WIP: Our Lives After the Fall

When my sister was 21, she got too drunk on a wine tour, tripped over her untied shoe-lace, hit her head on a rock and died. Actually, we all died- Luisa, Mami, Papi, and me. Since her accident, none of us have really lived.

I was 14 and without Luisa to fuss over, Mami focused all of her attention on me.

Where are you going? Who will be there? What time will you be finished? You know what, forget it I will take you and wait outside to bring you home.

It became much easier to, at first just not go anywhere, and later, to be the house where everyone came to after school, and then to become the girl who never went outside anymore. It's a slow progression but it feels fast. Like you just woke up one day afraid to leave your room, but really it happened in tiny increments.
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*I've been reviewing my old works-in-progress to see if something jumps out at me or grabs my attention. Often, while traveling, I'd see a spot in the landscape that triggered a scene in  my head, and then the opening of a story soon follows. I think this one came to me while on a trip through the Central Coast of California; we were trying to get to Big Sur, but, alas, wildfires. We had to turn back. This is a piece I found on my phone in the Notes app. It might could still be something one day if I get bored enough:

Love & Balls,
Jaded
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but things just get so crazy
living life gets hard to do
and I would gladly hit the road, get up and go, if I knew
that someday it would lead me back to you

RANDOM: The Truth About Post-Dating My Blog

That truth being that I do it, I write this crazy late and then change the date so it appears to have been written 'on time'. This particular post you're reading right now was in fact written today before the time I want it to go live, but the one for Monday, April 7? I'm writing it after I schedule this one. I don't even care. It's how I'm running things over here. Now you know.

That said, Bad Bunny did a great job at his Tiny Desk performance and I just want to make sure you all saw it.

But also, here's my favorite video from this latest album:

I love this song because, well, it's beautiful and melancholy, but also, it reminded me of this poem I wrote once:

How do you not run out of new things to say?  

I fell in love with someone who was on vacation 

He was observing fake routines— Breakfast-gym-coffee-tours 

That I’d mistaken for his true self. 

He’d sit at the bar reading classic Poe 

And presidential biographies, and I 

Confused posing with intellect 

He sipped red wine quietly 

Ate steak neatly 

Smiled at toddlers in the hotel lobby; bent 

To pet dogs on his afternoon walks 

And I took his actions for truth, when really, 

He was playing a part. 

He was playing at: Leisure Man TM 

Who: doesn’t check his bank account before splurging 

Is meticulously coiffed + dressed on a Tuesday 

Appreciates the finer things 

Likes himself 

I fell in love with someone who was hiding from another life. 

He pretended to listen and care and know 

What it meant to love and be loved 

He began sentences with, “Perhaps a better way 

To look at it…” to mask half-cooked theories and advocacies 

For a devil that never asked for his help 

He retired every night at 10pm, ‘to catch the evening news’ 

And never asked for too much— 

I confused him with a proper gentleman 

From another era 

But, in fact, I fell in love with a man who’d 

Taken a break from reality 

And here we sit. 

Not knowing what’s true. 

Except—this is the bed that we made, 

And we lie in it every night.

You're welcome.

Love & Balls,
Jaded
-----
en mi vida fuistes turista
tú solo vistes lo mejor de mí
y no lo que yo sufría
te fuiste sin saber el porqué

What I Read: March 2025 Edition

I read and listened to quite a number of books in March; this post took so long to write I almost scrapped it. But also, I found a lot of joy in these books last month, so why not share the wealth? Here we go:

1-3, 5. Heartstopper, Volumes 2-5 by Alice Oseman 🕮
I'm up to date with the series (a sixth volume is promised but not out yet) and my love for the story is unwavering. Oseman does such a great job at capturing teen romance: all the awkwardness and insecurities that accompany that age and the influx of hormones. I will add that Vol. 3 only got four stars from me because there was an implausible side story about the teachers, but then Vol. 4 came through pulling on my heartstrings while focusing on Charlie's mental health crisis. It's all so so so so good; I truly recommend it ✮✮✮✮✮

4. Lakewood by Megan Giddings🎧
This book is probably better as a physical read-- I will concede that there is something "lost in translation" when listening to an audiobook--but I did not feel grounded in the story at all. It's about a girl hard up for money volunteering to be a test subject at a research center that was paying a shit-ton of money (to her), but it all feels very Henrietta Lacks-ish. I can't even tell you what ended up happening because I was all the way lost. One day I'll read the actual book and see what I missed. ✮✮

6. The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley🎧
This novel had everything I've been loving about audiobooks by British authors: multiple POVs and narrators; a mystery; tons of potential suspects with good reason to be the culprit; and a convoluted but good plot. Basically this posh woman promotes this expensive, clean-living lifestyle, which is a farce, of course, and uses her inherited mansion as a resort for her sheep/followers. Except she's a total bitch who hurt some people back in the day, and the time has come for her to pay the piper. OOOH it's so good, y'all should read it. ✮✮✮✮

7. On the Hustle by Adriana Herrera🎧
ALRIGHTY NOW. In a world where spicy romance novels barely have a grasp of the English language, Herrera bursts on the scene with PLOT, CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, and a good amount of spice for the heathens (LOL!). It absolutely helps that the characters are New Yorkers, and the narrator is an amazing reader, and I was actually rooting for the main couple. The main girl follows bestie to Dallas to chase her dreams; her boss follows her in an effort to woo her. Except she kinda hates him, so how's he gonna make it happen? READ IT AND FIND OUT.  ✮✮✮✮✮

8. Here to Stay by Adriana Herrera🎧
Of course I follow up one with the other (even though this is the first book in the series) because I loved On the Hustle so much, but unfortunately it was just OK. Not spectacular. Still, good plot and characters, but maybe the novelty had worn off? Girl moves to Dallas for a job she believes in, but a consultant threatens to shut it all down. Or does he? Maybe, instead, they fall in love? It's warm and fuzzy but Hustle was better. ✮✮✮

9. The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson 🕮

This novella combined my two loves--Christmas stories + murder! An American co-ed studying in London for a semester stays with a British classmate over the Christmas break, contemplates a fling with the friend's brother, has an encounter with a maybe serial killer, and writes all about it in her diary, which is how we, the reader, know all about it. But there's a twist I wish I could tell you but it took me by surprise and I want that for you, too. It was a great read. ✮✮✮✮

10. Nick & Charlie: A Heartstopper Novella by Alice Oseman 🕮

Can't stop, won't stop reading books that take place in this universe. I love everything Nick & Charlie. I'm obsessed with them. This book explores in depth their relationship, and the fact that Nick is about to head off to college while Charlie has to stay behind and finish a year of school, still, oh baby the tension! Do you remember the heartbreak of your first love? It's all over the pages of this book. I'm truly in love with these fictional characters. ✮✮✮1/2

11. A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera🎧
So thanks to a bookish friend, I tried another book by Herrera, this time the first in the Leonas series (there are two more but there's also a long wait at the library), and I have to say, yes, bring on the rest of the books. It's a historical romance, my first, and I have to applaud Herrera for making it believable that a Dominican-Scottish woman, head of a rum empire, leaves her island home to go to Paris and make a killing in the liquor business. Then she meets a Scottish Duke who's also trying to make a name with his whiskey business. Their worlds collide and an attraction grows. And grows. I was almost convinced to ditch my own boyfriend for a towering Scottish hunk, and y'all know how much I'm not attracted to white men. ✮✮✮✮✮

12, 13 & 15. Revive Me, Parts 1-3 by J.L. Seegars🎧
Hear me out. This author isn't terrible. She has a decent grasp of the language, and how to put a story together, and how to write characters that make the readers care about what happens to them. And she writes a decent spicy scene. HOWEVER, homegirl needs an editor so very bad. A lot of this book was, I don't know, really didn't need to be there. I fast-forwarded and slept through so much of these books I almost didn't include them in my March reads. I don't think I would recommend them unless I let you know that you will be exhausted by her prose a lot of the time. Of course, if you're only here for the smut, have at it. Still, proceed with caution. ✮✮1/2

14. Nine Lives by Peter Swanson🎧

After reading how critically acclaimed Swanson's books are, I tried another thriller, one that felt like an homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Was None, one of my favorite Christie novels. And I was not disappointed. Nine people find their names on a list; they don't know each other and can't think of how they're related to each other, and then one by one, they're murdered. Now, how it all comes together was a bit if a let down, rather pedestrian as far as motives go, but still, I enjoyed the ride, so I'll definitely pick up another of Swanson's books in the future.  ✮✮✮1/2

16. Again by J.L. Seegars🎧

Yes, I'm crazy for choosing another spicy Seegars book, knowing she doesn't know how to edit herself, but it was only five hours long (it's a novella, in the same universe of the Revive Me characters), about a divorced couple at a Mexican resort for their siblings' destination wedding. The ex-hubby is determined to win his ex-wife back. The journey is actually a fun time but I couldn't give it a higher rating because again, Seegars muddied the writing with so many extra sentences that didn't need to be there. The difference between this and Revive Me, though, is that I'd recommend this one. ✮✮1/2

Now, I know that the amount of spicy books I've read last month makes me out to be some sort of horny housewife, but trust that this Jaded New Yorker mostly rolls her eyes and laughs at how the men growl while they climax, women end up with blown pupils because the sex is so good, and couples keep confusing lust with love and I'm supposed to believe it. It's all very entertaining, though. Jaded Bae even commented, as I laughed out loud at a particular scene: "It doesn't work for you because you think love is a joke." 

He ain't never lied.

Love & Balls,

Jaded

-----

ain't it fun

livin' in the real world?

ain't it good

bein' all alone?