Kansas City – MORIAH JOVAN

Decluttering my mind

May 4, 2015August 1, 2025Moriah

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.

A professional milestone

June 5, 2013August 24, 2025Moriah

It may or may not be common knowledge that, under my real name, I run B10 Mediaworx, an author services / digital formatting company, which I’ve been doing for the past … mmm … four years. I think. Anyway, before that, I was an at-home medical transcriptionist for six years. I haven’t worked out of doors in ten years.

Well, doing this with babies/toddlers isn’t easy, let me tell you, but once they started going to school, my work life got a lot more productive. And it was so blessedly QUIET. I love(d) working at home. Free and breezy. But a couple of years ago, I found I had a lot more work to do AND I was slacking on the internet during the quiet time. So I started going to the UMKC library on Sundays to work, Read more →

Comfort food: Trouble salad

June 11, 2012August 24, 2025Moriah

Okay, it’s really macaroni salad and about as ubiquitous as can be, but there’s a story behind the title.

It was 1980. In Kansas City. In the summer.

The 1980 United States Heat Wave was a period of intense heat and drought that wreaked havoc on much of the Midwestern United States and Southern Plains throughout the summer of 1980. It is among the most devastating natural disasters in terms of deaths and destruction in U.S. history, claiming at least 1,700 lives and because of the massive drought, agricultural damage reached US$20.0 billion (US$55.4 billion in 2007 dollars, adjusted for the GNP inflation index). It is among the billion-dollar weather disasters listed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. [ … ] In Kansas City, Missouri, the high temperature was below 90 only twice and soared above the century mark (100 °F/38 °C) for 17 days straight [ … ]

Mommy, why don’t you smile anymore?

April 9, 2011August 24, 2025Moriah

My son said this to me a couple of months ago and I’ve been guilting over it ever since.

Well, it’s because I’m stressed. My work life kind of exploded some time last summer when I decided to escape the (dying) industry I’d been in for the previous seven years in favor of the formatting work that was falling on top of me. I kept thinking I could do less work for more money and spend time with my kids, but … That’s not the way it worked out.

Is it ever? Read more →

I’m outtie …

December 20, 2009July 31, 2025Moriah

… for the rest of the year, most likely. I reserve the right to come back and rant. It is my blog, after all.

Many projects on the table, most of which I’m behind on (oh, there’s a surprise):

Re-doing my foyer and living room. What, you thought my DIY re publishing thing is a new development? No. I’ve been a DIYer at heart since I saw the first episode of This Old House when I was a wee bairn (as in, their first episode, too).
Christmas chores. You all know what they are. But I’ve recently got a yen to quilt us a new tree skirt. That will have to wait until next year.
Much cooking and cleaning in preparation for my family’s big Christmas Eve shindig. Moms, dads, inlaws, outlaws, aunts, uncles, cousins, and babies. Lots and lots of babies. Very fun having the biggest house in the family. Ah, but I love Christmas Eve, almost more than Christmas Day (you know, now that we are Santa). Also? I love my mom’s cookies. And I love my Christmas punch (see previous post).
Probably some yard work. I really need to get out and mow my lawn.
More weatherproofing.
Fandamnily outing to see the Plaza Christmas lights. (Photos by Eric Bowers, KC Photographer extraordinaire who also does a lot of Manhattanscapes—you must visit his blog and galleries and message board. Really.)

An enhanced image of the Country Club Plaza at Christmas in Kansas City, Missouri at twilight ©Eric Bowers

A fisheye image of the Country Club Plaza, J.C. Nichols Parkway, at Christmas, in Kansas City, Missouri at night. ©Eric Bowers — 47th & Broadway. If you read THE PROVISO, you know what Giselle did near here. For the nitty gritty details, see *Dirty Little Secrets*.

A small aluminum Christmas tree with white lights and red ornaments, standing on a red box.

And, last but not least, the Darling Day Job (feeling blessed at the moment).

My blue tree from the last two years turned red this year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Mojo, Dude, XX and XY Tax Deductions!

Evolution of a cover, part 3

November 6, 2009July 29, 2025Moriah

Originally published at Publishing Renaissance on February 12, 2009.

Thank you for your continuing indulgence on the travails of designing a cover if you’re not a designer of covers. As I said last week, it took me almost a year and hundreds of hours of Photoshopping to come to the cover I did, which I affectionately call The Bewbies™. Originally, The Proviso was one book and it was enormous. I originally titled it Barefoot Through Fire. Then I figured I’d probably do better to split it out into 3 parts, 1 part per romance. This is the story of book 3.
Read more →

Evolution of a cover, part 2

October 30, 2009July 29, 2025Moriah

Originally published at Publishing Renaissance on January 30, 2009.

The Bewbies™ 1st Edition full flat wraparound cover Thank you for your continuing indulgence on the travails of designing a cover if you’re not a designer of covers. As I said last week, it took me almost a year and hundreds of hours of Photoshopping to come to the cover I did, which I affectionately call The Bewbies™. Originally, The Proviso was one book and it was enormous. I originally titled it Barefoot Through Fire. Then I figured I’d probably do better to split it out into 3 parts, 1 part per romance. This is the story of book 2.

Evolution of a cover, part 1

October 23, 2009July 29, 2025Moriah

Originally published at Publishing Renaissance January 6, 2009.

If you’ll all indulge me, I though it’d be fun to do a little series on the evolution of a cover by a non-cover artist/designer. It took me almost a year and hundreds of hours of Photoshopping to come to the cover I did, which I affectionately call The Bewbies™. Originally, The Proviso was one book and it was enormous. I originally titled it Barefoot Through Fire. Then I figured I’d probably do better to split it out into 3 parts, 1 part per romance. This is where the cover journey begins.

Kansas City: Chiefs 2009-2010

September 14, 2009July 31, 2025Moriah

Yeah, we know. It’s a building year.

Kansas City: Little help?

July 8, 2009July 31, 2025Moriah

I’m choking on childhood nostalgia, KCitians.

Does ANYBODY remember the mechanized dolls in the display windows at Harzfeld’s at Christmastime? And if you do, do you have a decent picture or, better yet, a line on where I can get one of those dolls or six?

There is a Harzfeld’s page and a Harzfeld’s blog, both created by historians with a book in the works, but neither has a search feature, and as far as I can tell, ~~this~~ [dead link] is the only mention of the dolls:

A couple years ago a Dresden Doll (right), said to be from Harzfeld’s, was sold at a Kansas City area auction. This was a mechanical doll that may have been part of a Christmas window display.

(I want want want one of these dolls, even if I have to build one. I’m good at DIY! Promise!)

As an aside, I remember these chairs:

[2025-07-31: Image of a Harzfeld’s “corset chair” unavailable and I don’t remember what it looked like. That’ll teach me to hot link.]

But a trip to the Harzfeld’s blog yielded something fabulous: Elle Decor featured an article on Kansas City (worth the read, even for non-Kansas Citians), and the ~~picture gallery~~ [dead link] features the usual suspects, but gorgeous as always.

However, the ugly-ass addition to the Nelson-Atkins was extolled briefly:

“The marriage of the original neoclassical building and the stunning addition by architect Steven Holl … ”

I will not be happy until somebody takes a wrecking ball to that abomination. I would PAY MONEY to attend its destruction.

Settling for, settling in, moving up

June 19, 2009August 1, 2025Moriah

A little while back, I posted on the sentimental value I hold of the 1960s ranch. Today, I’m rethinking 25 to 30 years’ worth of self-indoctrination.

Obviously the reason it holds so much appeal to me is that it was, in my teenage mind, the unattainable. I didn’t live in a house that nice, although I didn’t begrudge what I had. I liked it fine enough that I was proud to show it off to my friends, totally unable to see that what niceness I had was only that way because my mother worked so hard to make it nice with what little she had to work with. And on hindsight, I’m not sure my friends (from more chichi neighborhoods) were terribly impressed.

(You can tell my obvious slant toward the steep-roofed “French Provincial” style ranch.) Anyway, what I was doing when I was a teenager was aspiring up. That’s good to do. But somewhere, the adult me got lost in my teenage wants and conflated that to the end-all and be-all of existence.

Lately, Dude and I have been despairing over the state of our house and its issues, almost all structural, almost all of which will suck money right out of our bank account, with nothing aesthetic to show for it. Now, I’m all for infrastructure, but geez, that still doesn’t make my lawn dandelion-less. It also doesn’t account for the innumerable walls covered with crayon drawings that I would have to continually repaint to make the spaces halfway decent.

Thus, I have come to hate my house. This is a very difficult admission to make, especially when one considers how ecstatic I was over it in the beginning, and we moved in with the intention that we weren’t moving again. EVER.

A few days ago, a friend told me about a party she went to in a chichi neighborhood of L.A. and described the splendor to me. It shocked me that my first thought was, “Real people live like that?”

Today I saw a post over at The Red Brick Store about readying a house for sale. It was a gorgeous 4,000 square foot house, and the post led to pictures, which led me to search myself for flaws in my thinking. I didn’t covet the house, but it did make me wonder if I should dare to desire it at all.

Then I went to realtor.com and put in my favorite zip code (not telling which one it is) because it embodies my best childhood memories. Let’s just say it’s a rundown little village-size town in a rundown corner of a rundown state (not Missouri), and for the first time, I saw through my own little bubble of childhood memories and thought, “Am I aspiring to this? It’s 100 times worse than what I’ve got.”

Then I thought about the 1960s ranch across the street from me which inspired that other post. It’s beautiful, with lush lawn, kept immaculate at all times and with great care (care that it takes time and energy to spend, which we don’t have). You know what? Even aspiring to that is aspiring too low at this point in my life.

That gets me to thinking about my mother and what she did with what she had.

Which she hated.

Every day of the 18 years we lived there.

Knowing that we could have had something better if she and my father weren’t sacrificing a good chunk of money every month to send us to a private school.

A kidney-shaped midcentury modern swimming pool

After I revisited my childhood memories, I looked up properties in my own zip code, and thought, “THAT is what I should be aspiring to.”

We live in a neighborhood that retains its property values no matter what because A) Kansas City seems to weather recessions/depressions fairly well, even without Boss Tom, and B) the elementary school we have is one of the best in the state. People move into this neighborhood and within the school boundaries expressly for their children to attend that school. Believe me, we aren’t going to have to send our kids to private school for an excellent education, so there’s one obstacle conquered.

This has led me to some conclusions.

I’m far more happy with what I have right now. (That may wax and wane.)
We need to work on making it as good as it can be within our limitations.
We need to build a plan to get out of here and move up once we have accomplished #2. And I want a swimming pool.

Whether we attain #3 or not … well, I just don’t know. I’m still somewhat dubious of our ability to do that.

However, if we don’t make the attempt, it most assuredly will not happen at all.

I need to get out more

February 7, 2009July 31, 2025Moriah

Today, February 7, at 4:25 CST in Kansas City, it is 70 degrees outside. I got a sick kid (have had for about 3 days now). I got a list of things to do a gazillion miles long. Since it is my mission in life to give birth to a new race (Glow in the Dark) and the sun cackles wickedly every time I go outside in anticipation of what evil it can wreak upon my skin, I don’t go out unless I have to. I’m a hermit, I tell you, and I like it that way.

But you know what?

I’m missing something, I think. I had a visitor yesterday, like, came to the door and rang the doorbell adult human type of visitor. The real deal. To visit. With me.

I’ve forgotten how to converse with people. My face feels all out of whack. My voice doesn’t seem to work very well. I’ve begun to stutter. I space out faster. I don’t smile much. My small talk is microscopic. Once I actually manage to pry my mouth open, I talk in longer monologues than I used to. I mean, I’ve always felt more comfortable with the written word than the spoken—but lately I’ve just gotten downright terrible.

It’s been my goal in life to become that old woman on the block, you know, the one with the muumuu and the orthopedic shoes and the orthopedic stockings rolled down to her ankles and the funky straw hat, the one all the neighborhood kids whisper about (“I heard she’s a witch”). Mmmm, I dunno.

Mebbe not.

Pardon me, dearie, while I go stir my cauldron.

Buy a saddle

January 18, 2009July 31, 2025Moriah

A stylized black-and-white dragon. I had a real character of a supervisor once. The minute I clapped eyes on her, I felt real pity deep in my soul.

She was 106 if she was a day. She had a sparse bottle-blonde bouffant. Her skin was paper thin (friable in MD speak), though her face was amazingly free of wrinkles. She had a permanent snarl on her pink-painted lips that let me know she’d had a stroke and/or that side of her face got stretched too tight. She was sitting behind a desk loaded with yellow and brittle papers that had been there since the Nixon administration, one hand on her hip and the other elbow propped on the desktop, a cigarette between two long, gnarly fingers.

She glared at me.

Well, I was late.

My first day.

As a temp.

(A hammer, really.)

But my first thought was, “Oh, that poor woman, having to work at her age. I bet she’s eating cat food.”

My second thought was, “I didn’t know they made leathers in lavender.”

She had a voice like I would imagine the sound a cat would make if it were shaved and then dragged over the business side of a cheese grater. She smoked like a chimney.

Right. Next. To. Me.

She snarled and growled and snapped at me. Once I dug into the work and figured out what had to be done, I calmly explained myself to her and it only took about 2 sentences for her to understand I knew what the hell I was doing.

We were best pals after that.

A late 19th-century 3-story cream brick building with a blue banner and awning reading LANE BLUEPRINT CO. TOTAL COPY CENTER, at 1520 Main Street in Kansas City, Missouri. Anyhoo, over the next year, she taught me a lot about life. Well, no, not life. About money. About how to make money. Because, contrary to my first assumption, she was not eating cat food. She was richer than God. Older than Him, too, but that’s neither here nor there. She worked full time to pay her taxes because she didn’t want to dig into her principal.

And lavender leathers can’t come cheap.

She had a repertoire of cutting asides she tossed off throughout the months and I wrote them down because I never laughed so much as I did with her. She was a mean, sneaky, conniving, clever bitch and I loved her for it. In my head, I called her The Dragon Lady.

One day a customer came into our store complaining about other merchants in a loud, obnoxious tone of voice, and generally being an asshole. Finally (because she couldn’t help herself), she said, “Well, shit. If one person calls you an ass, you can bet they’re having a bad day. If three people do it, buy a saddle.”

Yesterday I was wandering around blogland and witnessed a train wreck of a blog wherein the embattled blogger was told this, only in a much nicer way (albeit not as, ah, colorfully).

And I thought, “Damn, I wish Dragon Lady was online so I could see what she’d do with that.” Except, well, Dragon Lady can’t type very well.

It’s her long, manicured claws nails, you know.

Painted lavender.

To match her leathers.

Kansas City: The Shuttlecocks

January 15, 2009August 1, 2025Moriah

The New York Times reports that Coosje van Bruggen, the wife portion of the husband-and-wife sculpture team who designed them, died of breast cancer at age 66 (hat tip: Pitch).

Okay, I’ll admit I didn’t like them at first, but they’ve grown on me. But! Don’t think the construction trailer Bloch Addition will grow on me in a similar fashion.

Godspeed, Artist.

(OH HO!!!! What’s this? Now 24 hours after I wrote the above post and slotted it for publication):

So Tony reports that the Star reports [dead link] that the Nelson-Atkins is laying off 20-25 people because their endowment income is down (well, shit, everybody’s investments are down—wanna look at our 401(k) stats? I thought not).

No, really. It’s not that the endowment is down. For Pete’s sake, the thing got built during the effing Depression (well, like everything else in Kansas City). Your problem is your light bill, which you knew back in October, if not before. So gallery CEO Marc Wilson says to the Star, he says,

“These figures are impacted by museum attendance,” Wilson said. “The public is not responding to the expanded museum the way past indicators suggest.”

Gee, ya think?

SOLUTION! Tear it down. Then you could create jobs and your attendance would go back up again. After all, the people who love and adore the construction trailer Bloch Addition don’t actually live here.

Oh, and donate the materials to Habitat for Humanity. I love those people.

Kansas City: Randomidity 1

January 2, 2009August 1, 2025Moriah

My stats say that consistently the most viewed spot on this site is the Kansas City picture gallery. I don’t know why, but I’m glad because you know what? We have some nice stuff here. It’s the cozy kind of romantic where you snuggle up with your honey in front of a fire feeling.

UMKC (University of Missouri-Kansas City) is an urban commuter school in the University of Missouri (known for the journalism school) system with the one in St. Louis and Rolla (School of Mines). UMKC has a law school, an MBA school, a pharmacy school, a dental school, and a medical school. But it doesn’t look urban or commuter once you start going from building to building. I think people forget that once you get off Rockhill Road and start walking, it’s a very pretty (and more importantly!) compact campus. (Uh, but could you plant more flowers, please? BYU spoilt me on the flowers thing.).

Platte County is, weirdly, the same shape and size as Chouteau County in The Proviso and it’s in the same spot, too! I don’t know how the hell that happened.

Although it’s not exactly the same demographic, it has Parkville, which is just too cute. If you’re coming into Parkville via 3rd Street from the north going toward the Missouri River, it kind of reminds me of a microscopic Estes Park, Colorado. Or at least, the Estes Park I remember from my childhood. Without the mountain part. If you’re coming into Parkville via 9 Highway from the east, it kind of reminds me of Hannibal, Missouri. Only with a smaller river. There’s a walking path in English Landing Park right along the river.

And about that Chouteau (pr. SHOW-toe) County thing. If it’s not an English or Irish word around here, it’s Shawnee or French. There’s a reason for that. Anyway, half of the northland (i.e., north of the Missouri River) is Chouteau this and Chouteau that and Chouteau something-else. When I was looking for a name for my not-so-fictional fictional county, I looked it up and there was NO Chouteau County in Missouri. Surely, this must have been an oversight, thought I, but yay for me. Something uniquely Kansas City that hadn’t been done.

Yet.

Kansas City: Chiefs take my advice

December 15, 2008August 1, 2025Moriah

Carl Peterson, general manager of the Chiefs since dirt, just resigned effective end of the season. [2025-07-08: Link and image are gone; this is what I get for hot-linking.]

“On behalf of my family and the entire Kansas City Chiefs organization, I want to thank Carl for his two decades of service to the Chiefs,” Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt said. “Both Carl and I agreed that immediately initiating the search for the next Chiefs general manager would be the best thing for the future of the organization, and he will be resigning following the 2008 season.”

Well, we all know what “resigned” means in the rarefied air of executive management.

Okay, so being the greedy little bitch I am, I still want Herm to go and the team to get therapy.

Kansas City: Chiefs 12-14

December 14, 2008July 31, 2025Moriah

My lovely, dear boys:

You have obviously got a fear of success, as evidenced by the last 4 (yes, FOUR!) games you have lost on your last play of the game.

Fear of success.

I prescribe the following:

*A new general manager

*A new head coach (oh, Marteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee)

*A therapist (to find out why you can’t stand to win)

Love,
Mojo

I’m a series whore

November 4, 2008August 1, 2025Moriah

Okay, let me clarify: I’m not so crazy about the ones where you have to read them in order, especially if they’re not marked on the cover as being part of a series (Covenant, are you listening to me?) and which book it is. I like the ones you can read out of order. Yeah, you might get spoilers for the ones that came before it, if they happen in chronological order.

But what I really really really really super-duper like are books that are interconnected by characters, say, like a family series. Like, say, ahem, the Dunham family. With these people, I go back in time, forward in time, some of them aren’t even related by blood but by friendship. It doesn’t resemble a straight line so much as a wagon wheel, with a hub (The Proviso) and spokes, each spoke being a separate, standalone story but with characters you can keep up with in other books.

My current project is Stay, set in both Mansfield, Missouri and my beloved “Chouteau” County. It’s the romance between two minor characters in The Proviso.

As you can see from the word-count meter at the right, I’ve written a good portion of it. That doesn’t mean anything. It’ll be rewritten several times before it gets published some time in (I’m hoping) the winter of 2009/2010. As you can also see, it’s a little more manageable (for me and you) at 100,000 words.

Kansas City: Chiefs 10-26

October 27, 2008July 26, 2025Moriah

This is what I want to know: Why is Peterson getting WORSE at his job as time goes on? Isn’t he supposed to get BETTER at it? I mean, that’s how age and experience work, right? Right?

And you know what? I’m not even gonna touch Herm Edwards with a 10-foot punt. I want a Schottenheimer clone. Yeah, we never got the brass ring, but damn, at least we got close a few times.

Then I had to go rub salt in my wound and read Whitlock’s column this morning, which asks the question: “Why did the Chiefs go away from what was working?” Well. If they could answer that, we’d have a winning team, right? Or at least a mid-’90s team. And then this:

There was only one way to ruin Sunday’s game, and Edwards and Gailey found it.

For you non-Kansas City readers: We’re all about the football. I’m not sure who these “Royals” people are that get talked about every so often.

Kansas City: LDS temple update

October 7, 2008July 31, 2025Moriah

Shoal Creek Valley, in Clay County.

I’ve never been so happy to be wrong (about Olathe) in my life. Happy dance!