I have news! Things that have been happening! And so forth!
Thing the First: This week Corvid Queen (a literary journal published by Sword & Kettle Press) announced their nominations for the Pushcart Prize. I am so incredibly chuffed that they choose to nominate my short story “How Bluebeard Ends” along with five other amazing works. “How Bluebeard Ends” is a story that went through a number of rejections before it found a welcoming home at Corvid Queen. I’m honored that the editors liked it enough to nominate it.
Thing the Second:Â The Fall 2019 issue of Star*Line is out, and I’m happy to report that it contains my poem “Bride of Frankenstein: Our Lady of Rage,” which they have also shared online. To get the full serving of great poetry, however, be sure to order the print copy.
Thing the Third: I do have more cool news, but I can’t quite talk about it yet — so instead, I’ll tell you about my newsletter, through which you can make sure you’re fully informed about this future announcement, as well as getting my thoughts on writing and life. The news is that I have decided to switch my newsletter over to Substack, which provides many more tools for community building — such as the ability for readers to like, comment, or share posts. It also includes an option to monetize newsletters, but for the time being I’m sticking with things being free as they’ve always been.
I came to the realization halfway through writing this post that today Tuesday, not Monday. This is because I spent my Monday helping my mom clear out and transfer belongings from one storage shed to another in a grueling twelve hour period resembling the interminable curse of Greek gods. If we hadn’t been laughing so hard at the absurdity of the situation, I’m sure we would have been miserable. But we were laughing and we accomplished a hell of a lot and my mom rewarded my efforts with beer, so all was well.
In other weekend news, I SAW FLOGGING MOLLY at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival and they were —in what was no surprise to me — amazing. They played all my favorite songs and introduced me to new favorites. I danced my ass off that night and sang my throat out and it was worth the next day’s pain. We also saw The Brothers Comatose and Gillian Welch play and they were both wonderful, as well.
The crowds were thick and fun at the Flogging Molly performance in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.
What I’m Reading
I’m still working on Celestial Inventories by Steve Rasnic Tem, which continues to astound me with its ability to present stories, ranging from deeply moving to incredibly disturbing.
Most of my focus has been on finishing an initial draft of a Sleeping Beauty story for the Brainery Workshop I started last week. I have the main outline and a good sense of how I want to approach it, but since it has some science fiction elements I’m not sure how much explaining I should do up front. I suppose I should just get the draft
Laura Madeline Wiseman and I have finished up a number of collaborative poems, which need to be sent out. At which point, we need to get started on some new ones.
Goals for the Week: Finish workshop draft before class. Submit some collaborative poetry and get started on some others.
Brainery Workshop – Science Fiction Fairy Tales – Week One
The first meeting of the workshop, which is run by the amazing Jilly Dreadful, was introductory, introducing us to our fellow writers and to how the workshop will work. My fellow writers (most of whom I met, although there was a switch in students at the last minute) are all amazing as far as I can tell from the small piece of writing they all shared and from their comments during the meeting. This makes me even more excited to see how things will go.
Our assignment for the week is as I noted above, a Sleeping Beauty story, which can incorporate some of the sleep science in various articles Jilly assigned.
Linky Goodness
Justine Larbalestier notes Our Heroes Are Fallible And So Are We — “We do not write in a vacuum. We write about the real world while living in the real world. That’s true whether we are writing about zombies or vampires or high school or genocide or butterflies or all five. Our words have effects on other people.”
Afrofuturism Rising by Ytasha L. Womack — “While Afrofuturism is viewed as a tool of empowerment for people of color, the dual aesthetic and philosophy at large serves to provide answers for a gaping hole in the story of humanity. Afrofuturism values intuition, feminine aspects of humanity, and nature. Afrofuturism views the future, past, and present as one. Afrofuturism provides a platform to explore time and memory in the context of human life.“
