Three new stories and an erasure poem inside!
What was published in the past month
I’ve been lucky to have a steady stream of content go live this past month with a few fantastic publications. Two of these pieces were collaborations (one flash fiction and another, creative nonfiction) and the other two were creations of my own: a flash creative nonfiction piece and an erasure poem a part larger anthology (only available for order). We’ll go order of publication date this time to mix things up!
The Office - Ice Breakers Lit (Haunter & Architect Collaboration)
Read time: <2 minute (300 words)
Ice Breakers’ Lit does some of the coolest collaborative writing prompts out there. I love their fresh take on submission calls and their Tiny Hauntings issue did not disappoint. Essentially, you could self select as a architect or haunter (or both) by October 1st. Architects then had seven days and up to 150 words to design a creepy setting. Once selected, the setting was then passed off to a haunter who would, you guessed it, haunt the piece for the remaining 150 words. I architected this one, but was also lucky enough to be a haunter of a second piece (although that one wasn’t selected). You can check out the entire issue by clicking on the photo below.
Image below from the Ice Breakers Lit Website
Your Only Save - Five Minute Lit
Read time: <1 minute (100 words)
Yes, this one’s teeny tiny and, hopefully, packs a punch. It’s creative nonfiction and based on my most embarrassing moment of all time when I was a high school lifeguard. I was lucky enough to read it at the Salem Literary Festival, along with a slew of talented Five Minute Lit writers and readers.
Image below from Five Minute Lit team
The Sega Saga as Told by a Kid Trying to Escape - Interstellar Flight Magazine
Read time: <5 minutes (1,000 words)
I was lucky enough to get to work with the fantastic Mahailey Oliver on this piece, a creative nonfiction collaborative essay. We originally wrote it for a Ice Breakers Lit call on fantastical nostalgia and were lucky for it to find a home with the fantastic team at Interstellar Flight. Writing CNF with a partner is funky because you have to find the commonalities in experience in order to pull out a unified voice grounded in both of your lives.
Art Below by Andrew Indelicato from Interstellar Flight Magazine
Untitled Erasure Poem - Dead Girl Erased Anthology with Gnashing Teeth Press
Read time: <1 minutes (100 words)
Gnashing Teeth Press put out a call for erasure poems on Twitter earlier this year with a twist. The deal was you DMed them your address and they would send you a page from a thriller (in this case, Dead Girl Running)that you then turned into an erasure poem (i.e. blacked out some of the words to create a new piece of art). The collection in which this is featured turns each page of this novel into one such poem. I hope you like the found art within the, well, existing art. You can preorder it at the link above!
Image from Gnashing Teeth Press Pre-order
My favorite reads from the past month
Non-fiction: How Not To Be a Politician by Rory Stewart
As an American married to a Brit, I definitely get more exposed to British politics than I would have otherwise, whether it’s via the weekly panel show Have I Got News For You or two favorite podcasts of mine: The Rest Is Politics and Leading. That being said, if you asked me how Parliament works or what the purpose of a shadow cabinet, I’d probably mumble something incoherent. That is, until now. One of the hosts of The Rest Is Politics recently published a book about his experience as part of the conservative party under David Cameron and Boris Johnson. Part expose, part rage against the political machine, Stewart’s work exposes the ludicrousness of elected office and how, often, the goal of climbing the political ladder is in opposition to their ability to create real positive change in the lives of those they represent through elected office.
Fiction: Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Kingsolver had me feeling a kind of way about Dickens given her reimagination of David Copperfield that I highlighted in my newsletter last month so I jumped back into a comfort read for me: Bleak House. It’s not so much a cohesive plot-driven novel as it is collection of anecdotes that loosely follows a rotating set of characters. Its observational humor about class and employment still had me chuckling today. A good read to fall asleep to for sure.
Other things of note & the look ahead
This past October, I participated in an After-Glow SmokeLong writing intensive on point-of-view and, wow, was it inspiring. Work has been a little crazy recently which always causes some serious writer’s block for me and Sherrie Flick’s generative workshop really loosened the dam. The format was fantastic (a live 90 minute webinar, two assigned tasks, and a week-long asynchronous workshop) and my fellow participants — as well as Sherrie herself — provided insightful feedback on two pieces that I’m hoping to edit further in the future and show to the world. Wish me luck!
For December, I’m looking forward to another generative workshop called Dressing The Skeleton: Long Form Writing for Short Form Writers with Apex Books and taking the time to really immerse myself in a few works-in-progress.
Until next time. Happy reading!