Freakin’ FINALLY!

Oh my God, if you even knew how hard I’ve been working the past 3 days… This thing took way longer than I would have liked to get shipped, but what can I say, sometimes life gets in the way. I totally would have met my Monday deadline too if I hadn’t spent over eight hours in the car this weekend, driving back and forth from SC to SF for the Hypnobirthing classes, and then up to Vallejo on Monday for a “practice run” of Isabel’s birth 🙂 But alas, Dena wasn’t really in labor, and so back to Santa Cruz I went for the final pushes of my own personal labor.

I am so happy right now I want to throw a party. It’s DONE. No more editing, no more revising. It will soon be in the mail and I can forget about it and move on to other things. Like writing the next book. And finishing Edwardo’s, lol. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and I seriously wanna dance around or something corny like that, lol. Man. And its a LOST night? Life is good.

Alright, this is my first night “off” in awhile, so I’m about to get to it. Just wanted to share the good news 🙂

Well I am coming off the most spiritually intense weekend I’ve had in a while. I have been selected to be present when my cousin Dena gives birth to her first child, and as a member of the birthing team, I attended Hypnobirthing classes with the couple this weekend. Cool stuff. First I gotta confess – I really wanna have a baby now, lol. I simply cannot wait to give birth to my first child, it is going to be so cool… Okay, now let’s box that thought up and put it on a shelf for a couple more years, LOL. But seriously, a natural birth with no unnecessary medical interventions is the way to go, and that is what we are trying to do for the Santillan family.

The premise behind Hypnobirthing is for birthing mothers to use self-hypnosis and meditation to interrupt the Fear-Tension-Pain model, to facilitate birthing with the least amount of discomfort. Most women are perfectly capable of birthing their babies without drugs or surgery, and it was only when men and the medical establishment got involved, turning pregnant women and childbirth into something that had to be “managed”, that all this fear got introduced into the birthing process. In order for the baby to move smoothly down and out of the body, all the muscles in the woman’s body need to relax. Fear – by triggering the fight, flight or freeze response – causes tension in the body, which leads to pain, as the body is now working against its natural instincts to birth the child. It’s all so simple really, mind over matter, right? Well Dena is an incredibly spiritual person, and I’m confident that she can pull this off. And I will be there to offer all the positive energy I have to the process, as well as acting as a forcefield to keep negative, fear-inducing influences out.

Yes, a very deep time indeed.

After class I hooked up with another spirit who quite literally, rocked my world. A very powerful and intense spirit. A spirit who actually healed the pain in my back with his hands and some stones. Crazy. I’ve been in physical therapy/chiropractic care/acupuncture for YEARS, and this boy walks in, lays his hands on me, and makes all the pain go away just like that (just like he said he would). It was a trip. I think spending the morning meditating in the Hypnobirthing class prepped me to be ultra-receptive, but we were doing some major energy work, balancing and alignment, real good stuff. I think I’ve spent too much time lately around non-believers cause I forgot what it was like to be in the presence truly spiritual people. Seriously, I haven’t been vibrating on this level since I fell in love with Mr. Max…

So on top of all the other things I am trying to do right now, I am adding “Reconnect with my Spirituality” to the list. We’re talking regular yoga, astrological meditation, balancing and grounding work and most importantly Positive Thinking. You get back what you put out people.

PS: The manuscript will ship on Tuesday, providing Dena doesn’t go into labor in the next 48 hours.

PPS: Look at the cool things that happen when you let a photographer loose in your house 🙂

Thanks Adam =)

Man, there just aren’t enough hours in the day… Demands on my time have been high, and I haven’t had enough left over to put in quality work editing. I’ve hit the halfway mark on the editing project, but I’m still not done. However, the shipment of this manuscript cannot be postponed much longer before I risk looking *gasp* unprofessional… So I’ve decided that I will print and ship on Monday, whether I’m finished or not. I try to align most of my projects with astrological omens if at all possible, lol, and the New Moon is on Monday. For those of you that don’t know, New Moons favor initiations and new beginnings.

In other news, Kanye West’s provocative ass is at it again… The rapper has decided to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine posing as Jesus. Uh huh. I have mixed feeling about the man — I respect him as a talented and sometimes brilliant artist and producer, but also strongly believe his ego is WAY out of control. No one should be that full of themselves, it can’t be healthy… I wonder if he’s going to be as whiny in this article as he was in the VIBE article I read… Someone will have to read it and let me know.

For those that don’t know, my day job is Program Manager of the Center for Cultural Studies at UCSC. Today we hosted our major winter conference Reflections on Katrina: Place, Persistence and the Lives of Cities. I wasn’t required to be “on duty” today, but because the topic interests me, I headed over there bright and early and spent the bulk of my day listening to the presentations. There was provocative discussion, intense imagery (courtesy of the near-constant stream of Katrina slides and a lunchtime photo exhibition), and I walked away from the whole experience totally overstimulated. Of course. Cause I’m Steph.

Two of the panelists were actually from New Orleans, so they were able to provide a insiders perspective and analysis that you’re just not going to get from the mainstream news media. A media that seems to have forgotten Katrina even happened, its horrors removed from our TV screens, and in turn wiped from public memory as we re-focus on our own self-interests and more trivial matters. But the aftermath of Katrina is still very real to many people, people whose lives will forever be changed. And you know what? Shit is still hella f*cked up down there. The reconstruction efforts have only just begun, but what is being reconstructed? For whom? How will race and class politics shape the efforts to rebuild? And how can communities, displaced and destroyed, come back together and set down roots in soggy soil?

Those geographically removed from the Gulf Coast region have what I believe is the privilege of not having to deal with the aftermath of Katrina, with economic and environmental consequences that will prove even more devastating and far-reaching than the hurricane itself. We watched it unfold on our TVs, safe in the comfort of our air-conditioned homes… We felt outrage and sadness, our hearts broke for those suffering, but it passed. Maybe we donated some money to the relief efforts, but most likely, we didn’t. Cause it happened to them. Over there. Someone else in a land far, far away. Why is it people only stand up and pay attention when something is directly affecting them? And why are flashes of compassion so fleeting?

There is so much we can learn, as a nation and as human beings, from this terrible tragedy, but I fear Katrina and the issues it brought to the forefront are suffering from a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Have we forgotten? Or is a change gonna come?

Well I guess the mission of the conference has been accomplished – I am reflecting on Katrina. On all people across the globe that are suffering.

Donate to the Red Cross

I’ve decided I’m going to start a Thursday blog tradition of LOST venting, lol.
*****LOST SPOILER ALERT*****

“Who are we, to tell anyone what they can or can’t do.”
–Locke

Well, that was one testosterone-fest of an episode, a good ole-fashioned alpha-male showdown. Everyone waving their dicks, er, I mean, guns around, pissing lines in the sand, marking their territory. And they want us believe it’s the WOMAN’s fault that evil reigned supreme, a la Eve (ha) in the Garden of Eden, when in fact, she probably just saved the world and they’re too puffed up on pride to realize it. Reminds me of the Commander and Chief episode this week where the female President averted nuclear war simply by agreeing to apologize. What a concept, eh?

Seriously, Michael can stay lost in the jungle for all I care, cause that’s one less crazy person with a gun running around who might accidentally shoot one of my favorite characters. They really need to start utilizing Libby’s skills as a psychologist to get some group therapy going on. Talk about a group of folks with issues…

Nothing terribly deep today… I’ve been fighting off a cold all week, and everyone knows how difficult it is to be positive and productive when you’re not feeling well. I’m an EmergenC junkie, so I tend to keep my immune system boosted and don’t get sick very often, thankfully. But the bug got me this time. 🙁 I suppose that’s what I get for drinking too much at bars and kissing strangers, lol.

I’m trying to push through with the editing despite my sore throat and fatigue. I guess I’ll miss my manuscript submission deadline once again, but you know what, I’m not beating myself up about it. That’s the cool thing about self-imposed deadlines–there aren’t really any tangible consequences. I’m not gonna fail a class or get fired or anything, so the stress and anxiety is absent (thank god). I just push it back a little and push on.

Not to say that deadlines are totally useless and arbitrary. I do believe in the importance of setting goals and deadlines for yourself. When you set a deadline, you’re making a commitment to your goal. It gives you something to work towards, structure. We all need a little structure in our lives, even us creative folk who are inherently resistant to such things 🙂 I was talking to a friend yesterday, who’s trying to submit a grant application, due this Friday. We were lamenting about how difficult it is to get motivated, how easy it is to put things off until tomorrow. Anyways, even though the grant isn’t due until Friday, I encouraged her to set a goal to finish it by Thursday. I reasoned that “even if you don’t finish on Thursday, I bet you’ll be further along come Thursday morning than you would have been if you hadn’t set that goal.” And it’s true. Goals give us something to focus on, and you can’t produce or create anything of value without a certain degree of focus…

What are your goals for the year? Month? Personal, professional or otherwise? Just for fun, why don’t you write a few of them down and tape them to the mirror in your bathroom , or tack them up on a wall. Just the sheer act of writing it out will bring you one step closer to achieving it, and we all gotta start somewhere, right?

Hey FAB – I’ll even give you a head start, lol. Goal for Faby: Find a Business School in the Bay Area and APPLY 😉

Alright, tis all for now. It’s almost time for me to get LOST 🙂

Well, I had a productive weekend regarding the book. Did a lot of thinking about the book dilemma and talking about the book dilemma and what do you know – I actually know what I want to do now. Sweet.

I’ve decided that I’m definitely going to self-publish my first book. After doing a little research and talking to Edwardo, I know this path is more suited to my personality. I am a bit of a control-freak, and was planning on doing a lot of the marketing/promotional work myself anyway, so it doesn’t make sense for me to sign over creative control and a large percentage of the profits at this stage. I want to shape my career, and I’m starting to see that the fastest path to the top does not necessarily need to be linear.

However, I do acknowledge that I’ve already invested a lot of time and energy into fishing for a book deal, and I don’t want to just abandon that, so I have devised Plan C, lol. It goes a little something like this 🙂 The queries I have out for SOUL MATES, I’m going to leave alone, and still try to publish through the traditional route. But SOUL MATES is the second book in the series. So now the mission is to try and write WHEN LOVE ISN’T ENOUGH, the first book, in the next four months, with the intention of self-publishing this year, probably in November, with advance copies printed in July, just in time for my cross-country road trip. That way, I can get a book in print soon, which is important to me, while still trying to catch the attention of a big fish publisher. Whew, what a task I have ahead of me! 🙂 But I know I’ve charted the right course – it’s all about Balance…

I’m excited to get back to working on WHEN LOVE. I have 8 chapters done already, and can devote my full attention to it as soon as I finish this last edit of SOUL MATES, which by the way, is going well. I’m a third of the way through, and confident I can finish this week, as planned.

Here’s to having a Dream… Hope you’re resting in Peace Dr. King…

Well I made it LA safely… And am having a freakin’ blast. Last night we went to this country club called Montana’s… Now I’m not talking country club as in lifestyles of the rich and famous, but country club as in wranglers, stetsons and COWBOYS Baby!!! And we partied like it was our last Yee Haw, lol.

Yeah, for those of you that don’t know, I love country music. One of the Many things about me that folks find a tad different, lol. It makes total sense to me though. As a writer, I’m all about lyrics and words, and country songs are all about telling a story. It is a genre that reveres simplicity (one of the things I hate about contemporary hip hop is the focus on materialism, misogyny, and recently the glorification of cheating. At least when they cheat in a country song, they feel bad about it). As Trace Adkins sings, they’re songs about lovin’ and livin’ and good-hearted women and family and God… I listen to other music, but like I was telling the boys last night, country has my heart. So our trip out to Montana’s was a real treat for me.

First off, it was so awesome to be with a group of ladies who love country music as much as I do, and don’t just “tolerate” it. The atmosphere was great, the music was great, and watching the folks out on the dance floor just rounded out the night. Guys who can two-step and line-dance are so freaking hot I cannot even handle it (even when they’re chicks, right Fab? LOL). All I gotta say is, I want one. Badly. I think I would even consider breaking my no white-boy rule for a two-steppin’ cowboy…

So a new resolution for 2006 – learn to line dance. Then, start frequenting country bars, lol. And rope me a Cowboy 😉 It is going DOWN when I roll through Texas this summer…

Exciting weekend ahead… Not only do I get to go down and celebrate my birthday all over again with my SoCal friends, but I’ve also got a little business meeting lined up 🙂 I’m gonna hook up with Authorpreneur Edwardo Jackson for a power lunch to talk business. Edwardo is my first official author friend 🙂 It is so cool to have author friends, lol. He, er, got my attention at an online conference a few months ago (lol), and we’ve struck up a pretty good friendship over the past few months. We joke that we’re writing soulmates, cause we write in a similar tone and style… Fellow genre-straddlers… Both charmingly long-winded. I’m excited to finally meet him.

Edwardo has been kind enough to let me pick his brain about my present career dilemma. Namely, to self-publish or not. I’m torn right down the middle on this one, the pros and cons of each side pretty even. I’m interested in Edwardo’s thoughts because he’s had experience with all sides of publishing. He self-published his first novel, EVER AFTER, and then was picked up by Random House, where they re-released EVER AFTER and published the sequel, NEVER HAFTA. Now Edwardo has started his own publishing company, JCM Books, from which his 3rd book in the series, I DO?, is forthcoming in February 2006. Hence the “authorpreneur” bit. Needless to say, there is a lot I can learn from this man. I am grateful for his time and counsel.

So I hit the road in the morning. I’m looking forward to the trip – it’s been a few months since I travelled, and I get to see FABY, which always brightens my day 🙂 Four-day weekends Rule!

Okay, so the manuscript probably won’t go out this week, lol. I’m making good progress on the latest revision, but I’m not trying to rush when something is this important. So I’ve released myself from the Thursday deadline, but if I continue on pace, I should be ready to ship by next Wednesday. One more week. (Meg, please hold me to that.)

Anyone who’s ever edited a manuscript can attest that it’s a time-consuming process. I know every time I read through a draft, I’m editing for different things. Sometimes its a content-edit, where I’m reading for flow and plot consistency. Sometimes it’s a copy-edit, where I’m strictly looking for grammatical errors. This time, I’m just reading it as a reader – trying to look at it with fresh eyes and experience the story as a whole on an emotional level. I’m pleased to discover that the copy is pretty clean – the red marks are scant this time around, and there isn’t much in the terms of revision. That in itself is satisfying. But there is always room for improvement, and I will not rest until I’ve produced the best piece of work I’m capable of producing.

So I will push on, with trusty red pen in hand. Get ‘Er Done!

Heads Up: LOST comes back from hiatus tonight AND we finally get Eko’s backstory – Woot Woot! Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll be doing much editing this evening, lol. (Yes, I’m one of those people…)