Writing Update: March 2023

Publications, nominations, in-progress work, & recent favorite reads from yours truly, Salena Casha

Another month, another writing update featuring my hundredth publication!

What was published in March 2023

I had two pieces debut in March with Defenestration Magazine & Flash Frontier. One is a satirical flash and the other is a contemporary micro.

Recently Published

• You can barely keep a plant alive, Sharon - Defenestration Magazine

  • A note: this is a satire about poorly executed unconscious bias training.

• Five Billion Years Wouldn’t Be Enough - Flash Frontier’s Ra Issue

  • Lucky to have this piece open the Ra issue for a remarkable New Zealand publication. I’ve been published with them before, back in December 2020, with A Turn debuting in their Doors issue

    Additionally, this was officially my hundredth publication since I began submitting back in 2009. Let’s celebrate!!

My favorite reads of March

I hit a bit of a dry-spell book-wise in March (a lot of false and disappointing starts) so instead, I’ll offer you a few favorite shorter pieces and essays I read out in the wild west of digital publishing.

Weak Lungs by Lily Seibert - An emerging writer featured on Roxane Gay’s publication “Audacity”

1. If you haven’t read Roxane Gay’s work, go start with Hunger

2. Her emerging writer series is amazing, and this essay in particular was DEVESTATING as it follows a woman’s journey with chronic illness from long-COVID. What I found most heartbreaking was the on-the-nose depiction of how America’s individualistic culture and do it yourself attitude bleeds into the way in which both the medical profession and society at large treats those with chronic conditions as something the chronically ill can simply overcome and often, when they can’t overcome it, it’s interpreted as a personal failure, not a failing of the wider system.

3. Read it.

Full Mood Magazine published a hefty issue on the theme MYTHOS in March with 39 pieces (all well under 1,000 words each) completing the collection. I love everything that Full Mood, Jaime Dill, and their guest reader, Mo, produces. This issue is their best yet. Each of the below works, especially the three poems demonstrate how critical line breaks can be to the evolution of understanding words and meaning and how powerful author choices can be in terms of what their readers take away at the end

A few favorites:

• Beyond the Sun, Impervious by Jared Povanda

  • Povanda’s work walks us through the experience of a modern day Icarus in the aftermath of falling from the sky. He hides in a bathtub and finds love through his terror of the outside world. It’s a moving contemporary take on an age-old story that had me in its thralls through the final line.

• Do Metamorphic Amphibians Know How to Flirt? by Jessica Coles

  • This poem blends humor and despair in a single work that thinks through what it means to be human. How could I not get sucked in by beautiful lines like:

    She doesn’t understand what makes a human

    beautiful, wears too much moist-earth

    perfume.

• Eurydice's Reply by Abigail Myers

  • A true exercise in how a few well-chosen words from title through last line can pack a real punch. While not required, I recommend brushing back up on the Eurydice and Orpheus myth which this is based on to really get the full effect of the poem

• Genesis 2:31 by Stephanie Holden

  • Another poem that uses form to its advantage. I’m in awe of how writers can look at both the words and the actual form it paints on the page and make them render new meanings each time you read it through.

What I worked on this past month

I have quite a few pieces in the works, all upwards of 2,000 words. The genres I’ve been tackling recently have included historical speculative fiction, post-apocalyptical fiction, and contemporary sci-fi (I know, a lot of SFF) as well as a humor piece and creative nonfiction tribute to my grandmother.

Hopefully, you’ll get to see all of these in the coming months in their more final forms!

Additionally, huge thank you as always to my critique partners Mark Slattery and R. Tim Morris for their thoughtful feedback as I worked through these revisions!

The look-ahead for April

I’ve got a irreverent fairytale coming to you from Bitterleaf Books based on the centuries old story Les Fées by Charles Perrault.

Keep reading, and, if you feel so moved, reach out! I’d love to hear from you. Have a wonderful Sunday!

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