5/21/24
Wow! It’s been nearly half a year filled with hustle and excitement. The podcast, Mindful, Happy Kids, has truly skyrocketed. I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing New York Times best-selling authors, award-winning cartoonists, and a slew of other amazing guests.
Currently, I’m immersed in crafting a captivating miniseries centered around kids collaborating with dogs in activities like agility and rally—promising lots of joy and excitement.
Despite the heartbreaking loss of Pippi, our beloved companion, Bobbie, our mischievous one-year-old miniature American Eskimo, has stepped up to keep us thoroughly entertained and occupied. He strikes the perfect balance between playfulness, snuggles, and a hint of mischief.
The middle-grade contemporary novel I’ve been crafting has taken a slight turn in direction. While still centered around Petitations™ and other meditations tailored for kids, I’ve pivoted the focus towards addressing performance anxiety in children. Rather than pursuing a traditional publishing route, I’ve decided to share the journey by posting and reading chapters of the book on my website and podcast. Additionally, I’ll be bringing Petitations™ to life on YouTube. It’s a work in progress, but I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop on its evolution.
I’ve registered for the online Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCWBI) conference happening this August, where I’ll be evaluating this website and my social media campaign. The lineup looks fantastic, and I’m really excited about it.
If you have any suggestions for potential guests to interview on my podcast, please let me know.
That’s all for now!
12/1/23
I can’t believe it’s December already. We ran away for Day of Gratitude to Berkeley, home of the independent bookstores. And, yes, I took advantage of that. It’s also the home of Saul’s the best Jewish restaurant in the entire Bay Area. And, since there are no Jewish restaurants in Sacramento, it’s extra special. I had my favorite bagel with whitefish salad, matzah ball soup and we got our Thanksgiving turkey dinner from there. YUMMMMM…Awesome pumpkin pie and Linzer tarts. Went off my year long diet for one night. And girl, was it good!
Right now, it’s all about work life balance. I can feel in my body that I’ve been working too much and not exercising enough. So, to that end, I started back on my physical therapy exercises six days a week, exercise bike five days a week, and yoga four days a week. And, of course, Pippi needs a two mile walk every night. It feels good to back into it even though it’s only been two days. I feel motivated, which is half the battle.
I’m getting ready for my interview with Chris Baron on Tuesday. Although I’ve read all his books and written topics/questions for the conversation which he approved of, it means revisiting his books to refresh myself for the interview. They are as awesome as I remember them being. I can’t wait to “meet” him and introduce him to you.
I finally gave in and got a kindle. And girl, was it a good decision. I originally got it because I filled yet another bookcase full of books and am running out of room. It’s nice to have all my books I’m reading in one place. And, reading in the dark is great. I discovered (for the first time, I’m behind the times) that I can go into my library system, access my library card, sign out books and then they go straight to my kindle. Awesome!
I’ve been working diligently through “Story Genius” and I’m finally at a point where I’m writing a scene. Wow, what a build up. I hope that I don’t have to through this for every scene. I’ll be writing this novel until I’m 96. I’m real happy with the result though and between Lisa Cron and Julie Artz (the leader of the workshop I’m in) I’m learning a tremendous amount about writing.
I now read and analyze books at the same time. In some ways it’s more fun than just reading for content, and I appreciate it more, but it takes longer and makes my brain hurt.
That’s it for now….
11/22/23
I know it’s been quite a while (2 months) and I’ve been extremely busy and pretty productive.
In joined the WordPress support group and they are amazingly helpful. Today, the person who runs it, Anka, helped me with an accordion, critical to my brother’s website. They are also helping me with Search Engine Optimization. To that end, I met with Jason McDonald and he helped me figure out where we are going wrong on our website.
I started intensely working on my new middle grade novel and joined a writing program to facilitate the process. I wrote 60 pages and then started learning more about service dogs, important to the novel and have to start all over again. This time, I’m working with “Story Genius” and going slowly step by step. I think this will work better for me.
My podcast is going well. I have a couple of people who I interviewed and a couple of podcasts I uploaded and I’m really happy and excited about them. I’m totally psyched about upcoming podcasts. I think you’ll enjoy them.
9/18/23
I am feeling very motivated today to get back to work. We heard back from the vet (she’s in Europe for a conference) that Pippi does NOT have cancer (YAY) (#Pippithepup). I feel super relieved and a new wave of creativity and motivation. I worked on the book for a while this morning.
My new philosophy is: “Don’t throw the piglet out with the mud”….Instead of giving up yoga completely when I had a disagreement with my yoga teacher, I found an even better situation for me with a fully staffed studio five minutes from my house. And, it’s women owned. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the four teachers I’ve tried so far. And, I’m going to take a review beginner course for a month in two weeks and go to a meditation/yoga retreat with a social afterwards.
I was supposed to do Petitations with one of the groups within the 4-H program, but that might now happen now (not quite sure) so I am going to start an online program on Petitations for preteens and teens going through the Petitations one by one with a way to download them to practice with along with music. I’ve done a bunch of it already, the Petitations will be contextualized and organized.
I have been having a little bit of trouble with the search engine optimization (SEO) of my websites, so I joined a WordPress support group to get some help.
Trying to keep optimistic, grateful and proactive.
9/12/23
After a couple of days off, I am back to “work”. I am working on editing a podcast of an interview with Lisa Fipps, the author of Starfish to take my mind off my sick Pup (see #pippithepup). It’s an interesting interview, and way overdue so it’ll be edited and posted later on today. I am also taking a class at the London School of Journalism on Children’s Writing which entails reading PDFs and sending assignments to a tutor. I’m rereading the beginning of the class and rewriting the outline of my book on anxiety for kids.
I’m reading a couple of interesting books. The second novels in two series, one on a Irish Muslim lesbian and one on a genius kid with cerebral palsy. I love series! Stay tuned for the reviews of these books in #booksilike.
I plan on writing my books on anxiety as a series. I think it’ll be much more effective to capture it in more than one book.
In a sappy mood, so I’m listening to Jill Knight, the performer at our wedding. We found her singing at the pier in San Francisco 20 years ago and asked her if she did private concerts. She was just getting started then and happily agreed. It was one of the best decisions we ever made! She’s still going strong.
Well, that’s all for now.
Where to start? I never thought that I could be anything even close to an artist. I gave up a career as a Public Health scientist studying substance use after 20 years and started writing books on Petitations©™ (pet-centered meditations) which led to a series of picture books on mindfulness, compassion, gratitude, yoga and finding your forever home featuring none other than Pippi the Puppy and her brother Norman the Grumpy Cat. My writing has gone from purely scientific to whimsical and joyful. My newest project is about a 15-year-old girl, Alex, with severe anxiety, who works with an emotional support dog. While the Pago the Schipperke dog trains Alex to practice Petitations to deal with her anxiety, Alex teaches Pago to do agility and obedience training strengthening their bond and helping both of them. I’m about to launch into writing the skeleton outline for the millionth time. I’ve met some of the most incredible people while researching this book.
During Covid I started a podcast: Mindful, Happy Kids with interviews, Petitations, and readings from my books. 4500 downloads later, we are still going strong and branched out to video on a YouTube channel with the same name. I learned how to conduct interviews during my doctoral training, but this is a lot more fun. I have several interviews in my back pocket and a couple more on the way.
I also started learning to do website design and search engine optimization (SEO) during the pandemic, so that I could create this website and help out some friends. Surprising to me, I thoroughly enjoy creating websites. The combination of putting my research skills to work, figuring out how to simplify complicated ideas and present them visually and making them retrievable in a web search is challenging and fun.
Well, it’s the wee hours of the morning in California so I’ll end here for now.
12/1/23
I can’t believe it’s December already. We ran away for Day of Gratitude to Berkeley, home of the independent bookstores. And, yes, I took advantage of that. It’s also the home of Saul’s the best Jewish restaurant in the entire Bay Area. And, since there are no Jewish restaurants in Sacramento, it’s extra special. I had my favorite bagel with whitefish salad, matzah ball soup and we got our Thanksgiving turkey dinner from there. YUMMMMM…Awesome pumpkin pie and Linzer tarts. Went off my year long diet for one night. And girl, was it good!
Right now, it’s all about work life balance. I can feel in my body that I’ve been working too much and not exercising enough. So, to that end, I started back on my physical therapy exercises six days a week, exercise bike five days a week, and yoga four days a week. And, of course, Pippi needs a two mile walk every night. It feels good to back into it even though it’s only been two days. I feel motivated, which is half the battle.
I’m getting ready for my interview with Chris Baron on Tuesday. Although I’ve read all his books and written topics/questions for the conversation which he approved of, it means revisiting his books to refresh myself for the interview. They are as awesome as I remember them being. I can’t wait to “meet” him and introduce him to you.
I finally gave in and got a kindle. And girl, was it a good decision. I originally got it because I filled yet another bookcase full of books and am running out of room. It’s nice to have all my books I’m reading in one place. And, reading in the dark is great. I discovered (for the first time, I’m behind the times) that I can go into my library system, access my library card, sign out books and then they go straight to my kindle. Awesome!
I’ve been working diligently through “Story Genius” and I’m finally at a point where I’m writing a scene. Wow, what a build up. I hope that I don’t have to through this for every scene. I’ll be writing this novel until I’m 96. I’m real happy with the result though and between Lisa Cron and Julie Artz (the leader of the workshop I’m in) I’m learning a tremendous amount about writing.
I now read and analyze books at the same time. In some ways it’s more fun than just reading for content, and I appreciate it more, but it takes longer and makes my brain hurt.
That’s it for now….