Originally published by 49 Writers. Photo by Clark Fair.
I was a teen in 1990s Soldotna, Alaska—the setting for my debut novel—so people often ask me if The Ocean in My Ears is a thinly disguised memoir. The short
In Search of the Perfect Card for Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood’s themes of survival, images of the body, and the implicit questions about what it means to be female reached inside me and shook me. Slowly, on the cusp of twenty years old, I began to wake from a dark, oblivious sleep.
Agonizing Toward Publication
I was all dreamy over Ooligan Press after pitching my book at the 2016 Write to Publish Conference. Then this happened…
Ooligan’s amazing Acquisitions Editors, Molly and Bess, emailed in March that they were excited about Conspiring to be Meri and wanted to pitch the novel to their executive committee. I had no idea
How Disney’s Magic Kingdom is like Publishing
No, this isn’t Magic Kingdom. It’s the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. And I want that magical mess remover.
I try not to make a habit of wanting things, especially the desire-in-my-loins-can’t-sleep-until-I-have-it kind of want. Because wanting something THAT bad creates the possibility of profound disappointment, and like most humans, I’m averse
On Flying
A show about planes aired on PBS last night. Images of early wood-and-canvas aircrafts flashed on the screen. A black-and-white still of a World War I general. The narrator’s deep voice captured the general’s sentiment without irony: These flimsy flying contraptions have no place in battle! One hundred years later,
So yeah, I’ve been writing this book…
Not that I need an excuse to blow shit off, but blogging (re: my lack of) has taken a back seat to this whole novel-writing thingy. I go to sleep thinking about my Other World and my People. I wake up all itchy to know what’s happening with them.
Kinda like
Home is an ocean
The first time I went to NYC and told people I was from Alaska, they asked if I lived in an igloo. Unfortunately, no. I didn’t grow up in a house made of ice. That would’ve been way more exciting than our unremarkable middle-class house on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.
Aside the from
I’m here, are you?
I woke up yesterday with a cold sore. My lip was swollen and blistery and I was pretty sure the world was ending.
Turns out I’m still here. I think everyone else is, too. Apparently, the Mayans weren’t trying to predict anything; they just got sick of calendar-making.
Don’t think I wasn’t worried,
