Publicity, & Interviews

My Scribd love affair con­tin­ues to deepen month after month. This week­end, I’m hon­ored to return to the fab­u­lous South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Writ­ers Con­fer­ence where I’ll be speak­ing about Grow­ing Your Read­er­ship with Scribd​.com. You’ll know why I love telling other writ­ers how I’ve built my writ­ing plat­form when you read what Michael Steven Gre­gory, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of The South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Writ­ers Con­fer­ence, wrote about my phe­nom­e­nal Scribd​.com journey: “(Hyla’s) first time attend­ing a writ­ers’ con­fer­ence was last February’s SD24.  Net result, three agents request­ing her mem­oir, Drop Dead Life: A Preg­nant Widow’s Heart­felt and Often Comic Jour­ney...

Last month, I had the honor of read­ing in “The Mama Mono­logues” at Corte Madera Book Pas­sage, along with NY Times best-selling author Kelly Cor­ri­gan and many other tal­ented Writ­ing Mamas. Spe­cial thanks to Dawn Yun, founder of The Writ­ing Mamas, for mak­ing this laugh­ter and tear-filled event pos­si­ble. We raised over $5,000 for Abelina Mag­ana, a North­ern Cal­i­for­nia mother of three who was shot 15 times and lived to tell. If you would like to make a con­tri­bu­tion to Abelina and her chil­dren, all of whom are still very much in need of our help, please send a check to: Attn: The Mag­ana Fam­ily Fund, Bank of Marin, 1450 Grant Avenue, Novato, 94945. Please enjoy this video of my piece, “You Think You Know,”...

  This past Feb­ru­ary, I went to the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Writer’s Con­fer­ence in San Diego—a con­fer­ence I highly rec­om­mend for writ­ers. I spent weeks prepar­ing advanced sub­mis­sions and query let­ters for the three dif­fer­ent lit­er­ary agents and one edi­tor with whom I sched­uled to meet there. When it came time for my SCWC Advanced Sub­mis­sion Cri­tiques, all three sched­uled agents raved about my man­u­script, declar­ing things like “Peo­ple need to be inspired by sto­ries like yours” or “You’ll be great at speak­ing engage­ments” and “Loved the sex and humor.” I returned home to San Fran­cisco with enthu­si­as­tic inter­est from three dif­fer­ent agents. Or so I thought. Two...

Michael Steven Gre­gory, Direc­tor of the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Writ­ers’ Con­fer­ence, had some cool stuff to say about me. Read all about it here.

For the full arti­cle by Jason Boog, go here.

DROP DEAD LIFE, the blog, must make a shift. Despite my own inse­cu­ri­ties as an intel­lec­tu­ally under-stimulated mommy of four wild chil­dren, ages 2 through 12, my mem­oir, DROP DEAD LIFE, a preg­nant widow’s poignant, heart­felt, and often comic jour­ney through death, birth, and rebirth, has recently sparked enthu­si­as­tic lit­er­ary agent interest. So, what this means, I imag­ine, is that my book will even­tu­ally end up in your local stores. Still dif­fi­cult for me to believe, but it is going to hap­pen. In other words, I can no longer post chapters-in-progress on my blog, for fear that you will not want to stand in line to pur­chase the actual book. A solu­tion? Sug­ges­tions? The best I’ve come up with is to...