Ombailamos

The L.A. Stories!

Note: this post is going to be "featured" i.e. pinned to the top of my blog, because I've gotten some new traffic recently and I would like to call attention to my writing.  To read new posts, continue down the page.

ABOUT MY BOOKS AND STORIES

The L.A. Stories are novella-length modern romances - they average 21,000 words.  They feature adult situations, language, and themes.  Rights available!  Find out more at the dedicated website: TheLAStories.com

• Getting Off: (2012) two female friends compare notes on dating and make an unexpected discovery.  A F/F love story. **2018 edition now available!** get "Getting Off"
• All the Bars on Sunset: (2012) a lounge lizard falls hard for a salsa dancer **2018 edition now available!** get "All the Bars on Sunset"
• Chrome: (2012) a Japanese-American designer takes a semi-pro dancer by surprise **2018 edition now available!** get "Chrome"
• The Continental: (2012) a young ballroom instructor meets the man of her dreams.  There's only one problem: he lives on the other side of the planet **2018 edition now available!** get "The Continental"
• Beat: (2013) a retired fighter and a younger draftsman walk into a bar in West Hollywood ... a M/M love story **2018 edition now available!** get "Beat"
• Chai at Midnight: (2013) an Indian expat and an African-American club owner decide love is worth some changes **2018 edition now available!** get "Chai at Midnight"
• Speed Date: (2013) an up-and-coming DJ is ready to settle down, and finds his match where he least expects to **2018 edition now available!** get "Speed Date"
• Set Dressing: (2014) a designer with trust issues and a set decorator with a history find common ground **2018 edition now available!** get "Set Dressing"
• Mating Dance: (2014) how much older is too much? a ballroom pro and a younger actor figure it out **2018 edition now available!** get "Mating Dance"
• Benchwork: (2015) an L.A. doctor's plan to deal with her biological clock takes off on a tangent when she meets a widowed jeweler **2018 edition now available!**  get "Benchwork"
• Vintage: (2016) a young attorney and an independent wine consultant decide to take a second chance on love **2018 edition now available!** get "Vintage"
• The Whole Truth: (2018) a friendly work relationship between two attorneys evolves rapidly after a tango get "The Whole Truth"
• Toward Love: (2018) two actors assigned a showmance fall headlong into real love get "Toward Love"
• Exposure: (2018) a Broadway veteran and a TV actor play the long game, and play it for keeps. A M/M love story. get "Exposure"
• Green Man Walking: (2018) an industry pro and a dancer find that working on a project together takes them from "maybe" to "forever". get "Green Man Walking"
• A Random Sequence: (2018) two lottery winners, a wildfire, and dancing on the beach: what could be more L.A.? get "A Random Sequence"
• Drawn Out: (2018) an animation artist and a filmmaker meet at a festival and knock each other for a loop. How do they move forward when the whole world seems to be watching?  get "Drawn Out"
• Stripped: (2018) a TV actress and a dancer/barista negotiate several significant life changes in West Hollywood, with a little help from their friends. A F/F love story. get "Stripped"

  

THE NOVELS

The Exiles was my first-completed book.  It is a long historical romance, set during the French Revolution, with some of the action taking place in France and the rest in England. get "The Exiles"

Discovered is a follow-up, not precisely a sequel, to The Exiles.  The action here is all in England and features an inter-class relationship.  I'm particularly proud of this one. get "Discovered"

Home Sweet Home is a contemporary romance set in the 1980s. get "Home Sweet Home"

Million Dollar Death is a mystery with two points-of-view: one, the director of a stage play; the other, the police officer investigating the death of one of her cast members.  Set in the modern day in Los Angeles, this novel is related to the L.A. Stories.  **2018 edition now available!** get "Million Dollar Death"

The novels are also available in paperback or for Kindle.

THE OTHER STUFF

"What Went Down" is a stage play, basis for the production described in Million Dollar Death.  A project in the works is creating sheet music for the songs in this play.  Both formats.

and finally ...

"Other Voices: Social Commentary in the Novels of Frances Burney" was my master's thesis.  It looks at the ways this very successful, highly-placed Englishwoman managed to say a lot of things that most women in her position wouldn't have dared to.  I don't have an image for this particular book, but it is available for Kindle e-readers and in paperback from Amazon.

my author page

a decade

A long time ago - ten years, to be precise - I started writing this here blog.  A decade ago.

So much has changed since then.  Much too much to summarize.  I see from the stats report that people do check in at this blog from time to time, even though it has been inactive for five months.  Thank you for your interest (and your patience).

I thought for a while that I would let this blog expire, because I have a new one now.  The new one is devoted to the series I am writing and publishing as The L.A. Stories - that is the name of the new blog: www.thelastories.com - and that is where you will find updates about new publications. 

I expect I will keep my "pinned" post here (desperately needs to be updated) but the rest of the publication material has already been moved, and will be deleted here.

Ombailamos was originally conceived as a place for me to write about dancing and fitness.  Over the years the blog became very unfocused; the category of "home and garden" took over for a while.  There's quite a bit of random photography here.

Still not sure what form this blog will ultimately take.  However, I've decided to keep it alive for at least one more year, to give myself time to figure that out.

In the meantime, if you want to see what I've been up to since last summer, do check out The L.A. Stories.  Twenty-two novellas and three in-series novels are now available at Amazon, along with a few other things that are not connected to the series.

excavation

This is what it looks like when a sewer pipe has to be dug out because it's broken.  The pipe in this trench was terra-cotta and probably original to the house.  It was broken, and the verkakte grass was feasting, which two facts meant that I really couldn't do much of anything in the front yard.

I am very grateful to our landlords for doing this.  And glad, on behalf of the poor guy who did the digging, that the pipe was only about three feet down.  Yikes, what a day's work.

reading list: September 2018

It is another very short reading list.  Since finishing that novel draft, I've taken a bit of a hiatus, or rest period, from writing (have a read-through-edit to do very soon, and am still in progress with novella #18). 

So far in October, I've already read as many books as I got through in September.  And next weekend won't be much for writing either, so I may not have writing progress to report till near the end of the month.  And when, for whatever reason, I'm not writing ... I'm reading.

Anyway!  Herewith, September. * denotes a new-to-me book.

 

65. The Wild Child, by Mary Jo Putney. An ambitious Regency with so much plot, I was tired.

66. The Undomestic Goddess* by Sophie Kinsella. An entertaining story of a young lawyer's professional implosion, followed by reinvention.  I could have done with more of the romance.   I mean, if you're going to adopt a new life because you realize you're in love with a person who can't be integrated into your old life, that person needs to be a little more alive on the page.

67. Locked Rooms, by Laurie R. King.  Came up on sale and is a series favorite, so ... really very good.

68. A Conspiracy in Belgravia* by Sherry Thomas.  The other nouveau-Holmes fiction I read.  This series' Holmes does not engage me on the same level as King's Russell, but the novels are smart.

69. Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home* by Maria Finn.  A well-written memoir about a plunge into Argentine tango following the breakup of a marriage.  Lots of dance detail, so of course now I want to learn tango even more than I already did (I know a few basics, and enough to be an intelligent viewer - which is to say, I can tell good technique from bad - but that's not enough).

P.O.P.

It happens to be my dad's birthday today.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDIO!

In honor of that event, here is a picture of a pigeon I call POP, which is short for "Pile O' Pennies," because that's what it looks like to me.  In this lighting, you don't really get the hint of iridescence that brushes some of the feathers.

Back when I worked in Beverly Hills, there was a pigeon that would strut up Beverly Drive that was a smooth copper color, almost like a cedar waxwing, but with that iridescent neck you see in the standard-issue gray birds.  He was beautiful (I know it was a he because of his behavior). 

This bird is beautiful in a different way; it is more like the sparrows who come to the yard.  You don't really notice the subtlety of the colors because the overall impression is "brown."

Anyway, there is a POP for my pop.  I love you, Dad.

nice surprise

Among the many plants I acquired after moving into Chez Violette were a pair of "Yuletide" camellias.  These are apparently of the type that thrive under a regime of benign neglect; I have done absolutely nothing with them, since potting them up, except water them with a fair degree of regularity.

Recently I noticed that they are both covered with flower buds.  This was nice!

And this is what the flowers look like open:

a tale of two Lears

So Mr. P & I went to see the streamed National Theatre Live broadcast of Sir Ian McKellen's "King Lear," and I'm really glad we did because that is the way to see these plays, if you ask me.  Even with our theater's chronic tech problems, and even though we were in the theater for going on four hours.

Quick comparison:  Mission Impossible: Fallout: in the theater for two hours forty minutes, felt like eternity.  King Lear? Over in a flash.

I was not bored for a second.  I did not have trouble following the play, even though I've never read it.  The acting was, if not uniformly excellent, certainly very high quality and in some cases hard to imagine bettering.  I now have a crush on James Corrigan, who played the nefarious Edmund. McKellen was everything I'd hoped.

Seriously loved that Kent was played by a woman, Sinead Cusack, who was SUPERB.  Since Kent is arguably the hero of the piece, extra special love here.

The director staged the play in two long acts, which works for the modern theatre-goer, and the break in the text was in a logical and cliff-hangery place.

 

Then, coincidentally, Amazon just released a new Lear film starring a slew of fabulous actors including Anthony Hopkins (Lear), Emma Thompson (Goneril), and Jim Broadbent (Gloucester).  This was an abridged presentation, coming in at right around two hours total.  We watched it, and I definitely preferred the unabridged version.  A lot of plot threads just disappeared in the truncated text.

Hopkins' Lear was very different from McKellen's: meaner, more violent, with less pathos.  Less sympathetic, and without some sympathy for the old bastard it's difficult to conceive of the piece as an actual tragedy.  The Cordelia in the Amazon film was stronger, to my mind, and Emma Thompson has never been anything less than perfect.

The two versions were quite similar in their sort-of-modern settings.  Both had Cordelia marrying the Duke of France but then in military uniform, actively participating in the French sortie on English soil.  I have no idea if she has conventionally been played as a soldier.

 

So, one of the upcoming events promoted with this screening was a December NTL broadcast of 'Antony & Cleopatra,' with Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo.  I have already ordered tickets.

 

And since I have got my Shakespeare thing going, I think it is time to re-watch some of the filmed versions that live in the jukebox.  I have also, finally, downloaded a copy of the complete plays so that I can, belatedly, further my education in this regard.

reading list: August 2018

Seriously, the reading list is hardly worth posting at all.  What with NOVEL NUMBER 5 that I just finished writing the first draft of, I have not been reading much of Other People's Stuff.  This may be the shortest reading list I have ever posted here.

Anyway ... * denotes a new-to-me book.

 

61. Lord John and the Private Matter* by Diana Gabaldon.  An 18th-century mystery, rich in historical detail, but also a cracking good adventure.  Will almost certainly read others in this series.

62. If We Were Villains* by M.L. Rio.  A blisteringly good novel about death at a Shakespeare college, and its fallout for the six student survivors.  I would instantly read a sequel.  I usually delete things from my Kindle after reading (because having too long an index stresses me out) but have left this one on the device because I want to read it again very soon.  I was tearing through it at such a pace (wanting to find out what happened) that I know I failed to appreciate some of the gorgeous theatrical language.

63. Longshot, by Dick Francis.  It came up on sale, and since it is one of my favorites of his, had to have it.  An excellent palate-cleanser.  I had - somehow - forgotten that the hero is actually a writer.  As well as being, like all Francis' heroes, intelligent, courageous, and resourceful.

64. Irresistible, by Mary Balogh.  A workmanlike Regency with a rather fraught and overextended blackmail plot.  I always enjoy this author, but this particular plot was a little hard to take at this particular time.

 

What I have been doing this summer instead of reading, I guess, is going to movies.  Mr. P and I, or my BFF, or the three of us have been to see

• Ocean's 8;
• Set It Up (on Netflix);
• Mamma Mia 2;
• Ant Man & Wasp;
• MI: Fallout;
• The Spy Who Dumped Me;
• Crazy Rich Asians;
• Happytime Murders; and
• Juliet, Naked.

Maybe even something else that I've forgotten because of my writer's spongiform encephalopathy.  Plus we watched "Galaxy Quest" at home with other friends who had not ever seen it, which was a situation direly in need of correction.  All were satisfactory entertainments and some were very much better than that.

Because of the M.L. Rio book, I am seriously considering going to see "King Lear" with Ian McKellen.  That will probably be me on my own, if at all; I've never seen the play nor read it, and  having seen his Richard III, I do believe I will want to give this my undivided attention.

alien visitors

So one day recently, after filling the feeders and going back inside for my coffee + yoga, I had a little time and sat down to look out the window at the bird show, and ...

insert Scooby noise here

what?!

the?!

cluck?!

Yes, folks, those are real, live, actual, legit CHICKENS which somehow made their way to my disastrous - but apparently appealing! - yard.

I have no idea where they came from.

Haven't seen them since, but they sure were good for a laugh.

L.A. Stories, Number 16

And because I was so busy writing new stuff, I forgot to "announce" when I finished this one.

A RANDOM SEQUENCE is the story of Linda & Diego, two lottery winners, both Mexican-American.  There's some dancing along the way, and a supporting role for my characters Vince & Kelli from ALL THE BARS ON SUNSET.

Linda and Diego may turn up in a future story that I'm developing. You just never know what's going to bubble up, these days.

A Random Sequence at Amazon

why it's been slow around here

Voila, L.A. Story #17!

This one is not recommended for Mumsie.  Sexy and profane.  That said, I think it's the best one - certainly (to me) the funniest - so far.

DRAWN OUT stars Tina, an animation artist first encountered in THE WHOLE TRUTH, and Reza, an interior designer-slash-filmmaker.

My editor/beta reader/marketing consultant and I are working on cover art concepts.  For now, this novella comes with an original drawing that ties into the story.  

Drawn Out at Amazon