More than a decade ago I got an email saying that a book I wrote about a broken hearted detective living in Los Angeles who runs into a sad-eyed Korean man with a bit of a bite to his words was accepted to be published. It was a lot harder to get published then and I also kind of knew that the odds are stacked against me because of how I write and what I write.

The biggest problem with the exploitation and fetishization of our culture is that it becomes increasingly impossible to find authentic artisans and crafts people who produce Hawaiian things... and I'm going to leave that vague because it is a present for somebody. So many companies are like yes this is authentic or yes this is the native wood when it isn't and it's definitely not handmade and you can tell that because everybody is carrying the exact same things and they are ugly and clunky.

Made beef gyodon with some purple rice in the rice cooker. Pretty much quick marinate the beef and then put it on top of rice and onions. Then add water and shoyu and let that all cook in the rice cooker. It's not a pretty dish because I added the purple rice to it but it is tasty. It probably could have been prettier but it's dinner and I wanted something that was just good.

Tonight's dinner: fried rice I had a bunch of leftover stuff sort of floating around in the freezer. Lap Cheong. A couple of shrimp. Some peas and carrots. And of course rice from yesterday so I was planning on doing something with some chicken but the night got away from me and this is just easier. My how to on fried rice:

It is funny how I am constantly doing nothing but at the same time it seems like there isn’t any space to add to my day for the things that I need to do. I am in an odd cycle of trying to get my body back into some kind of semblance of working order, scratching at a day job which takes up a lot of my brain, and then trying to grab the tidbits of writing that are floating up into the stratosphere of my thoughts.

Woke up with a headache because the pressure of the thunderstorms keeps coming and going so that's a thing. But it's raining which I do love and it's about 81° F so a decent temperature. The cats are all sleepy and except for the southern belle, Harley, who thinks that every time I get something to eat that it means she gets something to eat.

2 lb pork, cut into cubes. One large can of pineapple chunks in juice. Drain the juice and keep at least one cup of it. This is optional. If you do not have pineapple, you can use a cup of water. One small bag of baby carrots One cup shoyu (soy sauce) One cup sugar 1 cup white distilled vinegar…

A quick lunch. Shoyu noodles with kamaboko The salad kit I got which was not from the bad batch... Turned out to be mostly cabbage despite what It was advertised as. I find that to be true of most chopped kits and that's kind of rough on the stomach. Since I still had two of the kits left... Off one of them went into making shoyu noodles.

Tonight's dinner is rice cooker bulgogi and onions. On top of rice of course. Shaved steak marinated in a bulgogi sauce which was shoyu, a little bit of oyster sauce, sweet chili sauce, garlic, ginger, and a little bit of water. And I just let that sit in a Ziploc bag until it's nice and happy. Wash two cups of rice, put in almost enough water so maybe a couple of milliliters below the index finger line.

Okay, one of the worst things that can happen when trying to get a post written is that my dictation software decides that it just wants to dump over a decade of accuracy training and just not work anymore. It is a pain in the ass because I pretty much have to retrain it to understand everything that I have ever written.

Tonight's dinner is something quick... Roasted ginger chicken and shoyu noodles

Tonight's dinner: beef shoyu noodles.

Tonight's dinner: shoyu chicken and rice.

It is AAPI month and honestly... I'm just not feeling it. There really isn't support. It's not really a thing other than kind of like a participation trophy and if you are a Pacific islander, you're kind of not even up on the podium. And obviously I grew up in a very Asian focused culture because that's how Hawai'i is. There are other contributing cultures but primarily since the plantation days it has been Asians and of course the Portuguese.

Tonight's Dinner is Smoked ham hocks and collard greens with a sourdough roll. Before I leave you to it, I just wanted to check in with you all and if anybody has any interest in sharing their thoughts on book covers. More importantly the art type and what attracts you these days? The reason I'm asking is because we get a lot of noise from marketing teams from publishing houses telling us about the trends and art covers and sometimes I'm looking at everything and I'm like; Is this really what people want?

Read a letter. Write a letter. It is often the hardest battles of us fight... The struggle to keep breathing. The war to stay alive. Stupidly enough one of the things that keeps me here is someone spent a good amount of energy not only hating me but trying to destroy me in any way he could. I promised myself that if anybody was going to take me out it would be me.

I love Filipino food. And I have been fighting a flu for the past 3 weeks that has just really wiped me out. I have the last scraggles left of it and I just wanted something that had flavor. Because for the past few weeks I have been eating very bland food including miso soup, plain rice, chicken broth, and lots of tea.

There's a halfway musing point in my brain where bits and pieces of stories and characters begin to break free and float around, looking for a place to roost. That's where I am right now. And I've also had some serious heartburn... gastric flux etc. All of those capacitors. It's annoying and really nothing to be done about it but still...

Okay first off I'm all over this movie. Secondly it makes me so happy that Momoa pronounced Yakuza the right way because it gets slaughtered in movies all the time. It's kind of like listening to people pronounce musubi. Sharp nails running over a chalkboard while holding a balloon painful.

Getting back into writing poses a lot of complications. Mostly, keeping focused on what I'm doing. I'm also at a crossroads on what to write. Do I continue on with Saint or do I work on the Jack Collins novel? It's kind of like deciding on what to make for dinner. I have ground meat but what to do with it?