The Beautiful Answer

Searching for Sassy’s First Award!

Super excited to report that my book Searching for Sassy: An L.A. Phone Psychic’s Tales of LIfe, Lust & Love has just won its first award, as a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards! 

Yay and double yay! 

The response has really been great, and I am so grateful for all the reviews I’ve already received. 

Onward and upward, to see what’s next. :) 

Indecision Sucks, and Then There’s Clarity

Sorry for the spotty posting of late, especially since I had made a vow to post every day for the past year. I’m pretty close, with only a few posts left to close out this 365 day period, and never expected a book, a play, a potential TV series and more in the works to be happening all at once. 

Pans to travel to Baltimore last Thursday were in place, until I woke up with a sore throat (I pretty much never get sick — maybe once a year at most) and started to worry that I shouldn’t go. I could call and cancel, I thought. Sure, I’d disappoint people and not get to meet all the hard-working folks who have worked to put my words on the stage. But I was feeling crappy as hell and had no real desire to get in a germ tube and fly across the country. Not in that moment. 

So I Dayquil’d up and got on the plane. As my husband was rounding the corner from our house, and heading for the freeway onramp to get to the airport, I kept thinking maybe I should turn back. Maybe it just wasn’t the right time. 

Then a woman with silvery-white bobbed hair, and black roots caught my attention. She was waiting at the light as we went around the corner, so she could cross the street. When I looked at her, I saw that she was wearing a t-shirt that said one word, in huge letters: GO.

There was no logo, and I’m pretty sure that there’s no band with that name. I should know by now that my guides aren’t subtle. They broadcast messages to me through the radio, billboards, people who randomly come up to me on the street, and many other ways. I have a question in mind, and even before I’ve voiced it, I’m getting information. But this one was pretty magical. 

I live in a magical world, I thought. Amazing things are happening all around me. I can either sit by the shore and miss out on the fun stuf, or jump into the moving current.

So far, I’m thrilled to be here. More tomorrow. I’ve got to get some sleep so I can teach a workshop at breathe books on Intuitive Dating, and attend the first-ever fully staged performance of my play Punk Rock Mom (for me, at least). 

How freakin’ lucky am I? 

A Breakthrough

In the eleven months I’ve been keeping this blog, I’ve begun to notice a few things about the way the mind works. How it strives to keep things looking bleak, perhaps so that when joy occurs, it will stand out by comparison. 

Then there are those days when you’re able to break through a pattern that has been so much a part of your life that it’s become like a second skin. Over the years I have raged at it, coaxed and cajoled it, even tried to reason with it as I attempted to move toward some sort of final releasing point, where I could finally be rid of it for good. Today, I stood up for myself in a way I have never done before. And it wasn’t really like anything I expected. 

Most people picture fighting of some sort when you say you’re standing up for yourself. They imagine swords drawn, defensive battle postures, grimacing faces. Not that I didn’t get irritated — I suppose sone of that is required before we all reach our limits and set an impermeable boundary. I did, a little. And then I got tough. 

It’s not something I can talk about in detail because it’s still ongoing, but suffice it to say that I have been offered several great career opportunities since my book Searching for Sassy came out. I’ve had agents circling, publishing companies interested in putting it out on their own labels, and film and television producers vying for the rights. It’s all been pretty heady and confusing at times, even though I have a pretty good working knowledge of how these things work, since I’ve been employed in both the publishing and film industries in the past. 

The thing is, there are all kinds of people, in each of these businesses. There are your sharks, who want to dominate you (and the conversation, apparently), even if no money is actually yet changing hands. There are your artist wannabees, who will never get quite as close to writing a book as sitting across from you on an expensive couch, and those who crave power and influence, to somehow affect the culture at large. You meet enough of them, and they all start to look the same. 

But I’ve learned that breakthroughs seldom come when you’re trying to make them happen. They tend to creep up on you, waiting to strike when you’re not expecting it. So you have to be ready to walk away from something if need be, even if the very thing you’re being offered is the thing you want most. 

I did that today. I was ready to walk away, even though it was painful, and I ended up winning. It required absolute nerves of steel. And even though this may not happen all the time, or even most of the time, just the act of standing firm and saying no made my legs and little stronger underneath me, and my connection to the earth all the support I needed to move forward. 

A Curious Thing

There’s a curious thing that happens whenever you put out a book. A kind of compression of time and space, until you’re living inside yourself, of course (I suppose it’s hard to get out of that responsibility) and living outside yourself as well, seeing what your work does to other people. You begin to see yourself through other people’s eyes. 

The book that’s coming out in 19 days, for me, is my third, but each experience has been really different. The first was an enormous learning curve, where I did just about everything wrong, and nearly drove myself insane with all the expectations. The second was more relaxed. I let it come to me, and it did, in a larger way. It became an Amazon bestseller for around three months, which was nice. The third is … well, it’s still happening. I’m doing a lot more for it, in a much more concerted way, and I’m reaching a lot more people as well. Chalk that up to all the learning experiences I’ve had in the past, or just a realistic set of expectations, I don’t know. I’m just happy I’m not tempted to tear my hair out anytime soon. 

So many people I run into want to write books. They tell me that, and then in the next sentence say something like they don’t have the time, and they don’t know what they’d write, or they’re not sure if they’d be any good at it. Setting aside the “good at it” part (everyone sucks at first, trust me), I don’t know why anyone would want to write a book unless one were burning its way out of you from the inside. Writing books is hard. It takes time, and patience, and perseverance. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You have to see inside people’s heads, which can get exhausting, and even miss out on the fun stuff of life, like seeing your friends as often as you’d like. Writing can be painful if you’re doing it right, and it can be transcendent. 

For right now, I’m happy to rest in the “done with this one” feeling. The marketing will keep happening, as well as the reading in public and the teaching of workshops. I’ve got a few new things sketched out or outlined on my computer, a few books and plays, and we’ll see how long I can go without diving in again. For me, writing is necessary to balance out the part of my life I live for other people — the healing, compassionate part that needs to do those thing, just as my fingers ache to be on the keyboard again, after too much time alone. 

Enough

On certain days, I’m sure that some cosmic force is fucking with me. On days I have a dental appointment, I may have three or four clients that day alone who are battling tooth problems. On days I want to go back to drinking caffeine I’m so tired, I may speak to several people o the phone who are having trouble keeping their energy up. Sometime, it’s just like that. 

These days, life is pretty much back to normal, and I’m enjoying some balance. With a book coming out in a few months, it’s a lot of work, but I’m not going to complain. I’m lucky to do what I do. I never forget that. But today, in the swirl of emails, clients, readings and more, I realized something. 

I had reached the point of saturation with suffering. Not that I can’t hear other people’s problems anymore (that’s a real problem among psychics - - just ask one if you don’t believe me), but I just came to the end of a road, so to speak. All at once, I saw that all the work I had done on myself, and all the healing I had helped people do, had kind of boxed us all in. Not in a bad way. But now it was just impossible for things to go back the way they were before. We knew too much, and had come too far to go back to the old ways of thinking and being. 

In a word, we had reframed our lives so much that to not see them that way was impossible. To quote the Replacements, color me impressed. 

All without trying to be anywhere or get anything. This shit is amazing. 

It’s Not Unusual

You know those days when everything seems to change every few minutes, even by the hour, and you’re left at the end of the day feeling drained? That’s how today was for me. I had plenty of work to do and, with the dreaming part of my brain, am outlining a new book. I have realized I can’t be that happy if I’m not creating, so there you have it. 

In the meantime, Uranus (planet of change, the future and instability) went direct today, after several months in retrograde motion. That gave rise to, among other things, NBA trades that turned into non issues (at least for the time being, though if I were Chris Paul, I’d be pretty pissed), and a guy who randomly walked down the center of Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood today shooting people before he was shot dead by police.

Uranus does things like that. 

Usually, I’m a pretty big fan of Uranus transits. They tend to bring out the unusual, the rebels and the unconventional — all my kind of people and events. But when a planet of this size changes direction, it tends to be pretty powerful. So I wanted to reframe that somehow, without trying to affect what the planet’s going to be doing for the planet itself. After all, don’t want to get in the way of that; it’s going to affect a lot of people in various ways. So I decided to merge. I imagined myself as a ball of energy, showing up bright and blue and crackling softly. I saw this energy, my energy, expanding out into the world until it met up with the Uranian energy (which, maybe not coincidentally, rules energy work itself). These two sniffed each other out like two dogs before deciding to meld a little bit. Once inside, I could see and feel the purpose of the Uranus energy — to transform (for some reason, the concept of ignorance came up, and eradicating that), to make us more tolerant, and to help us accept. That doesn’t mean that we allow people to walk on us, but instead find whatever needs to be understood in any given moment, so growth becomes possible. 

So maybe that’s not so unusual, to want to find a way to just move on and get along in the world. Maybe it’s an act of rebellion simply to see things as they really are, without reacting against them, or feeling like they have to change to accommodate us. 

Now They Are

You know when you were a little kid, and everything seemed like a ghost? Lights on the wall, the moon, creaks on the floorboard — even your night light could seem haunted and magical. I had really vivid dreams as kid, seeing them almost projected onto the walls of my bedroom. Some nights I was afraid to move, if the dream was scary, while other nights I could run around and cavort with squirrels, chipmunks and butterflies. 

I’ve been talking to a lot of people lately about my book Searching for Sassy, which tells the story of coming to Los Angeles to escape a bad breakup, falling backwards into a job as a phone psychic and having that completely change my life for the better. People always want to know what it’s like to be a phone psychic, if it’s real or if they’ve just hired a bunch of actors to perform the fake readings. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for the people at my line, who were all very gifted. I refused to believe I was psychic for the longest time, and finally gave in when my fellow psychics basically took me under their wings kicking and screaming. 

Luckily, I listend to them. Or they wore me down — either way. I learned everything from tarot to energy work and astrology, with some mythology, Greek literature, psychology and more. I read everting I could get my hands on, in line at the store, on the bike at the gym, in traffic, you name it. My native curiosity just took over and I let it drive the bus for a while. 

I’ve been thinking about that, that knowledge or wisdom can be there and then not there. There as potential and then developed into something you can talk about and practice, not there if you decide to change your mind or even allow ignorance and darkness to flower. I’ve been thinking about ghosts from the past, literal ones who used to haunt the crap out of my apartment in the Ravenswood, and figurative ones that cling to all of us, as beliefs we hold rightly or falsely. Reframing this, I’ve decided to give those ghosts a new home. My ghosts that have no more use in my life. I built it up in the hills of Laurel Canyon, a pretty spot with a view of the Strip when the weather is clear. I’m sending the thoughts, patterns, beliefs and memories that no longer serve me into a retirement home. It’s a cool one, but still for stuff that’s going off to die. 

The Precious

Slow and lazy day, during which I had a little chat with the divine. We talked about how I might take new goals on board over the next few months without burning myself out, and discussed how some people I know may not be on board for all of it, for various reasons. I wanted tea, but the divine wanted hot chocolate. It couldn’t be considered cold yet in L.A., but it’s working its way toward cool. 

In a few days, I’ll make my way to New York with my husband. He will do some research on a book he’s working on, a historical exploration, while I’ll attend Hay House’s Book-to-Screen Pitchfest. The irony of traveling from Los Angeles to New York to pitch film people certainly isn’t lost on me, but the story is applicable to these media, so what the heck? I figure I may as well give it a shot. 

Until then, the divine is giving me advice about how to handle myself, the trip (my throat is pretty sore today), and the changes coming my way as I deal with book, play and TV stuff happening in the same general timeframe next year, not to mention publicity stuff and a national book tour. Should be pretty interesting. 

So to narrow it down, the divine asked me what was precious to me. What I would follow to the ends of the earth, like Golem in Lord of the Rings. I said my husband and dog, of course, myself, and my health, as well as my ongoing work in writing and healing. But then I said something that sounded surprising to my ears, at least in that moment. 

I said I would follow it to the ends of the earth, that connection I love to feel on my skin and hear in my ars on a good day. I said I would follow the divine not in a blind or overly religious way, but in the sense of staying part of things while forging my path, and remaining close to those precious tendrils of strength and tenacity found in all living things. 

Down the Rabbit Hole

Whew! It’s been a day. Just found out that my publishing company may want to push the release date for my new book up by a few months, cutting the time I have to prepare and do marketing & publicity down to just a few weeks. Argh and double argh. 

Every time a book of mine is published, I learn a little more about how to do things easier and more effectively. Last time, in 2008, I learned that you need to give yourself a nice long time period before the book comes out, in order to get copies to potential reviewers (lead time is sometimes up to 6 months!) and leave yourself plenty of time to get the word out to bloggers, TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. Each has a different way of pitching, and a different set of expectations. 

So when your timeline shrinks, you either take the leap and hope for the best, or find someone who can help. So I’ve gone down the rabbit hole to a certain extent today, and begun to interview publicists and other marketing experts. I’m pretty self-sufficient and often try to do things on my own. So the reframe for today is to learn how to accept help, work with other people to help my agenda along, and well, just trust that everything is going to work out fine. 

This is hard for someone who’s used to doing things on her own, who enjoys learning how to do new things. But the other way is better for the project, so I gotta swallow my predispositions, smile and … get on with it. 

Those Inner Gremlins

Maybe other people have this —I have no idea. You know when you get really excited, when something really amazing happens for you and you’re kind of clenching up a little, as if in the next moment someone’s gonna snatch it away from you? I don’t have that exactly, maybe a minor version of it. I don’t assume that people are going to eff me up. I’m sure they’re worrying about other things. But I have noticed a little pattern of wanting to downplay my good news. 

So let’s see what we can do about that. 

Having a book published is always exciting. And even though very few of my friends are writers, or can even understand what this process entails (I don’t know, a few hundred days or nights of being on your own, living in your mind, then getting an agent, getting a publisher, going though the editorial production, then putting it out and arguing over the cover. And then the real work begins, of trying to promote it), they smile and like me I guess enough to buy it, or tell people about it and endure my endless talking about every little aspect of the damn thing. 

Today, my publisher and I worked on the cover of my book, and I think we have a central image, which of course will determine the color palette, etc. It’s usually the hardest part of the process. You may have the best manuscript on earth, but until you see that PDF of your front cover, it never seems real. 

Hopefully, within a week or so, we’ll have a proof and I’ll post it. To reframe my little issue with downplaying stuff, I played with telling people today. I told my family (they have to care, I guess) and my husband of course. But then I started telling other people, to see how they’d react. I told a friend I’m not that close to, and the guy at the yoga studio and even, yes,  my landlady. 

All had differing reactions, of course, but most were encouraging. So maybe those inner gremlins in my mind, who tell me I can’t, or it won’t happen, or you better wait until you get permission can and should suck it.