M.X. Reo Kelly
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Post-it-Note Poetry 2022: forbidden/desire and loving the monster...

1/25/2022

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It is almost time again for the yearly poetry group I participate in to once again begin posting our short poems to Facebook and/or Instagram (though I don't use Instagram anymore). 

Post-it Note Poetry's group of poets has been writing tiny poems on post-its for ten years now. Some of us has even published some of our poems from the exercise, but the goal is to write and post a poem every day, and to give ourselves the permission and self-love to write crappy poems, so long as we write something each day. 

Some years have been more successful for me than others. Some years I barely wrote five poems for the whole month. Other years were ink-fire! 2015 and 2021 were the best years for me. I wrote and posted a multimodal poem every day in the year 2015. In 2021, I went even further, writing mostly all Japanese short form poetry (haiku, senryu, tanka) and I wrote over 150 poems last year. I have not stopped either, although the flow has trickled somewhat. 

This year, since it is the poetry group's tenth anniversary, they decided to do a theme. I am not a big fan of themes, as I feel that they tend to stifle my poetic spontaneity, if I'm always trying to write about a certain subject instead of what is on my brain and heart and soul at the moment. Sometimes, I come 'round though. Sometimes I see the synchronicity; the destiny of things. The little nudging of the universe telling me "this was meant to be."

The theme they decided on was "forbidden / desire." At first, I thought "UGH..." I mean, I can write stuff like that, but not every day for 28 days. But then...

I have been researching for quite a while now some very interesting and bizarre topics for an upcoming story/novel thing: monsters, aliens/interdimensionals, cryptids, the winged humanoids and people who may or may not shapeshift into these beings. Everything being speculation for the sake of "what-if-it's true?" and openmindedness. Few of us are born with open minds, we have to develop them like any other talent. I developed mine through a childhood filled with the stories of weird stuff that happened to other people and then through a young adulthood and adult life full of its own weird crap. And the Woo is a gift that keeps on giving, yes indeed. That's sarcasm, folks. 

I have also been researching the people who love the monsters, and are obsessed with them and write about them or talk about them on podcasts or YouTubes. People kinda like me to a certain degree or beyond. People as strange as the monsters they seek...to the people who don't understand. They're not your average, cookie-cutter Joe's and Jane's. They're not those normy couch potato sorts who would never for a moment consider that there may be darker things than the shadows under the boughs of the trees, lurking in places deep inside those forests where they take the kids for camping and s'mores over the firepit. Darker things? Depends on your point of view. Definitely misunderstood things. And things that want nothing to do with the likes of the hairless beings who live in concrete and glass cages, with their nonstop destruction of the land, sea and sky.

Or do they?

What happens when we, the curious, want to know? Want to find out so badly what is in the deep dark places. What is the monster like? What does it love? What happens when this forbidden desire to know what lurks in the dark becomes an uncontrollable lust? What if "they" lust back? Are just as curious and thirsty for our mystery? And maybe more...

As I've been putting together the notes and research for my cryptid novel "So Lonesome I Could Cry" I had the wild idea about a month ago of writing poems about cryptids (not that it hasn't been done before). A whole book of poems devoted to a dark desire of giving oneself over to the call of the forest and the call of the forest-dwellers (that's probably been done, too, I don't know). At the start, I only had a title idea for the poetry book. I'd call it "cryptopoetica: love songs for unloved monsters." 

Then, they announced that theme and I wasn't happy about it at first. But then I thought... "Maybe I'll write that cryptid poetry thing sooner than I wanted to." 

I'm not even sure these poems I have in mind can be short enough for a post-it note, but since I do multimodal (pairing my words with images) I'm kind of a rebel there. I've got a busy editing schedule on my plate as well, so I'm not even sure I can write poems every day, but I'm going to give myself the freedom to "NOT" be perfect this year. In fact, there may be some days that I feel like writing a nature haiku again (I am planning a Florida nature haiku poetry book as well). But I do have some good ideas for some poems...ahem...love songs for monsters...already. 

What's more forbidden than loving a monster? Throwing ourselves into the arms of the creature pursuing us. What would we learn from it? Maybe that the monster that is lurking in the darkness is really...

...a reflection of ourselves. We don't so much need to love the monster as we need the monster to love us. The girl in the red cape who willingly beds the beast? She may be a beast herself. And it may be that the wolf is the one who should really be afraid. There have been a few great writers who have turned that story on its head.

The night is full of dark terrors and the forest is full of whispering shadows. Did you hear that? Was that... a baby? Was it...an owl...no..? That's...

Something out there is calling my name...and I must go to it. 

Oh, yes, indeed. 
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I will try making regular Progress Posts on this blog of my weekly poems as well as uploading some of them to my online chapbook little paper parasols when I have time. 
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Writing, Publishing, Editing and Life in 2022

12/30/2021

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If there's one thing I've learned about making these goal lists, and I've been doing more than one per year (I just haven't blogged them), is that they're tough to do...mainly because I always end up spreading myself thin, like Bilbo Baggins (like a thin slice of butter spread over too much bread). I can't keep going at the pace I have been going. I end up wearing myself out and accomplishing very little in the way of personal gain. I work way too hard to make money, for a self-professed socialist. I do it in order to try and retire before I die...and I hope I can make it. 

There's some things I do for fun that I'm going to give up. Well, one thing, really. I've decided that if I ever have enough time to finish reading the submissions for the next two issues of The Were-Traveler, I'm going to stop publishing that. Now that my public media job has gone full time and I'm still editing part time and trying to write fiction (and do the heavy research that goes with writing fiction), and trying to self-publish my short story and poetry books... whew! There, you see? Time is of the essence, and I just don't have the time to read through a huge slush pile anymore. I wish I did. The magazine was getting good. Very good. But when I don't have the time to read the stories or respond to writers in a more timely fashion...that's not good. So, I'm putting the Traveler to bed. At least for the  time being. Later on, I may decide to publish a twice a year short poetry thing, but that's going to be waaaayyy down the line. 

So, I did succeed in fulfilling some of my 2021 goals. I've gotten myself out in nature, I've lost weight, and I've begun putting together some e-books of previously published and unpublished stories and poetry. What do I have planned for 2022? 

More of the same...and some other goals as well. 

Here's a list (flexible, I'm being very flexible with myself these days) of my goals and ambitions for the year of the Water Tiger:


  1. Continue my research reading for the novels that I will begin working on in 2023:
    1. So Lonesome I Could Cry
    2. Zen & the Art of Alien Diplomacy
    3. See the post titled: Reading Goals for 2022 
  2. Continue a little writing here on my back-burner novel (I'm almost done!):
    1. The Strange Blue Days of Dr. Fountainbrew
  3. Get the 2 e-books finished and up on Amazon for sale (Mamma needs to keep buying Apple stock on Stash!):
    1. Four & Twenty Blackbirds: Short Stories & Poems
    2. Little Paper Parasols: Haiku & Other Shortform Poetry
  4. Start prep work on the Florida-based short form poetry e-book:
    1. Tentative Title: Swamplillies: Haiku & Short Poetry on Florida Nature & Life 
  5. Begin prep for another e-book on my previously published and unpublished speculative fiction poetry. I don't have a title yet...well no...rather I have a couple of titles in mind but they don't really grab me
  6. Keep getting out in nature, hiking and seeing the wild critters that inspire me to write more haiku, senryu, tanka, and other short form poems. My coworkers gave me a state park pass for Christmas, so there are lots of state parks on my "To-Do and To-See" list for 2022:
    1. Cabin stay at Myakka River State Park...let's get squatchy... We are staying in the squatchiest cabin in the park. We better practice our whoops. 
    2. A weekend cabin stay at Fanning Springs State Park...a cool dip in the springs & a cabin with a screened, wrap-around porch! It's a long way for a weekend trip, but sometimes, with state park cabins you have to take what you can get. We will still have fun. Val may get to do some snorkeling. The park itself has a nature trail plus we will walk a little of the Nature Coast State Trail if we have time.
    3. A trip back to Oscar Scherer State Park (in the hope of walking the Blue Trail and seeing some endangered Florida Scrub Jays)
    4. New State Park visit goals include: Colt Creek State Park in the Green Swamp [UPDATE: DONE ON NEW YEARS EVE MORNING! Report soon on hiking blog], Charlotte Harbor Preserve State Park, and Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park (home of the endangered Florida Panther--not sure we'll get to that one this year, it's pretty far away) and Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park (need a tent for this one, as it is a dark sky paradise for astronomers and I want to see me some stars! So we'll need to camp out at this one. Sadly, they don't have cabins. I did registered to win an Airstream Interstate 24X. Sure would be nice to win that thing! Not sure we'll be able to do this one this year either).
    5. Other wild areas I'd like to see this year:
      1. Goethe State Forest
      2. Myakka State Forest
      3. Ocala National Forest
      4. Some more of the Withlacoochee State Forest (just because I love calling it the 'Coochee. Plus we've hiked some of it and not actually seen the river it is named for...and that is just so...so...wrong). Also, it's a really cool, hilly area that's not far from home.
        1. ​For the above State Forests: ..walk a trail for the Trailwalker program!
      5. Mosaic Peace River Park or another nature park along the Peace River (but probably not Peace River State Forest, as it is one of the few that doesn't have a restroom. I mean, WTF?)
        1. NOTE TO SELF: I need to write something about all the rivers I've seen in Florida. It will likely be a poem...or perhaps several. Who the hell knows, maybe an essay! Nah...most likely a linked haiku.
      6. Dead River Park 
        1. ​​Right next door to Hillsborough River State Park and part of it is on the Hills River. Would be cool to see this park as some squatchy happenings have happened there in the past. 
      7. John B. Sargeant Park 
        1. ​Also down Hwy. 301 from Hillsborough River State Park. Has a cool boardwalk trail (at least as far as I can tell from the pictures of it online). 
    6. I need to finish the last two issues of The Were-Traveler and put it to sleep for a bit, maybe forever. Sad, but I just don't have the time it takes to devote to a story magazine. I'm only one person. This is actually higher up on my to-do list. I really need to get it off my plate.
    7. I need to write a couple of new short pieces and get them submitted somewhere. I hope I am able to do that this year. 
    8. Take it easy...as much as possible. These last few years have been horrible for people, and I'm no exception. 
    9. Remember to breathe. And never stop dreaming.

If you're interested, I started a blog page on my reok_weirdworldview site to blog about the nature trips and hikes we do. I need to give that site a bit more love, I've been neglecting it. 

That's it for 2022 plans, and I do believe that is enough. If I can accomplish half of it, I'll consider it a success. 

What are your plans for the new year? I hope you don't spread yourself as thin as I do.

Happy New Year! May the Year of the Water Tiger enrich us All!
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Me inside hollow Cypress tree (I believe it's a Cypress) at Hillsborough River State Park.
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Reading GOALS for 2022

12/29/2021

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The book I'm currently reading is Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon, Volume I: Folklore. I will immediately follow that up with the second volume, which is called Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon, Volume II: Evidence. These two books are probably waaayyy more WOO than most Bigfooters like. Woo makes serious Sasquatch researchers nervous and fearful of not being taken scientifically seriously. However, one can't ignore that sometimes...with bigfoots, woo fucking happens. It just does. Other phenomena that gets put under the woo umbrella, no matter how many serious and professional, intellectual people have reported witnessing that stuff too. like UFOs and ghostly paranormal activity, is often associated with bigfoot sightings. And woo is going to work just fine for my novel. So be it. I have, for many years now, embraced all the woo. Experience has taught me that woo is a thing. I have not seen a bigfoot or other cryptid, but I've experienced some weird-ass and daunting stuff in my 56 years on this haunted planet of ours, and have talked to others who have as well. Enough to know...woo happens.  

I don't know whether there will be much woo in it, but I'm betting there might be, but I'm going to read the Bigfoot book of the Into the Fray podcast's host Shannon LeGro. I first saw Shannon on her TV show on Amazon Prime called "On the Trail of UFOs" and then later listening to the Into the Fray podcast and through the production group Small Town Monsters, whose Amazon and YouTube documentaries on cryptids like Momo (Missouri's Bigfoot) and the Minerva Monster (a Bigfoot that visited an Ohio family's property) and Mothman (those who know me well, know I love the Mothman cryptid stories even more than Bigfoot!) I've been consuming these stories like a kid consumes Halloween candy the day after trick or treating. Shannon's book is called Beyond the Fray: Bigfoot. I will read it next. 

Books by one of the all-time woo authorities on weird shit, John Keel, are on  my to read list: The Mothman Prophesies, Our Haunted Planet, and The Eighth Tower: On Ultraterrestrials and the Superspectrum. I'm not sure I'll be able to get to all of these, but for research purposes, I need to read the first and the third, at least. Why Mothman for a bigfoot book? He kind of figures into it somehow, but I don't know how just yet. I have a feel, way down deep in my little woo soul, that all cryptid creatures (if real) are somewhat connected. 

I almost forgot that I'm also currently reading Ghost Stories of St. Petersburg, Florida, by Tim Reeser. Speaking of the all-prevalent, dirty word WOO, my partner and I like to do some paranormal investigations sometimes, not strictly for fun, mind you, but to see what we feel. I'm particularly interesting in seeing how much I can feel from the other side of the veil since some of it lifted a lot for me after an encounter I had (and not a positive one) in a duplex I lived in here in Florida. So far, we've only visited the fort at Ft. DeSoto, reputed to be haunted by ghosts of soldiers and pirates. There was one bunker we felt a little uneasy in the day we went, but otherwise we didn't experience anything too ghostly there that day. 

Other research books on my list are more scientific. The Oregon Bigfoot Highway has witness accounts for sure, but also pictures of scat samples (they call it the Mother of All Turds, I shit you not...no pun intended), locations, and other interesting data. Jeff Meldrum is featured on many a bigfoot show and he is a scientist and University professor who believes in something called the relict hominid theory. That bigfoots are an undiscovered missing link to humans, if you will. Could be. Why not? Doesn't take away from their woo-ness. May even add something to it. His book, Sasquatch; Legend Meets Science,  is on my list. 

I have a few books on the Florida Skunk Ape and one on the Ohio Minerva Monster bigfoot account. I'd like to try and read the skunk ape one before our 4-day trip to Myakka River State Park this year (we recently saw our own MofATs there, but it was most likely a human who had to go to bad to get to the restrooms at the park...it was hella big though, enough for us to crack jokes about us finding squatch crap in the woods...lol). 

For fun and to get my fiction fix, I'd like to finish reading the latest Murderbot novel, Fugitive Telemetry. I'll be really absorbed in research and writing, but I need to get some reading-for-fun into my busy schedule in 2022. 

And I'm ordering from Amazon soon the second and third volumes of Junko's romcom manga Kiss Him, Not Me. I'm hoping I can fit those into my busy reading schedule this coming year. 
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The Books I Read in 2021

12/29/2021

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These are the books I read in 2021 according to my Goodreads challenge. I set the challenge low this year, knowing that I would be focusing my reading goals on lots of big research books. I'll probably set it low again in 2022 for the same reason...but that's a whole other post. 

The Only Fiction I Read in 2021:

I read Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch series that takes place in a universe among a people where gender is totally not a thing and everyone is referred to in the feminine pronoun "she." Strange and intriguing plot once you get used to not trying to figure out who is male and who is female as this either does not matter with some characters, or if it does, it will get revealed through the plot eventually (maybe not in the book you happen to be reading at the moment, but the next book or the next). Maybe it never will, and you'll just have to live with that. 

The story follows a soldier named Breq who is both a zombie solider and ship. Their technology is such that a consciousness can be spread throughout thousands of physical flesh and blood bodies brought back to a living state via some strange process that's not really explained to the reader after having been kept in frozen storage. These bodies are obtained via  their many wars of invasion and domination on other planets and are the victims of these wars. After the artificial consciousness is installed, they become mercenary soldiers known as ancillaries, and even devices, such as ships and security computers. Even the leader of this universe has created multiple versions of herself and the story begins and progresses through a schism war when several of these bodies of the leader start a personal argument among themselves. Factions develop. You never really know who is on whose side (except for Breq and her crew and even that is dicey at times).  The novels in this series are, in order: Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy.

Research, research, and  more research:

Pretty much everything else I read in 2021 is non-fiction (well,depending on whose opinion you ask about the subject matter) with the exception of Scrivener for Mac--Compiling for Export, which I read in order to get my e-books loaded to prepare for publishing.


The other three books I read were "Woo" books about UFOs, aliens, and cryptids. I read these because:
  1. I have a keen interest (personal and otherwise) in these subjects...
  2. I am going to be writing fiction projects related to these subjects...
  3. I fecking like these subjects and owe anyone else zero explanations why I do. It's enough to say, like my Twitter profile says, "I've seen some weird shit too, Alice".

I'm reading more Woo books now for research and will be reading even more in 2022 as I plan and research two projects ( one about the world's most famous cryptid and another on a reluctant alien contactee/abductee. The two stories are loosely related). I will write about those in a blog post titled Reading Goals for 2022.

I've read more articles and informational websites this year than any books, and those are also related to my tastes in unusual phenomenon and what I'm looking into for my research for writing projects.

If you share interests in any of these woo topics, I highly recommend reading Somewhere in the Skies, by Ryan Sprague and Chasing American Monsters, by Jason Offutt. Somewhere in the Skies is a book about UFO sightings that focuses on the witnesser's total perspective...what did they feel like, what was going through their minds when they saw it? Not too many books take this approach and, as a witnesser myself, it is refreshing. UFO sightings are human events...because there are human beings seeing these strange things in our skies. Ryan's book features one of the most interesting cases of a mass sighting in my home state. A massive black triangle UFO that was seen at a drive-in theater in Ohio, and whoever was aboard it wiped everyone's memories. To this date, as far as anyone knows, only two people have come forward to say they've gotten some of their memory of the event back.  

American Monsters informs you about the different kinds of cryptids there are (some that may no longer be with us and some that may have been hoaxed) in every state in the U.S. It doesn't have all of them...indeed, new cryptids and weird creatures are being seen all over the U.S. (and world) every day, but Jason's book is a good place to start if you have an interest in illusive critters.

If you don't scare too easily or are not very prone to nightmares, give Rich Dolan's Alien Agendas a read. He is one of the more intellectual and scientific ufologists around. Take it with a grain a salt, though, like he asks you to, as he is only reporting what witnessers, abductees, contactees, and researchers have reported. Long story short, aliens have been coming here or have even been living in other dimensions on earth for a long damn time. Some of them take people, for better or for worse. We aren't really sure of some of their intentions. Some say it's for our own good, some say it's to help them by mixing our genes...and some ufologists have accused those behind the UFO and abduction phenomena of trickery and deceiving us all. Read with an open mind and a discerning critical mind as well. He does give a good run down and description of those types most reported by contactees and abductees. And yes, there are aliens who look like us out there. Strange, but true. And when you read his scientific theories for this, they kind of make some sense. Who knows what the real truth will end up being, if we ever learn it? Maybe John Keel was right and Earth really is the Disneyland of the Gods.

CURRENTLY READING

I recently watched the anime Kiss Him, Not Me, about an overweight high school fujoshi (a girl or woman who is a fan of manga or anime featuring gay male love stories) who becomes sick and loses a lot of weight, and when she goes back to high school, about four of her male classmates (and one female) develop crushes on her and compete to win her heart. It was so fun and silly, but there was only one season...and goddess knows when there will be more, so I started reading it. I'm almost done with the first book. I'll find out who wins her heart no matter what!  I may finish Volume 1 before the year is over, so I will post it here. The mangaka, Junko, is actually a popular yaoi/BL manga artist in Japan. I've read a few of her works. 

All my other books that I'm reading currently for research and whatnot I'll post in my 2022 Reading Goals post, coming soon!
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2021 Accomplishments: Life, Research, Writing, Self-Publishing, Etcetera...

12/20/2021

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Sometimes, it doesn't feel like I've done all that much this year. But then I started making a list of all the things that I have done, all the little ups that countered the downs and made 2021 a pretty dog gone good year for me, all in all. 

Here's the best things that happened, or that I accomplished, this past year:

  1. Put together an e-book of twenty-four short speculative fiction stories and poems that I've had published in magazines and anthologies. The book will be titled Four and Twenty Blackbirds, which has to do with one of the stories in the book, as well as the number of tales and rhymes. 
  2. Wrote an amazing number of short poems in February of 2021 for the short poetry challenge that I participate in every year, the Post-It Note Poetry Challenge. I wrote well over 100 haiku, senryu, and tanka in February as well as other types of short poems, and I'm still writing them, though not quite at that pace. 2021 has been my best year for writing poetry so far. 
  3. In November, I put together another e-book containing many of the haiku, senryu, and other short poems that I wrote in February 2021 (and before and after) titled after my online poetry website little paper parasols. 
  4. I began planning three other e-books (not sure if all of these will play out, but hoping some do): 
    1. one of speculative stories and 
    2. one of speculative fiction poetry (both published and unpublished) and
    3. another of short poems only about Florida nature, tentatively titled "Florida Swamplillies: Haiku & Short Poetry About the Sunshine State" or "Lillies from the Swamp." Something like that. It will include some, but not all of the poems from the other previously mentioned short poetry e-book.
    4. I've got an idea for a 4th poetry book on dark poetry, but as of now it's just an idea...no poems written for it yet.
  5. I began planning my novel/novella about Sasquatch. Yes, I'm writing a book about Bigfoot. It's currently in the research/planning process. Parts of it will spill over into another fiction project I'm planning about aliens.
  6. I've lost a lot of weight this year. Over 30 pounds. Part of it is from hiking in the Florida woods as part of my research for So Lonesome I Could Cry (see above). Another part of it is from a diet pills and diet my nurse has me on. But it's working. 
  7. I managed to sell another story and poem or two, but I also started a blog to write about weird stuff and anime but I haven't been writing in it much due to all the research and planning and creating e-books. 
  8. I started an account on Stash and am managing to invest a little. It's up one day, down the next. That's the market right now, but Stash lets you do it a little at a time. I have a personal and retirement account that I handle, and a smart account that I throw some money into and Stash's people invest for me. I try not to invest in crappy companies that are bad for the environment or are shitty to indigenous peoples or their employees. 
  9. I've been saving money for two years now in my banking accounts and have a bit stacked up. I'm going to invest a little of it in 2022, but I'm also going to keep saving. Ever seen those memes about saving money by taking some out of your pay and doubling it every week? Well, I created a couple of those tailored for people like me who get paid bi-weekly. It's worked, like I've said. With me investing in Stash, I may do a lower amount  of bi-weekly deposits in 2022 than I did this year. 
  10. I've been taking real, honest to goodness vacations instead of stay-cations. Hiking and looking for the Big Guy, yes, and I've got two big trips planned with my partner in 2022. Myakka River State Park (squatching for three-four days) and Fanning Springs, the latter more for a weekend swimming getaway for Val and for us both to see the Suwannee River and a little bit of the Nature Coast State Trail. In 2021, we went to Lake Wales, saw some real Florida mountains (more like hills really, but pretty big ones!) and we went to Bok Tower. Someone saw some gnomes there in the fifties, but there doesn't seem to be any there now. (This is a real cryptid historical account of these gnomes in Eerie Florida by Mark Muncy). 
  11. A tiny flash story of mine was given an Honorable Mention award in a popular yearly fiction contest. I've been writing a 300-word story for Queer Sci-Fi's yearly anthology contest since I heard about it in 2018. In 2021 my story "To Have and to Hold and to Hold and to Hold" (a tiny tale that envisions the great great  great grand-relative of Cthulhu--xe was strictly a female but got a male mating organ surgically implanted so xe could reproduce--going to a dating convention to find xemself some wives) was given the accolade of Honorable Mention, along with a handful of other great stories. Perhaps someday, I'll win one of the big prizes in the contest. It's always a worthy challenge trying to write a 300 word story that makes sense to readers.
  12. My poem "Star Trip(tych)." was nominated for a Rhysling Award with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. It was originally published at the end of 2020 in Issue 2 of the magazine Speculative North. The poem was then reprinted in The 2021 Rhysling Award Anthology. Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. 

I haven't sold as many stories or poems this year. Mainly because I'm concentrating on planning and publishing longer works. I did sell a couple of small speculative poems in 2021 that will be published in 2022, in Scifaiku magazine, but that will be for me to write about in next year's post. I will probably make a goal of writing and submitting a few short stories and poems in 2022. Or not. I'm gonna play it as she lays, as they say. And 2022 will likely hold a crap ton of research for me. I'll be writing about that in my post on 2022 Reading Goals.

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Two New Poems to be Published in Scifaikufest & a Publication that Fell Through & a New Story in the Works

9/13/2021

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Whew! That's one helluva post title. Let's take it one step at a time...

I recently submitted about 5 new short poems to Scifaikufest. They've published some of my little bitty poems in the past. Out of the ones I sent, they accepted "ode to mars" and "future california; death comes to silicon valley" for publication in their November 2022 issue. That's generally how long it takes to see a your work published by them. It's a popular zine for short science fiction and fantasy poets, so they fill up issues quickly and move on to the next...and then the next...etc. 

"ode to mars" is a 7-7-7 poem, a poetry form I invented. "future california: death comes to silicon valley" is in another poetry form I invented, the octain. 

The 7-7-7 form came about when I was first trying to write haiku, a form that is strict in syllable count and topic. It's three lines, generally, with the syllable count for each line being 5-7-5. In the beginning, it would frustrate me to not be able to make those exact syllable counts, so I ended up with a lot of poems that were not perfect in form. I began to notice that a few of them had line counts of 7-7-7, or seven syllables each line. I thought instead of that being a bad thing, to turn it into a good thing, since seven is viewed as a lucky number by some folks. So, my 7-7-7 poetry form was born. I've since stopped giving so much of a shit about my syllable counts for haiku and senryu (haiku's little sister that's about human stuff instead of about nature stuff, like haiku are supposed to be). I now call my uneven haiku and senryu "rogues" and leave it at that. I've even written a "reverse" haiku or two, where the syllable counts are 7-5-7. Whatever. Poetry should be fun, Basho! 

The octain is a form I set out to create. I wanted to do something strict in syllable count, with a volta (a change in the tone of the poem around the middle of a poem), and one based on mathematics, sort of like the fibonacci poem. So you could say my octain form was born from the fibonacci. I decided the poem should be eight lines. The first line would be the subject of the poem and the last line would be the opposite of the subject. The mathematical syllabic scheme would be based in multiplication for the first 4 lines, then division for the last 4. Example. If the first line has two-syllables, the second line would have four, the third six, the fourth eight. Then around the fifth line is where the "volta" or change in tone should occur, leading the reader to the conclusion, the opposite of what we started with, and counting down in syllables again. The fifth line will repeat eight syllables, then the countdown to the final line which will have two syllables. So the syllablic scheme for a poem that starts with two syllables would be 2-4-6-8-8-6-4-2. I am very rigid in this form. This works best when you keep the first line syllable count to under 3. I've done 4, but it's hard. Very hard. See an example of one of my first octain's below, "the open and close."

That's my news on that. I'll publish the article I wrote on the octain in my upcoming poetry e-book. 

Now for the not-so good news. I blogged in December 2020 that I was going to have three poems published in March or so of 2021 with a Pakastani publisher Paper Djinn Press in an anthology called Lyric. Alas, March 2021 came and went. As did the following months until now. We got a email that they were behind, but then the information stopped. About a week ago, I got an email from the American editor who said he had lost touch with the publishers as well, and they might have gone belly up as they were having financial woes. Hey, it's happened to more than one good independent publisher in the wake of Covid. So, I will be trying to put my poems "Red," "under the robotic umbrella in the rain," and Musical Thought Drones Are Here to Assassinate You Again Today" back out on the market again soon. 

I also have a new short thing in the works. It's likely to be longer than a short story, but not quite a novel. It's a story about what happens to government workers when they've gone too far afoul of the company, and the gov just can't kill them (they may need information from them later). It's called "So Lonesome I Could Cry" and I'm digging into the research on it now, which involves watching a lot of weird TV shows made by a production company called Small Town Monsters and reading a lot of weird books and websites, and listening to a lot of podcasts involving high strangeness of all kinds, including the podcast by SMT.  So, needless to say, the "woo" in me is having a lot of fun! 

​Other than these things, I'm working on editing for others and myself. For myself, I'm working on finishing up my first collection of published speculative fiction and poetry, called Four & Twenty Blackbirds. I've also started to put together a collection of short poetry to publish in an e-book, I'll begin that project soon too.

Well, that's me all caught up now. 
the open and close (an octain)

begin 

a breath to start
a going forward stance
moment of something new and great
nevertheless succumbs to fate
missteps halting the dance
stopping the heart
ending

~m.x. kelly, 2018
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Planning a Poetry Book for November Scrivener Project

8/30/2021

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As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I was considering uploading another Scrivener e-book project for November to (half-ass) engage in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It's been a couple of years since I've done it and I miss the camaraderie. I want to connect with old friends there and cheer them on this year. 

I debated on uploading another speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, and horror) collection of published and unpublished stories and poems (one that collects mostly some of my very early stuff--and some newer stuff--from the days when I was a naive forty-year old writer who didn't know what a vanity press was). Despite this, I was proud of being newly published and these stories weren't that terrible at all, in fact, a few of them have been republished over the years, in more savory and paying markets. 

I also considered that my literary poetry doesn't get much attention at all, and I don't really try to publish it (I tried early on to get into literary magazines, and it's very competitive, so I never made very many waves there). I joined groups to get better at writing poetry, and one of them was Post-it-Note-Poetry group on Facebook, or PiNP for short. Each February for the past several years, we post our post it note poems...short poems in screen shots and encourage one another in our efforts to become better poets. This led to me searching Pixabay and Pexels for images to use with  my poetry...something I learned from my senior university professor, Dr. Trey Conner, is called multimodal poetry. I took his course in my last semester of my Bachelors of English program at University of South Florida-St. Petersburg and made that years' Post-it-Note-Poetry my first project where I used images consistently for every poem and wrote a poem every day. I posted them both to Facebook and our course Wiki page. Below is one of the poems from that year (2015), the first year I managed to write a PiNP every single day. I was as proud of that accomplishment as I was for graduating that spring Summa Cum Laude. Were they all good poems? Hell, no! Some were terrible. But I got over my fear of putting them out there for not one...but two...two audiences. Some of them, and some of my earlier and later multimodal poems are now out there for the world to see, with my online chapbook little paper parasols. 

What does all this PiNP shit have to do with NaNoWriMo? 

Patience, my young grasshoppers!

This past year, 2021's Post it Note Poetry was another gangbuster year for me. In fact, I blew 2015's year out of the damn water. I decided this year to focus on very short forms. Haiku, senryu (haiku that are not nature/season related), tanka, etc. I ended up writing over 130 poems in 28 days! 

Some of them are very good. Quite a few of them. And, unfortunately, not all of them could be made into multimodal poems for PiNP that year. So, they are just sitting in a Google Doc file. Getting added to, every now and then, because even though the flow of words has stemmed some, I still get a day or two once in awhile where something comes to me. The rush of words will hit me like a tsunami again and I have to write. And now, I'm trying to write a new poem every day. I don't know if I can...and I don't push it.  

So...after much thinking, I decided my NaNoWrimo project is going to be a book of recent short-form poetry...some of the PiNp stuff, and some of the stuff that never got a chance to be seen, and even some of the new stuff I've written since. I don't have a title for it yet, I don't know what poems I'm going to use for it, and I don't know how many... I have started a book project for it in Scrivener (novel writing application) and begun to arrange it a little bit. The only thing, I do know is that with the exception of some poems I wrote this past year called SHS (Short Horror Stories, actually poems that are horror poems--channeled a bit of EAP as well as William Carlos Williams this year) there won't be any other speculative poetry in it. 

Because this is all stuff that I have already written, it would not be fair of me to treat it as a regular NaNoWriMo, where I post daily or weekly word counts to the NaNo website in the competition (with others and one's self) to complete the month with a 50,000 word novel. I am going to sign up so I can be a cheerleader for any of my writer friends who are participating and so I can get some tips on advanced usage of the novel writing and book formatting (paperback and e-book, but mostly for e-book) software apps Scrivener and perhaps Vellum. Vellum is a very expensive but easy to use (so I've been told) book layout/publishing program. Considering that it may be worth my while to invest in it. Scrivener's "compile" feature to create e-books (I haven't yet used it to create a paperback book for Create Space or any other paperback publishing venue yet) is a right royal pain in the ass. But it is super for planning your books, laying them out, and even storing your research, and cover images. Not to mention writing the actual book, which is really what Scrivener is for. I also use Scrivener to write some longer short stories. 

So, now that I have that settled in my mind, I need to figure out which poems out of all my short ones I will publish in the book...then where I will place them. 

Working out the kinks will be the tricky part, but at least I've my mind made up and got a start on the project for my first e-book of literary short poetry. 

November, here I come!
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Do You penzu? I do...

8/28/2021

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I have about twenty or so of those paper journals, like the one shown above, lying about...some do get written in when I'm feeling like taking a pencil or pen up in my hands. 

But most of my journaling is done in the cloud these days. And creative writing note-taking...and story planning. And poetry writing. And private blogging/cathartic writing. 

I was doing a lot of it on Google Docs until I read that Google like probably can read everything I write and maybe share my shit against my will with people I don't want to read it. Not fucking cool, Google. 

So I searched on my Safari (totally safe Mac browser...as far as I know) for a private way to get my thoughts on the screen and into a space...before I share them in any other spaces (if I choose to do so). 

I found penzu...the totally private and secure online web journalling experience. 

The basic one journal with basic bells and whistles is free. But you can pay just a little bit more and get lots more features, including unlimited number of journals, covers and page and pad images you can change, extra cool fonts, etc. For me, it was worth it to pay for the PRO+ version, butt the free or regular PRO version will probably do for most. PRO+ wasn't that much more expensive than PRO and it has extra level encryption. (Even though I'm saving up for something else I might need later on that's kind of expensive but as a writer who wants to self publish, I will probably need eventually and I'm planning on taking my blogs to the pro level as well). 

​Below is a look at my Home screen with all my journals (so far)...

The penzu PRO+ Home screen layout

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The one I've worked most recently in, Writing Projects, is positioned top left and largest on the screen. The others are around in, clockwise rotation order according to when I last worked in them. I have used my own images for the covers of each. They look pretty cool don't they? 

I'm not suggesting you buy the PRO or PRO+ version. I happened to get it when it was on a deal where they threw in another year for half  off, so it was a good deal. You can add images and tags to your posts just like a blog and you can also privately share links to it with people...if you want to do that. 

I chose to do PRO because my first journal I made in there, 'wandering starseed,' is where I'm pre-writing some of the more sensitive personal posts of my dealings with weird phenomenon that I normally post on my other blog... "reo_k's weirdworldview" but these are really sensitive posts and will not get posted to the main blog, but to private content pages of that blog once I have that part of the blog up and running. For discreet and special eyes only.

The page layout is simple to use and you can also time-stamp your entries if you want to keep track of when you started writing them. That's helpful for me...lets me know when I'm taking too long on something and need to get my ass in gear. 

​Below is a view of the writing area layout:
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It looks pretty much like any other blogging app but there are some extra cool features. That light bulb in the upper right? If you are stuck for something to write, in total writer's block hell, you can click on that for prompts. How awesome is that? And everything is100% private, unless you choose to share it with someone. 
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penzu app for private journaling. Free, PRO for $19.99 per year and PRO+ for $49.99 per year. Sometimes they have sales for an extra year at half off. Worth checking out if you can afford it. See more at https://penzu.com .

File under..."Cool Tools for Writers, Bloggers, and Journal-Keepers". 
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What Will Be My NaNoWriMo Project?

8/27/2021

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I mean, if I even have time for it. 

I am really busy editing OWMs. Other Writer's Manuscripts. I have several projects in Scrivener—I've started to create books of some previously published short stories, flash fiction, micro fiction, drabbles, and poetry. I am working on getting my first one out the door and onto Amazon.com where I hope to make a little penny or two. 

Before I do, I need to completely overhaul (this) my author website. It's a total mess. I don't know what I was thinking putting that thing together the first time. It was basically the first time I'd messed with the Weebly website creator...and you can tell. It's ugly as hell. I don't even have my complete published work's on it. 

So I'll do that a little bit at a time while I contemplate what I'm working in for November...if I'm working on anything new or not. I have a novel I need to finish (The Strange Blue Days of Dr. Fountainbrew) and a new one I've started planning (​​​​​​​Zen and the Art of Alien Diplomacy). I am also planning a story or novella about Bigfoot (tentatively titled ​​​​​​​So Lonesome I Could Cry). I have a Penzu started on Lonesome with some clippings of research and ideas. I have most of my research going on for the new novel in Scrivener (which is where I do almost all novel work). 

If I do any uploading of published works to a new Scrivener e-book project (either short unpublished poetry or published speculative fiction/poetry, I haven't decided yet) I won't do a "typical" NaNo. I won't post Word Count updates and such. I mean...it's really not fair since I've already written all the stuff I'm loading into Scrivener, and NaNo is really for new words to count. I will log into it and and  wave my pompoms for my fellow writers on their projects and post my updates on Write Track (writetrack.davidsgale.com) and to SMS. 

I don't anticipate having much time to do anything more than planning for new stuff at the moment...so all of my new writing will take place after November. It can't be helped. I'm saving for my retirement, and I enjoy editing and will probably continue to do it, even when I retire...if I ever can retire. 

I'm more than likely just going to sign up for NaNo this year with a tentative cover for either my poetry book or my published fiction book and then cheer everyone else while I work on figuring out the kinks of getting Scrivener to compile a decent-looking .epub file for Amazon. It's really a brain-buster. I also need to sign up to be an Amazon author. That's an involved process as well. So my busy time will revolve around a lot of prep work and making the decision to either stick with Scrivener to compile/process my e-books for Amazon uploads, or invest in the pricey but easier-to-use with far more creative options book publishing software, Vellum. 

So lots to think about and lots to prepare. 

Haiku & short poems? Or another offering of previously published sci-fi, fantasy and horror? 

I have a little while yet to decide.
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Killer Spacesuits & Other Publishing News from 2020

12/30/2020

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It was a good year for getting published. I'm starting to crack some better-known magazine nuts. The best known of them is probably Bards & Sages Quarterly, which published my killer spacesuit micro-story "Fifty Percent of Smartsuits Fit You Perfectly" in their October 2020 issue.

Fairly new, but highly praised Speculative North published my little three-verse lament on light pollution called "Star Trip(tych)" in their second issue, in August. The issue was reviewed in Amazing Stories, by CSFFA hall-of-famer R Graeme Cameron. You can find the review here. He even had a word or two to say about my poem. **blush** I'm glad he got the point of it. 

Hirareth Publishing printed two of my poems, "Age of Oceans" and "
Marital Bliss: Robot Reboot" in the Summer 2020 issue of Illumen magazine; and another poem, "Fairy Wine," a creepy sonnet, in their June 2020 magazine ​The Fifth Di...Their editor, Tyree Campbell, was the first to ever accept one of my poems for print publication back in 2011. 

Lastly, my short 300-word micro-story A Little Sunshine and a Breath of Fresh Air ​was published in Queer Sci-Fi's annual micro fiction contest anthology Innovation in August 2020.

After a few years of fits and starts, mostly fits, I'm starting to get published at a better rate, and getting noticed by more notable magazines and publishers. I hope this is a good sign of things to come in 2021 and beyond. 
And I received an acceptance for this anthology, where 3 of my poems will appear. "Red," "under the robotic umbrella in the rain," and "Musical Thought Drones Are Here to Assassinate You Again Today" will be published in Lyric, ​a poetry anthology by Djinn Press, a Pakistani publisher.

​I've much to be hopeful for in the coming year. 
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