Posts Tagged "writing"

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,”...

The red taxi drove away, leav­ing me there, alone, for three days of writ­ing, lec­tures, read-and-critique work­shops, author pan­els, edi­tor insights, net­work­ing, and the nerve-wracking one-on-ones with lit­er­ary agents. Already, I wanted to board the plane back to San Francisco. Only days before, my mem­oir, DROP DEAD LIFE, a preg­nant widow’s poignant, heart­felt, and often comic jour­ney through death, birth, and rebirth, had been rejected, via email, by yet another lit­er­ary agent. Like most rejec­tions, there wasn’t much com­men­tary on the actual writ­ing, but I con­jured up plenty of imag­i­nary bash­ing on my own. Not feel­ing very poignant or comic, I dragged my horse-sized brown suit­case up to the hotel lobby...

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...

I had every­thing I had ever wanted … right up until that Easter Sun­day din­ner when my 17-month-old daugh­ter and I watched as our beloved Erik slid down the kitchen counter and lay motion­less on our white-tiled floor. Erik, 29, was a rising-star man­ager for Lucas Dig­i­tal and a devoted hus­band and father.  I was a suc­cess­ful North­ern Cal­i­for­nia children’s pho­tog­ra­pher, seven months preg­nant with our sec­ond child. One minute we were laugh­ing, and thirty-five min­utes later, Erik was pro­nounced dead. Never could I have imag­ined that this tragedy would teach me to live and twice inten­sity, but now, eight years later, I embrace each day with my new hus­band (Match​.com) and our four children. Now,...