Write.


Book Cover Reveal Day

I am ready to reveal the book cover art for my next novel. Here are pink curtains. Behind them sit the book cover design of my next novel. Everyday until Wednesday March 13th, I will open the curtains by a bit to gradually reveal the book.  Drum roll please! Ta […]


The Pink Tea Cup 5

To celebrate finishing a novel, I pour myself coffee in a fancy shmancy pink tea cup. But wait? Where is this sadness coming from?

Pink Tea Cup

Word Animation: Despite

Ever since I entered into the intriguing world of author youTuber, I have been scratching my head to find new video ideas. I had this idea of doing word animation. I wanted to give myself the challenge of coming up with maximum number of ways to animate words and sentences in a single video to stir some creativity. Here is what I came up with.

The script of the video

All I could think of was the word “Despite”. Despite the fact that I am a woman, despite my skin color, despite my country of origin, despite my circumstance, despite other people’s expectations of me, despite of what the world might think, despite my short comings, despite is the declarative word of the English language. It announces itself like an elephant in a room, you might choose to ignore it, but it will force itself into your attention span weather you like it or not. Despite, is the samurai sword you carry in your scabbard ready to unleash at a moments notice. If you remove the d and e from despite it becomes spite a word that reminds me of a fantastic Kathy Bates movie called Delores Claiborne. Despite leads you into victory, up the mountain, all the way to the top. Enough is never enough, there is always more to be had. Despite is the reverse side of defeat. Today I am fragile despite my strength.

Word animation ideas

I tried to imagine the word “despite” popping up in a brain and then navigating around as if in a maze attempting to find an exit.

word animation in a brain

A sentence turning around in a circle

I came up with different ideas where words are distressed in a variety of ways. They are squished and squeezed and blown away. For some reason, this type of word animation was very satisfying.

word animation distressing

I imagined a word coming over a horizon like a sun during a sunrise. Probably my favorite word animation in the whole video. Don’t know why.

Word animation sun rise

I imagined words walking across a mountain range in a distance.

mountain

Word getting sliced by a sword.

A sentence dangling like a swing.


Humor in Writing

In an act of total tenacity, I nominated Spoonful Chronicles for Stephen Leacock Literary Prize for Humor. You can view all other nominees here: http://www.leacock.ca/pdfs/SUBMISSIONS_2018_as_at_Dec_5_2017.pdf. Seeing my name listed along side a Giller Prize winner and somebody else who participated in writing the Simpson’s show fills me with excited giddy […]


What’s Next? 1

“What are you working on now?” I keep getting asked everywhere I go. Yes! There is a new novel in the works. The new one is about traffic. Yes! Traffic. The way Spoonful Chronicles is about food. The new novel is about traffic. I am interested in how we interact […]


Book Club Questions For Spoonful Chronicles

A dear reader has asked me to provide a list of questions for her book club which is reading Spoonful Chronicles. The questions below contain mild spoilers and are intended for those who have read the novel already. If you haven’t read Spoonful Chronicles yet, please click away and return […]


Have your book and eat it too

“Does your novel contain recipes?” I kept getting asked whenever I told somebody about what I was working on. “No” I would answer. But, after being asked the same question about 20 times, I clued in that I need to find a way to say “yes”. “This is something that […]


Rocket Launch Drawing

Today my novel, Spoonful Chronicles, gets launched into the world. It is finally live. Here is the rocket launch drawing I created for this occasion. More details here: https://www.ihath.com/2017/04/05/spoonful-chronicles-is-almost-here/

Rocket Launch Drawing

For this auspicious day I decided to create a rocket launch drawing. Something that makes Spoonful Chronicles seem like a rocket that is about travel to out space with myself saluting the effort in a military style. I was inspired by a bunch of famous movie rocket launch. That moment when somebody says: “ladies and gentlemen, we have a lift off.” Always feel special.

Movies on this list would be:

Today, all those scenes are colliding into each other in my chest.

If you are wondering how to create a rocket launch drawing for a book. It’s easy. All I had to do is take an image of my kitchen totally empty.

empty kitchen

Then I took another photo with the book raised on top of a tall jar.

book on a jar

In my image editing software I layer the image with the book on top of empty kitchen. Then I erase the jar making it seem as if the book is floating in the air.

Finally, I added hand drawing to make the book look like a rocket getting launched into outer space.

And there you have it, a rocket launch drawing.

I hope you enjoy reading my novel.

Rocket Launch Drawing

Bacon Costume

My fascination with Lady Gaga’s meat dress aside. Here I am, in a giant bacon costume, pretending to be a piece of bacon reading Spoonful Chronicles-a novel inspired by food. How would bacon review this book?

A giant piece of bacon costume reading Spoonful Chronicles: A novel about food

I am the kind of food that food lovers love. I mean who doesn’t like bacon? Everybody loves me. Because I am the so delicious. And then I read Spoonful Chronicles. I was in shock for days. The way bacon is treated is treated in the story is many shades of wrong. Imagine meeting a character that doesn’t eat pork. Immediately I hate this woman. I don’t care what happens to her. Her struggle just doesn’t matter to me any more. Why would I care about somebody who doesn’t care about me? All that drama, all that action is wasted on the wrong person. Yes the novel is well written. Yes, it’s funny. Sure tons of interesting things happen in the story. But where is the bacon? No Bacon, me no likey. In short, don’t waste your time reading this brilliant baconless book.

So what do you think this bacon costume book review? Do you agree with it.

A giant piece of Bacon reading Spoonful Chronicles: A novel about food

Cracked Eggs

I was contemplating the expression “You crack me up” to mean you make me laugh so hard that I am destroyed by it. How we have a facade and that can be penetrated using humor. I used plenty of humor in the novel Spoonful Chronicles even though it deals with a serious subject matter. I have always found, in life, if you can make somebody laugh you have a better chance of getting them to listen to you as well. So here are cracked eggs. I painted a face on each one. The eggs don’t look so happy. They seem alarmed by the demise of their colleague. O the horror.

Cracked Eggs

Warning! This novel with recipes will crack you up.

I laughed lots while writing Spoonful Chronicles. In hind sight, I can see now that I was cracking my self up. Like the cracked eggs in the photo. I laughed and laughed and then there was the “Oh no” moment. A moment of painful self realization. I thought I was telling a joke, but the joke was really on me. There have been so many unexpected results of writing Spoonful Chronicles. Never in my dreams would I have imagined that I would write a light hearted novel about food and find myself traversing such dark places.

Life is full of surprises. You never know what you will encounter right around the corner.

To all the readers of Spoonful Chronicles, you have been warned. These cracked eggs can attest.

One minute you are laughing and next you discover that you have become an omelette.


carrot costume

Carrot Costume

My novel with recipes is about to launch. I dress in a carrot costume to impersonate a vegetable reading the book. I also wore orange pants, orange shoes and orange shirt. Read my poem on color orange for details on my fascination with the color. The giant carrot is deeply upset but what it reads.

carrot costume

So I tried to impersonate a carrot and imagine what this carrot would think of reading the novel Spoonful Chronicles. I think a carrot (or author in a carrot costume) would be deeply disturbed by this novel.

Number one, it’s not the most important vegetable in the book. Every carrot knows it’s the most important vegetable in the world. Why is there a cauliflower on the cover? This is just wrong on so many levels.

Number two, the stories in the book seem to glorify vegetable genocide. Cauliflowers, cucumbers and tomatoes are consumed left, right and center. This is an atrocity. A sensitive delicate vegetable like a carrot can’t handle such realization.

Number three, why did the author waste so much of her time writing a novel inspired by food when she could have spent the time in her garden planting carrots.

This novel is awful, disgusting, ugly and a waste of time. That is the final review of the giant carrot (aka Elen dressed in a carrot costume)


Book cover recreated in rodicio and cauliflower

So I had this rodicio in the fridge. All rodicio vegetable is red purple lettuce. It is bitter in taste. I enjoy using it as garnish for when I have a big party. So I had this cute idea to use rodicio to recreate the book cover for my novel Spoonful Chronicles. Here it is.

rodicio ad cauliflower

It is interesting how delighting this experience was. Something so easy and simple. And yet it brought me so much pleasure. Who knew that you could have so much fun from a simple humble lettuce. I purchased a vegetable to use as garnish for a dinner party. And it ended up affording me a bit of play time. Life is full of surprises. You never know what you gonna get.

rodicio ad cauliflower

Planned Surprise 2

Life is full of surprises my dear friend. Snow in March in Vancouver. The sun making a brief appearance after weeks and weeks of rain. Receiving a package in the mail to discover that an overseas friend sent you a gift for no reason at all–they simply felt like it. […]