Shameless again....

I've been kind of keeping this one under my hat, so it is even more exciting to share that I have a story up at The Collagist. I'm in awe of the names up there in both the first issue and this one, and totally honored to be among them.

Back to school.

It's almost 4 am, and here I am spending some quality time with Kant and Aristotle. I guess you could have worse late night/early morning company. It always takes me until a few weeks into the semester at least to realize that getting up early is something I have to do a few times a week and not some random fluke occurrence. Pretty happy about this semester, though. I dig Kant. Not in the "yup, he had it all figured out" way, but dude was seriously ambitious in his undertaking.

I am interviewed over on the Storyglossia blog.

I am saddened by the death of Jim Carroll, who I haven't read in quite some time, but who always stuck with me. Stephen Elliott has a really nice piece over at The Rumpus about Carroll. I think Stephen does a nice job of getting at that unique kind of mourning we feel when someone we didn't really know but loved anyhow dies.

Speaking of sadly departed writers, I have nothing profound to add to all the brilliant commentary that already exists about DFW. But in light of the recent anniversary of his death, I offer a quote from him which is probably my favorite quote about fiction ever: "I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of "generalization" of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple."

On that note, back to Kant.

So long, summer.

I'm not prepared to go back to school on Wednesday, but I am even less prepared for my child to start school on Tuesday. We homeschooled for kindergarten, so this will be school day numero uno. I'm excited. She's excited. But still: my baby is going to school.

Got an acceptance today, just when I was starting to feel like I was in a wee bit of a slump. Wrote something new I like, too. I keep trying to finish some longer-ish things in progress, and instead writing new super short ones, which is okay, too. I'm trying to decide if one of my older stories is submission and/or collection worthy. Usually I dislike old things when I read them, but this one I'm really undecided about. The original draft of it was the first short story I ever wrote that I was really happy with, back like 9 years ago. It's been drastically edited since then, but I'm not sure if I made it better or worse. I guess I'm always free to submit it and see what happens, but I generally like to know that at least I like something before I send it out.

I think with one or two more mid-length stories, I'm calling the collection at least tentatively done. That's exciting, I think, regardless of when and if anyone ever wants to publish it.

A little bit of shameless self-promotion.

This is an exciting week for me. I have new stories up in issue 35 of Storyglossia and on Necessary Fiction. Both are journals I really admire and am really honored to be included in.

Also, over at the Pank blog today, I am one of three guest writers for a post about motherhood and writing. Thanks to Roxane for allowing me to ramble over there.

That's all for now.