News!

Two major developments in the last several days!

A longtime dream has finally come true. Well. Two longtime dreams have finally come true.

Since 2001, I've been writing for The Journal of Asinine Poetry under three names, all of which have their own social-media profiles, which is not in any way weird or creepy, thankyouverymuch. This site and all it stands for--community, laughter, parody, out-there-ness--has meant so much to me for so many years it's hard to remember what life was like, pre-asinine. They kept publishing me through the darkest times of my life, and the happiest. They published an anthology and included me, and at the book launch I signed autographs for the first time. They invited me to New York, where I read at a poetry club with other poets who have books published and everything. In other words, they gave me my first taste of what it really means to write, Kept me going through slow periods, revved me up through speedy ones. I own merch. (You should too!) And finally, finally, after nine years of submitting, I made the Halloween Issue. I'm very excited about this, see. The Halloween Issue is my favorite, the one I read and re-read every year, the one I desperately wanted into. Because Halloween is my favorite holiday and, try as I might, I couldn't write about it. Not as well as I wanted to. And even when I submitted the poem that made it in, I told the editor I had plans for a Halloween verse. Which he promptly pointed out was already in. You talk about a frabjous day, man. Frabjous.

Then, I decided to join PubIt! Barnes & Noble now has a program for authors to self-publish their books for free, royalties paid, etc. More about it here. I read through all the legalese, details, and guidelines. I put together an anthology of stories I've produced in the last couple months. I uploaded it. It's available now for sale. Not as if Penguin-Putnam has picked it up, or anything, but still, this is a move forward, and an exciting one at that.

And that's what I have today. A good day, this.