rejections, a lunatics' ball

Three Lunatics' Ball fictions rejected today in one fell swoop, another a few days ago. It's becoming obvious that trying to marry historical epigraphs with short fictional pieces doesn't really work, that I have to work harder on incorporating the historical information into the stories themselves. Meanwhile the constant edits of my nonfiction title flash "The Lunatics' Ball" at F(r)iction are becoming frustrating. Not so sure that is going to work out, and I've just sent them an edit that restores the original structure of the piece, which their editor may not like at all, since she's the one who reshuffled it in the first round of edits.

Finished a draft of a hybrid flash about a (real) Irish-American female serial murderer housed in a New York asylum for the criminal insane, and a fictional flash of her dreams, which felt like a breakthrough. A series of dreams will allow me to do the lyric riffs I was hoping to do. And I've been reading about lunatics' balls. The one at La Salpêtrière Mental Hospital in Paris, where Charcot was treating female hysterics, was a masquerade ball. Apparently not unusual! Crazy to subject patients with delusions and hallucinations to a ball where everyone's in costume. I did a fun "I Could Have Danced All Night in My Maidenform Bra" flash, imagining myself dressed as Madonna at La Salpêtrière, and then found this amazing Maidenform ad from Ladies Home Journal in 1954. It was for sale on Etsy and i bought it.

Impatiently awaiting publication of "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" in THE JOURNAL OF COMPRESSED CREATIVE ARTS at MATTER PRESS, which was supposed to be posted yesterday, but hasn't been yet.