this book on my own came after the manuscript sat with an agent for about a year, then made its way through publishing houses where editors complimented the writing but found it too quiet, so I resolved to launch the book myself. I planned readings in Oregon with family and friends, and I was happy to place the book in the hands of receptive readers.

It's been over seven years since Overdue Apologies, my middle school memoir quietly made it's way into the world. Motherhood was right around the corner, and I knew my life was about to change making the work of finding a home for this manuscript even more challenging. I never properly launched the book or made time for readings, but it has also made it's way into readers' hands and found fans with middle school audiences.

Since then, stealing time for writing has become harder. Teaching and parenting make time management even more important. Early mornings are still key, and in November, the words come during National Novel Writing Month, and in April, for National Poetry Month, I've written a poem a day ever since Kima Jones spent her time as a PEN fellow visiting poet in my classroom. My writing partner, Hazel Kight Witham, and I have continued to meet weekly to focus our writing and teaching practices. We have also escaped to writing residencies at Wellstone Center in the Redwoods. These spaces mean that the final book in the Through Eyes Like Mine trilogy is finally ready for the world.

I've also spent time over the past few years building to emerging as a writer with Women Who Submit, an organization empowering women and non-binary writers to submit their work for publication. As part of this submitting work, Through Eyes Like Mine was chosen as a finalist for the inaugural 2040 book prize. Excerpts from Overdue Apologies appeared in Spector and Sky Island Journal. As my publishing credits grew, I decided to try find a traditional publisher for the high school memoir. Again, I queried agents, submitted to small presses, and excerpts from this work appeared in Compose, Lady Liberty Lit, and East Jasmine Review.

Senior portrait of the author.

Then, after the 2016 election, with conversations about the divide between rural and urban America intensifying, my high school memoir and all of the books in the Through Eyes Like Mine trilogy gained significance. Books like Hillbilly Elegy and White Trash became best sellers, but the perspective of a young girl of color coming of age in rural America was missing. This book is what's missing. The books in this trilogy are the missing books, and now the third book is ready.

In the next few weeks, I'll be re-releasing Through Eyes Like Mine and Overdue Apologies with updated covers and forewords by my sister, Laura Yukiko Nakada Flennaugh and my brother, Chet Nakada. Like with the first two books, I will launch playlists and excerpts and this go around signed, personally bound copies of the trilogy will be available as I Tried: Tales of an Emerging High School Feminist will FINALLY be here! Whoooo hooo!

My Year in Books

Ugh! I've been putting off this post hoping to finish a couple more titles, but the hours in the year are dwindling, so here it is. My favorite read this year were: Another Brooklyn, Citizen, Posada, March, and Homegoing, but really each book on this list was a worthy read. It was a good year in books. Here are annotations of the 22 books I read in 2018:

Everything, Everything by Niccola Yoon

Loved the happy surprise of a narrator who is half-Japanese, half-black. Her bubble-girl scenario makes for an interesting scenario and poses the question: is it easier to keep our girls locked away, hidden in rooms and towers than to subject them to the germs, the unknowns, the evils of the world? The writing and plot isn’t as strong as The Sun Is also a Star which blew me away from cover to cover, but I enjoyed this book and look forward to seeing how this comes to the screen (although the mom is supposed to be the Asian one).

Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

This novel, about a girl growing up in the grief of losing their mother, losing the south, nearly losing her brother, searching for her father, and finding her place beside other girls, is a beautiful tribute to girl hood. She navigates adolescence, womanhood, a world teeming with sexual violence and drug abuse, friendship, religion, race, class and creative spirit. I loved spending time with these girls, and these pages do illuminate another Brooklyn.

March, Book One, by John Lewis and Andrew Andin

This nonfiction graphic novel teaches us so very much about how to tell a story. Flashing between the inauguration of President Obama and the early days of John Lewis the child, the young man, and the college-student and activist. An excellent reminder of all the organizing and work that led to SNCC and the civil rights movement.

March, Book Two, by John Lewis and Andrew Andin

Book two moves forward from John Lewis’s work as a student volunteer to a SNCC organizer building on the momentum of the March on Washington into the Sit-Ins in the South, and the failed March at Selma where Lewis is badly beaten.

March, Book Three, by John Lewis and Andrew Andin

Book three takes on the work for voting rights, voter registration, and the Voting Rights Act. This seems so timely as voter suppression is on the rise after the Supreme Court weakened the act in 2013. This final book captures the heroic march from Selma: exhausting, heroic, and ultimately successful. The pages that spoke to me most clearly were the ones depicting the role teachers had in bringing public support for the sit-ins. This powerful trilogy demands we ask: what are we doing for the movement?

Posada by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

These poems show us our city and our country at the southern border where lives are lost and found, sucked dry and resurrected. Bermejo’s poems cut to the bone and demand you to bear witness, to see the lives that are hidden in the desert brush. She demands we look not only at the streets where we drive, but at the cactus alongside the road and to remember the land, and the people, where we have built our country and have erected borders to keep them out. A powerful and important work.

The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward

A modern response to James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, this collection of essays captures today’s Black writers on the experience of being Black in America. There is coming to terms with our racist past, adjusting to Blackness in America rather than in Jamaica, and the unrelenting violence Black America must live with and the rest of America must work to resolve

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

This YA novel tells the story of Starr Carter, who witnesses the murder of her childhood friend by a white cop on the streets of New York. Watching this young protagonist exist in two worlds, her Black community where her father owns a corner store, and her private school life mimics the code switching so many of our students must do when they come to school each day. I love how this young girl finds her voice in the midst of political and personal chaos.

How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon

A novel with shifting POV surrounding a murder similar to the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida, helps illuminate the misunderstandings of eye-witnesses. These many voices of his sister, the girl who stayed with him in his final moments, and the many other survivors he left behind, reveal all that informs how we choose to see the world.  

 

Turning Japanese by Mari Naomi

This graphic novel captures a time and experience I’m very familiar with. From wanting to get in touch with her Japanese-ness with a trip to Japan, to struggling with dating men with yellow fever, I could relate with many of the author’s experiences.

Homegoing By Yaa Gyasi

A story that arches across oceans and families, telling the story of two half-sisters, their different lives and the lives of generations to come. So many of these stories will haunt me: dreams of fire, seeking freedom and losing your young son, the long-stretching curse of those who dealt in human lives, the castle and those kept beneath it, the human impact of the Fugitive Slave Act, and the incarceration of so many innocents to float an economy of privilege. A beautiful resolution in water and salt and lineage separated by so many years and lives.

Blu’s Hanging by Lois-Ann Yamanaka

This book is so filled with grief and tragedy, but also triumph in the ways each member of the family struggles to survive. These kids all try to be there for Mama, for Poppy who can’t be there for them, and for one another in a world that can be so harsh, to brutal, so damaging. This book helped remind me of all that I’ve learned from this author about how to remains to your story, characters, and voice.

Citizen by Claudia Rankin

This book is a thought, a dream, a meditation on what it is to be Black in America. It looks in the eye of “narrative structure” and says, you don’t see me? Why should I honor you? The sections on Serena Williams illuminate so much of the constant burden it is to bear being the other, the unvalued, the invisible. Every slight holds that weight and these pages hold it so very well.

The Whetting Stone by Taylor Mali

This poetry chapbook blew me away. The way it handles loss and grief and mental illness is so tender and beautiful. He manages to work in light moments, although others are devastating. It is truly to voice of a survivor who will always wonder what they could have done to help prevent a lover one’s suicide.

Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond by Marc Lamar Hill

This book is so thoroughly researched and thoroughly depressing. I don’t know that I’m the book’s audience, as someone who already acknowledges the bleak world Black Americans occupy, but this book provides so much historical perspective and statistical analysis that the arguments seem inarguable. But will it change any minds? Will anyone who sees the world from a conservative point of view read or buy any of this news that counters all of the FOX News?

This Side of Home by Renée Watson

This author went through Jeff and grew up in Portland, so I’d been wanting to read her YA books for a while. I love how she tackles the gentrification taking place in Portland and the interracial relationship her protagonist falls into. There is also a great anti-reform education rant as she tackles public school issues as well. The plot works well, keeps me turning the pages, although I wonder about how things will work out at Spelman or for her friend at Beauty School. I think that’s the sign of a good narrative. I care about her characters.

Overdue Apologies by Noriko Nakada

A close read and edit of this seemed in order before diving into the high school memoir. Yes, it’s revising, but it’s also reading, so I’m giving myself credit for my own book. I still cringe at certain scenes, but with each read I forgive myself a little more for the girl I once was. It captures what it is to be a middle school student: longing to fit-in, dreaming of the future, and living in the chaos of every moment.

Solo by Kwame Alexander

Using lyrics and a setting of privilege, unexpected news sends Blade on a journey to find himself and love. Music creates interesting rhythms in this novel in verse and a trip overseas provides interesting perspectives of first world problems.

This One Summer by Mariko Tamiko

This book recently topped the banned book week list so, of course, I had to check it out. It’s a beautifully drawn musing on a summer when her parents are fighting, her mother seems to be battling depression, and the teenagers in this coastal town struggle with adult decisions and problems.

Pushout: the Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique Morris

Woah, do I see a lot of this as a public school teacher. I love how this book made me think of the skills Black girls and women have needed to survive in our culture, and how our schools devalue these skills over and over again. Girls who push back, we push out. I will never see the angry Black girl in the same way. She isn’t a problem, she is a survivor and a freedom fighter.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

I think I know something about slavery, or escaping from slavery, or what it must have been like, and then I read a book like this and the humanity of the experience, the horror and the humanity, are illuminated all over again.

Begin with a Failed Body by Natalie J. Graham

These poems could only be consumed in small doses. I like to pick up poetry collections to help read more at the end of the year, but Graham’s words demand small bites. I had to savor each poem, let them settle before moving on to the next. I love how she plays with formal and informal language, and her sense of place (although I’ve never been to the South) breathes in each line.

Publishing Round Up for 2017

With three days left in 2017, I'm behind on my blog posts, so I'm going to try to make these last three days count.

In 2017, I continued to work hard at getting more of my work out in the world. Women Who Submit, an amazing group of writers here in Los Angeles has been a driving force for me.

I managed to get 70 submissions out this year to literary magazines, presses, conferences, agents, residencies, anthologies, and book contests. Here is a summary of my work published online and in print this past year.

"A Short History of Insanity" an essay that is the opening pages of Waiting for the other Shoe to Drop: One Family's Battle with Mental Illness was originally published in Meridian's winter issue. It was then republished in Lunch Ticket's alumni issue for the 20th anniversary of Antioch's MFA program.

Compose magazine chose "Picture Day," an essay from Dispatches from a High School Feminist: Rising Up from Rural America which ran this past spring.

I'd been trying to find a home for "Running from the Dark" for three years and it finally made it's way to readers in Catapult this past May after editor Mensah Demary made it better.

"Geometry," a flash essay from Dispatches from a High School Feminist: Rising Up from Rural America went up at Lady Liberty Lit in May as well.

Over spring break, I had a series of nightmares. This was in the middle of National Poetry Month, so the nightmares ended up in these poems. In June, two poems I started writing that spring break went up at Rising Phoenix Review: "Sarin Nightmare" and "Mother of All Bombs."

In July, Linden Avenue published, "Final Days," a poem I wrote about losing my mom.

I finally broke into an Asian American press when Kartika picked up two poems: "Camp Stories," and "Howl."

This past fall, Sky Island Journal published "Winter Ball," an essay from my middle school memoir Overdue Apologies.

My last publication this year came in December when East Jasmine Review picked up an essay from Dispatches from a High School Feminist: Rising Up from Rural America: "Open Gym."

This year I also had the chance to read for Women Who Submit at the West Hollywood Lit Crawl and to attend a week-long residency at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods. Through Eyes Like Mine was also short-listed for the 2040 Prize which seemed to breathe new life into this book.

2017 was a challenging year, but I appreciate all who read my work and work by those who attempt to cut through the noise, challenge long-held silences, and use art to resist. 2018: let's do this.

#ReadDiverseLit Post for "Book with a main character who is mixed race"

Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. 1977, May 3, 6:30 in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast. 

These are the first lines of Everything I Never Told You, a novel, by Celeste Ng. It's written in a shifting third person, a pov I don't read much, and tells the story of a missing (dead) high school girl. By hovering over the thoughts of her parents and siblings in this shifting, but close, third person, the reader sees events from many different perspectives. Ng writes lovely sentences and her plot kept me turning the pages.

What really set this book apart for me, though, is that it's the story of a mixed-race marriage and of mixed-race children. These are the kinds of books I write as a mixed author, but I haven't had the opportunity to read very many of them. Wait. I haven't read any novels like this. And the few books I have read are about the black/white mixed-race experience: The Color of Water, by James McBride, Caucasia by Danzy Senna, and Dreams of My Father by Barrack Obama.

Everything I Never Told You is a truly Asian-American novel, revealing some of the loneliness of what it is to be an outsider in small-town America, something I know quite well.

So, in addition to Everything I Never Told You and the books mentioned above, I have to recommend Through Eyes Like Mine and Overdue Apologies for people looking to read more about from mixed race characters. Apparently, there aren't too many book likes this out there!

Through Eyes Like Mine v. Overdue Apologies

So, a couple of times in the past few weeks people have told me they didn't know I had a second book. What? How is this possible? It came out almost two years ago. Apparently, I didn't do a very good job getting the word out about Overdue Apologies, the middle school memoir follow-up to Through Eyes Like Mine.

Well, the early reviews are in, and it seems that the adults prefer Through Eyes Like Mine, and the young adult readers like Overdue Apologies more. My students have given me great feedback, even though I'm a little bit torn about my students reading my books. I don't mind when they read Through Eyes Like Mine, but this year I made the mistake of telling them they shouldn't read Overdue Apologies. So, of course, this made them want to read it. It's been good for me, though. I've had the chance to get more feedback and it's always funny to hear them critique my middle school choices.

"Ms. Nakada, I was mad when you broke up with Robert."

"What ever happened to Robin, or Casey, or Bianca?"

Then, one of my students wrote in a reading journal that she cried as she read the last chapter. She loves her middle school friends and hates to think they will someday drift apart.

She made me consider that it might not be so bad for my middle school students read my middle school memoir. Even though I did some things I'm not proud of, maybe reading my book will help them make better decisions than I did.

So, if you have a reader on your holiday list, here are a couple of books for your consideration.

Through Eyes Like Mine

Overdue Apologies

Walking to School

This past Wednesday was Walk to School Day. I helped a pass out stickers and fruit roll-ups to Emerson students walking to school. The small town where I grew up is far from urban Los Angeles, but as kids passed by with their friends, I doubt their walks are all that different than the ones Robin, Bianca, and I took most days to school. Those walks were a block of time without adult supervision so we walked slowly toward Pilot Butte or away from its shadow discussing our day, our plans, our fears and dreams. On those walks my friends and I grew closer, or we tested the limits of our bonds and I imagine the same thing happens with my students as they make their way to and from school each day. Here’s an excerpt from Overdue Apologies: a Middle School Memoir, about those long-ago walks.

Morning

Every morning in the house on Jones Road we execute a carefully choreographed dance. Dad starts a fire in the woodstove, and Mom turns on the heater to take the chill off the rooms upstairs. Dad showers and leaves for work before the rest of us race through the shower. Mom makes breakfast and packs lunches. We scarf down pancakes, waffles, or cold cereal. Chet and Laura eat first, and then Mitch and me. We move near one another, through the kitchen, and around the breakfast table. It's a silent dance except for Morning Edition playing on the radio. We brush teeth, and then Chet and Laura rush out to the old Datsun 210 and drive to Mountain View. Mitch and I walk up to Pilot Butte, but not together.

Mornings in Bend are always cold. Even when the sky is clear, the sun's rays can't penetrate the cold of the high desert. In fall, yellow, brown, and red leaves litter the ground and the first snow paints the Cascades a gleaming white. Soon ice will form a slick crust along the roads. Every morning, I leave the quiet chaos of home and wait along the side of Jones Road to walk to school with Robin Crank.

Robin lives across the street with her new-age-mom, step-dad, and two sisters. Her mom buys organic chips and natural sodas. A couple summers ago Robin and I played makeovers with her Fresh 'N Fancy makeup kit, and when I came home wearing pink blush and blue eye shadow Laura said I looked like a clown. Robin has a tetherball pole in her backyard and an indoor pool where we play Marco Polo and Sharks and Minnows. Robin's older sister, Heather, is nothing like Laura. Heather wears thick black eyeliner and lipstick. She's into music and film. Laura never wears make-up, and she's into sports. Robin and I have way more in common than our older sisters, but since we went to different elementary schools we've never become close.

Once I start Pilot Butte though, I see another side of Robin. At school she is popular. She's tall and has an asymmetrical haircut streaked from the summer sun. She wears braces and so many cool clothes that she can go three or four weeks without repeating an outfit. Her best friend is Bianca Weston. Bianca and Robin went to Juniper Elementary together. Bianca is skinny with straight light brown hair. She lives in a huge house on Revere. Bianca has great clothes too and she doesn't repeat outfits forever. Kim Mitchell is their other friend. She went to Buckingham, and she's tiny (even shorter than me). She has shoulder length, wavy blonde hair, and she's a spaz.

I don't know how everyone knows in the first week of school, but already Robin, Bianca, and Kim are popular. Maybe it's the clothes and jewelry that only kids with money can afford, or where their dads work, or the size of their houses. I don't know exactly what it is, but the differences between the popular girls and the rest of us are clear.

Popular girls have Polo shirts, Guess jeans, Swatch watches, Trapper Keepers, rubber jelly bracelets, and Lip Smackers. Popular girls have a different attitude. They smile and laugh as they walk through the sixth grade hall. At lunch, they sit with the cool boys and ignore the rest of us. They are in the best class with teachers who are young and cool.

Not-so-popular girls have Levis, hand-me down t-shirts, bare arms, plain blue three ring binders, and chapped lips. We walk nervously through the halls to our lockers. We grab brown bag lunches and sit with girls from lame teachers' classes.

Still, Robin waits for me every morning for the walk to school. Even though my family isn't rich, even though I don't wear exactly the right things or carry the right supplies, I think maybe, just maybe, I could be popular too.

As Robin and I walk down Jones Road, we leave behind the girls we are with our families and head toward the girls we are on our own. Clouds of breath appear and disappear before us as we talk about school, teachers, and mutual friends. Half way down the hill on Revere we stop at the two-story house with a circular driveway and a broad front porch.

Bianca's mom answers the door in her bathrobe. "Morning girls," she says sleepily as she lets us into the warm entry hall. The Weston's house always looks and smells clean. "Bink! Your friends are here," Mrs. Weston yells up the stairway. "Hurry up!" Then Mrs. Weston turns to us.

"Cute sweater, Robin."

"Thanks."

Robin and I look around the entry hall and wait.

"Sorry, guys," Bianca yells. "I'm almost ready."

"Your nails look nice," Mrs. Weston says holding my cold palm in her warm hand. She studies my fingers and the pale pink polish. "Where did you get them done?"

I've never had a manicure. "I did them myself," I say quietly, worried that doing your own nails isn't very cool.

"I wish I had the patience to do mine," Mrs. Weston says examining her French manicure and the red polish on her toes.

My mom files but never paints her nails.

Bianca rushes down the stairs, a messenger bag flung over her navy pea coat. Mrs. Weston looks her daughter up and down. "Your shoes don't match, Bink."

"Mom, they're fine. We're going to be late."  

Sometimes Bianca makes it out the door, sometimes she sprints back upstairs to change. I walk with Robin and Bianca, the two most popular girls, up the path by the irrigation ditch toward school. We take our time, walk slowly, and I start to understand: If I want to be popular I have to be patient. It's totally not cool to want to be cool. I have to watch for a pattern and figure out what it takes to be popular.

2012: It's a Wrap!

Well, there goes another year of blogging. This has been my least productive year as a blogger, but you know what? I had a lot going on, so I'm not going to worry too much about it.

I started the year reading/reviewing The Chronology of Water a memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch. It reminded me why I love to write and that I want/need to push myself to that raw, honest place where Lidia goes. If you still haven't read this, I highly recommend it.

Then I started nesting in preparation for Kiara's grand entrance into my life. I painted a mountain mural, and readied the nursery.

And then I spent the bulk of the next couple of months getting Overdue Apologies ready for publication. I hate book promotion, but I love making play lists so I put together three soundtracks, one for each part of the middle school memoir. If you're a fan of 80s pop, these are the mix tapes for you. I published a few excerpts from the memoir and hoped it would move, but I didn't do enough to promote it, didn't properly release it or stage readings, so although it sold in modest numbers, it hasn't done nearly as well as Through Eyes Like Mine.

Then, on April 1, I had a baby. April Fools. No, really, I did. You can read Kiara's birth story in three parts. The link starts with part three so if you want to read them in order scroll to the last post first. 

When summer arrived I read a book: Looking for Alaska by John Green. I liked it, but took issue with a section where he referred to basketball players as ape men. He doesn't think it is racist. I think it is. You can read the whole deal here. Again, the original post is after all of the conversation which followed.

I haven't written much since. I am a new mother struggling to figure out how to make the writing fit. I also tore my Achilles tendon which sucks. Everybody stretch. You don't want to tear, or strain, or rupture that tendon! But I wrote the draft of a novel during NaNoWriMo, and that helped me learn how to sneak in time at the page no matter what else I have going on.

So, thanks for hanging with me in 2012, and here's to 2013. Happy New Year.