H.K. Rowe's Blog, page 12

Excerpt Sundays – Killer Orange

As promised, I’m sharing an excerpt from one of my current projects. Killer Orange is one of the closest projects of mine to publication. I’m in the editing stage right now and polishing up the last draft.

Here is an excerpt from one of the earliest chapters.

Sunshine Sands had once been a high-priced community where people bought plots of land and custom built their houses. After the housing market collapsed in 2008, communities like Sunshine Sands no longer held their initial luster. The community became desperate for buyers as housing prices fell and their richer residents abandoned their houses for better, bigger mansions. Sometimes owners rented out their houses, but Rebecca remembered the real estate agent sniffing her nose at the term renters and upon seeing Rebecca’s shock, had quickly moved the conversation forward.

“She really wanted to make a sale,” Rebecca muttered under her breath, when she suddenly realized she’d been talking to herself for a while in the car.

Shrugging inwardly, Rebecca surveyed the area outside the subdivision that was to become her new home. The reality of having her own home didn’t feel real to her yet, and she hoped she could learn to love this house like a favorite pair of jeans. The novelty of its newness excited her, and she hoped her neighbors were more pleasant than the beady-eyed, lip-curling rednecks of Oneco.

“They’d have to be. No one could be that bad,” she murmured with a chuckle, as the country music playlist ended and switched over to hard rock.

Anticipation filled her as she turned down Shasta Daisy Street and headed toward the sectioned off subdivision. Her phone’s GPS beeped and told her that she arrived at her destination. She pulled her Lumina onto the next small street, which immediately stopped her at some steel gates. There was a security guard on duty, and he glanced at her, looking inconvenienced from his copy of Fifty Shades of Grey as she waited for him to verify her ID and buzz her inside.

Rebecca handed him her crisp ID and her community pass, and when he looked at her, she felt like he was surveying her like a hungry bird. Rebecca shrank back instinctively at his steely stare. She met his annoyed expression, and her gaze drifted to his skin.

Gee, for an old guy, he sure is tan! she thought, and it almost sickened her as she pushed away the rising anxiety that was balling up in her stomach.

“So, you’re that new lady that purchased the Baker house on Ray Court.” He sniffed at her, unimpressed by her looks without even trying to get to know her. Rebecca hardly cared; she often received such reactions from strangers. Other than her striking pale skin and cherub face, she really didn’t have distinctive features that impressed anyone.

“Um… yeah, it’s the house where my aunt’s friend Kolee Baker lived. She found a great place on the coastline of Florida,” Rebecca replied. She beamed at him with a fake smile and shrugged. “This housing market, eh?”

The overly-tanned security guard nodded slowly, but his eyes seemed wary of her. He finally returned her ID and pass and buzzed her through. When Rebecca finally drove on, she let out a sigh that felt like a thistle had been stuck in her throat.

“What’s with the judgmental looks?” she mused aloud, and she almost wished she’d taken her friend Sophie up on her offer to move in with her. Sophie would’ve had the perfect snarky comment to put Rebecca at ease. Plus, Sophie would’ve truly scared the daylights out of the guard with her dark eye makeup and scary occult tattoos alone.

Even though Sophie lived on the south side of Chicago, Rebecca didn’t think she needed to bother her friend to come on a weekday and hold her hand while she moved into her new community. Sophie was busy enough with two jobs, and she had helped Rebecca plenty of times already when she’d been house hunting and visiting the area.

Rebecca took a deep breath and drove onward toward her house. She drummed up her internal resolve and encouraged herself to be strong. “I don’t need help from others all the time,” she reminded herself. “I have to learn to live this new life on my own. Without Matthew. Even without Sophie.”

© 2015 HK Rowe

Flash Fiction Friday – The Playroom

The Playroom 

I dream of an old house, and I’m always afraid of it. Yet, I travel there and wander through the vast rooms, changing forms and designs.

I once grew up in this house. It is the house of my patchwork childhood, where my mother lived with a man she grew to hate. Where their arguing echoed throughout the halls, leaving a mark of their frustration as a thick black residue on the thin walls.

Where I lived with a man that used to be a father, an abuser, and later – a stranger.

The house still exists today, but it does not appear like it does in my mind. The landscape is mutable, evolving and warping through the raindrops of my memories. The rooms are familiar but I dwell in them as alternate versions of myself. I wake up in the rooms of this house sometimes – as if I’ve always lived there, only growing through the fine lines of spider webs of different lives.

One room used to be my playroom, which had spilled out from the kitchen. I remember a picture of myself in this room, sitting with my legs tucked under my knees in a schoolhouse desk, gripping a pencil and trying to see through my long brown bangs. I’m smiling at whoever is taking the picture – probably my mother. I’m wearing light purple pants and a white shirt with matching purple sleeves. I’m happy, and one tooth is missing in the front of my mouth. I’m waiting for the picture taking to be over so I can resume my drawing. In the background, a late afternoon sunlight trickles through a dark curtain, making the room look orange and gold.

I remember the room being scattered with toys and pencils and crayons. Occasionally, a cat would hide inside the room – finding solace in a toy box or window sill.

In my dreams, the room is never like this. It reshapes itself into other forms, in other lives, but I’m still there.

It always smells like cats, and I’m afraid of what’s underneath the carpet. Something is underneath the carpet. The floor’s not clean. It smells like urine and old messes. I feel like it will never be clean. Each time the room changes, the carpet changes, but it is never clean underneath.

In the high corners of the room, a black mass is always hovering above me, circling the ceiling.

The room sometimes seems longer, like an addition was built onto it – making the blackness out of the corner of my eye appear endless and hungry.

Other times, the room is small, and I’m encased in a box, always worrying about the old stains of the past hidden under a pristine new carpet.

Sometimes I’m a young girl. Sometimes I’m almost a woman. Other times, I’ve returned, still living in the house as an adult. Still worried about the old stains hidden from everyone’s eyes.

I can still smell the past. I sit in the room and hunch over, running my fingers over the carpet expecting to find a wet stain.

There is never a bed in this room. My schoolhouse desk is gone. Sometimes there are things littered on the floor: food wrappers, tissues and broken pencils. Pieces that embed into the carpet and stick to your feet when wet. Other times, it’s an ordinary room, and my mother is telling me that they redid it, that it’s ready to show so the house can be sold.

Once – the room had dark wood paneling on the walls. It felt cheap and flimsy as I scratched my fingers over it. That part never changes. I can still feel the cheapness of the walls. I still see the dark wood blending into the black mass that coils in the corners like a snake, waiting to wrap around me and draw me into another corridor of the room. Another changing place that used to be different in my childhood memories, but returns to my dreams like a distorted film reel.

I pace around this room like a ghost. I’m alive but my spirit travels here, seeing only what it thinks it remembers – pieces of a tattered painting that aren’t coming together as it used to be when it was whole.

The room will always draw me nearer to why I’m always coming back – promising to reveal secrets but only spiraling with an old fear.

(A memory can scab, but sometimes it scars. A thin white mark reminds me of what was.)

Today the room looks different. I’m not sure what the current owners have done to it. It could be expanded. It could be knocked down and changed into something new. I won’t know.

There is no reason for me to intrude on the current owners of the house, no matter how much my curiosity cloys. Knowing wouldn’t satisfy me anyway. It would be a stranger’s house, with a stranger’s energy into it. Mine is long gone by now. The room is inviting in my dreams, and I only recognize it by my unreliable memories.

Instead, my dreams paint me different pictures, trying to guess at what it used to be, filling in the blanks of yesterdays with the absurdities of my own mind.

Will I someday release the room inside my dreams – the room that once was my playroom when I was little? I don’t believe so.

Something is still lurking there. A secret that must be told. A shield is protecting me from whatever really happened in there, and why I keep coming back to it, why it draws me from the real world into a mad world of phantoms and fears.

The room is an open invitation, but the language is all wrong. The message is tangled and tattered. Maybe the truth is lost forever.

But I keep returning to it. I keep existing in a room that is gone from time, but never gone beyond the waking world.

Part of “The House of Wasps: An Unreliable Memoir” which is a new project of mine.

©2015 HK Rowe

Nonfiction: The Lottery Club

Welcome to nonfiction Wednesdays!

Why did I choose to talk about nonfiction? Well, for one, nonfiction is particularly special to me. I took Nonfiction Writing at Northern Illinois University as an elective for my English Minor back in 2002. At the beginning of the semester, I was dating this guy who I met on one of those free dating sites. It was actually sort of a new thing back in 2002, and he was the second guy I’d met through it. He was, well, a pretty decent boyfriend. However, as I’d find out though some of the weeks before spring break, he was turning out to be sort of a basketcase. We were happy and things were good until he became distant and shady, and then he decided to break up with me right before spring break. Nice guy, eh? Well, it was college.

During that spring break I had to write a paper for my Writing Nonfiction class and read it to everyone when classes resumed. I was so distraught that I couldn’t think of anyone else but my ex. I tried writing my paper about him – in a notebook and on the computer. Nothing I wrote was good. It was all awful, and as I wrote I found myself sounding completely pathetic. My feelings seemed real, but they just weren’t real to me.

I’d soon realized that writing about my ex was just purging. I was releasing myself from the relationship through my words. They were valid, at least to me, but to share them with a class seemed horrifying. Not only that, I didn’t want to seem like a complete loser in front of my writing peers. As some people know, when you take an English writing class, some people can be pretty harsh (and rightly so).

So I scrapped everything I wrote and decided to write about someone else besides myself. I didn’t want my paper to have anything to do with me that had any sort of depth.

I wrote about my job. I didn’t care at the time. I wanted to disconnect myself from my broken hearted misery and write about something that I knew I could write about without really thinking. I wanted to write about a place I was pretty comfortable sharing with others, something that came easily.

At the time, I was working at a gas station. I’d worked at a couple different gas stations for 2 years at that point. I’d worked at one back home, and then I’d found a really well-paid cashier position at a busy gas station in DeKalb near the college.

I decided to write about my job at the gas station back home. I was feeling homesick, and even though it doesn’t sound like the most luxurious jobs, I enjoyed the people I met there. Trust me when I say that gas stations bring in a variety of people from many different backgrounds and social circles.

I’d served the blue collar types, like construction workers and auto mechanics. I’d served the mayor, councilmen, police officers, and clergy. I’d served people on welfare and homeless people. I’d served college kids, high school kids, and even little kids who came in to buy a candy bar while their mother watched from outside.

Probably my favorite people to serve were the lottery players. I had a love-hate relationship with them. When you worked at a gas station, you had regulars, and you had the same folks buying lottery too. So, for my paper I decided to write about the regular lottery players I’d like to call The Lottery Club.

Consequently, my decision to write about these lottery people was a good one. Many people in my class were impressed, even the biggest critics. One person was not entertained, but he was known for finding fault with everything and never being satisfied. It felt good to hear the teacher of the class knock down his criticisms to defend me.

Not only was this one of my proudest writing moments in my lifetime, but the Writing Nonfiction class would forever change my life in a different way.

In this class, I met another student writer there that would someday become my husband. When I’d fretted over what to write after my breakup with that other boy, I’d searched inside myself and expressed something deeper, a part of myself I was delighted to share with others, rather than drown them in my personal suffering. In the end, a bad relationship had ended and another was soon born – a better one.

So I am pleased to share with you that story I wrote, complete in its original form:

 

The Lottery Club

(HK Rowe © 2002-2015)

 

Normally, my six-hour shift never changes. I work at a small, obscure little gas station that attracts the lowest class of people. The same people come into the gas station to get the usual things they did on previous visits. After awhile of repeat visits, regulars are known by first names to us employees at Phillips 66. The people who are normally the regulars are the lottery players. They play Midday and Evening lottery. They never hesitate to spend lots of money either. They constantly consult each other about numbers that they “feel” are right. They’re in tuned with the lottery and number gods. Or so they think they are even if they lose repeatedly.

Butch: President

At Phillips 66 in Freeport, Butch is the great sage of lottery. Not only does he spend over a hundred dollars a day on numbers, but also money seems to be no object to him. To the others who play lottery, he’s the Messiah. They always look up to him and await his advice.

Unlike the other lottery players, he seems different. His demeanor and appearance seems to be cleaner and more refined then that of the others. He definitely has money to spend, for he is the owner of Mrs. Mike’s Potato Chips.

I’m often curious to why the other lottery players look up to Butch so much. He’s won several thousands of dollars on lottery, but he’s lost just as much. For some reason, the numbers he picks seem to influence the others enough so they play the same.

I always know when Butch appears on my shift. I can see his curly white hair, pink face, and round torso sitting in his blue Jeep as he pulls into the station. His golden presence is radar, and shockingly other lottery regulars seem to come to the station simultaneously when he’s there. He walks into the station and usually some are quick to greet him, inquiring about his numbers and their miraculous origins.

“I saw this license plate number 4-7-6, and I have a feeling it’s going to come in soon,” Butch says when another lottery player asks about his numbers.

“Oh, yeah. I saw that one too. I saw 6-4-7 on the address of a house when I was walking Bogart the other day,” says Ed.

Their chatter warms the dullness of the gas station. They socialize, talking about numbers with passion. They are in their own worlds, and they don’t seem to mind being slowly forced into the corner with the candy and 12-pack sodas by the bustle of other customers.

Butch hands me his long list of numbers. He always tells me to not hurry. He’s going to talk to Ed about his failure at Midday numbers.

“I almost had it too!” I also hear him say, “I second guessed myself again. I had a little feeling about that number but didn’t play it.”

I snort unhappily at his long list. He always plays his numbers the same way every night. For Pick 3, he has about eight or so different numbers and I have to type in each number and play them as a Strait Box and a Strait for a dollar five times. His Pick 4 numbers are played about the same way, only instead of a Strait Box for each number, he wants a 50/50, which is 50 cents Strait and 50 cents Box.

After I type in the first four numbers, my fingers become robotic and seem to move on their own. I push the bright blue, green, yellow, and red keys of the black machine… 4-5-7…Strait Box… Send…Last…Strait… 1 dollar… Repeat…05 times…Send…”

The process seems to take forever. Whenever I punch in his numbers, the redundancy seems to slice my brain out of my head and turn me into a zombie. I don’t usually like getting interrupted during Butch’s numbers by other customers. Because the routine is so ingrained in me, I sometimes hiss like a monster after other customers interrupt me.

Once I get his numbers played and paid for, the rest of the night seems like a reprieve. But I still get annoyed as more lottery people come.

Ed: Vice-President

Ed is Butch’s second-in-command. Butch and Ed wait for each other to show up most nights so they can discuss numbers. Like Butch, Ed drives a distinctive vehicle. When he pulls up in his rusty, dull maroon van, he moves out slowly, gliding into the station like a phantom. As his master leaves the van, Ed’s hound dog Bogart barks at all the other customers coming into the station. Ed has a routine usually every night. He gets about four dollars of gas in his van, buys a bag of cheap Cheetohs for Bogart, and disappears into the bathroom. Usually he’s so quiet I forget he’s still here. When I look out the window, and I still see his van and a hyper Bogart, I know he’s around somewhere.

Eventually, Ed slinks around the corner from the bathroom to my high counter. If Butch isn’t here, he’ll inquire if he has been. Whether Butch has been there or not, Ed will stay, usually for a very long time.

Ed can seem a little scary at first. He could be mistaken for a little homeless man. He wears a ratty old navy overcoat, full of dark spots of unlimited amounts of dirt, smoke, and any other filth. He always wears a blue knit hat, and I’ve never seen him without it, even in the summer. His face looks hard and tired, and without being touched I feel his face is rough and bumpy like beef jerky. His beard, a style stolen from Abe Lincoln, makes him look a hundred years older than his actual age. His eyes are teary and wet, and they remind me of eyes of an aging dog. One eye doesn’t seem to work very well, constantly flooded with tears and moving erratically.

Despite his homely appearance, Ed has a sharp and cranky tongue. His voice has the intimidation of a strict old-fashioned grandfather. He usually looks at me intensely with his erratic blue eye and says to me, “What number is that bingo on?”

Whatever number I say, he steps back in intense thought. Nothing on his body will move except his erratic eye. Suddenly he opens his mouth full of brown rotting teeth.

“Give me it. And don’t disappoint me.”

After about five disappointing bingos, he plays his Pick 3 numbers for the evening. First he wonders about Butch’s numbers, and then he reluctantly plays them, but in a different order. He never spends more than ten dollars, but he’s adamant with me that HIS numbers should be picked because of the money he’s spent. Before he leaves he gives me a slow, piercing look with his wild eye.

“You better pick my numbers tonight, not like the last time.” Then he floats out of the station to his van; Bogart is jumping, shaking the van in jubilation at his return.

PeeWee: Public Relations

Upper middle class customers seem to leave immediately upon PeeWee’s arrival. PeeWee is a short middle-aged man, appropriately labeled the Pimp of Freeport. Well, I guess he used to be. For sure, he now puts his shady salary into the lottery system.

He always wears his white plastic-like hat (it looks like a miniature cowboy hat) with small black feathers held together by a black satin ribbon. He’s wearing his green and white striped polo shirt, stained from coffee and other unknown substances. He wears gray trousers and scuffed alligator shoes. His skips into the station with a grin full of mistreated teeth. His charcoal face and deep brown pupils contrast with the intensity of the whites of his eyes.

He hands me his list of tattered notebook paper. It’s scribbled in writing that resembles a child’s. After I hand him the completed tickets with his numbers, he has suddenly thought of more. Through his strong distinctive lisp, I hear about two more numbers. After paying only about four dollars, PeeWee’s vivid presence dances away. He drives off in his dusty blue convertible with some scantily clad and terribly ugly middle-aged woman in the passenger seat. Not only do the customers sigh in relief when PeeWee leaves, but the store itself seems to be more comfortable as well.

Members of the Board

Butch, Ed, and PeeWee only make up small amounts of the regular lottery players that come in during a night at Phillips 66. Usually more familiar faces linger into play the numbers.

Russ, a spirited look alike to Bill Cosby, comes in and shoots out numbers to me before he walks into the door. Thus, he’s affectionately called Dr. Huxtable among my co-workers. Without vision, we can easily recognize him as he yells out his commonly played Pick 4 numbers: 3414, 1947, 1923, and etc. He wears his tan overcoat, has a smile on his wrinkly freckled chocolate face. Sometimes he smoothes out his dry curly gray hair, and squints his eyes to look at my appearance, expecting me to have a new hairstyle. Then he always asks me, “Are you still in school? Do you still do all that drawing?”

He has a brother, Othar, which is a slimmer version of him with wilder black hair. Othar doesn’t only play regular lottery; he also plays instant tickets. He normally buys a pack of Merit Ultima 100 and about 30 dollars in instants with his winnings and crumpled bills. He takes his smokes and tickets and camps out in his clean white van, only leaving once in awhile to cash in tickets. He leaves with me a stack of old Pick 3 numbers to check for winnings. If he has a winner, I’m supposed to give him a “thumbs-up” through the window while he waits in his van. When Othar comes to the station to play, he usually never goes until close. He plays and plays until he runs out of money, and the money is always being found somewhere.

Eyes roll and people inhale when Dick walks in. Dick, an unkempt moldy old war veteran, walks all over town, and finally he stops into Phillips 66 for company and free coffee. His thick-framed glasses are always spotted and greasy. His back is hunched, weighted by his tummy. He seems goofy to those who don’t know him because he usually wears nice dress pants, a pair of tennis shoes, a raggedy bright red coat, and a frilly pink knit hat. He always announces he’s going bankrupt, sometimes in a mournful blues song he made up on the spot. After getting a cup of free coffee, he buys ten dollars in lottery tickets and cheap smokes. He goes outside and stands in front of the window to light up and gaze at the traffic outside. His eyes always look so sad, and I can’t help feel sorry for him, as his life seems to be hanging on by a thread. He’s excited when Butch comes, and doesn’t hesitate to corner him in a conversation about the same topic.

“The boss-man had no right to fire me.”

I don’t know what brings all these men together. Some nights all of them will circle together by the candy and talk colorfully about numbers and luck. They’ve all had that “feeling” about a certain number. They’re always sure the feeling is prophetic. If they win, they can better their lives. They all listen to Butch, who wins and has it better, but he still plays. Maybe it’s just considered an addiction, but I see more magic and color when these men talk about lottery then I see when smokers talk about cigarettes. They all seem to be caught in some life cycle, and they don’t mind. They wait patiently, twirling around in a machine with random circumstances. Someday, they believe their number will be picked.

Also, I did a cartoon of the regular lottery folks.

END

Cheers,

HK Rowe

Status! Postponed Monday Blog

The new updating schedule didn’t go to plan yesterday because I was ill last night, go figure! Nights or early mornings seem to be the best time for me to update, and with my dogs not enjoying the cold Chicago weather in the morning, it seems that nights are the best to update.

I will make the Wednesday post tomorrow for sure! I will post my blog for next Monday, which is currently half written. :)

Love you all. Stay warm. Cheers.

HK Rowe

2015 Blog Posting Schedule

2015 is here! Happy New Year!

I know we’re four days in, but I’ve been trying to catch up with things after the holidays, which has been rather difficult. I’ve been trying to post where I can that “Unbridled” is still on sale for $0.99 through the month, so that takes time as well. RL has thrown some curve balls as well: a party here and there, a funeral, housework and a sick dog. They all tend to eat up time.

I worked on a blog schedule for this year in an attempt to be a more proactive blogger than I have been. It’s still going to be difficult, but this comes with the indie author career so I’m ready to make the effort.

Starting tomorrow the schedule will go as follows:

MONDAY – writing/design blather and advice

WEDNESDAY – Nonfiction days: corporate, job search, self help and motivation

FRIDAY – Flash Fiction

SUNDAY – Excerpts! Excerpts on all current projects as well as promos!

Alright then! Let’s see how it goes. I’ll be posting Monday’s blog first thing tomorrow. See you then.

Cheers,

HK Rowe

LIMITED TIME! Unbridled is $0.99 through the Holidays on Amazon!

Happy Holidays and Merry Solstice/Christmas!

To celebrate the holidays, I have reduced the price of the Amazon Kindle version of my debut novel Unbridled to $0.99! If you have not picked it up yet, now is the time to get a copy.

Unbridled on sale now!

Please enjoy! And drop me a review if you can! Thanks!

Amazon Kindle version

Cheers,

HK Rowe

Goodreads Giveaway completed! Happy Winter Solstice!

My first giveaway for Unbridled ended last night, and 752 people entered the giveaway! Five winners were chosen, and I’ll be signing those copies and sending them out this week.

Thanks to everyone who entered and showed an interest in my book!

Happy Solstice to everyone and Happy Holidays! I’m off to my aunt’s house to spend time with family, eat turkey, and root for the Green Bay Packers!

Cheers,

H.K. Rowe

Goodreads Giveaway! ONE DAY LEFT

There’s one day left in my Goodreads Giveaway, so if you haven’t entered yet, there’s still time!

The giveaway is for my debut novel Unbridled about two orphan brothers, Brian and Ethan. Ethan is caught up in a seedy crime family to help Brian, but all is threatened when they become involved with their adopted cousin Elekta. Think Flowers in the Attic meets This Gun for Hire.

Here is where you can find the Giveaway:

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Unbridled
by H.K. Rowe

Giveaway ends December 21, 2014.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Thanks! Cheers,

H.K. Rowe

GOODREADS GIVEAWAY! 5 copies of Unbridled!

Hello all! It’s the official kick-off for my Goodreads Giveaway that ends December 20th. Please see the message below:

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Unbridled
by H.K. Rowe

Giveaway ends December 21, 2014.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Cheers!

HK Rowe

Monday Blogs: Giveaway & Book Review

Happy Monday, everyone!

I am still reeling from NaNoWriMo and catching up with my never-ending to-do list. I do plan on setting up a more regular blogging schedule at the beginning of the new year, but until then my posts will be a bit random like before. For now…

Tomorrow (which is my birthday) I am kicking off my Goodreads Giveaway for Unbridled. I will be giving away five FREE signed copies of my book. So you’ll see an official post for that tomorrow when it begins. I hope you enter for a chance for a free book. Who doesn’t love free, right?

In other news, I’ve been reading a lot, and normally I don’t do much reviewing of books because it seems like everyone does that, and though it probably is a good skill to foster in the indie-book world, it also depends on time. So normally I don’t have any sort of structured time for that, but when I read a good book, I feel I should share – whether it’s an indie author or not.

The book I read recently is The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer. Amanda Palmer was the former lead singer of the Dresdon Dolls, a bit of a cabaret punk band. She is an independent artist now and makes music regularly. Amanda Palmer is known for taking the music world by storm with her Kickstarter project and other advocacies, and I’ve been following her career for a while and just love her spirit, her engagement with fans, and her wisdom in art and music.

I don’t have a lot of free time to read much anymore, so I was amazed how enthralled I was by her book and finished it so quickly. I’m partial to biographies anyway, but sometimes I read them and it takes me forever, but not Amanda’s book.

I read it with ferocity, absorbing her stories, her biographical accounts, her romance with Neil Gaiman, and her struggles with asking people for help and then her art itself. Sometimes it felt like a self-help book, that I could adopt some of her wisdom with my own life and struggles. I know it probably wasn’t supposed to be like that, but once you read some of her own wisdom, you feel that her words are adaptable, and they make you think.

Especially when it comes for asking for help and receiving gifts. I feel like that can be a struggle for people, myself included, in getting over your pride and asking people for help, whether for money or goods, and when you do, as Amanda did, you see the sense of community and collaboration that is born from that. It was really touching to read about that, to see all her friends and fans come together in a unifying spirit to help.

I also enjoyed the concept of making art, how making art “is not hard” – and I guess I can see that as a more liberal sense of the concept, where if you make art for the public and someone, even one person, appreciates it, it’s a success.

If you’re a fan of Amanda’s work, I definitely recommend the work. If you’re intrigued by her, I’d look into her music and get a sense of her and then if you like her, totally pick up her book.

Here was my review I posted to Goodreads:

This book was so amazing I couldn’t put it down.

I began reading this and felt so connected to Amanda through her words, her snippets, and her stories. I was moved to tears many times that I was reading so furiously that I didn’t even realize I was crying until my cheeks were wet.

Such a powerful, moving book, that there were several parts of it I just absorbed with abandon, and other parts of it I just felt I understood her and nodded my head with what she was going through, explaining, or feeling.

It felt like a random, almost-self help book on and FOR artists, but it’s not that, (or is it? I’m not sure), it’s everything Amanda. That’s how much you connect with her when you read this book. I’ve never actually met Amanda in person, but once you read her story you feel like you’ve always known her and loved her. (But I want to meet her one day, because wow, what an amazing human being she is…)

Wonderful, wonderful book. It’s the best book I’ve read this year for sure.

Enjoy! See you all tomorrow to kick-off my Goodreads Giveaway!

Cheers.

H.K. Rowe