board of education

Birthday, Flowers, and the Mr. Bear Surprise

In Zoetrope, Mary Lynn Reed recently told of an inspiring ending to an old story. She dusted off some earlier work, sent it out again, and had it accepted. I’m exaggerating, but it was something dramatic like 10 years, 1000 submissions and boom! The piece ends up accepted at a great venue. You know where this is going…

I recently received a personal rejection from Vestal Review on a piece. I was ready to stash it, but after that post, I looked it over, tweaked it and sent it off to The Blueshift Journal. Three days later—on my birthday—I received an acceptance from them. That totally made up for having to attend a Board of Education Meeting later on that night. Even that went well! I was given a bag of Girl Scout cookies that I shared with the administrators when they gave their reports, there were no public comments, no executive session, and we were out of there BEFORE 9:00!

The next day arrived with a mystery. I, and other writers were mentioned in a Tweet by Mr. Bear regarding a show on Boston Free Radio. I pinged my niece, she knew nothing about it. I asked Mary; she didn’t know, so I found the station online (mind you I was misdirected with “download this” for over 40 minutes or I would have mentioned it on Facebook) just before 8 so I was able to listen to the whole show. The title was These are No Ordinary Gardens and you can listen to the podcast here. (Mine is the last piece, sandwiched between songs by The MaMas and the PaPas’ and The Cure. Ingrid Jendrzejewski, Jan Stinchcomb, Jolene Mcillwain, Marilyn Horn-Fahey, and Jennifer M. Donahue are the other authors, and Georgia Bellas is the DJ.) Let me tell you, that was the most amazing thing – to hear someone read my work! I have no idea how my flash came to Mr. Bear’s attention, but I’m so grateful! And that Jellyfish Review got a plug, too? Awesome!

The Monday birthday meant we went out for a nice lunch on Saturday. Shoe shopping and a trip to the bookstore were included, so it was a great day and on Monday, Husband brought me roses.

Spring felt like it was here; we even had the usual signs:

Now it looks like this:

Ah well…Another lovely problem, right? I have another that I’m off to solve. I don’t have any more flash to send out! I have to create more. I love my problems. I hope you appreciate yours, too. Thanks for stopping by!

*These are my Creekside reflections. Your experiences may vary.

Honey, I swear! The caviar was for research purposes only!

Yesterday was my turn to host the novel critique group. Spoiler alert: Early in Near Eden, New York, Pete brings caviar to Tara’s house to win over her cat. Anyways, at the previous novel critique meeting, Mary had said she hadn’t eaten caviar but thought it was salty and maybe the cat wouldn’t like it. Then, New Year’s Eve arrived and listening to NPR that morning, I heard Scott Simon interview Susan Stamberg. She described a dish called Caviar Pie. On the off chance they did, I asked a guy at Wegman’s if they sold caviar. They did, and some of it was reasonably priced.

Obviously, not hosting the Christmas shindig created a groundswell of decorating and celebratory angst that needed to be expressed and I’m happy Gina Detwiler and Mary Akers made the drive to put up with it.

My cat didn’t like the caviar cold, but cleaned the stick that held 10 or so fish eggs later that night, just before I left to attend SGI’s French Honor Society induction ceremony. Valerie Brown was making crepes after, but I was quite full by then. When I got home, I received a call from my friend/line editor in California. He wants me to stop querying until we go over the book at least one more time. I don’t want to, though. I probably will, but I’m going to be pouty about it. I think Near Eden, New York is good, and he agreed, but he wants it even closer to perfection. He also hates my query letter because it makes it sound too much like a lighthearted story. I tried to convince him it’s just a romance. He says it’s so much more. I love fights like this and am so grateful these are the problems I have.

And, oh yeah, it’s official, I was duly sworn in and it was on Facebook so it has to be true. I’m a Board of Education Member! Photo courtesy of Colleen Mahoney and the Springville Journal.

Thanks for stopping by!

*These are my Creekside Reflections; your experiences may vary.

New Year! New Printer! Clean Desk!

On the recommendation of my “ink guy” at Rapid Refill, I bought a new color printer/scanner on Monday. He’s the one that steered me to my black toner workhorse of a printer so I trust him. He pointed out that I’d spend roughly the same amount for new cartridges for my old printer and those aren’t refillable – and the one he suggested was on sale. I removed the Lexmark and cleaned the spot, then decided to clean that whole corner of my work area. That led to clearing off the desk. Since I was getting rid of the one printer, I cleaned the drawer with all the computer paperwork. And the next one down, and the middle, then another…

All of which is to say, this is what happens when I’m anxiously waiting to hear from beta readers:

I just got off the phone with Nina and her niggles and quibbles are easily fixable. I took six pages of notes, which sounds like a lot, but I doodle. I’m looking at adding seven sentences and adjusting seven more. Mere tweaks! Well, compared to full out rewriting…

Yesterday, I met with Kim Moritz, the superintendent of SGI and picked up my laptop, learned passwords, and found out when the agendas were available. Looks like I’m really doing this Board of Education gig; it’s still surprising to me that it happened at all.

Lake effect snow is piling up and I have no interest in going anywhere today, so I’m off to fix the quibbles, work on a flash for Jellyfish Review, and after dinner tonight, make stock because I do that now – make soup the old-fashioned way with no cans.

Thanks for stopping by!

*These are my Creekside Reflections, not yours. Your experience ought to vary.

Let’s wrap up this year already…

This is my last post for the year and — knock on wood — we get to the new one before yet another celebrity passes. Cohen, Bowie, Rickman, Prince, and Princess Leia all in one year is devastating! Sadly, there were even more…

I’ve ended up with a bit of a time buffer that I’ll be using to play catch-up-on-the-paperwork. Such a fun game! I made a decent dent in the filing of my writing over the weekend, have been winnowing the newspaper stack each night, but I’m dreading the receipt sorting/gathering tax paperwork part of the game. Yes, I know, it could be worse and I am grateful for the problems I have, but I still sometimes wish I had a secretary so I didn’t have to play one in real life.

Speaking of real life, I really was appointed to the Board of Education. Is that life imitating art or me getting suckered punched into a bureaucratic and political quagmire? Either way, it will be more experience to plunder for another story or two…

Writing wise, I only know I’m not getting my hopes up. When I finished Life and Crimes, I thought it was the best thing I’d ever written. Full requests from agents was so damned sweet and then, when they said no, it hurt. This book, tentatively called Near Eden, New York, is better written than that — in my opinion by a lot. What if it isn’t enough though? What if I need to write another book that surpasses this one in quality before I have a book published? It’s such a heartbreaking profession — not at all the way I imagined it would be when I started dreaming about being a best-selling author. I know I’ll get there because I’m not smart enough to quit, but in the interim, I think I’ll return to the Hot Pants office at Zoetrope and start churning out flash.

I stopped in there last night before I glanced at my flash file. I don’t have a lot left to send out. Again, I know, that is the best problem to have — getting so much accepted that I have nothing left to submit. I am grateful. So grateful and I would love to continue kvetching here, but that isn’t reducing the paper stack.

Thanks for stopping by!

*These are my Creekside reflections. Your experiences may vary.

Weather Dictation

In theory, I should be headed to Lockport for the novel critique group meeting at Mary’s house. The threat of 2-3 feet of lake effect snow negated that trip so I was able to get farther along in the Pete and Tara book. I’m so close to the end and I’m excited—in a tempered way. I’m trying desperately to not think about the next steps. I’ve been editing as I go, so that isn’t the problem, it’s the thought of another round of that fun game I call “Agent Hunt.” Hell, I’m still waiting on responses from the last round for the last book…

Prize for “First Christmas Card to Arrive” this year goes to a dear friend in Kentucky. Poor thing thinks she’s behind a letter to me. Sorry Natalie, that’s me. I’m the one who owes you two letters now. I’m sure I owe other people letters, too. I get caught up with writing and then assume that social media will fill in the gaps, but the people that I write to and write to me are often not on social media. I need to be better disciplined about such things. I think I’ve said that before. It sounds familiar somehow.

Remember to shop local! I stopped in at Herbs & Things last Saturday and found gifts for the few I’m buying for this year plus a gift for me at Kellie Shanley’s shop. I’m loving the scent diffuser I bought there—far more lovely and useful than a lava lamp.

All right, it’s short this time, but I do want to say that I am so ecstatic that the Journal of Compressed Creative Arts accepted “Meeting Notes”— one of the original Pete and Tara stories (which didn’t make it into the book but became the genesis for it). THANK YOU RANDALL BROWN!!!! In the funniest bit of irony, that story is set at a school board meeting and today, the questions that are going to be asked of the candidates at Monday’s board meeting arrived in my inbox this morning. I’m going to have to start writing historical fiction so things like this will stop occurring.

Thanks for stopping by!

*These are my Creekside Reflections; your experiences may vary.

Brief, rushed, short. You know, a normal cold and rainy Thursday afternoon sort of post

First, if you have a story with the theme of “Blink,” and it is under 3000 words, please send it to r.kv.r.y. I want to read it.

I start this post knowing I have to leave in a few minutes. I have a meeting with a potential candidate for the school board. Yes, I had been kicking around the idea of running myself, but the more I talked to people and read about the work that it entails, I didn’t see me fitting in the slot – at least not this year. So, the next best thing is supporting people who would be good at such things.

~~~

I’m back. The cherry stuffed French toast at Three Girl’s Café was wonderful, as well as our waitress Michelle, and the conversation.

I had a lovely birthday. Husband bought me these tulips that looked much better on Sunday. We went out for lunch and had a great time. If you were one of the many darling people who wished me a happy birthday, know that I appreciated that very much and I was delighted to have heard from you. I mean that.

I’ve been at a lot of meetings recently. On Monday, I was at Donna Hoke’s house where it was a thrill to see Gary Earl Ross again. I also saw Joy, a member of Playback, a troupe my mother-in-law founded. That meeting was informative and Donna’s commitment to playwrights is deep, caring and impressive. She’s hosting these meetings for six months as an experiment to see how it goes. Hopefully, I’ll work up my courage to send a play to the group by then.

Tuesday was SGI’s Board of Education meeting. I have far too many things to say about that, but I’ll not bore you with details – unless you call and ask.

From Mary Jo Hodge’s invitation, I have hooked up with Hamburg Writer’s Group. They meet in the Comfort Zone, which is a building my husband knows intimately since he’s worked there multiple times. We meet in the back room and they’re a lovely bunch.

Even though I had great intentions, I’m behind in my word count for Camp NaNo, so that’s where I’ll be, in my library, working on that thing, even though I just got out of data usage jail and would prefer to scroll and search for niggling little details, “new book” needs attention. All right, after I finish The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows. The recommendation was from Gina Detwiler. She has a new book out with Priscilla Shirer called The Prince Warriors. Yeah Gina!

Thanks for the read. Thanks for stopping by this page! Thank you for being you!

(*These are my creekside reflections. Your experiences should vary.)