Angela Nicole Parker

They say that writers write what they know. That always seemed boring to me because I always read for escapism, but as I have gotten older I realize that the beauty of writing is being able to put your experiences into words in a way that people can relate too, which is why I am thrilled that my online column, Under the Hill, has been picked up by CaribPress. So click here and take a look at the paper that's taking a chance on me.

I'm OVER Christmas!

Don't get me wrong,I'm not over the amazing decorations, neighborhoods turned Christmas paradises, and drinking hot coco and eating cookies while watching Christmas Vacation, but I am over the gluttony in all forms that this Holiday seems to bring. Here are five things that has me over Christmas ----

1) Gift Giving

I'm going to keep it real, anyone who says that the joy of Christmas lies in giving to others is a damn lie. There is nothing joyful about spending your money on other people. Think about it, shopping is something that most of us love to do, hell it's my favorite form of relaxation, but spending hours picking out stuff for other people  is just draining. Then their is all the family politics involved. For example, I have two nieces and a nephew so I have to find a way to give them gifts that all scream equality as opposed to favoritism. Whatever I bought for one had to be an equal value to what I got the other and if I saw something else Niece #1 might like, I had to gt it for Niece #2, then I had to take Nephew into account. Or how about this, I was going to buy my mother a designer handbag, I had it all picked out, but my Dad had forgotten their anniversary two weeks before and was still in the doghouse, so I recommended that he get the purse, which he did. I bought a wallet and was happy with my choice before I realized that next to her new beautiful and EXPENSIVE designer bag, my wallet was going to look cheap. I had to get her another gift. There is nothing worse then a mom's what's this cheap shit look. You know what I am talking about, you've all seen it. Which brings me to my next point about gifts ---YOU ARE NEVER DONE BUYING THEM! Just when you breathe easy with the knowledge you are done, Betsy Co-worker, who has never given you jack before, even when you were baking homemade cookies and putting them in fancy jars, ambushes you with a gift. Now you are screwed because you have to take it. You can't tell somebody thanks, but no thanks, for a gift they've give you, well not if you still want to be friends, so it's back to the store for you...

2) Time Tricks

Have you ever noticed that the week before Christmas times seems to speed up at an almost unnatural pace? Any other week those minutes would eek by, especially between the hours of 9-5, now you've blinked and it's two days before Christmas and you still  have gifts to buy, and wrap, and you find yourself
at TJMAXX at 9 p.m. two days in a row in a vain attempt to get on top of your shopping...

3)  Program Overload

In the span of two weeks, I've been to two Christmas programs, three Christmas parties, one pageant and three dinners and I have to ask, 'Why does everybody have their holiday programs on the same damn day?" And of course, all these Christmas things involve family members and friends who would be CRUSHED if you didn't make an appearance. I understand that, but how about cutting others a break when it comes to the Yuletide Cheer? Come on people, Christmas is on December 25 every year. That gives you plenty of time to plan. Guess what, you have the whole month of December, you don't have to do everything the week before, a Christmas Pageant is still a Christmas Pageant if you do it on December 4th and not December 14th, k....

4) Good Eats

There is just too many things that involve food this season and thus I have been eating, really eating. The good news is that the food has been amazing, the bad news is that I am the types who just looks at food that's not made by Weight Watchers, Lean Cuisine or Jenny Craig and Kabaam the fat cometh. This, of course means that "losing weight" will still be New Year's Resolution number one.

Nobody's forcing the food down my throat, you say? Well their may be a person who can watch others each turkey, mac and cheese and Red Velvet cupcakes and say, "pass the salad!" or "no thanks!", but I am not she...

5) Ho Ho Hell

This isn't so much as a complaint, but an observation, but when did Santa become an enforcer? I was  in the mall when a little boy started throwing a temper tantrum and his mom looked at him and said, "Ok, I'm going to call Santa!" The boy's eyes widened as if he was just threatened with the Boogie Monster and he started wailing, "Please don't tell Santa Mommy, I'll be good, please, please PLEASE...."

Geesh, I know parents have always done it, but isn't it just a little sad that your kid will listen to a fat, gray haired man he has never seen before he'll listen to you?

So, I'm standing in the middle of the store with my latest purchase in hand, tallying up in my head how man weeks it is going to take me to recover financially from this year's Christmas, and all I can ask myself is, why I'm doing any of this at all? Maybe that's why Charlie Brown's Christmas continues to be a must see for the Holidays after all these years because Charlie Brown and the rest of The Peanuts Gang seem to get it, even when we don't.

I recently saw The Chocolate Nutcracker for the first time last Sunday at the Wilshire Ebell Theater and I have to say that I loved it. The ballet is an urban take on Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky famous holiday classic. I haven't see The Nutcracker in any form since I was a little girl and seeing this fresh take was really enjoyable. I loved seeing so many young men and women come alive while dancing on stage.

Set in the 1950's The Chocolate Nutcracker is the story of Claire who receives the nutcracker as a Christmas gift from her Aunt, played by Keke Shepherd. Claire, her Chocolate Nutcracker and his true love, The Dream Queen, travel through time and space in a music and dance-filled adventure. My favorite pieces were "Brazil," in which they dancers gave us a spirited rendition of Carnival and "Africa", that featured native African drummers and dancers. The ballet was co-narrated by KJLH's Kevin Nash.

For more information about The Original Chocolate Nutcracker visit the Los Angeles Preparatory and Performance Art School at http://chocolatenutcracker.org/.

I don't think of myself as "A Hater," I admire people who can work what they got to grab that brass ring, but when I walked past Barnes and Nobles in The Grove and saw that Nicole Polizzi aka Snooki was having a BOOK SIGNING I nearly fainted. For those of you who don't know who Snooki is, she is the "star" of The Reality Show Jersey Shore. No offense to Ms. Snooki but she didn't strike me as the type who read, let alone wrote, but who knows she probably had a copy of Pride and Prejudice under her bed during all those spats.

Ms. Snooki is just the latest reality television thespian to use their show as a spring board to something else, but as someone who is working hard to sell my writings, the thought that she is living my dream made me feel a little depressed. I'm told that the publishing business is hurting and they are looking for that shore thing, people like Snooki, Nicole Richie, NeNe Leakes and Lauren Conrad  have a ready-made audience, and book deals that are alluding all us struggling authors. I know that connections make the world go round, but geesh this sucks.

Do people really want to read books just because "a name wrote it?" Can we program somebody to like a book the way the music industry gets us to like a whack song by playing over and over again until repetition and familiarity finally make us surrender to its charms?

I suppose I'm jealous. I'd like to be the chosen one who has publishing companies coming to me, instead of the other way around, but it made me think about he positives of how the publishing world is changing as well. The trick is always going to be to find your niche. For most of us, that book deal isn't going to be handed to us on a silver platter, we are going to  have work hard for it and find innovative ways to build our audience and live our dreams.

As for Ms. Snooki, I wish her luck, but now it's time for me to get back to the work of writing. Who knows maybe this time next year I'll be at Barnes and Nobles signing my books and it will be somebody else's turn to be jealous of me.

I recently got my Happy back, actually I stumbled into it with the click of a mouse. I was clicking through some old websites that I bookmarked when I clicked on a blog I use to visit often. The web mistress had recently self-published her first book and the euphoria that she felt was so real that it seeped through the computer screen and into me. My mind went to all the writing projects that I have been back burning or putting off because I've been afraid my words, my babies, just weren't good enough for publication and never would be and I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then did something I had not done in a while --- wrote for fun. It was a one page bit of nothing, but it was enough to get my creative juices flowing and to get me to reeavluate my work and how I saw myself as a writer.

Once upon a time I always wrote for fun. I was that kid in first grade who wrote a short story with my spelling words when only a sentence was required. I was writing fan fiction as a kid, before it was it's own genre. I wrote for the thrill of it.I wrote because it felt unatural not too.

Tethered was a blast to write and a nightmare to try and sell and I think that's when I started to lose a bit of my Happy when it came to writing. The Publishing business is brutal game and I think I have been so wrapped up in how I am going to sell Tethered and all my other manuscripts, both born and unborn, that I lost confidence. My writing became a business that I feared I'd never be able to get afloat.

I was beaten and when my dream of publishing Tethered  finally happened, I didn't scream for joy like I should have because it didn't happen the way I always imagined. I realized now how stupid that was. I became a writer not to hitch my star to a publishing house, but share my stories with others. After all, a writer writes...

Since this revelation I have been writing and revising my ass off. I've also restarted my column Under the Hill, a quirky little blurb about life as a thirty-something singleton.  And I can't remeber the last time I've been this happy. I also decided to self-publish some of my manuscripts as ebooks, a brave new world for me, indeed!

Writers never tell you how much pain is in the profession --- how each rejection cuts at you like a knife, and each story that you feel you cannot tell gnaws at you from the inside. But as painful a process it can be, it's also bliss. There is nothing more fufilling then to see your world come to life and to hear that somebody else likes your people and places as much as you do.

Us writers are a peculiar lot, we put ourselves out there and submit ourselves to so many slings and arrows that sometimes we forget why we are bleeding. I don't mind suffering for my art some time, because when I'm in the zone and I'm at one with my work, I am the most happy little writer of them all.

I've recently decided to self publish my first novel Tethered after years of wringing my hands and wondering if not being able to sell my books to the Publishing Gods of old meant that I somehow was a failure at this writing thing. Publishing is a hard, cruel business and it wrecks havoc on your self esteem, but I realized that I didn't write Tethered for my own amusement, although I love it, but I wrote it because I wanted others to love my characters as much as I did and to get as much enjoyment from reading each page as I got from writing them.

Still, it was hard to give up that idea of walking into the Traditional Publishing House Promise Land. A fellow writer asked me what I thought defined success. Well, truth be told I've always dreamed of having a book on the New York Time's Bestseller List that would be turned into a blockbuster movie, followed by a recreation of scenes from said megabook in a well attended amusement park (Hi JK Rowlings) but after serious consideration, I realized that I defined my success by people buying, reading and liking my books, be it 5 people or 5 million people, although you can guess which number I prefer.

Now that I've done the publishing thing the hard part awaits me --- marketing. I have to admit, I'm not good at tooting my own horn, but I know that nobody will know I'm here if I don't. So, now I'm faced with the ultimate dilemia, If I write it, will they come? I guess I'll see, but I pray the answer is yes.

So here goes --- Tethered by Angela Nicole Parker ON SALE NOW at amazon.com.