Today

Today is gonna be ok. I'm anxious. A day off. Another doctor appointment and then I gotta take my mom-in-law for bloodwork and then meet my BFF to try and find a dress for my book party. 

Usually, I would think fun, we can get some drinks after, but I'm on a quest to give up alcohol. So instead, I'm looking forward to food. Now the problem will be, eventually I know, that food will become my crutch so I've decided I gotta start exercising.

For the last 2 plus years, my only exercise has been picking up a pen. That's not a bad thing. I'm so proud of my YA memoir novel I just finished. It's called "Tales of an Inland Empire Girl." 

The first signing for my book this weekend at Barnes and Noble was so much fun. It felt surreal. I was out of breath from the excitement. They gave me free coffee, they put up a sign, I had a lil table, my family and many of my friends came by and I met new people and their high school aged children who bought the book. 

I sold a reasonable amount of books. And yes I want to sell more. Not for the money. I just want everyone to read it. To love it. Like I do. It's my book baby created, as I've said before, out of the spiderwebs of childhood memories all sewn back together.

So today, I gotta remember this, is just one day. I gotta take it one step at a time, in my combat boots of course. And walk a couple of extra steps for good measure. 

Goodbye Goodbye

Oingo Boingo has a song called "Goodbye Goodbye" that's fitting. They sing:

"Oh, I know something 

About the ways of loving 
And I tell you, baby, 
That something's wrong 
Look to the sky above and the mud below 
Something drives me crazy, got to got to get away 
Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye 
Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye!"

Alcohol has always been my crutch. My go to. My first love in a way. Since I was a kid along with cigarettes. But it's time. Gotta say goodbye.

No more. It's too much. It's not fun anymore.  I'm too old. And tired. 

At some point, I've had to ask myself, what have you done for me? Lately? Nothing.

Everything I've achieved is through coffee and hard work. My writing. My law career. My marriage. None of those things work when I'm drunk.

And believe me, seriously, me drunk at fifty is not pretty. I lose myself. I'm vacant. A zombie. A silly girl with unfocused eyes. Trying to reclaim her youth. Not realizing her time is now. 

So goodbye. 

I mean it this time, goodbye goodbye. 

Book baby

My book baby "Tales of an Inland Empire Girl" is being released today. Gestational period more than a decade. If I had known it would be Joycean in how long it would take, I might never have started. 

Each piece was written as stand alone (mostly) and each one had to be edited and rewritten to make those stand alone pieces into a book. It's a YA novel and memoir whatever that means. A rose by any other name...

At some point, more than 5 years in, I almost gave up. At some point, I called the book my albatross. So many titles. Reiterations. Variations. Workshopped at VONA, Inlandia, Macondo, with my writing group, the Tres Libras, and finally at the University of New Orleans (UNO).  Some stories went back to their earlier versions after too much editing.

At times, I got lost in the words. Had to work backwards. Last story first. Got some final feedback on my epilogue story "Trailer Park Daze" from my MFA class at UNO which helped tie it together. 

At some point, in the reediting process, a few years back, I almost gave up again. But I got lucky. A patient editor and publisher. A more than patient husband. Natural drive and ambition. I published my first book, "Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender, or how I became a punk rock lawyer" (with rock star publishing house Bamboo Dart Press), a chapbook about the horrors of mass incarceration, in less than a year while taking a break from the memoir/YA novel. Started a video podcast. It was what I needed. Staying home in the pandemic helped. 

Added poetry from my collection in at the end. I think I'm naturally multi-genre.

My dad's voice whispered in my ear the whole time. 

It was kinda magic.

I can't believe it. It's finally done. I know it's done because I can't read it any more. I've finally fracking finished it. And I love it. It's all mine. Mine. Mine. 

Buy the book here: http://www.losnietospress.com/tales-of-an-inland-empire-girl-available-now/

JEM's YA book is being released Jan 7th!

With nods to Judy Blume & SE Hinton, JEM's book (more than a decade in the making) about her IE YA years is now available! Check it out. 

Buy on the Los Nietos website or at your local bookstore, Amazon, or B & N. It drops January 7!! Support JEM! JEM will also be signing at Barnes & Noble in Rancho Cucamonga, CA on Saturday, January 15th 1-4 pm! Watch her book launch podcast on January 12th! Just add her Life of JEM FB page for the stream. 

To buy the book go here: http://www.losnietospress.com/tales-of-an-inland-empire-girl-available-now/

Twin fair

This picture is why I love writing memoir. 

The truth is always quirkier and stranger than fiction.

When we were kids, me and my twin sister entered a twin fair contest at the Pomona fair. It might have happened more than once. It was not by choice. 

You had to be twins, you had to dress alike and you had to have a talent. All twin contestants were judged on how much they looked alike as twins. And we were pretty similar. As far as talent, we did not the play piano. So I think we were pretending for the camera. 

As an aside, I did play the clarinet for one school year then gave it up. I'd always wanted to play drums or guitar, like Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days, not blow into a reed instrument.

I don't remember the details of that twin fair day, one forever memorialized in a newspaper clipping my mom still has. I'm the twin on the right who's closest to the frame. 

There's a mesmerizing glint in my eye. I'm sure I was planning my revenge in my head against my mom for making us show up in those head caps. 

As a kid, I was always telling myself stories in my head. Now you know why. For surely, it was to escape the doom and outright creepiness of my Inland Empire world. 

Then again, maybe I've just always been a ham. Side of pineapple please. And a coffee, a cig and a lighter to burn this picture up. 

Or maybe, just maybe, I love it all. The picture, the way we look like demented prairie girls pretending to play a (toy?) organ. 

It's truth. It's weird. It's life. 

Slouching toward grief

It is after midnight, and the beginning hours of Christmas Eve. The sky is crying. Rain is pouring down. 

It's a deluge. It makes sense. Joan Didion died yesterday. Her work was, and is, a huge inspiration for my essay writing. 

It was my wedding anniversary yesterday. My husband Adrian and I spent it with our moms. Adrian made a smoked pork roast. After I ate, I thought of my dad who always loved him a roast. When my dad passed so many years ago, I must have read Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" at least three or four times. It was my touchstone and helped me to process and grieve. 

The first story in my YA memoir novel is about the day my dad died, the day I had to let him go. It took me years to write that story. It went through so many versions. Some surreal. Fragmented. Poetic. The final version is more scene based. 

One day, probably many years in the future, I'll write an essay about grief. About how it manifests. How it changes. How we mutate from it. And I'll have Didion to thank.

When I think back to the writers who inspired me the most, Didion is up there with James Joyce and Sandra Cisneros. Didion taught me how to write an essay just by reading her prose. Didion taught me how to break rules and how to get a point of view across. That thing called voice was something she had in droves. 

Didion was a voice for the ages. Her writing was her. She was her writing. 

So thank you Joan Didion. May you Rest In Peace dear scribe, with a typewriter by your side. 

Happiness is a warm cup of coffee

It's Christmas time. I've decorated. Finally. Threw my back out wrapping presents. Medicated with a cold beer, my first in weeks. 

Coffee is my go to now. I love it. I've realized that alcohol has to be limited for me to the occasional indulgence or not at all. I might fall off the cliff otherwise. 

Truth is, I'm happier without it. Healthier. Clear headed. Even last night, after singing a few songs, I wanted the buzz to wear off so I drank a Diet Coke and a water and went to bed. 

I woke up at 2 am. Fully awake. I didn't fall back asleep until 4 am. 

I got up again at 6 am. I relished my cup of coffee listening to John Lennon croon. "Love is old, love is new..."

Talked to my twin. My mom called me. I fed the dogs and sanitized the counters. Thought to myself, I'll have another. Cup of coffee that is. Half and half, two sugar cubes. 

Whole lotta lumps. 

Merry Christmas friends.