Angélique Jamail's Blog

Have you ever heard this cover of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”? It really digs into the narrative embedded in the song and changes the tenor, in the same way that Johnny Cash completely commandeered “Hurt” from Trent Reznor.

And as for gratitude… This past week’s collection has some complicated items in it. Let’s dig in.

Zine Fest Houston on Saturday was really fun! Even though the weather was rather warmer than I like for November (or maybe ever), the crowds were excellent as always, and I had a good time hanging out with Han. It’s always wonderful to see how much people love his art; zine festivals tend to be really good venues for his work. (And mine, as it turns out. Sonic Chihuahua continues to be popular, despite production on it taking a back seat to my books.)

I was also really grateful to Han for taking over our table for the last couple of hours of the festival, when I had to leave to go to an event at school I was obliged to attend.

At said school event, I had the opportunity to speak with lots of people about my program, and their enthusiasm for something I’m already passionate about always energizes me. Also during that event, I unexpectedly ran into a very dear friend from college whom I hadn’t seen in years. That was definitely a highlight for me!

Some of you know that I traded in my very old Leaf for a brand-new Ariya a few months ago. I haven’t written about it yet here on the blog for a couple of reasons. First, I just haven’t had time to do an EV Diary post the justice it and you deserve. Second, I’ve had a few challenges with this new car. For example, it’s in the shop today, and since it will be there for a little while, the dealership gave me a loaner car. A vastly inferior one, if you ask me (though it’s a perfectly good car on its own), and I’m grateful that this loaner car experience is making me appreciate the actual car I bought a lot more.

My great-aunt passed away last weekend. That is not what I’m grateful for, although she was old and sick and very ready to go and so this passing was a relief in some ways, and though we all will miss her very much. But here’s the gratitude portion: she lived to be 101 years old and went very peacefully in her sleep at home. She was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of 99 and said, “Well, good grief, I’m not going to bother to do anything about that now.” She was also in congestive heart failure, very recently. Last week, she told my mom she was ready to shuffle along. She was active all the way up until the end. I was going to call her this weekend to invite her over for Thanksgiving when I heard the news of her passing, and while I’m sad, I’m grateful for her long and happy life and the very peaceful conclusion of it. She was the last of her generation in my family, so this is the end of an era for a family who usually has four generations alive at once.

Finally, here in the U.S. next week is Thanksgiving, and here, that holiday means much of the week off for a lot of us. (The whole week off for me because of the school where I work.) And boy howdy do we need that break! I’m extra grateful for that, even if I am hosting and will be cooking Thursday’s dinner for two days. I’ll take it!

I hope you all have a wonderful evening. I’ll be back here on the blog later this week with more good stuff.

Hello! This is just a reminder that Zine Fest Houston, one of this city’s very best annual literary festivals and artistic experiences, happens tomorrow! Come out and see Han and me. I’ll be there until a little after 4:00, so if you want me to sign anything for you, show up before then. We’ll be in the middle of the festival, on the center aisle. Can’t wait to see you!

For information and directions, go to https://www.zinefesthouston.org.

I want to express my gratitude to all those in our armed forces who love and defend and fight for our country and its democracy. Have a wonderful Veterans Day!

Ah, the 90s. Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance! (See what I did there? Readers of a certain age will, especially once they see this video.)

What am I grateful for today? My school’s Book Fair, which is epic and happening this week. As one of my colleagues put it, our school’s three-day festivities make Scholastic book fairs — which I loved, don’t get me wrong — “look rinky-dink.” Our Book Fair takes over a large gym and funds our school’s three libraries. Impressive, and also an absolutely fabulous way to support our school. I may or may not have bought way too many enticing books today because I could not help myself. (And also, addiction to reading fiction is better than addiction to almost anything else, so. There we are. No regrets.)

Remember last week when I said I’d be doing 30 Days of Gratitude this month but that I wouldn’t necessarily be posting them to my blog every day? I meant that. So here’s a round-up of things I’ve been so grateful for lately, in no particular order:

1. Memento Vivere Press is really good to work with. I had a meeting with my publisher last week that demonstrated to me not only incredible transparency and a useful SMART-ER goals discussion, but also that she’s genuinely interested in helping me develop my career as an author. I love this.

2. My classes at school have been raising butterflies and planting milkweed in our school’s Backyard (an extensive outdoor science and ecology space for learning) as part of an ongoing commitment to mindfulness in our use of resources. Almost all of the butterflies successfully emerged from their chrysalides, and on Friday we released nearly a dozen beautiful, grown Painted Ladies. One of them was reluctant to leave the enclosure and spent a few minutes hanging out on my hand first — getting up the courage to fly away, I suppose. I felt like a Disney princess butterfly mom. It was sweet.

3. I have enough food, and so does my family, and so do my friends. And now I’m going to focus on sharing even more than usual, because obviously. I learned today that some Little Free Library stewards have been putting canned goods or fruit into their libraries along with books, and I’m likely going to start doing that as well, in addition to supporting the Houston Food Bank and perhaps other opportunities that might come my way.

4. Saturday night we went out to dinner with some good friends to celebrate a birthday, and it was really nice to hang out with them and try a new restaurant I hadn’t been to before.

5. I got a new hairstyle. Getting my hair done at the salon makes me, perhaps, unreasonably happy, because I know it’s going to look fabulous for at least a couple of days before it reverts back to its usual utter chaos that I’m completely incapable of styling on my own. But hey, right now, it’s kinda gorgeous.

6. My family is wonderful.

Have a lovely week!

If you saw my post this weekend, you’ll know I’m posting 30 Days of Gratitude here this year, and I invite all of you to post things you’re grateful for in the comments as well. I have several things to be grateful for today, including a mostly clean bill of health from my doctor this afternoon (except for my cholesterol, which is suddenly not ideal and will necessitate doubling down on fruits and veggies and exercise until we check it again in a few months), and also my lovely cat Salaadin. (He is up here on my desk trying to get me to pet him as I type up this post. I will oblige because I love him so. You can’t see how blue his eyes are in this photo because of the warm backlight from my desk lamp, but he’s quite the beauty.)

And here is an earworm for you: “Come on Home” by Franz Ferdinand, which has been rattling around in my head for a few days. Enjoy!

You are probably already aware that people who express gratitude — even to themselves, even acknowledging one thing a day they’re grateful for — tend to be healthier overall, mentally and physically. Cultivating gratitude and noticing things to be grateful or happy for contribute to this good health significantly, in fact.

My friend Kara and I were talking the other day about my previous years doing 30 Days of Gratitude posts on social media, and I decided to do it on my blog this year. I might not post to the blog every single day, but I’m going to try and post something for every day this month. I invite you to do the same in the comments! We can build a community of noticing the good things.

And yes, I know the world is full of terrible things right now. I’m not ignoring them, not at all! But doomscrolling and miring ourselves ONLY in those terrible things will make us bonkers and ineffective to resist them. (Monsters love that. Don’t give in to it.)

So here we go!

November 1st — My son lost his phone at a concert Friday night, and Saturday a very nice stranger found the phone and called us to return it. Yay! (And way to go, my son, for putting my phone number in your emergency contacts. Double gratitude!)

November 2nd — Although it had its ups and downs, my weekend at Comic Indie Con (yesterday and today) was overall pretty good. I really enjoyed the people I met.

So how about you all? What’s making you grateful today? Tell us in the comments so we can be happy about it with you.

If you’re looking for something chill to do in Houston this weekend while you nurse your Halloween candy hangover, come see me at Comic Indie Con on Saturday and Sunday!

This convention has been going for five years, but this is my first year to participate. I’ll be a featured author and also paneling with a few others at a presentation entitled “How to Balance Your Work-life with Your Passion” — a topic that has been on my mind lo these many decades… Come ask us questions as we unlock the secrets of the creative universe or something. (Just kidding about that last part — although I do genuinely expect this discussion to be really interesting.) The panel is scheduled for 11:30 on Sunday morning.

The address for this event is 2025 W. 11th St., Houston, TX 77008. And here’s the schedule of events for both days. It will run from 1:00-6:00 on Saturday and 11:00-4:00 on Sunday. You can get tickets here. Come say hi if you’re there!

Little Plastic Castle was my entrance into the music of Ani diFranco, and I loved it so much. I still do!

Recently my entire iTunes library was put onto a thumb drive for my new car (more on that some other time), and since I can’t (yet?) create playlists in there, there are just thousands of songs ready to randomly shuffle and play, so every song is a surprise to me. On the one hand, this is kind of annoying when I want to listen to, say the Hamilton soundtrack in order, or to (in about a month) access my holiday music playlist.

But on the other hand, the upshot of this is that I’m getting to hear a bunch of things that had fallen out of rotation over the years, and so sometimes I get reminded of songs I loved in the past but haven’t heard in a while. Tonight’s earworm is one such gem.

And in other news: have you voted yet? If you want to find out about what’s on your ballot and what every option means, the non-partisan voting guides put out by the League of Women Voters tend to be really good at showing exactly what a candidate gives them, unedited. (And they show when candidates neglect to give them information, which is an interesting data point, too.) You can find your local league’s website here. (And if you’re in Houston — which I know many of you wonderful readers are — you can find that chapter here.)

One of the more entertaining series I read this summer was the Stay A Spell Series by Juliette Cross. This is paranormal romance with a healthy dose of comedy and a heat level of spicy/steamy.

These books, a set of six novels and an anthology of bonus holiday short stories, center around the lives of six sisters who are witches living in New Orleans. In a city well known in real life for its affinity with the spiritual/supernatural side of humanity, this prominent family has its benevolent hands in many spheres, including government, marketing, art, culinary, and social services. And the city has more than witches: predictably you will also find vampires, werewolves, and grim reapers. Each of the sisters finds her partner among these other species, a savvy narrative choice for its conflict potential. Every book stands alone, of course, but if you read them in order, you will see an overarching plot unfolding deftly across the six main books that has to do with social justice for social outcasts.

These books strike a wonderful balance between fun and thoughtful — proof (once again, like we needed more of it) that you can have literary-minded genre fiction driven by strong, well-developed characters and meaningful themes. Make no mistake, these books are fun. And the writing style itself gets more sophisticated as the series goes on (which tends to happen with capable authors). The careful planning a successful long series requires is evident here. Those who love reading category romance for its guaranteed features will find a comfortable rhythm to the way the central non-romantic conflict in each of these stories unfolds. And as with all books in this genre, the thrill isn’t in the final destination, but in the myriad ways getting there becomes complicated.

(You’re welcome for no spoilers.)

So if you enjoy paranormal romance and haven’t yet checked out Juliette Cross, I encourage you to!