Well, in NYC via Zoom in the FBomb NY Flash Fiction Series, formerly at the KGB Bar. We resurrected Alvarado O'Brien for a rare return appearance and read "Night of the Virgin" published in TIMBER. Thanks to Paul Beckman for the invite.

And a couple of weekends ago, we spent the night in Santa Cruz where Steve read for CATAMARAN LITERARY READER, their first in-person reading (and ours) in two years. It was magic.

Adam Swanson, a fellow writer that I met a few years ago in Lidia Yuknavitch's writing class/retreat, just wrote to me that his professor quoted me in his MFA workshop today. The professor at Emerson College, whom I don't know, is Jabari Asim. The quote is from a weird essay I published in ESSAY DAILY: 

It was partly about a crazy Sara Levine essay in the TOUCHSTONE ANTHOLOGY that I love, but also about a crazy incident at a conference where Steve did a keynote address. "It's a Wonder" was fun to write. I didn't think I'd ever hear about a reader, certainly not all these years later. The world is overflowing with inexplicable wonders again today.

A stressful few days with issues with my writing group and pressures from the CNF contest at CRAFT and problems with my health that necessitate setting up all kinds of appointments. All okay, really, just a lot at once. So it was thrilling to hear on twitter today that William Woolfitt (whose work I love) recommended my essay "The Dream Lives of Objects" to Rachel Laverdiere (whose work I love) and that she's going to teach it in her class "Hone and Polish your Lyric Essay" in May. Yay!

It's here! My flash "Zooming Out" just came out in FICTIVE DREAM, part of their Flash February series, which includes a lot of flash friends. Lovely art again from Claudia McGill.

And of course here I am today about to log into a Zoom meeting. A workshop with Rebecca McClanahan on organizing your memoir-in-essays or essay collection. Getting ready for it, and getting ready for Claire Polders to read the first two sections, already pushed me into a massive organizational effort. Claire's request that I give subtitles to the nine sections so the organization is more visible has me stymied, though.

Pleased to see that my flash "Where Are We Going?" made it into Kristina Saccone's "Flash Roundup" this week.

My flash "Where Are We Going" (slight nod to Joyce Carol Oates) is out in issue 25 of BENDING GENRES, along with some flash by great writers, quite a few of them friends. Can't wait to dig in to the issue. The flash was inspired by Meg Tuite, and a prompt from her in a workshop, "Let each sentence ride its own bus."

Looked around for a free picture of a bus to accompany my facebook post, and found this beauty, courtesy of Juan Encalada on Unsplash.

Maybe I'll write a post some day about what it's like to work at a literary magazine. Short version: right now, not great. The stressful edit of a couple of weeks ago became infinitely more stressful. The contest requires a lot of reading as we near selection of the longlist. At least I've been stealing time to work on THE LUNATICS' BALL, which is progressing beautifully. I've been producing new work and revising old work. My concussion and injuries are almost healed. And I can celebrate this flash today.

Later: I'm looking over an essay and some micros that we just accepted and I'm thrilled with them. As I was with the difficult edit, before everything went south. I've been so proud of the CNF we've published. Really there are great rewards to my editorial position, and we have a new EIC I love working with.  So there's all that too.

A flash fiction accepted at BENDING GENRES. I love magazines that respond within two days, and love BENDING GENRES for their innovative content too. I've published there a few times (one story, one cnf micro, one craft micro on plot). "Where Are We Going" was directly inspired by something Meg Tuite said in the Bending Genres weekend workshop I took from her.

I loved teaching a Bending Genres weekend workshop myself, and hope I get the opportunity to teach again. I'm really looking forward to taking a week-long Bending Genres residency/workshop in Ojai this summer. Meg Tuite and Robert Vaughan will be leading, and lots of flash writers that I love will be participating: Jayne Martin, Lori Sambol Brody, Lynn Mundell, Gay Degani, Patricia Bidar and more. I rented a two-room accommodation so Steve and Ben can come and hike. It looks like a beautiful place. I hope the virus is in retreat by them, and my inspiration has returned.

My third, or is it fourth?, year running in the Flash Fiction February event at FICTIVE DREAM, which is always fun. I love being invited to what feels like a month-long party, the flash are always great, and Claudia McGill's art is wonderful. I have a few from previous years that I want to frame. My flash "Zooming Out" is scheduled for February 19. My friend Kathryn Kulpa also has a flash scheduled, probably more writers I know.

Enjoying social media responses to "The Peak of His Powers," and having something funny for a change!

CRAFT has been a chore lately, with a very stressful edit, and I'm always weighing editing vs. writing, worrying that I'm neglecting my writing. Hard to say how much of that is post-concussive and how much has to do with the demands of my editorial position.

My first pub of 2022! I've yet to get an acceptance this year, but I have my fingers crossed.

​I've always admired BULL, a magazine focusing on "modern masculinity." Thrilled to join the BULL family with my flash fiction monologue “The Peak of His Powers.” Aging male academics like this one are so familiar to me. One of the reasons I don't miss university teaching, especially department meetings!

My nonfiction micro "Glimpse" is up at FIVE MINUTES, a magazine for hundred word micro-memoirs about five minutes in a life. ​This is not the only time I saw my father after his death, but it was the most indelible and sustained.

​I was leafing through the new issue of NUNUM and happened on a page announcing their BEST MICROFICTION 2022 nominations. "Super Stanley" is included! He's flying high.

Still not recovered from my fall before Thanksgiving, though much improved. Followup x-rays about the severe pain in my wrists didn't show any fractures, but it's hard to type. My vision is still sometimes blurred, sometimes flashing. I have a referral to an opthalmologist to look for a detached retina, but it may just be post-concussive syndrome (which can require an indefinite period to heal). Shoulders still painful; I sleep on a nest of pillows and still take Tylenol every six hours. All of this makes writing and sustained reading and even my routine editorial work for CRAFT very difficult. I haven't written anything at all for over five weeks and it's very depressing. I'm trying the dictation software in Word, but that's not really the way I write.