Authors, Kai Strand & LA Dragoni

I admit, when the wolf whistles stopped, it made me a little sad. Even though I knew that being whistled at by some passing guy wasn’t anywhere near the measure of my worth, I had been brainwashed by society and maybe my upbringing to think it was important that my appearance draw positive attention. Dudes – we need to stop this culture. It makes me so sad when I see Facebook friends post pictures of their pre-teen or teenage daughters and the responses say things like, “She’s beautiful. She’ll be trouble.” Why does a pleasing arrangement of features automatically equal rebellion, trickery or seduction to some people? What if that daughter is raised with conservative values and has a whole hell of a lot of common sense? What if she has morals? Just because she’s beautiful doesn’t mean she will say yes to lecherous men, but your comment will certainly encourage those lechers to lech. It is so counter productive to the current women’s movement. We can’t expect men to stop ...

As my son wraps up his AA he’s taking a Race, Class, and Gender class. He’s the third child of mine to take the class. Apparently, this teacher requires a weekly wrap up because the past two Wednesday mornings I’ve found a paper on my seat to read. This son likes for me to proof his work, though he hardly needs it. I have got to take this class! As I read through his paper this morning I was getting all riled up about how (and who) we’ve classified race for census purposes. I wasn’t fully aware that Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race – so now I better understand why it has changed over the years as they cry out for better recognition. But mostly, reading through my son’s recap of the week in Race, Class, and Gender class, made me think about how we’ve done this to ourselves. From the beginning we’ve singled out our differences. Originally, we defined our differences by our religion before changing it to race. Which does at least show some progress over the years. There ha...

We moved to central Oregon in the year 2000. We've been going out into the National Forest to cut our own Christmas tree since we moved here. We've only missed (maybe) two years. It's a fun, family experience. We get the tree cutting permit, complete with a guide to the types of trees we will find in the forest. The kids always liked to run around identifying the trees. Now they like brandishing the saw. Some years there's more snow in the forest than other years. I had back surgery in July of 2001, and wouldn't you know it, that was a year with more snow fall. Even by December of that year, my back hadn't healed enough for me to be able to trudge through knee deep snow. But, of course, we didn't find that out until we'd already trekked out, found and cut down the tree, and were heading back to the car. Yeah...my poor, poor husband. I was literally worried that I was not going to be able to make it back to the car on my own...but we also had our four y...

Welcome to 2018 - A new year. A new writer me. Every year I re-invent my writing self, based on how the year before played out. Last year was a rebirth for me and my career. Throughout 2017 I concentrated on my LA Dragoni persona by rebranding Ghost Touch , (self) publishing Guardian’s Touch and then releasing Again, For Love (Torrid Press). I carefully followed marketing plans I learned from successful marketers. I worked hard to build my platform so that my release would hit fans on several fronts. The rebranding of Ghost Touch and pre-release of Guardian’s Touch gave positive results and I felt encouraged. Yet, in the end it all came to absolutely nothing. Sales of both GT’s stalled after the release of Guardian’s Touch and Again, For Love (my favorite book so far) went absolutely nowhere. I’ve been publishing for over seven years, so I know building a following doesn’t happen overnight. But over those seven years I’ve also worked dang hard to stay current with my m...