A Bit of Life, A Bit of News

 

It's been very cold here in Minnesota for the past several weeks. I guess, it's all very normal, but all this "April showers bring May flowers" stuff is getting rather dreary. I swear I have not seen the sun in weeks.

Even my cat, Willow, has returned to her winter perch on the radiator.

It's hard to believe it's almost May, honestly. I have a few flowers poking up bravely in my garden, though I was happy to see that some of the trillium that I planted last year have made an appearance. 

The garden this is in still has its leaf cover because it's intended to be a "woodland" garden, aka I was lazy and haven't bagged them up yet. 

Speaking of lazy, I need to decide what to do for my next writing class at the Loft. I've got until the end of May to get in a proposal, but I'm considering proposing another asynchronous class as well as a hybrid one (hybrid, at the Loft, appears to mean: via Zoom unless things change.) I had an extremely successful master class this last semester and I'm taking the summer off to pack my only child off to university in Connecticut.  So these potential classes have a chance at being in-person, since they begin in the fall.

Either way, I need to figure out what aspect of writing. They do themes for their catalog every semester, and this upcoming on is: Outside My Window.  

Many of us felt our worlds shrink a bit during the last year as vacations were cancelled, offices closed, and events postponed. But we also found that some of the most powerful stories are the ones right in our backyards. Writing from where we are can tell us a lot about ourselves, our neighbors, and the world around us.

When we look through a window, we see the world from a unique perspective. What story can only we tell? How might someone looking through another window see it? What are we missing when we can only see a bit of the world through a pane of glass? And in a time when many of us are isolated from each other, how do we bring all of these perspectives together?

I don't HAVE to propose a class that fits this description/vibe, but you do get listed on the special splash pages, if you do.  I mean, an obvious connection I can make is to a spaceship's viewport, but I will have to ponder this a bit.

In other news, I signed the contract for my short story "Sincerely Yours" which will be coming out in The Reinvented Heart Anthology edited by Jennifer Brozek and Cat Rambo coming February 2022 from Arc Manor Press.  So, that continues to be exciting. If you haven't checked out the cover reveal I did of that anthology, you really should. https://www.patreon.com/posts/reinvented-heart-49701907  (This takes you to my Patreon, but this post is open and free to the public.) 

Meanwhile, I continue to work on both my lesbians in space novella and, of course, Alex Connor #3.  Although with the later, I really need to move out of the plotting stage and into the WORDS ON PAGE part or I won't make my deadline! (Which is the end of the year.)

Anyway.

Here's hoping for sunnier days soon.