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“Atomic Habits” by James Clear and the Self-Care Ritual of Routine: Or How I Plan to Process 2020
I find a lot of comfort in routine, controlling the things I can control when so much of the outside world feels and is so broken. My emotional stamina is currently finite and fleeting, so I have to spend it wisely or risk losing, hours, days, whatever to debilitating anxiety, which brings me to the point of this post: self-care.
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While Fiesta Plans Brew, Here’s the Story Behind a Couple of Saint Down’s Illustrations
The fiesta for the launch of The Music of Pedro will be a journey into the book, which is why I was set on Highland Gardens as the venue. I want our guests to take a trip from Utah Valley in November to the tropics of a greenhouse, something like the setting of our story: Pivámoc, Jalisco.
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Wistful August Wrap-Up
I met my benchmarks a few days ahead of schedule and I have a moment to forget the weeks and months ahead until launch. Instead I look backward. I consider what I’ve personally put into this book and why, what it communicates to me and what I hope it will communicate to others, and also how much I love my dad.
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Shouting at a Lover by the Sea: Graciela Enjoys Her Power, Such As it Was
Did she enjoy this? she wondered. She shouldn’t, but his lips took hers hungrily and the knowledge of his wanting stabbed her with desire, like that first burn of a hard drink, the way it entered her head with a hum. At least when he wanted her like this, there was something of him that was hers and she was grateful for that power, such as it was. Sometimes it could feel like everything.
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Tlacati, He is Born, but Dina Wished for a Girl
At least a month after her arrival in Pivámoc, Dina woke in the dark, early morning to pounding at her front door. Throwing a shawl about her shoulders, she ran to find Lea at her doorstep in a nightgown and slippers. Her long black hair was plaited into a single braid and dangled from the nape of her neck as she held herself between the legs with one hand, the other pressing hard into her lower back.
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Achievement Unlocked: Adobe InDesign (plus a Sneak Peek at Some Illustrations and Cover Designs)
What it was like to learn InDesign: You walk into a craft store simply knowing that you want to have a pretty house. You feel your eyes get big as your wallet gasps and then you find yourself in the clearance section at the back of the store maybe picking out some beads. Are you frightened? Strangely, yes. Do you feel inadequate? You bet.
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The Gift of Isolation (or How I Wrote 200k Words in 3 Years)
If it wasn’t a text it was a phone call. And if it was neither, it was an email. Are you working on it yet? Tell me when you start. I see you online, where are you? I don’t see you online, where are you? My dad was a benevolent taskmaster; some days it was easy to forget he was also my client.
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Writing The Music Of Pedro: Weaving Truth with Fiction
The story is fictional but very much based on true events. It reveals much about me, my life experiences, and a wistfulness for how I wish some things could have been. --Sergio A.C. Pizano
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I Suspect My Dad Raised Me to Rewrite His Book: On Harnessing Words of Dis/Encouragement
Much of what I was reading voraciously at the time could be called uninspired, but it scratched an itch, gave me something to mimic, and it was published. I wanted more than anything to do what those authors had done and smell my own words mixed with that pulp potpourri.
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Swapping Bitter for Sweet: Miss Gilmore Learns How to Charm a Widower
After Mrs. Bell returned to Bell Hall not three days ago, she sent a note to Ludley Park inviting my mother and me to tea and quibbled not in telling Mama that she had great hopes of my being just the thing to “uncloud” her nephew’s eye.
