I am very pleased to announce that I have a short story appearing in the April/May/June issue of the Storyteller Magazine (or so they tell me). This is my first publication in print! The story, entitled "Beautiful Stranger," centers on the resident ghost of the Hotel Del in Coronado. That's it. That's all you get. No other hints. I will say that it's a blend of magical realism and the classic gothic ghost story genre. Please check it out if you have a chance (and the cash).
The website for the magazine can be found here, however the story is only in print:
http://www.freewebs.com/fossilcreek/storyteller.html
My numerous (3) online publications can be found here:
http://www.storyglossia.com/24/jc_walking.html
http://tclj.toasted-cheese.com/2007/7-4/colomb.htm
http://www.foliateoak.uamont.edu/archives/december-2007/prose/jl-colomb/winter-shadows
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Ping
What's been going on since the last post and what is up with this blog?
Well, originally the blog was meant to narrate our lives in Italy to our friends and family. Now we are back and we're not quite sure what to do with it, or even if we have the time to maintain something on a regular basis. We also haven't done much traveling since returning to the United States. You could say that a transatlantic move takes a lot of energy, as does working toward a graduate degree, working full time and developing short stories and novels.
Since January, life has actually been quite eventful. My mom and Andrew came out for visits to the great southwest. Separately of course. We no longer have the mansion in which to house our guests. A small trade off for reducing cleaning time from 6 hours to 2. Pictures from their visits are now up on the flickr site.
Bobby and Cindy had their official ceremony, complete with tuxes and satin. Greg was the best man. He's really proud of his brother for making such a great choice in a life partner and for making strides in the sometimes painful processes of maturing. I don't think that process is ever complete. A rightfully so. I can't imagine how boring life would be having all the answers, seeing all there is to see...
My grandmother celebrated her 93rd birthday. She is happy and healthy and enjoying her new home.
Stay tuned for musings on the desert life, writing, and art.
Well, originally the blog was meant to narrate our lives in Italy to our friends and family. Now we are back and we're not quite sure what to do with it, or even if we have the time to maintain something on a regular basis. We also haven't done much traveling since returning to the United States. You could say that a transatlantic move takes a lot of energy, as does working toward a graduate degree, working full time and developing short stories and novels.
Since January, life has actually been quite eventful. My mom and Andrew came out for visits to the great southwest. Separately of course. We no longer have the mansion in which to house our guests. A small trade off for reducing cleaning time from 6 hours to 2. Pictures from their visits are now up on the flickr site.
Bobby and Cindy had their official ceremony, complete with tuxes and satin. Greg was the best man. He's really proud of his brother for making such a great choice in a life partner and for making strides in the sometimes painful processes of maturing. I don't think that process is ever complete. A rightfully so. I can't imagine how boring life would be having all the answers, seeing all there is to see...
My grandmother celebrated her 93rd birthday. She is happy and healthy and enjoying her new home.
Stay tuned for musings on the desert life, writing, and art.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Greg's studio
Greg's studio
Originally uploaded by Jessica & Greg
Poor Greg. Now he has to share the space with me for the most part. Not that he complains at all. His two studios in Italy have merged into one, and without all the built-ins that seemed perfect for stashing things like illustration board or watercolor paper. Although he is not doing all that poorly since he's sequestered an area of the backyard for oil painting.
Superman stopped by for dinner
Superman stopped by for dinner
Originally uploaded by Jessica & Greg
No, this brings me to wonder, what would you serve a super hero were he to come over for dinner. I think anything gas inducing would be a horrible mistake.
Some things don't change
Dining area
Originally uploaded by Jessica & Greg
The dining room looks basically the same, with some decorative additions. You can't see Vesuvio from this angle, it's just off to the right on the trunk. Vesuvio is pretty much the only original art we picked up while in Italy, with the exception of my photos and Greg's paintings, off course. It's a gi-normous flat, rolled out piece of clay that was made by holding together the clay with a piece of cloth while Luciano was shaping it. The glaze on the outer rims reminds me of hematite and the center is a blaze of yellow and orange. Bought in Vietri, so close to the Mountain, it seemed a natural leap to call it Vesuvio.
Welcome Home
Living room
Originally uploaded by Jessica & Greg
We've improved from empty homes and borrowed spaces to our very own domicile. Things are finally starting to feel normal after the chaos that started nearly five months ago. We have all of our "stuff" and have some routines established.
The house we moved into in Tucson is much smaller than the 7 bedroom sprawling, green-tiled monster of a place we had in Italy. And there is no view of the Mediterranean. New Year's was sadly quiet. None of our neighbors set of fireworks for twenty minutes straight starting at midnight. And the air is suspiciously clean here. Hardly a fire to be detected by the nose, barring the sedate flames burning in fireplaces and wood burning stoves on the colder nights.
Mom, note the lamp in the left corner.
Riiiight
Puffy butt.jpg
Originally uploaded by Jessica & Greg
And I hadn't even had anything to drink. All the tissue from the Christmas bags were just crying for attention. Perhaps instead of pursuing a career as an author, I should go straight for the gold. The Vegas gold.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
A week of (non) adventure
Sometimes life is necessarily boring. Perhaps boring is too strong a word. Uneventful seems more appropriate. Moments of inactivity help, however, throw into relief just how exciting those adventures to exotic places are. In honor of this, we embrace a week of the ordinary.
Greg had a couple of successes. He cooked some very good meals, which he's not used to doing. More importantly, he sold a painting at the Artists at Work storefront in Tucson. Inspired by Native American motifs, the image is of a mother and child bonding with a village and warriors in the background. Since the response to the image was so profound, Greg took Henri's, the owner of the shop, advise and started making more original prints.
Work for me has been very intense. Every day I'm a little more grateful to be able to walk to work. The way there sets a nice tone for the rest of the day, and the return trip is just enough time and activity to process through some of the more stressful parts of the day. With the exception of Tuesday, I've actually been able to write 2000 words every night. In a little under two weeks, I've been able to nearly double my word count. Of course, churning out material is just one small part of writing a novel. A word count says nothing about character and plot development, or quality. The real accomplishment is that I actually sat down every day and did something for my art, which I'd been lacking for the past couple of months.
Last night we did have a little bit of excitement. We went discobowling with some good friends. I found a couple of new neon signs to add to the list of cool ones to photograph on the way over. The Tiki motel had a great sign featuring an Easter Island head. Among the strip of motels leading up to the Golden Pin, we were also particularly captivated by the class and atmosphere of the "No-tel Motel." Very nice.
Greg had a couple of successes. He cooked some very good meals, which he's not used to doing. More importantly, he sold a painting at the Artists at Work storefront in Tucson. Inspired by Native American motifs, the image is of a mother and child bonding with a village and warriors in the background. Since the response to the image was so profound, Greg took Henri's, the owner of the shop, advise and started making more original prints.
Work for me has been very intense. Every day I'm a little more grateful to be able to walk to work. The way there sets a nice tone for the rest of the day, and the return trip is just enough time and activity to process through some of the more stressful parts of the day. With the exception of Tuesday, I've actually been able to write 2000 words every night. In a little under two weeks, I've been able to nearly double my word count. Of course, churning out material is just one small part of writing a novel. A word count says nothing about character and plot development, or quality. The real accomplishment is that I actually sat down every day and did something for my art, which I'd been lacking for the past couple of months.
Last night we did have a little bit of excitement. We went discobowling with some good friends. I found a couple of new neon signs to add to the list of cool ones to photograph on the way over. The Tiki motel had a great sign featuring an Easter Island head. Among the strip of motels leading up to the Golden Pin, we were also particularly captivated by the class and atmosphere of the "No-tel Motel." Very nice.
Monday, January 05, 2009
A little bit day-by-day
Particle physics. Dark matter. A kick-ass chick. An arrogant warrior. A run down neighborhood. Another world. Some guy named Elliott Sanford, also called the Shadow Man.
What do they have in common? They are just some of the elements from the book I started working on in November. About 22000 words into it, I had a huge work project and got the flu. "Defender" lingered, untouched and unfinished, on my hard drive for a month and a half. I went through periods of guilt, feeling like an unfit mother in many ways.
But now I'm back, and so is the book. Since the 1st, I've managed 10k new words and some light revision. I'm about 2/3s of the way through the story arc. Since I can't seem to settle on one genre. I have a fantasy manuscript completed and plans for another well developed. "Defender" one leans toward sci-fi/paranormal romance. Maybe I just wanted to write a sex scene. Scandalous, I know. However, my heroine and hero haven't even had sex yet. Horrible. They don't even like each other. But I'm working on that.
What do they have in common? They are just some of the elements from the book I started working on in November. About 22000 words into it, I had a huge work project and got the flu. "Defender" lingered, untouched and unfinished, on my hard drive for a month and a half. I went through periods of guilt, feeling like an unfit mother in many ways.
But now I'm back, and so is the book. Since the 1st, I've managed 10k new words and some light revision. I'm about 2/3s of the way through the story arc. Since I can't seem to settle on one genre. I have a fantasy manuscript completed and plans for another well developed. "Defender" one leans toward sci-fi/paranormal romance. Maybe I just wanted to write a sex scene. Scandalous, I know. However, my heroine and hero haven't even had sex yet. Horrible. They don't even like each other. But I'm working on that.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Art Show Announcement
We are excited to announce that Greg has been asked to participate in an art show at the Phantom Gallery in Orange, California. They are an independent gallery that usually has shows centered around themes. This month's theme is: It Came From the 80s.
We've had some fun revisiting the icons of our childhood, like the Goonies and Punky Brewster, as a result of this theme.
If you're interested, the show is on the 24th of January. Click on the title to hop over to the Phantom Gallery's website for more details or email us.
We've had some fun revisiting the icons of our childhood, like the Goonies and Punky Brewster, as a result of this theme.
If you're interested, the show is on the 24th of January. Click on the title to hop over to the Phantom Gallery's website for more details or email us.
Friday, January 02, 2009
How does one start a new year?
Hung over? Awaking with gritty-eyed fatigue? Sleeping in until the bright hours of the afternoon?
Since Greg and I are fuddy-duddies in young bodies, we didn't do the going-out-for-New-Year's thing. We had a nice quiet dinner at home, watched a movie, had a couple of glasses of the Ocone wine we brought from Italia. I worked on my goals for the year and on our budget. Yes, we do budget in our small family of two. I AM anal retentive, after all. We reminisced about the New Years we spent there, in Naples, watching in horrified fascination as the kids and dogs played with fireworks bought especially for the evening. Not to mention the overflowing trays of fried eel, shrimp, and fish.
Blues drifted through the air from the Arizona Inn, which is just a couple of blocks away, as we drifted to sleep. The next morning, I lounged in bed and, for a moment, I wanted to "treat" myself and sleep in. But I nixed that idea. It wasn't really a treat, it just meant that more time would pass before I started working on the things that are important to me. So we worked out, had breakfast and dove head first into art. We revamped the studio/office/guest room. It's a nicer space, less crammed full of stuff, and more conducive to hours of art. We "christened" the space; Greg painted, I wrote.
Since Greg and I are fuddy-duddies in young bodies, we didn't do the going-out-for-New-Year's thing. We had a nice quiet dinner at home, watched a movie, had a couple of glasses of the Ocone wine we brought from Italia. I worked on my goals for the year and on our budget. Yes, we do budget in our small family of two. I AM anal retentive, after all. We reminisced about the New Years we spent there, in Naples, watching in horrified fascination as the kids and dogs played with fireworks bought especially for the evening. Not to mention the overflowing trays of fried eel, shrimp, and fish.
Blues drifted through the air from the Arizona Inn, which is just a couple of blocks away, as we drifted to sleep. The next morning, I lounged in bed and, for a moment, I wanted to "treat" myself and sleep in. But I nixed that idea. It wasn't really a treat, it just meant that more time would pass before I started working on the things that are important to me. So we worked out, had breakfast and dove head first into art. We revamped the studio/office/guest room. It's a nicer space, less crammed full of stuff, and more conducive to hours of art. We "christened" the space; Greg painted, I wrote.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Goodbye 2008!
There is a part of me that feels like the new year is a contrived event. After all, people created the calendar, not the universe or some all-powerful being. Some physicists purport time doesn't really exist, at least not in the way in which we think.
Yet we feel it. Sometimes acutely. Our concept of time can perhaps be seen as a sequence of events, miniscule and microscopic and monumental, that effect change, growth.
It isn't such a stretch of the imagination to connect why this point in the annual cycle, the dead of winter, would come to represent the new year. In some parts of the world life lays dormant. Trees are stripped bare of leaves, bushes and flowers are shriveled husks. They wait. For rebirth, renewal.
In this respect, marking January as the new year makes sense. People, too, are in need of a renewal. This is an opportunity, as is every time we wake up to a new day, to examine our lives and do things differently. I could get poetic about this, but it comes down to evaluating our lives with the understanding that one small action can lead to a huge change. It takes some courage. Okay, it takes a lot of courage.
Thinking on our lives over the past year, we moved from Italy to San Diego to Tucson. I started a new job and Greg started school full-time. We, once again, moved to a city sight unseen (or at least unremembered). I'm beginning to think we are absolutely crazy. Or maybe we have thick skins. But given how much we've agonized over these decisions, the most accurate assessment I can make of this lunacy is that it is not really lunacy at all. It is a desire to achieve our dreams.
Yet we feel it. Sometimes acutely. Our concept of time can perhaps be seen as a sequence of events, miniscule and microscopic and monumental, that effect change, growth.
It isn't such a stretch of the imagination to connect why this point in the annual cycle, the dead of winter, would come to represent the new year. In some parts of the world life lays dormant. Trees are stripped bare of leaves, bushes and flowers are shriveled husks. They wait. For rebirth, renewal.
In this respect, marking January as the new year makes sense. People, too, are in need of a renewal. This is an opportunity, as is every time we wake up to a new day, to examine our lives and do things differently. I could get poetic about this, but it comes down to evaluating our lives with the understanding that one small action can lead to a huge change. It takes some courage. Okay, it takes a lot of courage.
Thinking on our lives over the past year, we moved from Italy to San Diego to Tucson. I started a new job and Greg started school full-time. We, once again, moved to a city sight unseen (or at least unremembered). I'm beginning to think we are absolutely crazy. Or maybe we have thick skins. But given how much we've agonized over these decisions, the most accurate assessment I can make of this lunacy is that it is not really lunacy at all. It is a desire to achieve our dreams.
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