Where coffee meets family.

Cynthia woke up at four in the morning to prepare. She had meticulously picked out four outfits the night before: casual, casually upscale, winter blasé, and winter chic. She needed something that said, I know we’ve only just met, but I want you in my life forever. At noon, Cynthia would be meeting Jonathan at Coolhaus, a place she picked, though now she found herself reconsidering her decision. What if he was lactose intolerant? Cynthia found “non-dairy” people to be insufferable. As a decade-long barista at Café Château, she could single out the non-dairies from the regular customers simply by the way they stood — shoulders tight, cheeks sucked thin, with elongated giraffe necks. The neck thing, she was sure, was a direct result of stretching their esophagus’s over the counter at the sound of “Sorry, we don’t have milk alternatives.” They would look at Cynthia as if she were hiding the non-dairy products behind the register. As if there weren’t a huge sign right in front of them reading: NO NON-DAIRY ALTERNATIVES. Oh god, what if Jonathan was a pompous non-dairy drinking asshole? …

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about travel. Life — as it happens — got in the way. But I finally got my wings back and I feel enriched in a way that I haven’t in some time. In my twenties, I launched into travel after heartbreak and in my thirties, it would appear that it’s been revived by love. Go ahead barf away (I won’t lie, typing that made me gag a little.) But it’s true nonetheless. Anyway on to the good stuff.

Finland. We landed in Helsinki in the dead of the night, grabbed a shuttle to a nearby hotel to crash and then picked up our rental car and headed up north. I was hellbent on seeing the Northern Lights and if that meant driving 12 hours to the Lapland then that’s what we were going to do. Finland in September is lush with Autumn colors. The roads are well maintained but mostly two-lane and you can drive for miles and miles and only see one or two other cars. …

Iceland is a paradise unlike anywhere else. An island in the Arctic Circle, it’s a haven of colorful architecture, kind-hearted locals, and otherworldly landscapes.

Make your way to Reykjavik and get your walking shoes on. Your first stop for the afternoon must be Baejarins Beztu Pylsur: The famous hot dog stand.

A simple hot dog, it’s covered with mustard and a gravy sauce. The best part though is the crispy onion beneath the hot dog. Come hungry and order two with all the fixings.

Continue on your walk and you’ll discover colorful buildings, ornate churches, snow-white swans, souvenir shops, wool clothing stores and cafes galore. …

Switching gears from writing to marketing was quite possibly the most excruciating brain shift I’ve had to endure. That being said, I’ve learned a lot! So I thought I’d share my experiences to help anyone who is considering self-publishing. I also plan to revisit this page if I ever do this again for another novel.

Number 1 — Begin PR Planning at Least SIX Months in Advance

Six months seems like a long time to wait after the novel is done but trust me when I say it will fly by before you know it, and there is a lot of prep work. I’ll get into the nitty gritty later in this post, but allocating enough time to send out massive amounts of e-mails and get responses takes a long time. …

Since my arrival in Houston a few months back, and my subsequent leap into the art community, (because well, when you don’t have a job, you hang out in museums), I had been asked in passing if I’d ever been to the Rothko Chapel. Now, I’m not a church going person (don’t tell my parents) but this question became such a recurring motif that I felt compelled to take a look.

At first glance, the chapel seems to be nothing but an empty octagonal room with natural sunlight and deep dark paintings covering the walls. What’s so special about that? …

Two days is definitely not enough time to spend in Austin if you want to see it all (esp. if you go on Halloween weekend) but it is a city to be reckoned with. My first night I actually stayed in Milano, TX, which is about an hour and a half outside of the Austin’s city center. The grandparents of an old roommate of mine owned a cabin out there and we thought it would be nice to stay and relax outside the city before entering the mayhem.

I fully admit that I am a city girl, so when her grandparents told me that the only things in the town were the Church and the Post Office, I laughed. I had heard once that the only thing you needed to be recognized as your own town was a post office, but I never thought towns like this existed. It was awesome! At 10pm we went on a night hike through the hills where I saw not only the brightest constellations (Cassiopeia, Orion’s Belt, and Ursa Minor to name a few), but also millions of other constellations that I had never seen before. We walked for about 2 miles and then turned around and came back to homemade pudding with ice cream. They weren’t my family, but it felt like home. …

I spend a lot of time in my own head, and occasionally I need a break. This past Thursday was one of those days. I had just written the middle section of my book, which was an uphill battle, so I decided to take myself the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH).

To be completely honest, I was trolling for inspiration. I needed new ideas to propel my characters forward in an interesting way. What I found was exactly that, but not just for my characters, but for myself as well.

I had walked into an exhibit showcasing the art of Islam and on the wall was this…

Coffee & Conversation

My friend Anh said to me once, “Jamie, how do you always meet these crazy characters at Starbucks?” Honestly, I have no idea. I usually sit in a corner with headphones in, but I often gaze off into the distance lost in thought so perhaps people think I’m staring at them? Anyway in the past, I have met: an electrical engineer, Lebanese refugee, homeless woman, architect, schoolteacher, aspiring rapper, and a self-made business woman who ran her own clown company (that’s right I said clown). Today, it was an Ethiopian Filmmaker.

I had been working for about 6 hours staring at a computer and trying to jump back into the world that I meticulously created yesterday (the chapter I am currently working on happens to take place in Petra, Jordan), when the gentleman across from me asked how to spell “courageous.” …