Category: Reading

Writing, Publishing, Editing and Life in 2022

12/30/2021

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gotten myself out in nature, I've lost weight, and I've begun putting together some e-books of previously published and unpublished stories and poetry.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:

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
Continue a little writing here on my back-burner novel (I'm almost done!):
1. The Strange Blue Days of Dr. Fountainbrew
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
Start prep work on the Florida-based short form poetry e-book:
1. Tentative Title: Swamplillies: Haiku & Short Poetry on Florida Nature & Life
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
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!

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:

I have a keen interest (personal and otherwise) in these subjects...
I am going to be writing fiction projects related to these subjects...
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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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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A Weird Reader's Book Review of "Best American Fantasy"

9/24/2018

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"A cabinet of dark wonders, and an important--no, a crucial--map of the richness and strangeness and startling range of the modern American short story."

~Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon's blurb on the front cover sums up this story collection well:

"A cabinet of dark wonders, and an important--no, a crucial--map of the richness and strangeness and startling range of the modern American short story."

Dark wonders, surreal and often terrifyingly handsome; beautifully quirky and so damn fun. This was my "bathroom book" for many months, but I can't recommend it as a bathroom book.The reason is that there are some long stories in here. But they ALL worth reading.

I recommend it for the bus or train, or for curling up on the sofa, or as a before bedtime read.

Here is a list of my favorite stories from the book:

A Hard Truth About Waste Management, by Sumanth Prabhaker
- Flushing your trash down the toilet will piss off whatever lives there. Bad idea.
The Whipping, by Julia Elliot
- Weird parents, weirder children, and mutant neighbors. A strange girl awaiting punishment narrates this oddity.
A Better Angel, by Chris Adrian
- Hauntingly beautiful.
Draco Compestris, by Sarah Monette
- Because dragon skeletons and strange children nobody sees (or maybe they just don't want to).
The Chinese Boy, by Ann Stapleton
- A Rear Window type story with a paralyzed man and his daughter who witness a bank teller's descent to attempted suicide, a shared madness of all three.
First Kisses from Beyond the Grave, by Nik Houser
- High school for the dead. But not the anime.
A Troop [Sic] of Baboons, by Tyler Smith
- Baboons finally gain sentience and what do they do? CHAOS THEATER. Well, that's what I call it.
Pieces of Scheherazade, by Nicole Kornher-Stace
- I love Nicole Kornher-Stace's work.Her book Archivist Wasp was one of my favorite books of 2017-2018. I finished reading it at the first of the year. Her contribution to this anthology is a retelling of the Thousand and One Nights story, with tattoos.
The Man Who Married a Tree, by Tony D'Souza
- I call this weird backwoods (quite literally) fiction. It made me think there should be a lumberpunk genre.
A Fable with Slips of White Paper, by Kevin Brockmeier
- Imagine going to a thrift store and buying the overcoat that used to belong to God. It's like that.
Lazy Taekos, by Geoffrey A. Landis
- Lazy Taekos is not so good with his hands, and he is lazy, but he has a trick and a riddle or two up his sleeve. Will it be enough to win him the princess?
Abraham Lincoln Has Been Shot, by Daniel Alarcon.
- An alternate history that imagines a modern era where Abraham Lincoln was president and still assassinated. Lived through the recollections and grief of his male lover as his current relationship is ending. Poignant and strange.

This is an older collection, published in 2007. It is edited by fantasy master Jeff VanderMeer and his wife, Ann VanderMeer.

I picked up a used copy of this book on Amazon for about five bucks, Unfortunately, there is no Kindle edition. It's well worth grabbing a used copy of this great weird as fuck little anthology for your bedside or commuter reading pleasure.

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RESOLVED! 2 for 1/2! Plus Upgrades

1/2/2017

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It feels good to be off to a great start writing in the new year.

And so far, two of my resolutions are checked off.

First, I wanted to write more blog posts, and although I did not specify and make any certain plans known in my original resoultion post, secretly I made a challenge to myself to write (and publish) a piece for three consecutive days. Today's post is the third.

I'm not sure I'll be able to continue writing daily posts once I start working both jobs again (and, Goddess help me, I'm considering trying to start freelancing in editing and proofreading as a third job). But the challenge I have set for myself is at least one per week.

The other resolved resolution was writing more creative fiction and poetry. My grandmother always said that whatever you do on New Year's Day, you will do for the rest of the year. So I worked on and completed a poem from my Priority WIP poem list (more on that in another post). I also started, but didn't finish, a new poem and some future blog posts.

Today, I will begin fulfilling another of my goals for the year. I will choose a book on writing and editng craft from the five I picked out from my collection of books on craft that I was either given or bought, but haven't yet read. Everyday, I plan to read a chapter or two from each of the five books. Today, I have chosen to read the first chapter of a book that has been on my shelf since shortly after I moved into my current apartment four years ago. Revision and Self-Editing is written by James Scott Bell and published by Writer's Digest Press. I think I got it for some ridiculously low price when I subscribed to Writer's Digest.

There are also some upgrades to my resolutions. I intend to seek out opportunities for beginning my editing and proofreading career. I hope to save enough money to be able to have my first paying issue of The Were-Travler (information, here). I am hoping to soon sign on to a monthly membership of the gym at the high-rise office building where my new office at the public media company will be located. I want to keep losing weight and feel better. I plan on a long long overdue visit at the dentist (as soon as I get some decent dental insurance) and do something about these awful broken and painful teeth of mine.

That's it, folks. Just a few excited lines of success in the first week of the new year. I am hoping to receive some long awaited news about some poetry and fiction submissions made in the past. A nice acceptance email would be a great harbinger of 2017. I would blog about that, for sure.

I hope your pursuits will all be successful as well.

Peace--

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New Year's Ressies for 2017

12/31/2016

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Happy End of 2016! Sayonara, you crap excuse of a year! Here’s my plan for the coming year:

I know I say this every damn year, but I really need to blog more. My last post was two months ago on October 3rd. That is unacceptable. I need to find things to say and freaking say them, on my web log. End of. This will be a priority. To blog weekly or every other week.
Read more. I had a reading goal of 100 books on Goodreads in 2016 and I fell well short of that goal. I hang my head in sorrowful shame. There are a few books I am determined to read this coming year, books that will strengthen me as a writer/poet, editor, proofreader, and publisher. I want to read a chapter a day (or as much as I can daily) of each of the following books of the craft:
1. The Editor’s Companion, by Steve Dunham
2. The Subversive Copy Editor, by Carol Fisher Saller
3. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, by Christopher Vogler
4. Revision and Self-Editing, by James Scott Bell
5. poemcrazy, by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge
  1. I will only schedule 5 craft-help books to read from daily, leaving the weekend free to pursue writing and reading fiction. I have some fiction reading goals as well:
  2. Finish:
    1. Archivist Wasp, by Nicole Kornher-Stace, and;
    2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
    3. Read the following fiction books:
      1. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
      2. Collected Stories, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
      3. Best American Fantasy, ed. by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer
      4. The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, ed. by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer
Live more, laugh more, worry less. Times will be difficult. We have an infantile idiot in charge of our country. We can protest, but we can also find joy in our every day experiences.
I’m going to pursue freelance work with a passion, while I continue to work both of my other jobs.
I’m going to write, write, write. I need to get some more fiction accomplished, so that I have something good to send grad schools.
Study for the GRE, take it, and pass the damn thing.
Keep on breathing. Keep on, keepin’ on. Very important, this one. Because when we stop, we die.

My wishes for you for 2017:

May you find joy when you look for it. And here’s a bit of interesting news, if you dig thinking about the Chinese zodiac as I do. The Year of the Fire Monkey (2016) was pretty shitty. The Year of the Fire Rooster (2017) may not be that much better. In 2018, though, we begin a new element cycle, with the year of the Earth Dog, so things could start turning around then. I hope. I don’t believe in these things, really, but I love thinking about them. It’s the creative Wood Snake in me. ;)

This is it, really. Going to continue to pursue better health, but not listing that as a goal because I’m doing it already and I’m going to continue.

Heiwa! Peace!

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What I'm Reading Right Now...

3/23/2016

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A little list of all the books I'm reading at the moment. I'm a reader who reads several things at once. My brain and gut will tell me what to read at any given moment. Here's what I'm indulging at this time:

Blood of Tyrants, Naomi Novik
- Number 8 in the Temeraire series, fantasy books about a dragon air force during the Napoleonic wars. Described by some critics as Patrick O'Brian meets Anne McCaffrey. A fair assessment.
The Seven Deadly Sins (Nanatsu no Tazai), Nakaba Suzuki
- LOVED the anime, now I'm reading the manga. Interesting take on Arthurian themes. I'm getting ready to end Volume 2 and begin Vol. 3.
Claymore, Norihiro Yagi
- Started reading this manga as part of my research on my Senior Capstone project for college. Part of my research was on strong women in speculative fiction. The Claymores, women warriors who battle demons called Yoma and who are half-yoma themselves fit the bill. I am currently reading Volume 20: Remains of the Dead Claws.
The Strange Library, Haruki Murakami
- The first book I read by Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, did not impress me much. But I have friends who recommend him all the time. I'd really like to read his Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World sometime, but for now, Overdrive e-book library had this one and since it is a mere 96 pages (his books are usually whoppers!) I feel like I can get through it rather quickly.
Don't Tell the Grown-Ups: Subversive Children's Literature, Alison Lurie
- I know I finished my Bachelors Degree and I'm just hanging around waiting to apply to graduate school, but I miss academic reading. I've taken an interest lately in the literature of revolt and thought this book was a good place to start. It deals with the subversive ideas within classic and modern children's literature.
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
- Started this book before my last semester at college. I'm halfway through it and keep meaning to start reading it again. One thing keeping me back is that I sense major feels are ahead.
The Best American Poetry 2015, edited by Sherman Alexie (Editor), David Lehman (Series Editor)
- I picked up this light tome of the best poems from last year at the library. As someone who sometimes writes poems, I wanted to read some of the best recent poems and poets.

I know this is a lot of books to be reading at one time, but I'm weird. I honestly love to read. All of the time.

What are you reading right now?

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Link Resource for 20 Best Women's Sci-Fi Short Stories Available Online

1/4/2016

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This is a crossover post from my Senior Portfolio class from last Fall 2015 semester. I am posting it here because I know a lot of my reader friends dig reading cool free stores online. Researching things like this is pretty much what my Senior Capstone was all about.

Source: Jones, Josh. "100 Great Sci-Fi Stories by Women Writers (Read 20 for Free Online)." Open Culture: The Best Free Cultural & Educational Media on the Web. N.p., 1 Aug. 2013. Web. 7 Oct. 2015.

Link: http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/the-100-best-sci-fi-stories-by-women-writers.html

The whole list of 100 best sci-fi stories by women can be found here: http://iansales.com/2013/07/10/the-list-100-great-science-fiction-stories-by-women/

Researching other resources for this project of planning a class in women's speculative fiction goes has been intense and educational for me. Research for this project goes beyond the standard critical journal articles on theory or analysis. Sometimes you have other ideas for how to view your audience.

Now, who is my audience, beyond the literature professors here at USFSP who will be viewing the course Google Site I created for the project and who I will be presenting for at the send of the semester? The answer is, of course, any future students who decide that want to cast their lot with me and spend a semester reading and discussing otherworldly, fantastic, and creepy books and stories. I know they will be college students. And as a college student myself, I know that many of them will be flat broke and working two-to-three part time jobs just to afford to sit in my classroom. Therefore, I have determined to make it one of my personal goals to make the course reading materials as cheap as possible, and you can't get any cheaper than free!

I just happened today to do a general Google search on "best women science fiction short stories" and the first result was the link posted above from a free educational blog. The article was posted by a gentleman, I'm going to assume he is a literature teacher based on the other articles he has posted to Open Culture (I found those by clicking on his byline link at the end of the article). The article contains information about a list compiled on another man in the field of science fiction. The original poster's page had a list of one-hundred of the best science fiction short stories written by women, along with a link to see where the stories could be found: anthology, collection, or online sources were given. Mr. Josh Jones took this list and narrowed it down to only those stories which could be read online for FREE. Mr. Jones' list is comprised of twenty stories that can be read online for free. Don't you just love the Internet? I do.

Mr. Jones' article was posted to Open Culture in August 2013, so there is the possibility that some of the links don't work anymore. I'm going to have to check them all, and if I use any of them they will have to be checked periodically to make sure they are still active. I know from the experience of being a student that there is nothing more frustrating than having reading assignments online and when you click the links to read them...ERROR! FILE NOT FOUND! Going to do my damnedest as a professor to avoid that scenario.

There are short stories on this list that I may add to the reading canon, namely: ‘The Cartographer Bees and the Anarchist Wasps’ by E Lily Yu, ‘Spider the Artist’ by Nnedi Okrafor, ‘Eros, Philia, Agape’ by Rachel Swirsky, ‘A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel’ by Yoon Ha Lee, and ‘The Lady Astronaut of Mars’ by Mary Robinette Kowal. Of the original one-hunded story list, five of them are on my canon already. I need to evaluate more of them.

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M. X. Kelly

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What I'm Reading Right Now...

Link Resource for 20 Best Women's Sci-Fi Short Stories Available Online

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