I got my booster shot yesterday (though it's left me pretty achy and sore), I've got a draft of the SUPERSTITION REVIEW talk (still longer than I'd like), and a poetry blog/zine called FEVERS OF THE MIND solicited a reprint of "Move on Up" from me, originally published in RHYTHM N BONES LIT (which is on hiatus or defunct). It's up, they're calling it a poem, which tickles me. It's based on music, and they posted a pop art version of the Curtis Mayfield album cover that I refer to.

Hands down, this one today. A tweet from my long ago former student Serene Vannoy about THE MISSING GIRL: "I saw your book in a bookstore in my new town (New Mexico) & just had to buy it even though I already have a copy. It was just so cool."

Also some nice soft rejects, one from THE RUMPUS today that's strong enough to make me consider sending that microflash out to more places. At the moment I've run out of steam for submissions, and I'm much more involved in THE LUNATICS' BALL.

And larger progress on THE LUNATICS' BALL. Two more essays ready for my writing group to look at. And out of the blue, a great beta reader: Claire Polders, whose work I love, has proposed swapping full-length manuscripts. Because she's so well organized, I assembled a definitive table of contents with actual lengths for each piece and came up with around 50K. Two flash framing six sections of varying sizes (6K-12K). Whether these very disparate pieces will hang together is another question, but I'm glad to have someone looking at the work as a whole.

Seems to be rejection season, since I'm getting a lot of them, mostly essays from THE LUNATICS' BALL, which are a hard sell, because they're not exactly personal essays with a first person narrator, at least a lot of them aren't. I'm not taking the rejections personally. I still think they're a good fit for the collection. 

A flash acceptance that I have to keep under wraps for now, but I'm excited about it.

​And a Pushcart nomination from the tiny magazine NUNUM for my tiny micro "Super Stanley." He's a character I'm fond of.

I'll be reading "Half Fish Tale, Half Ars Poetica" in the HARPY HYBRID REVIEW virtual reading next Saturday. Looking forward to it! Now for the important stuff: a long overdue haircut (my long time hair stylist is an anti-vaxxer and I need to find another), figuring out a background for Zoom (I usually Zoom in my study, which is overflowing with books and papers and pretty claustrophobic).

Submissions decisions are always hard. How long are you willing to wait to hear from a top magazine? Do you set your work aside while you wait and wait and wait? Or send it out widely? And if you do, do you send it to top magazines only? Then move down  a tier after some rejections? For flash especially, is it better to be online than in print? For a future collection, is it better to leave most of the pieces unpublished? And even if you read magazines closely, it's hard to tell whether you're a good fit or not. Often you get rejections from magazines you thought were a perfect fit.

Still waiting on two top magazines where I've published before, for decisions on submissions I sent in January and February. Just sent a status query to the January magazine and got a very nice note back about how behind the editor is because of the pandemic, with a parenthetical reference to child care that left me feeling guilty. I have my fingers crossed on both of them.

I have a flash about a Zoom meeting that I thought was topical and timely but I haven't been able to place it. Rejection Saturday. Rejection Sunday. And then today, a long, Bartleby-tinged story where I started with just the top places (since it's not timely and I'm in no hurry and why not) just got an amazingly soft rejection from the venerable lit mag STORY of all places. They would "love a chance to read more of my writing IN THE NEAR FUTURE." Naturally I have nothing at all to send them. It's not often that I write a long story, and lately all of my energies have been tied up in The Lunatics' Ball. Well, I can treasure this anyway. Strange game where writers treasure rejections.

It's been raining, buckets and buckets, which ordinarily wouldn't be news, but this year it definitely is.

later
​The sun is out and I've gotten four more rejections. One of the long story from a magazine where I submitted it in July (not so friendly as the one from STORY), and three CNF in one swoop. My horoscope didn't hint that I'd be a rejection magnet today. I'm afraid to open any more emails.

Even though I don't have an Instagram account (Facebook and Twitter feeling like more than enough for the present). 

Big thanks to the wonderful writer Marcelle Heath for including me in her Apparel for Authors series. This was fun.

Really pleased to see "Half Fish Tale, Half Ars Poetica" up in the new issue of HARPY HYBRID REVIEW on "Myth." The great cover art is by Elena Valdés Chavarría.  

Time to start thinking about what I'm going to say!

Reading the essay won't do, as it's not only online, but there's also an audio recording of me reading it online.

​The first proofs I saw didn't include the Joseph Cornell shadow box and I was holding my breath, but the EIC Trish Murphy managed to post it and the art looks great.

And here's a surprise tweet this morning from the writer DeMisty D. Bellinger, who teaches at Fitchburg State University: "Teaching Jacqueline Doyle (@doylejacq) this morning. Taught this one last year and I think I'm going to keep it in my regular rotation:" Linked to … "Two Guys Carrying a Toilet Into Taco Bell."

So I wandered into the kitchen to tell Steve, who was eating breakfast, who said, "I think it should be compared to 'The Death of Ivan Illych' because they're both about existential angst." (When I told her, she said, "Yes! I see this!")

The good news I was waiting to announce. I'm thrilled that matchbook has nominated "The Madwoman on BART" for Best of the Net. MATCHBOOK is one of my very favorite magazines (I'm sorry they're on hiatus, and hope they come back), and this particular piece means a lot. Very encouraging for THE LUNATICS' BALL.