Other People’s Clothing

Happy leap-year weekend, everyone! I hope the end of February is good wherever you are.

In Atlanta, we’ve got America’s best marathon runners racing tomorrow in the Olympic marathon trials, and I’m psyched to go cheer on some of my favorite athletes. I’ve also been watching Netflix’s “Love is Blind,” which is eye-bleedingly trashy and delightful, and ordering face masks on Amazon so I can ward off COVID-19.

In even more exciting news, the underwear story is out at Maudlin House! It’s wacky, weird, and fun, if I do say so myself. I hope you enjoy it!

 

Learning to Count

Hey, y’all!

It’s February, which can be a kind of cold, dreary time, but so far we’ve had lots of Valentine’s Day candy, snow in Atlanta, and I’ve got two stories coming out! I hope your February is at least as good.

“Counting to Sixty” came out today in the Eckleburg Review. Issue 21 (filled with stories that are guaranteed to make you laugh out loud while you also feel a little nostalgic/heartsick/bruised) is available for $5 with the coupon code “ContributorXO!” (If you’re looking for a hard copy because you’re old school like that, they’ll be available on March 1.)

Expect another email from me in a week or two. Maudlin House is publishing a crazy little story featuring an underwear thief. I honestly don’t know what to say about it, except that you’ll be able to read it yourself.

I hope you’re finishing the last of your Valentine’s Day chocolate, because the Easter Bunny is coming with more!

Dog Days

Hey y’all,

Happy summer, happy July, and happy upcoming day of fireworks!

Quick two things I’d like to share with you:

1. TIMBER, a great literary journal from CU Boulder, just came out with their summer issue, including my short essay “Guess Why the Dog is Crazy.” It’s about my struggle to understand why people have kids, and I feel a bit peculiar that this story was published a month from when I’m supposed to become an aunt to two more little rascals. PROTIP: The format of their website on my computer is a little weird, so I had to fullscreen my window. Thank you, Roz, for your help on this one. 🙂
2. Down East, a magazine in Maine, recently published Kathryn Miles’s “Homeward Bound” about how dogs are rescued from overpopulated kill shelters in southern states like Georgia and transported to northern states where adoptable dogs are much harder to find. The photos accompanying the article are stunning—Cait Bourgault took the photo below, not me.

Be good, everybody!

Beach Reads and Lost Pencils

School’s out! We made it! Congrats to all students, parents, and other school-affiliated creatures!

Now that we’re done for the year, it’s time to lay in the sun, heal up our stitches, and sink our teeth into something delicious. (Yup, Barkley’s got about ten more days of cone left from a cut by something vicious in the backyard.)

1. The Emerson Review ran a short story of mine called “Pencil Thief” in their latest issue! The first story in the magazine features an armadillo that I can’t get out of my head, and there’s an amazing poem about eating disorders that is to be read forward and then in reverse. It’s all free online — Check it out!
2. If you’re craving something longer, something with aliens, and something you’ll be thinking about for a while, check out Cadwell Turnbull’s The Lesson. The novel comes out in mid-June, and features aliens who settle over the US Virgin Islands. I think one of the things Cadwell does best in his writing is to treat all characters as fully realized. Every single person (or alien) that he develops has a lifetime’s worth of problems, and fears, and dreams, and each character’s complexities drive tension and plot. I tried to learn from his attention to character while we were at NC State, and am still learning. (Yes, we attended NC State at the same time. No, I don’t make any $ in talking about him.)
3. Last but certainly not least, THANK YOU everyone who looked into my poetry chapbook! We made it into the top 10% of books sold on Amazon!

Enjoy the beginning of summertime, everybody, and happy reading!

Reading Weekend & Being Brave

Hey y’all,

Happy (finally) springtime! It’s stopped being forever rainy and cold in Georgia, and I hope you’re getting some sunshine too.

I’ve been working sporadically for the past year or so on a poetry chapbook, and I corralled my courage and decided to make it known to the world. It’s called “Atlanta Millennium,” and it’s about Atlanta, love, dogs, running, depression, and trying to be a decent human in the 2000s. If you like words or any of those things, or you need a friend in book form, you might check it out. The digital version is available for $2.99 on Amazon, and you can read it for free if you’ve got KindleUnlimited. If that’s going to break the bank but you really want to read it and you’ll review it or recommend it to some friends, just let me know and I’ll try to get you a copy.

For a much shorter read (of exactly 50 words), you should check out Chip Houser’s “Beetle in her Pocket.” Chip’s work is borderline horror, and you may never look at a pageant the same way.

Happy springtime reading, everybody!