May will be full of wonderful things.

I’m so excited to announce that I’ll be among the inaugural month’s stories for the brand new venture, Cartridge Lit, a mag dedicated to literature inspired by video games. Run by the epic Justin Daugherty and Joel Hans, they’re tapping into an influence that many of us writing today have experienced and been shaped by in some manner.

I began gaming when I was quite young on my giant, slow, warm-plastic-smelling Apple machines. I played the Black Cauldron and Kings Quest and Carmen Sandiego and Astroids and Dungeon Master. It helped me process and still does. I’m not embarrassed to be a 36 year old who plays Diablo and Final Fantasy and Torchlight.

Over at The Los Angeles Review, I slushed a couple of gorgeous video game inspired pieces. And I started — and abandoned — my own. Maybe I wasn’t in the space I could write it yet. But after Justin announced the start of Cartridge Lit I knew I had to finish the piece. And, you know, it’s one of the pieces I’m most proud of. Yes it’s strange. Yes it’s personal. Yes it’s surreal. Yes. It’s mine. And I can’t wait to share it with you 5/15/14.

The other exciting event will be my 15th college reunion. I don’t even know how to quantify that time, since it still feels like yesterday. I didn’t attend my 5 or 10 year reunions for reasons that seemed important then, but inconsequential now. Mostly I wasn’t proud of who and where I was in life and I didn’t want to go back to the place where I once felt like I could conquer the world, the place I was surrounded by people I believed in and who believed in me. But in early May I’m headed to Southern California to gather with those friends once again. And, honestly, I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas. Even though I make almost nothing right now as a writer, I feel so much stronger and richer than I ever did when I was posing my way through corporate gigs. I can’t wait to share the stories and the pictures and the energy I’ll get from that journey.

xo