Sunday, January 29, 2012

Author Insides - Jonathan Slusher

Jonathan Slusher is a native of the Garden State, now living in the San Francisco Bay area. He has a MS in Environmental Science and has spent the past six years — two of those abroad in France — as a stay at home father. You can find recent work by Jonathan in Paper Darts Magazine, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, and on his webpage at www.waterlanding.net.

Jonathan's short story "That Far to Deep River" appeared in the Autumn 2011 issue of The Battered Suitcase.


When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? 

I realized that I wanted to be a writer gradually alongside with my reluctant acceptance of being a failure as a conversationalist.

Why do you write?

I’m not a quick thinker. Writing gives me a second chance to come up with all of the things that I wish I’d said in person. Also, whether writing them down or just imagining, creating stories is a great way to get someplace else, straightaway.

Is being a writer/poet anything like you imagined it would be?

I am still only in the beginning stages of taking myself seriously as a writer. I want to continue to write purely for pleasure, but I do shamefully admit indulging in the occasional delusion of grandeur.

What do you think makes a good story?

This is hard to say, but I prefer good story telling that is enhanced, not overly enriched with straightforward, meaningful prose.

What's your favorite genre to read?

Literary fiction is my favorite genre, but I am also not ashamed to admit being a huge fan of Robert Parker, J.K. Rowling, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

Who is your favorite author or poet? 

If I have to choose one favorite author I’ll go with Paul Auster. He’s so bold. Not every book is one my favorites, but each is almost always a new invention in itself. I read The Book of Illusions years ago and it is still very fresh in my mind.
 
What books or stories have most influenced you the most as a writer?

The short stories of T.C. Boyle make me want to search harder for my own secret formula.

What books or stories have most influenced you as a person? 

Even during the times when everything I owned fit neatly into a few plastic clothing baskets I’ve always kept a perfectly worn out, hardcover copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It isn’t even one of my all time favorites, but it was the book that made me crave stories with a purpose.

Where/how do you find the most inspiration?

I have a lot of story ideas that I’d like to get out, but don’t always know how. Attempting to find the right words to bring these ideas to life can be inspiring, sometimes it can be frustrating, and the challenge can be good or bad depending on my state of mind.

What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

Although it would probably be a good idea I don’t have much of a schedule. I do, however seem to make far better use of my free time when I don’t have very much of it.

Do you have any writing quirks or rituals? 

Early morning at the kitchen table when everything is still and I have a strong cup of coffee within arm’s reach: that’s the most fruitful setup there is.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

Editing is hard for me. The waiting aspect of publishing is extremely tough. I also still regret self publishing my first novel.

What are your current projects?

I’m just finishing The Room Above the Garage, which is a short story about a jealous husband –who is supposed to be out of town--lying in wait in the room above the garage to find out if his wife is cheating on him. He’s worried about getting caught and he can’t decide how many evenings will be enough to ease his suspicion. As usual, I have no idea if it will be worthy of publishing or doomed to join the collection of other duds lurking throughout the unorganized files on my hard drive.

What are you planning for future projects?

I’d like start working on a second novel. The first one took me almost two years and I gained fifteen extra pounds. I’m just now finally getting back in shape.

Do you have any advice for other writers? 

Try your best to write for your own enjoyment and avoid getting bogged down with worrying about how your writing will be received by others.

Where can we find your work? 

You can find my work in Paper Darts Magazine and Toasted Cheese Literary Journal. I also have a personal website at waterlanding.net

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Author Insides - April L. Ford

April L. Ford lives in New York state, where she teaches French at SUNY College at Oneonta.  She's working on a collection of fiction called The Poor Children, that includes "Isabelle's Haunting."  When not writing or teaching, she travels to her native home of Montreal, Quebec in pursuit of authentic French coffee and pastries. Vive les croissants et le café au lait! You can find her online at http://www.cogentwords.com.

"Isabelle's Haunting" appeared in the Autumn 2011 issue of The Battered Suitcase.


When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer, April? 

Not until my early twenties—at least professionally.  Before that, I had used writing as either a private hobby or a tool for good grades in college … perhaps I shouldn’t admit this, but I figured out early on that, in some cases, a grammatically sound paper could steer attention away from content and research deficits.  I no longer engage in this practice, of course!

Why do you write?

I’m not designed to do anything else quite as effectively, I’m afraid.

Is being a writer/poet anything like you imagined it would be?

I didn’t have a fixed idea about how it would be, probably because I came to the reality later than some.  I feel a bolt of despair whenever I read about a successful author—dead or alive—who published his or her first novel at age twenty-one.  What was I doing at that age?  There are days when I fear I’ve “missed the boat” (whatever that really means); that is, I decide I should have been serious about writing from the moment I could use a crayon.  But then I look at how I’m actually living now—as a writer—and I feel validated.  It’s not a glorious existence, but it’s full of little luxuries and freedoms that suit me just fine!

What do you think makes a good story? 

A good writer.

What's your favorite genre to read? 

I love family drama / saga stories, and creative non-fiction about events in US history from about 1890 onward.  I’m generally fascinated by the macabre, and my poor husband and friends have to hear about my obsession du jour until I talk it out of my system and write a something.

Who is your favorite author or poet?

Let’s say the perfect baby would come from Iris Murdoch and Jeffrey Eugenides.

What books or stories have most influenced you the most as a writer?

As an adult: Faulkner and Nabokov have taught me about beauty in prose, and register; Anne Tyler, Kaye Gibbons, and Russell Banks have helped me figure how to tell stories about people—everyday, idiosyncratic people; and Joyce Carol Oates has given me a lesson or two on horror.  As a teenager, before I ever imagined myself as a writer: V.C. Andrews—My Sweet Audrina, in particular.  

What books or stories have most influenced you as a person? 

Numerous from the abovementioned pool of writers.

Where/how do you find the most inspiration?

Definitely not by force.  Whenever I try to will a good story into existence, I generate mechanical, lifeless prose that can’t be rescued even by careful rewrites.  This isn’t to say good ideas, characters, and stories float from the heavens right to my fingertips, but I’m at my best when my psyche is well fueled—a state of being over which I don’t have perfect control, so I’ve learned to manage what I do have control over: The fuel.  I read whatever attracts me, I watch television and film for pleasure, and I converse incessantly about things that interest me.  Perhaps hedonism is the engine for inspiration?

What does your family think of your writing? 

We all have a different opinion of what it is, exactly, that I do.  Fame and fortune, no doubt, would clarify things some.

What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

I have spent the last decade organizing my life around my writing.  Generally, I wake up at absurd morning hours and write until the other demands of the day (like teaching, and my vanity about personal fitness) begin.

Do you have any writing quirks or rituals? 

I need the command of silence when I begin a new piece, but I prefer the background drum of coffee shops when I edit.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

Starting and finishing.

What are your current projects?

A novel.

What are you planning for future projects?

Another novel.  One more novel.  HBO television series (everyone has a dream).  More short stories.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

A break from writing can mean the weekend off, or it can mean a month off.  It can also mean a much longer period, and it’s dangerous to think, “I’m not a writer if I haven’t written in the last year or three.”

Where else can we find your work? 

http://www.cogentwords.com

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Author Insides - Flower Conroy

Flower Conroy’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in: American Literary Review; Serving House Journal; Psychic Meatloaf; Ghost Ocean; Sweet: A Literary Confection; Labletter; Saw Palm; BlazeVox; Interrobang!? and other journals.  She will be attending Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA program in January.

Her poetry has also appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of The Battered Suitcase.


Flower, when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

When I was a child I began writing these “pieces.”  They were exciting because of how they were structured.  What I didn’t fully understand at the time was not that I was inventing a new way to write but that I was discovering poetry.  Being a writer wasn’t something I wanted to be, it was something I just was.  I was writing, therefore I was a writer.  But it seems like in the last several years the idea of being a writer has really gripped my mind, and I am conscientiously working toward that goal.

Why do you write?

I am never bored writing.  In fact it’s the opposite; I get great satisfaction out of writing.  I get naturally high writing.  It’s meditative; it’s cleansing; it’s wild and surprising.  It’s play.  It’s fun work; it’s puzzle making and solving.  It’s seeing what one can get away with.  Like looking though a kaleidoscope, the experience is never repeated, it’s always fresh.

Is being a writer/poet anything like you imagined it would be?

Oh, it is much more glamorous than I ever imagined: will I ever get used to the paparazzi?  Seriously, it is like anything worthwhile: you need to work, work, work, work, and work some more.  (I think there are still romantic notions of what the writer’s life is like.)  My life as a writer is ever-evolving.  I’m pursuing my MFA.  I’m getting poems published.  I’m trying to do the best I can.  

What do you think makes a good story?

The great stories have been told, archetypically speaking.  (Think of the clichéd example of “West Side Story” being a retelling of “Romeo and Juliet.”)  Something must be at stake and you must have interesting, nuanced characters or it’s a sunk ship.

I think there is a different type of story being told in poetry than in fiction.

What is your favorite genre to read?

As a poet, I read poetry.  It is my passion, and I believe it is crucial for writers to read their genre de jour.  That sounds so obvious, but…maybe it’s still worth saying.  There is a certain level of discipline and patience needed when reading poetry; often I’m left feeling flabbergasted (sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a not so good way).

Who is your favorite author or poet?

Asking me my favorite poet is like asking a five year old what they want to be when they grow up.  Today it’s Maggie Smith.  Yesterday it was Amy Gerstler.  Two months ago, Dean Young.  Once it was Charles Simic.  One cold weekend, Brenda Shaughnessy.  Anne Sexton and I have been whittling away the evenings in bed for the last few months; I wouldn’t say a favorite but definitely important.  Wislawa Szymborska, how I adore you.  There was my love affair with Sharon Olds, Pablo Neruda, and Charles Bukowski.  It can be dangerous to have a favorite poet; I prefer continually becoming obsessed verses focusing and fixating on only one poet.  I have too much to learn.  Without meaning to sound trite or religious, I would say the author of this conscious world is perhaps the greatest poet.

What books or stories have most influenced you as a writer?

When I was younger, I enjoyed the pick your own adventure stories and Snoopy comic books.  I read the slender young reader encyclopedia set that we bought month by month from the grocery store.  The Babysitter’s Club series.  Anne Rice and Stephen King, my mother’s romance novels, mythology stories.  I was reading a lot of fiction but writing poetry.

What books or stories have most influenced you as a person? 

I attended Episcopal Church in my youth and I loved the language and imagery of the stories and psalms.  The stories my father would invent definitely influenced me.

Where/ how do you find the most inspiration?

How do you dig a big ditch?  Start digging, and keep going.  Ask the archeologist how she finds a dinosaur bone: by digging.  I dig; I dig into my heart, my imagination, my fear; I dig into other writing: I read.  I dig through pictures, books, words, experiences.  I’m sifting, sorting, gathering, rearranging.  You make inspiration like you make fire: start rubbing things together—something will ignite.  Inspiration is a proactive occurrence.  I scour magazines: Elle Décor is chock full of textures and visual stimuli and often the language is equally provocative.  Old art books.  Yahoo! News.  I invent or revisit writing exercises—I still use Richard Weems’ fiction prompts for my poetry.  Or actually exercise: a few jumping jacks gets the blood flowing.  I am in no short supply of finding inspirational sparks because I want to find inspiration, I want to discover.  Uncover.  Pick apart.  Reassemble.  Dig in, dig in.

What does your family think of your writing?

My cousin Shane (who I consider my brother) is a wonderful champion of my work; for years he has accompanied me to The Cape May Poetry and Prose Getaway where I have subjected him to impromptu poetry readings.  He recognizes when I revise poems, and agrees or disagrees with me.

My parents were always supportive of me writing whether or not they understood or enjoyed what I had written.

I think for the most part, my family is unfamiliar with my poetry; they love and support me because they love and support me: I think they want to understand and know what my poetry is about but I have been stingy in sharing it with them.

What is your work schedule like when you are writing?

I try to dedicate Mondays and Wednesdays to writing/revising.  During the week in the mornings I research publications.  At evenings and nights I am reading.  I also always carry books with me so that if I have some down time at “work,” I can stick my nose between some pages but I’m usually too busy or the shop is too hectic so I might pick up a magazine instead (in which case, I always read with the intention of stealing some interesting tidbit from.)  If I’m not reading, I wish to be writing; if I’m not writing, I wish to be revising; if I’m not revising, I wish to be reading.

Do you have any writing quirks or rituals?

I play “twinkle” music—new age, wordless music (I don’t like complete silence, and anything with words is too distracting).  I like to burn incense but it isn’t necessary.  If I’m writing by hand, I prefer Pilot Pens, #5 or 7 and the paper must be immaculate.  Physically releasing tension before beginning to write is effective.  I keep a little bottle of essential oil on my desk and I will anoint myself with aromatherapy.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

I find the greatest challenge creating the heartleap—the moment when an internal leap occurs and you feel yourself slip into a wormhole but it is so instantaneous you almost wonder if it happened.  When a door behind you opens but when you turn around there is no door.  When your mind is jarred in or out of reality.  Getting the memory down, the thought down as it feels in my mind.  Recreating that emotive sliver in my audience.  Making sense out of the—as Eminem would say—“Crazy insane or insane crazy.”

What are your current projects?

My current projects include: organizing my poems into chapbooks and book length collections; vetting my publication resume; and pursuing my MFA.  For personal fun, I’m experimenting with Dadaistic poetry exercises.

What are you planning for future projects?

As I mentioned, I’m about to embark on my MFA journey; I imagine that will happily occupy most of my future projects.  Down the road (this is more of a goal than an actual project) I would love to be invited on the panel of the Key West Literary Seminar the next time they showcase poetry, so I am purposefully trying to build a poetic foundation that will earn the credentials necessary to garnish an invite.

Do you have any advise for other writers? 

Read, read, read and read.  But if you only do one thing—read.  A lot.

Where else can we find your work?

American Literary Review; Oberon; Serving House Journal; Psychic Meatloaf; The Moose & the Pussy; Ghost Ocean; Sweet: A Literary Confection; Lavender Review; Labletter; Saw Palm; BlazeVox; Interrobang?!; Cliterature






Brief Bio:


Flower Conroy’s poetry has appeared/is forthcoming in: American Literary Review; Serving House Journal; Psychic Meatloaf; Ghost Ocean; Sweet: A Literary Confection; Labletter; Saw Palm; BlazeVox; Interrobang!? and other journals.  She will be attending Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA program in January.












Tuesday, January 10, 2012

How to Send a Query Letter - Publishing Basics

How to Send a Query Letter

Struggling to get noticed for your writing talents? Craft a professional calling card that will help you sell that first project to a literary agent or publisher.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Author Insides - Craig Steele

Craig W. Steele is a writer and university biologist whose musings occur in the urban countryside of northwestern Pennsylvania where he lives with his wife, their two children and one rubbish cat. He writes poetry and stories for both children and adults, and teaches environmental biology at Edinboro University. His haiku and senryu have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Modern Haiku, a handful of stones, Asahi Haikuist Network, Three Line Poetry, Prune Juice, Magnapoets, Grey Sparrow Journal, Haiku Pix Review and elsewhere.

His haiku were also published in the Autumn 2011 issue of The Battered Suitcase


Craig, when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? 

In my seventh-grade English class, when we had a short-story writing contest. We had to read our stories aloud and I found that sharing my imagination with others was a huge thrill.

Why do you write? 

Because I can’t not write; the ideas and words gamboling around my mind have to get out or I’d go crazy.

Is being a writer/poet anything like you imagined it would be?

Difficult to answer. I really had no firm expectations going in. I have found that, in today’s crowded, competitive market, it’s more difficult to break through to publication than I had thought it would be.

What do you think makes a good story? 

Realistic, even if the story’s a fantasy.

What's your favorite genre to read? 

Science fiction, especially military science fiction.

Who is your favorite author or poet? 

Tough question, I like so many. Among authors, I’d say David Weber, Jim Butcher and J.D. Robb. For the “older generation” of poets, Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson; among contemporary poets, Jennifer Reeser and Kim Addonizio. And my favorite haikuists are Helen Buckingham and Bob Lucky.

What books or stories have most influenced you the most as a writer? 

Jennifer Reeser’s poetry books, Winterproof and An Alabaster Flask.

Where/how do you find the most inspiration? 

I find inspiration through my family, everyday experiences and nature. For the most part, my poetry deals with: the effects of the past on the present; the effects of the present on the perception of the past; our everyday interaction with nature; my family; and whatever peculiar, interesting, overlooked or neglected oddities I feel deserve notice.

What does your family think of your writing? 

They’re supportive and are always pleased for me whenever I get an acceptance, however, none of them like haiku, or tanka (!!). My kids enjoy my children’s poetry, but are a bit too young for my non-children’s poetry (though my son does try and seems to like some of it). My wife is a visual artist and has little interest in “word art.”

What is your work schedule like when you're writing? 

Highly variable. It depends on the demands of my day job, my family, and how cooperative my muse is being.

Do you have any writing quirks or rituals? 

I’m not sure this is a quirk or a ritual, but I find I write best while relaxing in my lounge chair and writing in a spiral-bound notebook.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? 

Revision!

What are your current projects? 

My children’s poetry critique group is currently sending round a manuscript of bug poems. We had a group anthology of spooky poems published last year by Marshall Cavendish titled, An Eyeball in My Garden: And Other Spine-Tingling Poems, and hope to repeat that accomplishment.

What are you planning for future projects? 

I’m working on poems for two chapbook ideas, one dealing with storms (both natural and human) and the other, poems about winter.

Do you have any advice for other writers? 

Don’t ever give up. Enjoy the experience because writing for yourself really is more important than writing for publication.

Where can we find your work? 

Most recently, my haiku have appeared in Modern Haiku and the Aurorean and online at Three Line Poetry, a handful of stones, and Asahi Haikuist Network. My “regular” (non-haiku) poetry has appeared recently in The Lyric, the Aurorean and online at The Earth Comes First! and Willows Wept Review.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Author Insides - KJ Hannah Greenberg



KJ Hannah Greenberg gave up all manner of academic hoopla to chase imaginary hedgehogs and to raise children. After almost two decades of belly dancing, home birthing, herbal medicine making, and occasional basket weaving, she dusted off her keyboard and began to churn out smoothings, vegetable soup, and more creative work than might be considered proper for a middle-aged woman. To date, dozens of venues have accepted Hannah's poetry, and her short story, "Deferring to Family Custom" appeared in the Autumn 2011 issue of The Battered Suitcase.


When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? 
You mean I had a choice?  When I was small, I majored in sandbox, crayons, and words.

Why do you write?
I can’t help myself. I’ve tried to curb my impulses, but I have better luck stymieing my reach toward chocolate and my passion for tweaking my hair than abating my reflex to craft stories about gelatinous monsters or than forestalling my spontaneous tendency to fashion poetry about the ills of social institutions.

Is being a writer/poet anything like you imagined it would be?
I began working as “a writer” by authoring newspaper columns for a city paper and for a community paper at age fifteen. By age eighteen, I was fortunate to see a musical of mine, Watercolors, produced. The University of Iowa took me on, as a graduate student, before I was twenty-one. Subsequently, I jumped tracks and became an academic.

For more than a decade, I was a serious scholar whose emphasis was rhetoric and whose specialty was the nexus of philosophy and language. I wrote for communications and semiotics journals, visited Princeton University, as a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar, and was, otherwise, sincere about my association with language.

Fortunately, my highbrow life was interrupted by my having babies. Babies are messy. Babies are unruly. Babies can bridge a person from a relatively synthetic career back to reality.

I homebirthed most of my sons and daughters and nursed all of them through toddlerhood. Additionally, I dug up my lawn, and, in the place of that sod, planted wildflowers, herbs and vegetables. What’s more, I learned belly dancing and basket weaving. Whereas I continued to teach communication and sociology courses, I had become somewhat feral in my thinking.

Fourteen years after I’d embrace untamed mentations, my family moved to “a foreign country.” Once here, I realized that my kids were: getting bigger, able to stick glue in each other’s hair without my guidance, able to stick peanuts up their noses without my aid, and able to breed dust bunnies under their beds without my help. Also there are few positions here for professors that lack a fluent command of the local lingo. So, given the means, the motive, and the opportunity, I returned to creative writing.

Oddly, folks liked my words. Being yet ever so impressionable, I internalized their praise and wrote a lot more. That playing around begot: writing awards, including two Pushcart Prize nomination, writing responsibilities at various publications, writing workshops, and even more writing. My actualizing me as a writer/poet took a circuitous, weird and wonderful route.

What do you think makes a good story? 
Sticky fingers, be they attached to a lizard, to a small child, or to an alien. Actually, interesting characters rock, but they fail to roll if not housed in a tight plot and expressed with careful regard to word choice. My top advice to other writers is “rewrite!”

What's your favorite genre to read? 
Well-written texts, of any sort, taste yummy.

What books or stories have most influenced you as a person? 
I have liked too many sources to list. As a nerdy kid, I read: the prose of existentialists, medical books, classical speculative fiction, and contemporary novels. As a graduate student, I mostly read texts about sociology, psychology and philosophy. As a mother of wee ones, I read brief works of various types (albeit mostly intercultural short stories, children’s books, and essays about governance, hegemonies, or religion). Given parenting’s pattern of interruptions, I read mostly brief bits or collections thereof.

These days, I still read across genres. If I find an author whose work sings to me, I try to read everything that person has published. I equally enjoy hard core science, literary fiction, poetry, blogs, folklore, and parental musings. I read the work of writers who are friends as readily as I read the work of writers I will never know.

Sometimes, I find new material to read by looking at the publications of writers with whom I share venues. Other times, I find new material to read when I research a topic for a piece of my own writing.  I am as apt to read, to enjoy, and to be marked by a nonfiction chronicle of whaling on the Atlantic Ocean as I am by a revenge fantasy, by an rant about morality, or by a tell-all focused on street life.

What does your family think of your writing?
I am Blessed to parent two adolescent sons and two adolescent daughters. Just keeping up with those continuum-raised, critically thinking kids gives me lots of mental business. It’s also the case that because such offspring remain unimpressed by my imaginary hedgehogs, well publicized chimeras, and bizarre descriptions of “important” events on outer worlds, my writing has to flash chartreuse before those kids will laud my efforts. Both as a source for content and as practiced critics, my kids write me.

However, my family thinks my writing is no more a remarkable quality of mine than are my fingernails or eyeballs. When I announce sales to them, they respond with questions about whose turn it is to do the laundry or with complaints that I bought brown, not white, rice again.

What is your work schedule like when you're writing? 
Schedule? Midlife mamas are a crazed species. True to nature, I write six days a week, with breaks for family, for exercise, for meals and so forth. I’m too old to slow down and too young not to hurry. At least when I’m writing, I’m not obsessing about chocolate or about mismatched socks.

Do you have any writing quirks or rituals?
Absolutely! I usually process multiple texts simultaneously. I might have ten, twenty, or more windows open on my screen at a time. Synergy floats my boat.

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
Aging. My skills have improved, but not to the extant that I hope they will develop. Meanwhile, I haven’t figured out how to grow younger. I hope to live long enough to write lots and lots.

What are your current projects?
During the next span, I hope to tackle my backlog of collected nonfiction, of collected short stories, and of collected poetry. I’m making modest progress in housetraining those puppies, i.e. in organizing them into books and in sending those books to publishers. Although I have been fortunate, b’ayin tova, in finding homes for some of ones I have already parceled, despite my inclination to work on many projects concurrently, I can only polish one book at a time.

Most immediately, a full-length collection of my poetry, A Bank Robber’s Bad Luck with His Ex-Girlfriend, was launched by Unbound CONTENT, in December. Copies can be ordered at Amazon.com or through UnboundCONTENT.

To quote the publisher;
In this new collection of poetry, KJ Hannah Greenberg takes on the topic of love with full poetic abandon. Tangling with fairy tales, disillusionment, regret, break-ups, hardships, and longevity, Greenberg doesn't shy away from the sticky side of sweet. Her poetry, didactic at times, representational at others, employs devices of style and unconventional usage to delve deeper meaning in narrative. A collection for those who know the course of love is as often fraught with adversity as it is suffused with light.

As well, Bards & Sages Publishing will be producing an assemblage of my short fiction, Don’t Pet the Sweaty Things, in March, and The Camel Saloon’s Books on Block will shout out a chapbook of mine, Supernal Factors in August. As well, I am in talks with another publisher, i.e. am precontract, about an anthology, which I hope to edit, of writings by young adults.

Interestingly, I turned down a contract for a novel and said “no thank-you” to someone who wanted to run with a collection of essays during the last calendar year. I might not (yet) be a big publishing house wunderkind, nonetheless, I have no reason to sign away rights for the amount of breathable oxygen on Jupiter.

What are you planning for future projects?
In February, I hope to be teaching an online science fiction writing course. As well, I plan to continue to make my weekly contribution to an international newspaper and my biweekly contribution to a parenting magazine. Electronic communication is not the wave of the future; electronic communication is the modis operatus of the present.

I’d like, also, to submit more of my novels and of my collected works to publishers, to find a intrepid agent, and to see this year’s books gain a respectable audience share (a girl can dream). Meanwhile, I want to continue to help emerging writers with their craft and to be befriended by wordies who are paces ahead of me.

Do you have any advice for other writers?
Rewrite. Also, rewrite. Thereafter, rewrite.

Where else can we find your work? 
My brief, my freestanding, i.e. individual, short works can be found in several dozen online and print literary journals.

In addition, I’ve serial blogs or columns for various venues, worldwide, including: Kindred (Australia), Natural Jewish Parenting, Tangent Online, The Jerusalem Post (Israel), The Mother Magazine (The UK), and Type-A Parent.

Check out KJ's poetry collection at UNBOUNDContent and Amazon