Sometimes, in life’s crazy road trip, the accelerator pedal gets stuck and you have a little trouble catching up with yourself. I’ve been having one of those weeks, where I feel like Yakety Sax should be playing on a loop.

I attended a writing retreat from last Thursday through Sunday morning in Port Townsend. Lots of wine was enjoyed and great conversations were had, but thanks to a migraine and a general lack of discipline, I didn’t get a lot done. I returned home yesterday to frantically prepare for out of town guests who ended up needing time and transportation I hadn’t quite budgeted correctly for. After dropping them off at the airport I raced home to intercept a mattress delivery, flying in and out of Whole Paycheck to secure *something* for dinner. I have six loads of laundry in progress, no beds made, a fridge full of useless food, oh, and did I mention, I haven’t done any meaningful quantity of work in several days. I finally sat down to catch up on emails when a gent across the street began testing his car stereo in his driveway. I hope everyone else in the neighborhood is enjoying the rap version of “Hard Knock Life,” as it isn’t quite my cuppa.

But despite my first world problems (ie getting out of my own damn way), I have good news. First, I have a new gig. I’ve been waiting for a long time to volunteer to slush, read, sleuth, and opine for a magazine, but figured I’ve been dragging my feet to find “the right one.” There are lots of great magazines, of course, but I think, ideally, one wants to be able to learn something from the process and the people you’re working with. After corresponding with the management over at The Lascaux Review post flash contest, I thought to myself, these people seem to understand me and I bet I can learn a lot from them. I threw a shameless amalgam of self promotion in their direction and am proud to say I’ll be serving as a reader. I’ll say now that if you haven’t yet visited The Lascaux Review, you should. You might even think about submitting yourself. I’ll be on the lookout for fiction, poetry, and essays from writers new and old to introduce to my new team, so if you’ve recently found something you think I should know about, please share.

Secondly, I have a small piece in the Issue #06 of the Vine Leaves Literary Journal. I originally wrote this piece as an entry for a one-sentence story anthology. And while I know several of the folks who made it into said project, the editors felt that my submission was not a story because things were happening around the protagonist instead of the protagonist moving through a narrative. I’m still puzzling that out in my brain, but because the story is told through imagery and flashbacks, I thought it might be a good fit at Vine Leaves and I’m ecstatic they picked it up. I loved working with the one sentence constraint. I suppose I should avoid this tendency toward “trick writing,” but its something that I certainly love experimenting with. On a side note, I don’t know why I keep writing about horrible accidents involving cars. I wrote this and the piece for the Lascaux Flash contest several months apart, but clearly I must have been working through some sort of mental hurdle. Regardless, I’m in great company in this issue and I adore the illustration by Otha “Vaskeen” Davis III, whose work you can find more of here.

xo