NaNoWriMo 2022

As of yesterday, I finished #NaNoWriMo2022. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in the month of Nov. I’m not finished editing/writing this novel. But I did put in about 57,000 words written/edited in the month of November. Only 30,000-50,000 more to go. 🤣📝👩🏽‍💻✍🏼

I’ve worked on this book for a while. But most don’t know that it has gone through massive changes bringing me to what is a completely new book today. Here’s an excerpt from A Thousand Years…

“2005
The day I was born, a violent storm ripped through our community. It was the kind of story legends are made of – or so I’ve been told for all of my 21 years. Walls of torrential rain fell, washing away parts of the mountainsides, flooding streets, and taking out a section of the highway, blocking off the Big Sur coastline from the hospital – 45 minutes away. Newscasters from the city called it the storm of the century. Of course, there were many more of those to come to California over the years – land of fire and mudslide that we are. The California Highway Patrol, local law enforcement, and even CalTrans workers were pulling people out of trapped vehicles all over. As all of this was going on around my mom and dad, who were pulled over on the side of the highway – trapped from getting to the hospital. I entered the world like a screaming wild thing, just as my son did, and as my mom is fond of saying to anyone who will listen, in my granddad’s beat up old truck.

My mom and grandma used to tell me that the way I entered the world was a sign of what was to become of me. Not a good sign, by the way. They have always said I am as wild as the storm I was born in the middle of. Perhaps. Or perhaps the wild around me as I entered the world that day, is actually a sign of how I was born to shake things up. Instead of being born in a sterile hospital, unforgiving amounts of rain fell on the truck, and crazy wind distracted my dad from focusing fully on my mom. I entered the world determined. Nothing has changed in 21 years. I doubt it ever will, in spite of the expectations that follow me around.”

It Always Comes Back

“I could love you or wait for you,
For a thousand years and never
Reach the end of the longing.”

I wrote that about you in December of 2020. I think I reach the end of the longing from time to time. Mostly when I get mad at you for disappearing and not looking back. But it always comes back – the longing, that is. It is weeks like this one, I am convinced I will always miss you.



Stop at Nothing

The door was opened when I met you.
It hasn’t been closed. I can’t imagine
Closing it to you. If you stood on my
front porch tomorrow, I would pull you close
Before you uttered a word. And yet,
I deserve so much more. I deserve
A love that will stop at nothing.
Because that is the love I have
Waiting for nothing.
~ Elaina M. Avalos

No one here cares if you go or you stay

Love writes a letter and sends it to Hate
“My vacation’s ending, I’m coming home late
The weather was fine and the ocean was great
And I can’t wait to see you again

Hate reads the letter and throws it away
“No one here cares if you go or you stay
I barely even noticed that you were away
I’ll see you or I won’t, whatever”