Last night I had the pleasure of dining with a group of Sonoma friends, and my sister from Sacramento. There were eight of us, and we love each other in the way you do when you’ve been friends for twenty-plus years. We’ve shared weddings, births, deaths and divorces, birthdays and holidays, earthquakes and wildfires, road…
Author: Joanell Serra, Author
On Mothering, Between the Headlines.
Somedays it’s hard to write fiction, when the world is churning, so today I share my thoughts not on writing, but on living, and mothering, with the headlines being what they are. I am the mother of a young man of color, and a day doesn’t go by without something new to warn him…
Talking about life…In the elevator or at the wine bar?
“What’s Your Book About?” I get this question a lot. I know I’m supposed to have an elevator speech all lined up. At publishing conferences over the years, folks drilled this into me. “Know your pitch! Have your tag line ready!” But I’m not a tag line sort of person. I’ve never told a…
The Vines We Planted Getting Nudged from the Nest. (Fly, little book, fly.)
I am not really into self promotion for promotion sake. Remember that plant in the Little Shop of Horrors that kept saying “Feed me Seymour”? I feel like a lot of book marketing is social media posts of book covers over and over, saying “Read Me Seymour.” I don’t know about you, but that never…
A Fallen Warrior for Healing.
Jennifer Golick’s office held small toys, silly comics, stress balls and board games to put her clients at ease. She said things in a straight forward, I’m–not-kidding kind of way. At the same time she made folks feel people so accepted, they could hear the truth without being knocked down by it. She…
Words That Build.
Thursday, and I’m spending the day at Mt. Zion/UCSF Hospital, for a myriad of appointments (all fine. Diagnosis= aging.) I’m a well experienced medical appointment attendee: my mother had a chronic illness from the time I was born until she passed when I was thirty, and my daughter also manages (with grace) a difficult…
The Accidental Romance Writer
Am I an accidental romance writer? I say accidental, because I didn’t set out to write a romance. I wrote about the characters who popped up in all my short stories: A man who is half in love with his horse; a woman he used to love; his mother who drinks to much; her…
Your Steps Alone
In the airport, waiting for another delayed flight, and Jerry Garcia is singing in my earbuds. When you’re waiting for a miracle. I find myself reflecting on the things we wait for, and the roads we take. About thirty years ago I took my college degree, two suitcases and a back pack full of journals…
Back in New Orleans.
I walk through the teaming, busy streets of New Orleans, jazz notes always playing, as if the sidewalks themselves ooze with music. It is twelve years post Katrina, and thoughts of the recent California fires, our fires, come to mind. I cannot help but compare the two. The last time I visited, a year…
Dear Santa. What the world needs now…
Buy me no baubles and I’ll save you the trinkets. Here are the gifts we really need this holiday season. This gifts we give all year. This gifts for which we forget to send thank you notes. The gifts that shape the giver. My Christmas list for the world. The gift of listening.…