it's official

I got the long marketing questionnaire to Mad Creek Books last Sunday and they had their meeting about my book on Monday. It's official! They have a schedule for me. THE LUNATICS' BALL will be part of next year's spring season, with a projected pub date of May 23, 2027.

Suddenly there are more hurry-up tasks: the most pressing being the art for the cover, which they want by next week, though I couldn't contact the artist until they approved my recommendation in this week's meeting. I hope they come through. I've contacted them several ways, but haven't heard back yet. (Won't name them here for fear of jinxing the request.) And I need to start on blurbs already, several from people very difficult to contact.

Sarah Fawn Montgomery is proposing a panel for AWP—Shaping the Silence: Women Writing Memoirs of Madness— with some great experimental memoirists. I'm really excited to be included, though I know AWP turns down a lot of proposals. I love all of the other prospective panelists, and Sarah Fawn has been a strong influence on my writing. I wrote about. her in a Substack when she published an essay of  mine in her new magazine  for neurodivergent and chronically ill writers NERVE TO WRITE.

An avalanche of hurry-up tasks at CRAFT, since the contest results came back for our annual Memoir Excerpt & Essay Contest, and we had to come up with two editors' choices immediately, and to edit five essays for publication in June (that means now and last week) and solicit and edit author's notes. Roxane Gay's choices were not what we expected, but they're excellent, and I'm doing collaborative edits on my very favorite right now.