Books
Angela's newest is a book on spiritual wellness and how it can be applied to our lives right now. Navigating the murky waters of life is a job with tenure. All the money and station in the world won’t reprieve us from the task. From living through the pandemic to being thrust into a present-day American culture whose democracy and basic humanity are being tested, life has become more surreal, more unpredictable, and more challenging every day. What tools do we have in order to cope with the uncertainty of these anxious times? How the Light Gets In offers a practical guide of 10 principles to aid in taking care of our spirits, keeping sanity, serenity, and joy in our daily arsenal, living in our authenticity, and staving off the harmful effects of the “fight or flight” mechanism of a sympathetic nervous system in the constant state of hyperdrive. This little book does not propose we shut our eyes on the world we live in, but that we cultivate stronger, more lasting practices with which to sanely take on our world, while maintaining emotional and spiritual wellness. Angela has spent half her life in the study of Buddhist thought, Taoism, metaphysics, meditation, yoga, and other inward-turning wellness disciplines, each of which has contributed to the formulation of her 10-pt practice for rejuvenation of the spirit.
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Recipient of the 2018 North Street Book Prize in Literary Fiction
Angela's debut novel sets itself on a single day in the life of four Los Angeles musicians, who struggle to make their living as such, and who are each faced with a plight to which they must seek a resolve. By the end of the business day, their lives will have intersected in ways much like the intersection of a musical "trading fours" that builds to a poignant cadence.
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* Trading Fours has also been excerpted in David Rife's book of essays "Jazz Fiction: Take Two," and in Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature.
This modernist tale is set against the vibrant backdrop and diverse boroughs of pre-millennial Los Angeles, unfolding over four transformative years. At its heart is a young, successful author whose life intersects with two compelling figures: a passionate painter on the rise and a soulful poet with a dark past. Initially drawn to the allure of their tortured genius, she embarks on a journey that peels back the romantic veneer of the artist's struggle, plunging her into the depths of the "dark night of the soul." This character-driven narrative not only explores the seductive myths of artistic torment but confronts the raw truths of what it means to live and create at the edge of despair. Champion promises a deep dive into the complexities of inspiration, the costs of creativity, and the indomitable spirit of the human heart, which ultimately asks the question: What can be forgiven?
Tiny stories from every walk of life. An artist whose work is stolen. A childhood idol whose life ends up on the street. Idyllic life on a Guernsey farm. A man haunted by a game he used to play as a child. From spiritual journeys to crimes of the heart. Pure fiction to traces of news headlines. Comedy. Tragedy. Adventure. Fantasy. Romance. Surrealism. From lighthearted confections to dark recesses. In Aleatory on the Radio, Angela uses the exacting 100-word-story form, variously known as flash fiction, postcard fiction, microfiction, drabbles, short-shorts, and bite-sized fiction, to create miniatures that manage to turn their own worlds inside out. Where each word is scrutinized, and secrets are wrenched from the spaces between. They illustrate the ironic and sometimes cruel nature of perspective, and that we never truly know the whole story. Weaving through the vista of dreamers, loners, those lost, those found, lovers and losers, winners and whiners, this collection of microstories explores a world as baffling as it is beautiful.
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* After the Thousandth Time Singing Lush Life and Jazz have also appeared in Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz and Literature.
* Splenic Descent, Alms, and Intersection have also appeared in MacQueen's Quinterly.
* And in 2021, a concert of choral music was designed and produced around several of Angela's 100-word stories by the award-winning Los Angeles-based METROPOLITAN MASTER CHORALE, entitled "Short Stories."
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Bones is a poetry collection written in 2017, a year of great personal trials for Angela's family, and the first year of a Donald Trump presidency. The collection's turbulent poems juxtapose the personal with the national, as they traverse the broad landscape of loss, grief, upheaval, and transformation. The cubist cover artwork is by the artist Ted Brown.
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* Holy Order and the ekphrastic poem Female Nude from the Rear View have also appeared in Flapper Press' Poetry Café.
In 2008 Angela successfully donated a kidney to young Hans San Juan. Ten years later, the kidney failed. Desperate, hungry, angry, hangry, and slaphappy, with this tiny, jet-fueled chapbook Angela dives in without a life vest, to primally scream, through poetry, about a kidney, a rallying cry, and a young man named Hans. Viscera wades around in it, for certain, memoir in narrative verse, spinning a taut, lyrical suite of survival and the inexplicable life force of the young. The surrealist pencil cover portrait was commissioned to artist Paulina Franco.
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Postscript: Viscera released on December 29, 2019. On August 29, 2020, Hans San Juan successfully received his second kidney transplant.
On July 22, 2008, Angela successfully donated a kidney to Hans San Juan at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, during quite possibly the most profound spell of depression she had ever experienced. This trilogy of essays takes on Angela's own dark times and the surprising leaps of faith it sometimes takes to be delivered, as it depicts an extraordinary and life-altering adventure that turned out to save not one life ... but two.
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* The essays Standing Ajar and Belligerent Romance originally appeared on Kidney.Org
With a wink to dimestore pulp fiction and film noir, Angela's playful novelette The Night, the City, and Miss Thing follows the adventures of Elvis Schoenberg's Orchestre Surreal (real-life Los Angeles orchestra that Angela fronted as lead singer under the moniker The Fabulous Miss Thing for nearly three decades), a deranged, seductive, Felliniesque-German-Expressionist-John-Waters-circus-of-a-wild ride, and The Night, the City, and Miss Thing is no less a wayward midnight odyssey of existential mood, mystery, and shadow, as it unfolds the antics of femme fatale Miss Thing, conductor Elvis Schoenberg, and ultimate-fighting-champion-turned-opera-singer Dangerous Dan. Read it if you dare, Palooka!
Buddha International Film Festival Award for Best Multimedia Film
Indo Global International Film Festival Award for Best Multimedia Film
Digi-Fest Temecula's People's Choice Award & Honorable Mention
In this unique children's short feature "videobook" Angela narrates her tale on the indwelling nature of friendship. Featuring over a hundred colorful illustrations, and underscored with whimsical music by composer/pianist Chris Hardin, The Richest Girl in the World sets the stage for a timeless and quintessentially fable-istic tale. Lessons in gratitude and seeing beauty everywhere are taught by the story's two characters. In this New Age where turning inward, soul-tending, and mindfulness are no longer fringe, flower-child ideas but are in our everyday lexicon, The Richest Girl in the World is right on time to offer Kid-Lit for a risen consciousness. With playful references to Van Gogh, Banksy, and Munch, The Richest Girl is for kids ages 8 to 108!
Watch FREE on YouTube!
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