Hope for a Sea Change on Audible and a Giveaway!

My Shebooks' mini-memoir Hope for a Sea Change is available now as an Audible selection. You can download it for $2.99 or get it free with a 30-day trial subscription of Audible. It's strange to listen to your own words read by someone else, but I really like the reader and am excited and honored to have it recorded.

I have ten free download codes for a copy and will give one to each of the first ten people to leave a comment here and also share the link on their own social media channels.

Here's the link:

HOPE FOR A SEA CHANGE AUDIBLE VERSION

Just Say No

I have no other photos from last night -- the Shebooks reading in Eagle Rock -- than the one above which cracked me up, unless you want one of the great Denise Emanuel Clemen, author of Birthmother, and I about to plant a big smack of a kiss on one another's lips for a mutual friend who couldn't make the event. I'll spare you that sight, though, and just say that the event was wonderful. I'll post the links to the short memoir and fiction of the other writers and mine, so if you're hankering for some awesome writing and have an extra $2.99 lying around, go for it!

On another note, I'm currently in the business of just say no, with a sort of twist on Nancy Reagan's ridiculous admonition so many years ago. The twist is that the advocacy is in the field of medical marijuana and getting lawmakers to ease up on the laws. There's a formidable group of women and men who work diligently on all of this, and I've done my best to publicize their efforts here on the blog and on my Facebook page. I was, at one point, one of the designated advocates to work on the issue in California, but this morning I decided to just say no. To be honest, other than writing religiously here about the issue, particularly as it pertains to Sophie, my efforts have been minimal. I am comfortable with what I've shared -- our personal experience -- and believe passionately that every single child in this country should have the same access to a medicine that might help their own child with refractory seizures or other diseases. I also believe that marijuana should be legal -- yes, even the stuff that makes you high. Period. However, I just don't have it in me to do the non-profit foundation stuff anymore. I don't want to be a part of an "army" with all that entails -- the war imagery, the in-fighting, the politics, the politics, the politics. I really don't have it in me. I've told myself that wimping out is my perogative -- after all, I've been doing this for nearly twenty years, and many of the people working on this current "campaign" have very young children, have no inkling of the toll it takes on some people, year after year. I feel that toll, and I'm actually not ashamed to admit to it.

So, I'm just saying no. When I stare at that sign about walls, I think, of course. I am a wall in many ways, very strong and built of peasant stock. Many people lean on me, have leaned on me, continue to lean on me, and that's good. I'm grateful for my strength and grateful that I have the wherewithal to provide support. At a certain point, though, I will fall, and just as I realized very suddenly one day long ago that I was in charge of Sophie and that the medical world was not going to help us, I realize that I am in charge of me and have to minimize some of the leaning. Does that make sense? I'm not saying that I don't want to help anyone anymore. I'm just saying that this campaign is just too much for me right now, and I'm backing out.







Here are the Shebooks links. You can also buy these titles on Amazon!

Elizabeth Aquino Hope for a Sea Change
Denise Emanuel Clemen Birthmother
Laura Fraser The Risotto Guru
Mona Gable Blood Brother
Zoe Rosenfeld Owl in Darkness

What Are You Doing This Thursday Evening?

Los Angeles! Come to our Shebooks Shebang! 
This Thursday. 
Shebooks Party and Reading

October 23
7:30 - 10 pm

Admission: $5


Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock
2225 Colorado Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90041
323-226-1617

The night will feature drinks, music and readings from Shebooks authors:

Elizabeth Aquino
Denise Emanuel Clemen
Laura Fraser
Mona Gable
Zoe Rosenfeld

Birth Mother by Denise Emanuel Clemen

Pregnant from her first sexual encounter, a teenager living in a town of 3,000 Catholics keeps her secret from everyone until six weeks before the baby’s due date. Hustled out of town and hidden in the Iowa countryside within hours of finally confiding in her mother, she concocts a scheme that will allow her to raise her child, but can she win over any of the people who might help her? As her pregnancy and its looming consequences unfold, she realizes that her life of lies and secrets has only just begun.

That's a brief description of my dear friend and fellow writer, Denise Emanuel Clemens' new mini-memoir, published by Shebooks and available today for purchase. I met Denise years and years ago when we both attended a terrific writing workshop at UCLA, taught by the wonderful Barbara Abercrombie. Denise and I became friends and started a small writing group that met faithfully over the years and that finally dwindled away to occasional beer lunches for the two of us. We have every intention of starting up again -- both the beer and the writing group --  and I can only imagine what new writing Denise has in store. Her experience of having a child taken away from her is unique in its telling of the other side of adoption -- the side that we rarely hear in popular literature or press. Birth Mother is luminous and powerful and painful and above all, generous and loving. You have to read it. I command you to buy it. 

Here are the links:

Birth Mother at Shebooks

You can also download it through Amazon or on the Nook.

If you don't already, you can read Denise's blog. She's a fine writer, hilarious, moving, wise, and I'm just damn grateful to also call her friend.

Margaritaville

Carrie and Today's Blog Inertia, Overturned

I've been sitting at my computer all morning, filling out online health insurance claims, making neat stacks of paperwork, listening to the tinny strains of the Los Angeles Unified School District's hold music and periodically staring at this blank white space wondering what to write. I posted the daisy photo as inspiration because you just never know what'll strike you. As you know, I rarely have blog inertia, but in feeling sort of over-exposed and dry, dry, dry, I've been basically just conjuring up tidbits and observations of late. Offline, I'm working on a short story and -- well -- enough blathering about nothing.

My writer friend Carrie Link of love. and the author of one of my favorite memoirs, Will of God, just heroically rose out of her own self-described blog inertia and posted an amazing review of my mini memoir. You can read it here.

Thank you, Carrie and thank all of you who've downloaded and read this thing. It means the world to me, to use a blog inertia-provoked phrase.

xoxoxoxo

Thursday's Child

The publisher at SheBooks let me know that I was one of the seven women who "dared to do it their way," selected by a writer at BlogHer. Paige Bennett wrote a review of her favorite seven memoirs, one for each day of the week, and she selected Hope for a Sea Change as Thursday's pick.

Thank you so much, Paige and BlogHer!

Here's the link.

Here's the link to download my ebook at Shebooks. 

Consider signing up for a membership/subscription to Shebooks. For only $7.95, you can download all the short fiction and memoir you'd like -- I have found so much great writing on this new platform and am proud and excited to be a part of it!




P.S. I just got back from a grueling trip to Santa Barbara where I drove and then sat and watched seven lacrosse games. I will recover soon and try to post some photos.

On Not Giving a Flying Foo Foo

Let's get back to our regular business and forget, for a moment, the shameless self-promoting (although I'll have you know that my book is currently ranked #23 on the Amazon e-book sub-category of women memoirs, right ahead of Diane Keaton's). Thank you!

But back to "regular business." I'm just now coming down from a whirlwind of conferences and galas and public speaking engagements -- an exhilarating and overwhelming ride. I've spoken in public before -- many times, actually, when I was working for several collaboratives that addressed systemic healthcare improvement initiatives. I've also served on a few boards of a few non-profit foundations and even helped to found one back in the dark days of the last millennium. Going to galas and benefits that raise money for epilepsy causes is a mixed bag -- I am at once grateful that so many people support the cause, repulsed by the schmooze factor (especially on Wall Street and in Hollywood), and depressed with the acknowledgement that these are my people and this is my life. Frankly I'd rather be conjugating French verbs, to tell you the truth, or at the very least baking a cake and reading some poetry.

That being said, this past weekend in San Francisco, when I participated on the medical marijuana panel at the Epilepsy Pipeline Conference, I had a sort of epiphany or suddenly realized just how much things had changed. Generally, I'm a fiery and opinionated sort of woman, quick to mouth off and express my opinions, often sharp-tongued, and given the topic, frustrated and angry about the access to and quality of healthcare for children with epilepsy. I know there were some people at that conference who found me unbearable, and I winced, a bit, viewing the taped session, noticing how the female doctor and female nurse just might have motioned to the moderator to cut me off and allow them to speak. Contrary to what you might think, I'm not this entirely confident person all the time.

I confess, though, to realizing at the conference how my former motivations might just possibly -- OK, definitely -- have been about ego, about vindication, about hoping for and forever being denied a Power That Be who would step up and say, You are right! We are so wrong! We fucked up your daughter's life because we don't know anything and there's a vast and horrific conspiracy of Big Pharma and Western Medicine that we've been a part of, contrary to our Hippocratic Oath. You win!

My epiphany, actually, was this: I don't give a flying foo foo what They think. 

I realize that Sophie's astounding reaction to Charlotte's Web has nearly everything to do with this, that I'm in a new and unusual (for us) position of not needing their help. It feels outrageous -- like I actually am on a tightrope suspended over the world, which -- contrary to before -- looks sparkly as opposed to dark. I feel graceful even, for this moment.

Hope for a Sea Change

After a hectic day of weird links and other internetsamania, my Shebooks e-book is up and ready to roll on all platforms. I encourage you to download it from the Shebooks website as this is an amazing new platform that aims to close the gap between male and female publication and writing. I subscribed and have downloaded and read many wonderful memoirs and short fiction selections from the website. You can also help support the platform by donating to their Equal Writes Kickstarter campaign.

Here's the link to my author page where you can also buy and download the memoir.

Thank you so much for your support -- it's hard to really take it all in, but know that I am grateful!

"Hope for a Sea Change" is out and available for purchase! UPDATE!

A new version of the book with an added, short chapter about medical marijuana, is available and will be downloaded wirelessly if you've already purchased the e-book. Thank you so much for all of your support today and always!

I woke up bleary this morning after last night's festivities to a message from Angella at 37Paddington that my Shebook e-book was available for purchase on Amazon right this very second!

Good lord, ya'll. This is very exciting for me. I hope you'll download it for $2.99 and then spread the word to your friends and accomplices in life.

Forgive the shameless self-promotion that you might witness over the next few weeks. I promise that if I become a gazillionaire, I'll buy us all a private island where we can lie around all day talking about books and poetry, sip bourbon and relax.

Here is the link:

Amazon
Shebooks.net

Sophie and Realm of Caring, Shebooks and Me

Hellooooooo, Sophie-Girl!

Sophie and I just walked up to a copy shop to get copies made of the flyer I'll be handing out tonight when I speak briefly, again, at the Realm of Caring benefit. Tonight's event will be packed with more than 400 people, many of whom will be neurology officials. There will also be families and many people who are anxiously waiting to get Charlotte's Web. My words will be brief and hopefully inspirational. It's imperative that Realm of Caring gets more financial support so that it can provide this life-saving medicine to more children and adults with epilepsy and other diseases. If you haven't yet, please consider donating to Realm of Caring at this link. Click on DONATE and then scroll down to the California chapter (the one with the beach, of course!) You know I love you, don't you?

The flyer advertises the publication of my e-book this Wednesday, June 11th by Shebooks. It's a short memoir, an excerpt from a larger book that I hope will one day be completed and published, too.  I'll give you the links and all that jazz on Wednesday -- in the meantime, if you want to read a bit about it, you can hop on over to dear Angella at 37 Paddington. 

You can also check out Shebooks' website. Here's what they say about themselves:

Shebooks was co-founded by three women with long careers in publishing. We were excited by the explosion of digital media, which was giving readers new ways to find compelling stories. And we were pleased to see writers find fresh ways to work and make money outside the usual channels. 

The problem was that female authors, journalists, editors – and ultimately female readers – were being shut out of the revolution. Innovative digital publishing companies led by men and publishing mostly male writers were getting lots of investment and attention. (Our “aha!” moment came at a journalism conference in 2012: all guys onstage announcing their new companies to an audience that was nearly all women.) But we knew that women are voracious readers in every format – buying the majority of books and magazines and reading (and writing) the majority of blogs. 

As veterans of women’s publishing, we understood the realities of women’s lives – that while we love to read, we don’t always have time for a full-length book. We also knew that paid opportunities for female writers were shrinking—and that the content of the so-called thought leader magazines still carries 70 percent male bylines. 

So we decided not to wait for our invitation to the party. Shebooks was the result: a new media format, real money for writers (our writers all share in our profits), and engaging stories that women can’t wait to read, that fit the corners of their busy lives.
We are grateful for the support of the New Media Women’s Entrepreneurial Fund at the Journalism Lab at American University, as well as that of friends, family, and angel investors – and now you, our readers!

Cool stuff, right?

Maggie May

My writer friend Maggie May Ethridge has a short memoir published today and available for purchase on the wonderful new website Shebooks. The memoir is called Atmospheric Disturbances: Scenes from a Marriage and is easily downloadable at this link or on Amazon.

I've been reading Maggie's blog Flux Capacitor for many years and given the honest and intimate nature of her writing, I feel almost proprietary in promoting her writing -- surely you've read it and surely you must if you haven't! I've already started Atmospheric Disturbances and find it difficult to put down -- there's something about Maggie's ability to articulate the pain and joy of marriage, of serious mental health issues, of her own identity as a woman, that makes you feel as if you lived right next door and were carrying on a conversation over many years. The book is both intensely erotic and utterly matter of fact, if that makes sense, and I'm certain that no matter the state of your marriage or whether you're married or not, you will find something deep and wise and resonant for you in this memoir.

Oh, and it's $2.99 -- really.

Click here and download it today!














Shebooks is a new online publishing platform working to promote women in publishing -- in case you've been hiding (and reading) under a rock, you might not realize that women are very under-represented in the literary world. They recently launched a subscription program that is incredibly reasonable -- and yours truly will have a short memoir published very soon!

Vesuvius in YOUR Home

I've told ya'll about the new e-book publisher, SheBooks, right? They'll be publishing a bit of my writing in the next few months, but right now, right this instant, they've published my dear friend and writer extraordinaire Brittany Tuttle's (of Vesuvius at Home fame) novella. It's called Stone and Spring, and I have already downloaded it on my Kindle and read about half of it last night before finally having to go to sleep Like everything Brittany writes, it's gorgeous, tight -- lyrical and intense. And like nothing she's ever written (that I've read) or that's been written, maybe, by anyone, it's at once deeply feminine, childlike and just this shy of brutal. I felt, reading the first half or so, like I was unwinding a spool of film -- black and white -- the images transparent and haunting, an undercurrent of violence. But, hey, I'm not even finished with the book. I can't wait for tonight when I'll climb into bed and finish it, come up for air.

Go over to Shebooks.net and order yourself a copy.








P.S. That film analogy was a careful one -- I can imagine some unwitting person reading it lightly and then realizing that they're holding the next great independent film.