Living the Fictional Dream

Hello, blog readers.

Wondering where I’ve been these past few weeks? Well, it’s been a crazy time, let me just say. I don’t normally talk about a lot of non-writing stuff on this blog, but I’ll make an exception today.

A little over a week ago, my little girl, Summerlyn Anne, was born. She came 7 weeks early, which was a big surprise and not exactly what my husband and I had planned for. But she is apparently headstrong (she gets that from her daddy) and decided that she couldn’t wait to join the world any longer.

Summerlyn was born at 4 lbs., 3 oz., and 17 inches. Because she was a preemie, she has been in the NICU since she was born, but she is doing really well. She never needed oxygen and she got off the breathing tubes after just a couple of days. She’s now in an open-air crib, as well, and maintaining her own temperature. Once she learns to take all her feedings on her own, we’ll be able to bring our little darling home. Until then, life is being lived crazily between working frantically at home to finish all the stuff we thought we had more time to do (like the nursery) and spending time with her at the NICU.

I would share a picture, but I’ll need my husband’s help on that. I’m not great with the linking and the HTML.

I hope all my friends out in the blog-o-sphere are doing well, and I promise I’ll start regular blog updates again once the world slows down a little and I have time to get back to things that are writing-related. Right now, it’s all Summer all the time, and I can’t wait until my little girl comes home!

It’s a new day, so you must be looking for more short fiction to read, right?

First off, a little anticipation. Every Day Fiction recently released it’s table of contents for July, and I’m very excited by the story that will be appearing on July 12th — “The Only Thing Left to Do” by my friend J.P. Tioga. I critted this piece for her, and it’s a great bit of flash. I know you’ll all enjoy it!

While I was at EDF this morning, I read today’s story of the day, “Recipe.” It’s an interesting sci-fi piece. I like stories that show the fantastic and speculative as a mundane, daily event. But the kicker for me with this story was that the main character was deaf. What some might call his disability, turns out to be exactly what he needed in this sci-fi situation. There isn’t enough short fiction out there exploring such different points of view.

When perusing the blog-0-sphere, I discovered that writing group mate, Stephanie, has a new story out. It’s called “Misty,” it’s live at M-Brane SF. It looks like you have to purchase or subscribe to read this one in electronic format. “Misty” is another story that I helped critique during the writing process, and it’s an interesting and quirky take on a sci-fi idea that you might have seen done before, but never like this.

Finally, I had the chance yesterday afternoon to read more of 10Flash’s inaugural issue. I haven’t been able to read all the stories as of yet, but I did get to some of them, and it really is a great issue. Some of the stories that I really enjoyed (in addition to Alex and Gay’s that I linked yesterday) were “A Small Dark Room” by Jordan Lapp, “The Dangers of Kafka in Cairo” by Megan Arkenberg, and “In the Basement” by D.J. Barber.

The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of craziness, made up mostly of home improvement projects (specifically, getting everything ready for new carpet to be laid in the nursery and the master bedroom).

With all that home improvement going on, publication of the inaugural issue of 10Flash totally snuck up on me! But, it is live today, and everyone should go check it out. What are you waiting for? Do it now!

K.C. has done a great job compiling an awesome line-up of stories for the first issue based on the theme of a librarian on vacation in a foreign land. If you have time, you should check out all 11 of the stories in this issue (they are all flash — it won’t take you that much time!), but if you don’t have time to read them all, I do want to point out to you “Four Liars” by my writing group mate, Alex, and “The Scorpion-Charmer’s Daughter” by Gay Degani, a regular commenter on this blog.

My story in this issue is called “The Last Ball at Concord House.” When K.C. invited me to submit a story for this issue, I wasn’t sure what tack to take on the librarian theme. I really wanted to write a story about Sarah Kirby, the main character from “The Widow and the Stranger,” as she seemed like just the type of woman this theme was meant to embrace. Howeer, Sarah is a shopkeeper on vacation, not a librarian, so I nixed that idea.

Then my writing group had its monthly prompts contest, and one of the prompts was to write a story about the belle of the ball who had a secret. I got this image of a librarian crashing a high society ball while trying to conceal the fact that she is a mere librarian, and suddenly, I was off a running on “The Last Ball at Concord House.”

Of course, the story needed an element of the fantastic, as well, so I mixed in a little of one of my favorite supernatural elements (the one that gives me the most cold chills), and the story came together (with a little post-first-draft help from my writing group).

If you read tLBaCH, I’d love to know what you think of it. You can leave a comment here on this blog, or you can leave a comment over at 10Flash.

Again, congrats to K.C. for putting together a really great first issue, and congrats to all the contributing authors. I haven’t had time to read all of them yet, but I can’t wait to do so!