As early as January 2012, I looked forward to November, National Novel Writing Month. I would take the whole month to write. I would do the research my fantasy novel needs to gain the cultural depth I want it to have, and I had time to do all of this, for November was many months off.
Writing-Wise
"Partrick Road" Published in Australian Anthology
My flash fiction story “Partrick Road” is featured in this year’s edition of Short and Twisted, an Australian anthology of short stories with a twist. “Partrick Road” is part nightmare, part omage to an infamous road in my hometown of Napa, California, where Satanic cults and carnivorous winged simians known as Rebobs have been spotted off and on for upwards of thirty years. Short and Twisted 2012 is currently available through the Celapene Press bookstore.
"The Barn" Published in Praxis: Gender and Cultural Critiques
My short story “The Barn” appears in the current issue of Praxis: Gender and Cultural Critiques (formerly Phoebe: Gender and Cultural Critiques). In this story, George Gilbert, an old widower, resists his African American daughter-in-law’s offer to save his farm from foreclosure because he fears she will one day own the place. Still grieving for his murdered son, George is caught between allegiance to his late wife and a desire to release the prejudice that has shaped his family’s past.
"Eleodes Armata" Published in Spiral Orb
The latest issue of Spiral Orb: An Experiment in Permaculture Poetics is dedicated to the Poetic Inventory of Saguaro National Park, in which more than a hundred poets wrote poems celebrating a species from the Sonoran Desert. My poem on the pinacate beetle, or stink bug, is included in the issue.
Letter to Rick Santorum
In honor of Rick Santorum’s suspension of his presidential campaign, I’m sharing a letter I wrote him in 2004, years before the inception of his Google problem, when I first encountered his opinions regarding birth control. Back then, my suggestions seemed outlandish. Now they sound eerily close to the tenor of our national debate:
March 2004
Dear Mr. Santorum,