I just heard from a new reader who bought THE MISSING GIRL in preparation for assembling her own chapbook and found it powerful and meaningful for her own work. A response like hers is worth more than I can say. (Also, I just heard from Sarah Fawn Montgomery that she admires my flash cnf and learned a lot from it. Her researched hybrid memoir QUITE MAD is such an inspiration for THE LUNATICS' BALL!) I know that prospective publishers and agents want to see gigantic platforms, but it's the individual readers that mean so much to me.  THE MISSING GIRL was published in 2017. It's amazing that people are still reading it and that it still resonates. Glad that Black Lawrence Press has kept it easily accessible. Feeling moved and grateful.

Halfway through the #flashfictionfebruary event at FICTIVE DREAM, my flash "No Better Time Than Now" is out. This sendup of an overbearing, ineffective therapist is in fact based on stories from a writing group member, my husband, and something that happened to me, though the character is made up. 

So pleased that editor in chief Laura Black accepted work from me again (the seventh year running), and as ever I love the artwork from Claudia McGill.

After years of work, THE LUNATICS' BALL is ready for the outside world. Sent it out today to one of my first choice publishers. It feels different hitting "submit" on Submittable for a 92,000-word manuscript than it does for a longform essay or story or flash.  A leap into the unknown.

My flash "The Chair" is out in South Florida Poetry Journal (known as SOFLOPOJO). (Scroll down. The flash are in alphabetical order, and there are lots of friends and stars in this lineup.) A big thank you to Francine Witte (resident of Manhattan, not Florida). I was startled to see that a late-marriage breakup and the husband's chair figured prominently in another flash I wrote. There's nothing autobiographical about the flash, or the wing chair. BUT my father's wing chair figured in an essay I wrote (and rewrote, and rewrote) for DO IT YOURSELF NIGHT, the essay collection I'll turn back to when I get THE LUNATICS' BALL launched.

The voice and the runons and the defiance of grammar was fun in "Teachers' Pets," published in DOES IT HAVE POCKETS? A big thank you to Camille Griep, who gave me a chef's kiss for the ending.

My first time in both magazines. Love both of them.

Advice from two K-12 teachers that I've somehow never forgotten. A high school teacher, Mr. H, told me I'd be an excellent student when I learned how to apply myself to tasks I didn't want to do. As I procrastinate about building my 6-week flash class and learning the online platform, I realize that I never did learn that. I put Mrs. W.'s advice (sixth grade, I think) into the "Teachers' Pets" flash. I needed to learn how to take a compliment, she said. As the two flash rack up praise on Facebook, I immediately discount it. Steve says I always do that. Another lesson I haven't learned.

DOES IT HAVE POCKETS? did a nice graphic for the flash:

​A spacious airbnb this weekend in a woodsy area 15-20 minutes from Auburn. Unfortunately it's been raining buckets and the hot tub is outside so I haven't even tried it. Getting lots of work done, though.