Alia Luria's Blog, page 2
January 18, 2025
Geri o Shimasu, Ocularum, and more...
Geri o Shimasu
I'm long overdue in announcing that the countdown has begun for publication of my first full-length collection of non-fiction essays, titled Geri o Shimasu: Adventures of a Baka Gaijin. Releasing August 12 of this year, preorders have already opened online at the following links:
and more places!
Geri o Shimasu: Adventures of a Baka Gaijin invites readers on a witty, unfiltered romp through 2008 Japan as experience...
May 16, 2024
Crossing the Rainbow Bridge
"My Only Fans would just be videos of me chasing my elderly dog down the street braless," I said to Vince after bringing Ein back in from a potty break in the front yard.
"You'd have tons of subscribers," he replied with a laugh.
“She tried to make a break for it this morning, and I had to scoop her up just as a truck careened around the corner. I'm pretty sure the driver got an eyeful."
We laugh, but my dog is a few months away from 16 years old, and her senior moments are increasingly senior min...
September 28, 2023
Typewriter Talks: Episode 23
I had the immense pleasure of conversing with Maureen DcDole of Keep St. Pete Lit for their Typewriter Talks podcast series. We talked about our respective writing processes, haiku as a journaling tool, books we had recently read, favorite authors, and how much we love being writers. If you want to learn a little bit more about my process for both my fiction and my non-fiction work, as well as advice I would have given my younger self, please feel free to tune in to Episode 23. I also gave a ver...
September 1, 2023
Friday Footnote: How to Spot a Geisha
If you look at the painting attached to this post, you will see the back of a maiko. I painted this from a photograph that I took during the Gion walking tour referenced here. You can tell she is a maikobased on her obi (belt). We were extremely lucky during our walk and passed multiple maiko and geikohurrying about their business that afternoon. There a few really quicks ways to spot the difference between a maiko and a geiko. One, the maiko will wear a furisode, a type of kimono with very long...
August 25, 2023
You Might Eat Organic, but You're Still Full of Baloney
I wrote this essay in the summer of 2017, two days after a former boyfriend was arrested for stalking me. It was a runner up for the Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards in Creative Non-Fiction, but it was never published until Northwest Review selected it for inclusion in their Winter 2021 issue. It is my very first CNF essay, and I’m so proud that it was published in Northwest review. It has since been republished in the SOOP Anthology, Women Write Now: Women in Trauma. Below is an excerpt from...
Paralysis
“Paralysis,” a piece of flash fiction was originally published by Toho Journal in Volume 2, Issue 2, published in 2020. Sadly, this lovely journal with amazing art has since ceased publishing, so I’m including my piece here for you to read.
Paralysis
The man stands on a plateau with nothing but distance below. He is broad-shouldered yet too thin. He shifts from foot to foot, uncomfortable, hair gleaming in the harsh, unyielding light. Sometimes he feels the fragile column sway. It might be vertigo...
Friday Footnote: How to say "No" in Japanese
The finger X, hand X, or forearm X (you may have noticed 🙅🏻♀️ among your emojis and wondered about it) is a common sign employed by Japanese people to inform someone else that they either cannot do something they are about to do or be somewhere they are about to go. I was once given a forearm X by a security guard when I attempted to walk through an entrance that was closed off, and sometimes a finger X or hand X, usually held lower on the body, if something I wanted wasn’t available in a store...
August 22, 2023
On Dealing with Manipulative Behavior
So, as a writer and knit designer, I keep certain social media accounts public. I use these accounts for updating readers, posting about projects, doing pattern launches, sharing photographs and artwork, etc. I am an open and blunt person. It’s my nature. I don’t know what it is about this year, but my “availability” seems to be an invitation to some folks to try to engage me in ways that are disruptive, manipulative, or just selfish.
Part of my move to put posts like this behind a paywall is rev...
July 18, 2020
Ocularum Available for Pre-Order August 1!
[image error]
About Ocularum
Three friends, fractured. Mia hears the trees and feels them, desperate to heal the planet. Cedar, now partially blinded, has walked the path of peace since birth but grapples with a growing rage boiling in his blood. Both have chosen their side, and Taryn, their former friend, has seemingly chosen hers, but all three must face their past betrayals as they try to understand the truth and their roles to come in the future of the planet Lumin.
Ocularum, the follow up novel to Compendium, follows these characters and more as the ever-expanding complexity of friendship, love, and politics forces them choose between each other, their families, and the values they hold dear. Set in a lush world where nature itself creates the electricity of technology, humanity’s reliance on the world around it cannot be greater, and the struggle to control technology is the struggle to control all life in Lumin’s fragile ecosystem.
March 31, 2016
Close Reading 5 of 12 (Setting the Scene in Scott Lynch’s “A Year and a Day in Old Theradane”)
Hi anyone who reads this! Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written anything up here. I have been busy busy. I thought I’d break the ice again with another of my close reading analysis pieces. I actually have 5 – 10 to post, but I’m not going to put them all up at once. This entry analyzes one of my favorite short stories ever, Scott Lynch’s “A Year and a Day in Old Theradane,” which was published in the Rogues anthology. It’s my favorite thing that he has ever written, so he should expand t...
