I contain so much of you “Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons?” — Jeanette Winterson (Written on the Body) – Image: Salvador Dali, Figure with Drawers for a Four-Part Screen
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Writer, explorer, and keeper of Alder the dog.
Devotional: Love Letters
We’re no good at sending love into the world, and even worse at receiving it. I want to shout it from the rooftops, but the streets are stony and deaf. How can I crack my heart to let a sliver of this color out? “All of you in a space full of sounds — in the shade…
Read MoreDevotional: Peasants
Friday. I count the hours in every weekend, wasting them as surely as I waste breath. My generation’s mantra, “live life to the fullest”, a product of the post-WWI attitude of “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” and the roaring growth of the Baby Boomers, has left me obsessed with material things, questing…
Read MoreDevotional: Loneliness
Wednesday. Loneliness is real, but this is not it. This is the kind of loneliness you have to get used to. This is the kind of loneliness that makes you who you are. How you fill your time now tells the person you are today who to become tomorrow. Will you clutch your loneliness to…
Read MoreHow I Sold My First 10,000 Books
It’s been a crazy year and a half for one Amira K. Makansi. Since I began my journey as an author and a publisher in July of 2013, my co-authors and I have released two books and a novella, all set in the world of Okaria, a futuristic post-apocalyptic civilization. In early April we announced…
Read MoreIn The Language Of Dreams: Why Genre Fiction Deserves To Be Considered Great Literature
Pretension exists everywhere, but sometimes I think nowhere more than in literature. How many of us read The Grapes of Wrath in high school? How about The Great Gatsby? Or Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter? But, let’s be real: who ever assigned The Lord Of The Rings to a high school curriculum? Or what about Dune, Frank…
Read MoreBook Review: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
I have read four books of Neil Gaiman’s to date: Coraline, Sandman: The Dream Hunters, The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, and now, American Gods. It is strange to say that I have read four of his books because I don’t necessarily feel as though I’m the biggest fan of his work, or as though I have even…
Read MoreBlind Like Water: A Poem
Tonight, I will sleep in the garden Buried under rocks and sand A man will come with a rake every now and then To carve lines into my body And he will say “The flowers are sweet today.” At night when the lights are quiet The moon like a sea shell washed ashore by a…
Read MoreA Day For Dreaming
Horray! Today is BOOKBUB DAY! This means that my debut novel, THE SOWING, is temporarily discounted to $0.99. DID YOU HEAR THAT? YOU CAN BUY AN ENTIRE BOOK FOR NINETY-NINE CENTS! Does anyone else find this a little bit crazy? Crazy awesome, amirite?! After all, once upon a time, books were the possessions of the elite,…
Read MoreIn Which I Attempt To Shoot Fashion Photography
One of my hobbies, for those of you who don’t know, is photography. Every now and then I get a chance to take advantage of this love and bum a dSLR camera from my sister to take photos. Recently, I decided I wanted to experiment with some fashion and portrait photography. As it was my…
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The Z-Axis 