Accountability… Sometimes

Last June I had the great idea to post my progress on the last Monday of every month. I did it for July. As August approached, all this life happened and it threw me off the rails. By October I only posted three times in a month. So much for accountability and grand ideas. But, here’s to resilience.

November has always been my personal new year, so it’s a good time for me to renew and refresh myself and my projects. I’ve been doing a lot of simplifying and organizing in the house. We’ve been laying the ground work for some future plans.

It’s not the last Monday of the month but if I’ve learned anything in five decades it’s this: showing up to the party late and without a costume is better than not showing at all. So, here’s what I’ve been up to, roughly since August. I may have announced some of these already, so pardon my redundancies.

I had some work picked for some fun projects.

• My short story “Sticky Rice” will appear in When the Sirens Have Faded to be published by A Murder of Storytellers.
• My short story “Soft Deadline” is in Trickster’s Treats III published by Things in the Well. You can find that on Amazon here.
• I have 10 drabbles (my serial series) published in Guilty Pleasures and Other Dark Delights, also published by Things in the Well. You can find that book on Amazon here.
• My story “Cat Whiskers” will appear in the upcoming Christmas Lites IX. All proceeds go to benefit the NCADV to fight domestic violence. You can find out more about NCADV here.
• My poem “Dark Matters” won first place in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Associations poetry contest in the Dwarf Poem category. You can see it and all the winning poems here.
• I have a featured video on Go Indie Now’s Indie Writers Block Season 1. I answer five questions about writing. You can find that video on YouTube here.

I haven’t submitted much towards the end of the year because…
I have a monthly column in the Horror Writer Association newsletter called “Monster Marketing.” I’ve done a little nonfiction work for Evolving Magazine locally. We organized a monthly Open Mic event in conjunction with Mid-Continent Public Library. We are moving our Space and Time history display to a new library in December. I’m finishing up issue #135 while Mr. Smith finishes up the audio version of #134. Mr. Smith and I are earning our certificates in both oral and written storytelling in conjunction with Mid-Continent Public Library and Metropolitan Community College.

And whew… I think that just about catches me up on what we’ve been up to lately.