Earlier this week, I celebrated completing another orbit around the sun. People always ask "Did you do anything special on your birthday?" Well, that depends on how you define special.
I had the day to myself and it was a beautiful one: cool morning, blue-sky warm afternoon, quiet. It started with french toast using my favorite bread (cranberry raisin sourdough) from my favorite bakery (Rose 32 in Hardwick), topped with some late season strawberries I managed to pick before the birds and squirrels got them, and a local farm's maple syrup (Hardwick Sugar Shack). Also, coffee in my favorite mug.
Then, still in my pajamas, I spent some good quality time with words and wrote a poem. This is one of two pieces I've written to pair with artists' paintings for an upcoming exhibit and poetry reading at Workshop 13.
Happy Birthday, from me. :)
P.S. If you have read and enjoyed any of my work, the best gift you can give is to recommend it to a friend or write (even a brief) review. And thank you.
P.P.S. All my books are available on all the typical ebook platforms, but they are also available directly from me via Gumroad, if you don't like to bow to any corporate overlord.
The drafting of EVERY SKY A STRANGER, book 2 in the Entangled Realities series is progressing. Summer - especially late summer as it turns to fall - is the busiest time of the year for us. My spouse and I live on a small homestead farm and grow a large percentage of the fruit and vegetables we eat throughout the year. (Not quite what a former NYC gal expected to do for a second act! Cue the theme from "Green Acres"??)
This is the time of year when food comes fast and furious. I made 10 pounds of saurkrout with a friend this week. We are also dehydrating batches of cherry tomatoes, blanching and freezing or lactofermenting pounds and pounds of green beens, and getting ready to be inundated with tomatoes that will be turned into sauce. Among other things, we also need to harvest potatoes and get them ready for the root cellar.
Drowning in produce
But in between garden chores and preserving the harvest, writing is happening.
And related to writing, I will be at Albacon in Albany, NY this weekend. Here is my schedule. A good part of the program is also available virtually, as this is a robust hybrid con.
I have been slacking off in the reading department of late - given the work on the farm, by the time we finish dinner, it's quite late and all I have the brain power to do is watch some TV and knit. But we have recently finished the police procedural show "Department Q" and from a writing perspective, I found the characterization and the writing to be extremely sharp and compelling. Every character - even the secondary and minor ones - had rich histories and full arcs. If you like the genre, I highly recommend it.
And speaking of knitting - I forgot to share this earlier in the summer. I was one of the artists chosen to decorate a life-sized fiberglass cow for Old Sturbridge Village'sCow Parade.
"Yarning for the Past" A cow fit for a sweater
It was definitely a wild project to tackle and if any of you are yarn folks, I have the entire process documented from initial measurements to finished sweater here.
I do not and will not employ so called "AI" (e.g. Large Language Models/LLMs) in any part of my writing process. All of my work - poetry, fiction, and non fiction - is 100% human generated. The tools I use in writing either do not have AI integrated or I have disabled it. I commission cover art from human artists.
I love to hear from readers! Let me know what you're reading and recommending or if you have any suggestions for what you'd like to see in future newsletters.
