Waiting out the winter

Things are heating up on the steppe. By heating up, I mean it's gone from just below freezing to just above freezing with freezing winds. I'm finishing up my next novel, Endless Knots, and happened to stumble upon some old Mongolian short fiction books printed before the switch over to democracy.

Nice to read from a real book again. Most the reading I've done over the past two years has been on a Kindle and I forget what real paper feels like. I like the Kindle format, especially for note taking and looking up words, but real paper reminds me of why I started writing in the first place.

Summer is on the way, which means I need to figure out my residency status for next year. Mongolia one more year, then New York. After that I'm retiring. 

SXSW is over..and now I am off to Germany!

Today marks the end of SXSW and the beginning of the spring equinox. Coincidently, I found out today during a yoga class that the spring equinox symbolizes a new birth and the end of winter (I guess I could have figured this out but it was nice hearing it in hero's pose). In the last few weeks I have released a book, sublet my apartment, moved all my belongings, and officially and metaphorically prepared myself for a new existence. If all goes well, I will be in Brazil this summer writing and then Mongolia on the Fulbright Program (and still writing!). In two days, I will arrive in Germany and my new life will begin. After visiting K-town to do some writing for my second novel, Honey Dripping from the Barrel of a Gun, I will depart for India where I will finish the novel! Finally, I have finding fliers for Armageddon Skills in weird places, which makes me hopeful that people have been looking at them.

I have recently been bottling up inspiration and prose-based ideas for a hopeful creativity explosion after arriving in Dharamsala, India. SXSW should be considered fuel for this inspiration, and if it were a person I would thank it for the help! From seeing amazing bands, to a puppet play based on the Jungle (@Salvage Vanguard Theater)to basking in the depressing nature of Chicas Bonitas on a whim--I feel as if I were an open container this SXSW, being filled with ideas and hoping that some don't spill out (I meant to write a few down but I am such a believer in th power of memory that I forgot to!)

SO here is to a new year, although not officially New Years, and here is to every day from here on out being the start of a new year.