Two quick fun updates for today: First, I just got word from the lovely folks at Fork Apple Press (publishers of The Core Review) that they’ve nominated my short story, “Gluten Breath” (sentient bread, toxic relationships to food, and bad breakups) for a Best of the Net Award! Very cool! This is my second nomination, so I’m dreadfully flattered, but also just pleased that the story resonated enough to be a favorite of theirs.
Second, I just got word that two of my zines–“Penpocalypse” and “The Oddscope Vol. 1”–have been accepted to the Biggest Little Zine Fair! This is a pop-up zine fair that travels around the LA area (like Recreation Coffee in Long Beach!) and features zines from all over the US (and possibly the world!). Mine will be at the Biggest Little Zine Holiday Fair at Recreation Coffee in Long Beach, CA on Sunday, November 16th. If you’re in the area, definitely go check it out!
If you’re not going to be in the Long Beach area around that time, but still want to check out some zines, feel free to pop over to my Ko-fi shop, where I have both “Penpocalypse” and the brand-new “Aloe Gerald” zine for sale!
In utterly un-writing related news, I took two art classes at the fabulous Hollis Artspace this past week, which have been absolutely fantastic. The first was an alla prima oil painting class (alla prima means wet-on-wet, vs. painting one layer over a dry layer–alla prima is often used for single-sitting outdoor painting (also called plein-air painting)) and the second was a class on felting squirrels! (My squiggle may have turned out looking a bit like a rat, rather than a squirrel, but he’s still pretty cute!)
The painting class got my brain painting-wired again, and the other day, while Andy and I watched The Ruling Class (a dark comedy starring Peter O’Toole, one of our favorite actors), I snapped a few photos of O’Toole smoking a cigar and decided to turn it into a mini-series of smol paintings to practice tonality and underpainting. I also threw together a tonal painting of my kitchen sink filled with dishes, because I enjoy torturing myself.
My other obsession at the moment is pink eraser art printing. I just got my copy of Serena Rios McRae’s book, and it’s so incredibly inspiring, I’m dying to get started! I got myself a little speedball carver and some pink erasers and I’m going to play around and see what happens. I think prints like these could be super cool for making a zine of “Tower’s End” so we’ll see!
Turned in one short story (hopefully it’ll meet with approval, but who knows-!), working on wrapping up some proof-reading for another project, and I’m hoping to start powering through the novel rewrite (now tentatively titled Love Me to the Bone) on Friday! I’m trying something a little new with the noveling this time: I’m trying to create my own NANO-style push to get the rough draft done as fast as possible (in this case, by the end of November) so that I can better compartmentalize my desire to switch between long and short form. We’ll see if it works!
I’ve also got a short story that needs one final pass before I get it submitted (I’m making progress on my 50 submissions/yr goal, though I’ve got some ways to go yet), and I’ve got another that if I have time I’ll try to get out in the next month or so, but those are somewhat lower priority than the novel drafting.
Also in fun news, my dear friend poet Katherine Quevedo just won an Elgin award for her beautiful poetry collection, The Inca Weaver’s Tales! It’s only $10.00 from Sword & Kettle Press, and you can find out more about what Katherine’s up to (and attend one of her readings if you can, because she’s a wonderful performer!) on her website, here.
That’s all for this update! If you’d like to see what I’m up to between posts, I’m fairly regular on Instagram (for now, at least–I keep threatening to quit the internet, aside from here, of course), and I’m posting a bit more on my Ko-fi shop for fun! Feel like funding my new pink eraser art obsession? Donate to my art fund!