Author: Moriah

Decluttering my mind

Moriah

1. Vomit blue ink all over the agenda book with how cluttered and chaotic the mind is until clarity ensues. It may or may not take 14 pages, front and back.

2. Take the Female Tax Deduction to her art class. Walk through the park barefoot in the grass (for the first time in years) to get to the art gallery. Think about taking a yoga class. Finish a cross stitch. When XX TD is finished with her art class, solve a glass labyrinth with her. Walk (in the grass) (barefoot) (this is crucial) up the terraces to the gallery. Traverse the glass labyrinth. Talk to tourists and answer questions about the new exhibit (the Green Man-ish sculptures) and good barbecue. Stroll through the art gallery after having responded to nature’s call. Sit and let XX TD sketch a medieval knight on a horse.

3. Share pictures that don’t even come close to capturing the magic that was yesterday.

20150503_nelson01 Things to carry. No shoes today.
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20150503_nelson08 Just sitting here cross stitching.
20150503_nelson10 I do my best work at the Nelson.
20150503_nelson09 SHUTTLECOCKS Claes Oldenburg, Coosje van Bruggen 1994 aluminum, fiberglass
20150503_nelson11 At the entry of the glass labyrinth by Robert Morris, installed 2013. The sign didn’t lie. It was hot in there.
20150503_nelson12 GLASS LABYRINTH Robert Morris 2013
20150503_nelson13 FERMENT Roxy Paine 2011, stainless steel
20150503_nelson14 SHEEP PIECE Henry Moore 1971-1972 bronze
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20150503_nelson16 RECLINING FIGURE, HAND Henry Moore 1979 bronze
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20150503_nelson22 THE FOUR SEASONS Philip Haas
20150503_nelson21 THE FOUR SEASONS Philip Haas
20150503_nelson23 THE FOUR SEASONS Philip Haas

Say You’ll Go

Moriah
After twenty years and five children, love just wasn’t enough anymore—until, five years after the divorce, it’s the only thing they have left.
After twenty years and five children, love just wasn’t enough anymore—until, five years after the divorce, it’s the only thing they have left.
Janelle Monáe: Say You’ll Go

“Tess … ” She stopped cold at the breath of a whisper, her heart slamming into her ribs so hard she thought it would fall out right there on the table and flop around. She turned slowly—so slowly.

She opened her mouth to scream at him for ambushing her, but she realized just in time that he was as stunned as she was.

And he was beautiful. More beautiful than he had been when he was nineteen. More beautiful than he was the night he’d left her. Yet nothing about him had changed. Read more →

Virginity as a feminist statement

Moriah

1996: Victoria, an American professor in Sevilla, Spain, moonlighting as a nightclub singer meets Emilio, a smooth Spanish matador moonlighting as a chemist. She makes him laugh. He solves her problems. They’re just friends—right up until the first kiss.In which a promiscuous matador is pissy about having been brutally friend-zoned by a feminist college professor he wants to have sex with in the worst way, and she pounds him into the ground.

••• TL;DR •••1

EMILIO: “Why is being a virgin when you get married so important to you?”

VICTORIA: “Because it’s not important to anybody else,” she snapped, then huffed. “No. What happened was, I saw girls in high school—and one at church—they’d have sex, almost always pressured. Sometimes it was date rape, but they didn’t have the guts to say so. Or they were confused or conflicted about it. And they’d either get pregnant or the guy would treat them like crap. Regardless of what people like to think, I’m not oblivious. I see and hear, and I remember. But I don’t care.” Read more →

We all know how it works

Moriah

I read that once in a comment on a Mormon women’s writer’s blog bemoaning explicit sex in books. If I recall correctly, it was one where a bunch of the Deseret Book-published writers gather, because it was a “name” who said it. I don’t remember if my book was the one under discussion or not. Didn’t matter.

“We all know how it works.”

What struck me then and still does is that, No, we don’t all know how it works, Read more →

Book updates

Moriah
 

1. ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF

My story, “Allow Me to Introduce Myself,” that appeared in Monsters & Mormons has been ready for me to put up for sale for quite a while. I just haven’t gotten around to it. I hope to get that done before Christmas. Kidding. Not really. It won’t be on the Dunham site, so if you want to buy it from me (please do!) it’ll only be here, in the sidebar.

A Mormon nun battles demons and insecurity in the Louisiana bayou—with a baby alligator by her side and weapons powered by cold fusion. Read more →

Confessions of a wannabe foodie

Moriah

My relationship with food is like having an abusive ex-boyfriend: He keeps coming back and coming back, every day, even though you don’t want to see him. You want to get rid of him but he won’t go away. It’s not an analogy of “I eat because I have to” and “I can’t really live without him.” It’s that you really don’t want want food in the house the way you really don’t want him to come back. That’s where the analogy stops. Read more →

Two new books

Moriah

1996: Victoria, an American professor in Sevilla, Spain, moonlighting as a nightclub singer meets Emilio, a smooth Spanish matador moonlighting as a chemist. She makes him laugh. He solves her problems. They’re just friends—right up until the first kiss.
They’re
just friends …
right up to the
first kiss.

2010: After twenty years, five kids, world renown, and a multimillion-dollar business, Étienne and Tess call it quits because at some point, love just isn’t enough anymore—until it’s the only thing they have left.
Sometimes
love isn’t enough …
until it’s the only thing
you have left.

PASO DOBLE

&

WE WERE GODS

go on sale today!

The print books are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all the regular places.

The ebooks are available from me (see links above), Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all the regular places (iBooks coming soon). From now until May 15, 2014, they will be priced at $1.99. After, they will be $5.99 and $4.99 respectively.

Get ’em now!

Scheduling fun?

Moriah

An image of the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana, packed with people for Mardi Gras.I’m asking a question, but I’m not sure I’ll understand any responses I’ll get.

A long time ago, I wrote this post: Mommy, why don’t you smile anymore?

I was doing a psych eval for clearance for a surgery I hope to have some time this coming summer, and the shrink said, “You don’t know how to relax, do you?” Why no. No, I don’t. I don’t remember the last time I had actual fun that didn’t involve guilt for being unproductive. Read more →

On parenting

Moriah

Book cover of PARADISE by Judith McNaught.Tess: “You know this makes us like all the evil meddling parents in all those novels who pay off the boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks, and then are responsible for the seething hatred between their daughter and her boyfriend until they meet up twenty years later and have angry sex.”

Étienne: “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Tess: “But by that time, the boyfriend has used his seething hatred to make a billion dollars just to show her father up and comes back as a master of the universe to get his revenge on the parents and his girlfriend, even though she has never stopped loving him and was heartbroken that he never tried to contact her—” Read more →

Face(book) On, Face(book) Off

Moriah

Facebook-like thumb’s down graphicI don’t like Facebook. I never did. I wouldn’t even get on it to talk to my relatives. There was always something faintly nefarious about Facebook I didn’t feel with Twitter (which may simply be better at hiding it). I also didn’t like and didn’t understand either the interface or its functionality.

But I’m an author and as authors will do (or try), we must market. And marketing was happening on Facebook. And, not coincidentally, that’s where my fans were, too. I made a page. I have a personal account, too, that’s really not so personal. So I went there and I posted there. Then Facebook changed the way it displayed what I posted, Read more →

Paso Doble

Moriah

Paso Doble“You’ve been smooth as a baby’s butt since you were gored three years ago,” Victoria said.

“You’re supposed to be smooth,” Emilio replied, suddenly irritated. “That’s the point.”

“Yes, but! Your posture isn’t quite straight enough when it should be and your shoulders aren’t back quite far enough and you don’t lean in quite close enough to the bull. When you go down on one knee, you’re right in his blind spot. When you make the kill, you go a little too far left and you have to reach for it. Your veronicas are a little too studied, and I haven’t seen you do a mariposa in, oh, years. Your faenas are a little too cautious, the time it takes you to turn the bull a little too long, and the horns are a little too far away from your legs.” Read more →