four flash in the smokelong challenge

Last day of the SmokeLong Archive Challenge, where writers choose a flash magazine that has been around for at least ten years and post their favorite flash from the archives. Four of mine have appeared on the lists:
"Little Darling," Wigleaf
"The Missing Girl," Vestal Review
"Head of the Household," Cotton Xenomorph
"Ready or Not," Gone Lawn

Travis Flatt called my pandemic flash essay "Ready or Not" a "frightening, relatable, grounding, prescient story." Rereading it now, it feels like it could be grounded in a new dystopia, the masked officers at the door frightening agents from ICE instead of friendly policeman, in a new era when marines are patrolling the streets, backed up by National Guard.—so far just in LA, but the pictures yesterday of giant armored vehicles and agents on horseback in MacArthur Park were shocking. The pandemic feels like a more innocent time.

I know I get more readers through social media, but it also feels very here-today-gone-tomorrow. It's great to know that some of my work gets read later, and that so many magazines have survived. I've been in lots of fine magazines that were here-today-gone-tomorrow themselves. Some I really loved (Jellyfish Review, elimae, The Collagist, too many to list). A lot of them didn't leave their archives online when they folded.

I've been sending out flash for submission recently, while I wait for more news on The Lunatics' Ball and a shorter hybrid manuscript I just assembled, The Arithmetic of Memory.  Thanks to Len Kuntz, who suggested at AWP that I should be putting my work together in collections, and Patricia Bidar, who suggested that you can publish older work. It's interesting to me to see how my themes persist and transform themselves. And I've really enjoyed reading past publications I'd half, sometimes completely, forgotten. Like meeting former selves.