Tag Archives: Stamps Vamps and Tramps

Working Vacation

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I took a short break from work to focus on a novel-length project… I suppose one would call that a novel, but I’m still too small and nervous to own the word. Sometimes I think I always will be.

While I was in the cave, Stamps Vamps and Tramps came out. The editor described my story as “eerie” in her introduction, and I don’t think I’ve been more pleased with a single word in all my life, but the best part was reading the other stories in the anthology. It’s a wonderful collection to be a part of. I want to line up all the authors and high five them. Double fives for editor Shannon Robinson. It feels good to be there.

I also got an email from the editor of Literary Orphans, asking for permission to reprint my story Ahuizotle Learns to Fish (or as my mom calls it: The girl who’s name I can’t pronounce and fishing) in a best of anthology later this year. Which is pretty wonderful. Literary Orphans has a brillo style and the print anthology is going to continue that aesthetic.

And I now have an author profile on Goodreads, which, although I’ve been in print (actual print, not high school journals) since 2009, feels like I’ve got something to back my claim to that moniker: Writer.

Ooo that felt spooky. Maybe I’ll leave of the capitals. writer. That feels better.

In my own little writing world, things are looking up. Outside of the office, my strange shaped, green walled, under-staired clutter sanctum, life has been rough. But there are always patches of rough. I’m getting older, which means the people I know get older, too. Deaths happen. And we go on. And write. And send in submissions until the pleasant and encouraging rejection letters turn into acceptance.

Or knit. Passions and mad-talents make life worth living. I’ll finish a novel. Soon. Maybe I’ll write that pattern for the Frozen-inspired mittens. Right now the only pattern is in the gloves I’ve already made, and reverse engineering isn’t for everyone. Where was I going with this? Right. Novel.

Oh, and Ahuizotle is pronounced Ah-WHEE-zot’l. I think.

The Monster at the end of this Post

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I feel like I always have to make a little disclaimer for fiction. All of it. “No, I’ve never even attempted to kill anyone, please do not read that into my horror stories.” There is this inherent want for an audience to attach the story to its author in a deeper capacity than “I wrote this.” Of course, I attach more meaning than “I wrote this”, I am not immune to wondering if secretly J. K. Rowling attended wizard school. And yes, the characters and actions stem from somewhere, but never so close to the surface that it can be pulled out by someone who does not already know the author. But its like we want that magic of fiction to bleed into its author… A while ago I read an interview with Janelle Monae (she’s a singer/musician who worked with Of Montreal and so I Iooked her up and she does concept albums around the idea of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. They’re fun!!) and the interviewer was going on with the little preamble: where they are at the time of the interview, what Monae was wearing (always a tuxedo, it doesn’t need to be stated) and within the preamble the author mentioned how like an android Monae was during the interview. I found that funny, because it would seem to me that Monae was probably just patiently answering questions and because this interviewer had already listened to her albums (monae sings the part of an android, and is a total sci fi nerd) she was expecting something otherworldly and hinged it on Monae’s normal behavior. Which happens! We do this! It takes a little work to remember that we do this.

All that being said, I’ve written a short story about an evil vampire and it’s going to be published by Evil Girlfriend Media in an upcoming anthology called Stamps Vamps and Tramps. Check out their website at http://www.evilgirlfriendmedia.com I’ll put up more information as I receive it. Exciting stuff!

(Dear friends and family, the story is brutal and filled with gore, but I am no closer to being a serial killer than Beatrix Potter is to being a rabbit.)