It's a new dawn. It's a new day.

Now that my latest book is published and live on Amazon, I will be starting to write the sequel to my first book, The Awful Truth of Loving.  While compiling You + Me and waiting for the copyright to come back, I wrote little bits of the sequel here and there.  I'm glad I did because it's a nice little bread crumb trail leading me down the path of the story I wanted to tell.  Not everything is fleshed out yet, not even close, but here's a taste of something you can expect to read in case you're curious:



Accidental Babies

Ramona was able to get Anderson to calm down enough to meet her in West Hollywood for coffee.  He was usually so confident and relaxed, but when she saw him walk through the door of Queens Road Café, she was surprised to see he was really nervous.

Ramona stood up and waved him over to the table she had gotten for them.  He gave a slight nod and removed his sunglasses with orange frames.  She went in for a hug as he went in to shake her hand.  They paused and laughed nervously before deciding to just sit down.

“Hey,” Ramona said trying to over-compensate how nervous she felt by making direct eye contact.  “Thanks for meeting me.”

“Ain’t no thang,” he replied unable to make any eye contact at all.  “Uh, do they serve alcohol here?”

“I don’t think so.  It’s just a coffee shop.  They have food if you---.”

“Naw, naw, I’m not hungry...just thirsty.”

Just then, a waitress walked up to their table asking, “Can I get you anything to drink?”

Anderson looked down at the table as if this were the hardest question anyone could have asked him at that moment.

“He’ll just have a water with some lemon, thanks,” Ramona answered for him. 

The waitress left them alone again. 

“So...what do we do now?” Anderson asked after a long silence.

Ramona shrugged.  “I have no idea,” she replied.  “I’ve never had this happen before.”

“I don’t mean to sound like a dick, but...are you sure it’s---.”

“Yes, I’m sure.”  She paused.  “You’re the only one I’ve been with this year...unless this is immaculate conception, in which case God really does have fucked-up sense of humour because I’ve never been to church a day in my life.”  Anderson suddenly saw how nervous Ramona was and instinctively reached across the table for her hand.  She instinctively took it.  “I don’t want you to think I planned this, Andy.”

He finally looked at her.  “Mona, I don’t.”

Andy was the only one who called her “Mona” besides her mother, but Ramona hadn’t heard her mother call her that for nearly ten years.

It's Up!!

My collection of short stories and poems is up and available for immediate download!!  I will now share with you the foreword I wrote for the book and I will give the link to the book at the bottom of this post.  Thank all of you so very much for reading and for your support!

Foreword From the Author:

            It’s around 9:30 a.m. on a random weekday morning.  I’m at Aroma Café in Studio City and I’m doing what I’ve been doing here the last few months on random weekday mornings, which is working on the book you now hold in your hands.  Oh, and drinking coffee.  Lots of coffee.

            My first self-published book was a fiction romantic comedy of sorts, so one might wonder why I felt it necessary to venture into the realm of short stories and poems next.  The answer simply is that I love stories.  I think we all do.  Whether we hear them in our favorite songs, movies, or television shows.  Mankind has had a fascination with storytelling since the beginning of time and I am no different.

            For as long as I can remember, using my vast imagination and writing stories has been my favourite way of expressing myself.  When I was a teenager, my favourite place to be was in a coffee shop with a notebook and a pen.  I would sit and look around at different people, trying to imagine where they had just come from or where they were going to next, what it was they were working through in their lives at that moment, and like a photographer out in nature, I would often get lost in them.  I wanted to capture those moments on paper in the form of words for others to see and interpret. 

            I’ve kept a good number of the notebooks I carried with me from high school and college.  I dug into them to gather stories and poems for this collection.  A majority of them were too melodramatic for my tastes now, but a few still hold some truth for the person I am today, and those few you will find revamped, edited, and included here.

            There was also a period when I gave myself a 30-Day Challenge to complete 1 short story each day.  I completed 15, not the whole 30, but it was still enough to render some of what you’ll find here.

            These poems and short stories are not necessarily complete on their own, but rather, they are seeds I am planting in the soil that may someday grow into a greater narrative for another book I have yet to write and hopefully one that you have yet to read.

            And so it is with great pride and joy that I present to you my first collection of short stories and poems.

With many thanks and so much gratitude,

Leslie Li Hikida

Excerpt from You + Me: A Collection of Short Stories & Poems

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HKSLKHW 

In Review!

It's happening!!  My second self-published book You + Me A Collection of Short Stories & Poems has been submitted to Kindle Direct Publishing and will be available to download very soon.  I can't tell you how great this feels to have completed another piece of work that I will share with my readers.  I will post again with a link to the download page as soon as it goes live.