Designed My Next Manuscript and Thank You, La Bloga!

First, the much deserved thank you to the editors of La Bloga. My poem was posted online on La Bloga's poetry section of Flor y Canto.  That is a huge honor for me! 

Unfortunately, I opened my big mouth and told my older brother, who is no doubt blabbing the news to my parents.  He wants to post his own poetry, so I sent him the url, which I may regret later because he will tell my dad I was talking shit about him.  It's like that one time when I was performing for 100 Poets for Change in 2017 and thanks to my older sister, he got the damn Facebook video, which I uploaded, and my brother played it for my dad over and over. Mind you, my dad is the reason I weave poetry, as he is quite the rhyming poet and singer himself.  Well, of course, all the political content of that poem "True Faith in Unity" was totally lost to him.  My Dad only cared about the cursing and how good I looked.  Sigh.  Familia. 

This morning, I was tired from all the long meetings and early morning writing, so I got none of my novel The Harvest done.  I plan on hitting it hard tonight and slowing down the pacing to capture the new environment where Alan is going, to south of the border in what used to be an ejido hidden from tourists.  The c-ervants will play an important role in this chapter.  

What did I do this morning?  I designed the manuscript for Wolf Trek.  I sent it to the editor, Elizabeth Marino, and cover designer.  I am so excited to see what he will spin out!  I sent him some prototypes of other covers, but I am open.  Look, my first cover design of The Long Walk on Smashwords was rather limited (I almost said ugly).  I have sold one copy of La Bruja in the Orchard there, probably because of the cover. 

Amazon is a different story.  The printed copies are taking off, and that makes me very happy!  I also got kudos from Luis Rodriguez, and I may pester him for support on my novel.  But, it's not about the sales.  It's about the love of writing, and I am so glad to see the improvement, book to book (and poem by poem).  I really think folks are going to enjoy Wolf Trek.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to my new Creative Writing group!  It is meant for busy HW students and writer friends.  I wanted to highlight one of the author sites from a former creative writing student, Brenda Halter:  www.brendahalter.com/ Her story draft "The Advantage" is awesome!  You can read it on her author site; I'm sure she would love comments on it!

Well, have a fantastic, productive Wednesday.  I will be posting more of my novel draft later tonight.

Celebrate your writing victories with some quality tequila (I will tonight)!  #Resist