Sneak Peeks by Louise Yeiser McAlpin

Bee Plus

The old wooden trunk with its chipped corners, scratched sides and two-inch wide leather straps that once held it tight, is filled with dreams that pop out, hand in hand with the strong smell of cedar, every time I open the lid.  My mother bent over her work in a straight-backed chair at her sewing table, among folds and folds of material cascading from her lap, with many-colored patches of fabric neatly piled, with even edges, into the basket at her feet that were as bare as the dark, wooden floor.  She worked with white and lavender, folded at the bottom of the bed in my guest room, and pink and beige, which is on my nieceʼs bed in Florida , and lemon and green in a quilt whose whereabouts I lost track of.  When she could no longer quilt, she stored her new squares, her old favorites and all her leftovers in the trunk for safekeeping, so on special days, like her birthday or the anniversary of her death or her wedding to my father, I almost tiptoe around my bed and sit cross-legged on the floor in front of it.  Slowly, so slowly, I lift the lid to savor the colors escaping into the air and listen to the song of her humming and stitching, and I breathe my fill of the memories and the cedar and all the goodness which is the only part I want to remember.  And for just a quick piece of a moment, I can step back into an improved, silky-sweet version of yesterday and relive it the way I always wanted.

Bio:  Louise Yeiser has been published in Modern Witches, Wizards and Magic (Kerlak, 2005) and Six Sentences v1 (McEvily, 2008), and online at Tuesday Shorts, Six Sentences, Flashquake, Flashshot, Pen Pricks, Long Story Short and Boston Literary Magazine.  She studies creative writing at Carlow University in Pittsburgh and Ireland, and she knits.

Thank you to Rob McEvily for publishing Bee Plus on 6S on Saturday, October 18.

The Long and Short of It

Thank you, Long Story Short, for publishing a frighteningly eerie story about my house's shenanigans.  Check it out here.

From Louise

And then there was...

FLASHSHOT
Daily Genre Flash Fiction
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ISSUE TWO THOUSAND-THREE HUNDRED-TWENTY-EIGHT September 28, 2008
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SECOND ATTEMPT
By Louise Yeiser

I slid off the bed and felt the cold beneath me, so I melted into it,
absorbing it, steady. Rising to my feet, I crept toward the bathroom,
pausing at the door to listen to your breathing. It whistled and scratched
its phlegm into my nerves. The box springs creaked. You were unharmed. I
would try again tomorrow.
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Louise Yeiser writes to get to the bottom of it.
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© 2008 Louise Yeiser

                        

                                        Thank you, G.W. Thomas and Flashshot!

                                        From Louise

The Joy of Writing

I am looking down a gun barrel at yet another writing deadline, which was cut in two by a madcap adventure I embarked upon with my son.  I helped him clean out and pack up his Pittsburgh apartment and drive to Prescott, Arizona, where we unpacked and set up a new apartment.  During the drive, we got a speeding ticket, visited some strange places along Route 66 and picked up a dumped puppy near the Oklahoma-Texas border, for whom we subsequently found a home in Amarillo.  Arriving in Prescott, I discovered I had inadvertently booked myself into an historic, haunted inn (aren't all historic inns in Prescott haunted?) and never got a wink of sleep since I slept with all my lights on, even the one in the bathroom, waiting for the dreaded apparition to float in and scare me out of my wits, which of course it never did.  Back in Pittsburgh at midnight on Tuesday, after a 5-hour flight, I learned that Hurricane Ike had blown through, taking out my electricity and my fence.  In addition, one of my mastiffs aged so suddenly during my absence that she could no longer climb the stairs; but in her determination to try, she pooped all over herself and my favorite antique hand-woven rug.  I was up till 2 am shampooing both her and my carpet and making up a new step-less bedroom.  Every night since, I have been downstairs with her (and the others) on the fold-away couch, sitting bolt upright with eyes fixed open in an unseeing, dazed-deer stare, even though I've been home almost a week.  I've lost my groove.  The deadline is less than two weeks away, I have to produce 4,000 words, and so far, I'm up to 500 and it's awful writing, so terrible, in fact, that even my mother wouldn't want to read it.  So, given all that, I thank Rob of 6 Sentences for publishing this.  It is quite timely.

The Big Spill

According to Boston Literary Magazine, the definition of drabble is: (100 words) ...a real challenge ...very short works that express interesting and meaningful concepts using the most tightly concise language.  I guess I can drabble with the best of 'em.  If you click here on their fall 2008 issue, you will find my piece at the bottom of the page.

“Why am I always at the end?”  My shrieking rattled the inside my head and startled me into spilling coffee on my shirt.  “Did they put us in alphabetical order?”  My frustration waited for an answer with its fists resting on its hips and its foot tapping while I dabbed at my new stain with a white paper towel.

“When am I going to be first on the list?” it continued.  It was beginning to look wild and strange, with pursed lips, a deep scowl and pinpoint glare.  Its hair was disheveled and its skin a Wicked-Witch-of-the-West shade of green.  It could kill my healthiest house plant with one glance, I was sure.

“Whenever,” I answered, putting down the paper towel and squaring my shoulders, facing it down with all my attention and intentions.  “And until that happens, you and I will be appropriately grateful to have any place on any list in any worthy publication.”  The anger vanished.

“Aaaaah, that's more like it,” I thought, sipping my coffee and turning back to my reading.

from flashshot

---

THE HISTORY OF IRISH MUSIC
By Louise Yeiser

In class, his voice sounded like a mostly-monochromatic herd of gnats circling my head and dive-bombing sporadically, with no warning. He vibrated his words down the back of his throat, then flung them out in scattered sound waves -- muffled, guttural -- with quick accents in staccato dots divided by barely-there pauses. I daydreamed of the quiet café down the street where I could find the perfect corner for drinking coffee and writing profound thoughts in my notebook with my favorite pen, the one that glided like a gel and wrote like a ballpoint. But everything changed once the music began.

Louise Yeiser has been published in Modern Witches, Wizards and Magic and Six Sentences , and online at Tuesday Shorts, Six Sentences, Flashquake and Pen Pricks. She studies creative writing at Carlow University in Pittsburgh and Ireland.

© 2008 Louise Yeiser

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Flashshooterly List

I had a snappy, little post prepared for today's blog, but having discovered that my writing was up and running on Flashshot, which I somehow forgot, I thought I would:

• point it out
• say thank you to G.W. Thomas and Esther Schrader for accepting the piece
• include a link to it because, starting tomorrow, the link won't work the same because my piece will have moved down to the storage area in the basement to make room for another daily shot and I will have missed this fabulous opportunity to show off.

So here is the direct link to my piece which will work today, but not tomorrow.  But don't worry.  By then I'll have a whole new bragging plan in place.  To read more about Flashshot, click here or here.  To subscribe, which I recommend, click here.   

So, happy fall, happy Friday and even though we've been talking about flashing, please keep your clothes on for all the high school, college and pro football games that are taking place across America this weekend.  Thank you.

From Louise

        PUBLICATIONS

• "Dump Him" is published in the October, 2008 issue of Long Story Short.

• "Second Attempt" was published in Flashshot on Sept. 28, 2oo8.

• "Ballet Solo" is published in the fall 2008 issue of Boston Literary Magazine.

• “The History of Irish Music” was published in Flashshot on Sept. 5, 2008.

• “Second Attempt” was published in the July, 2008 issue of Pen Pricks.

• A complete catalog of my writing published on Six Sentences can be found here.

• “The Detour Home” was published in the spring edition of Flashquake, Mar 1 - May 31, 2008.

• “Annual Art” was published in 6 Sentences, vol 1, (McEvily) in April, 2008.

• “the first date” was published on Tuesday Shorts, March 25, 2008.

• “Nighttime Flirting” was published on Tuesday Shorts, Feb. 26, 2008.

• “The Seated Shrinking” was published on Tuesday Shorts, Jan. 29, 2008.

• “Christmas Confusion” was published on Tuesday Shorts, Jan. 2, 2008.

• “Opera and M&Ms” was published on Tuesday Shorts, Nov. 20, 2007.

• “My Little Elves” was published in 2005 by Kerlak Publishing Co. in Modern Witches, Wizards and Magic, an anthology.

Flash from Louise

It didn't go down like this, but it could have.  Thank you to everyone who thinks this is non-fiction.  I love you for that.

An Odd, Little Post

Thank you to G. W. Thomas and Flashshot, for including two of my pieces in September's schedule.  Flashshot publishes quality work of up to 100 words that is either dark, strange or funny; ie, horror, mystery, fantasy, sci fi and/or humor.  On September 5, one of my faves, The History of Irish Music, is running.  I suppose I could call it fantasy or humor (although it's more ironic than humorous), or all or none, who knows?  On Sept. 28, Second Attempt is scheduled, a slinky, sinister sort of piece, which probably could be called fantasy-mystery, but again, who knows?  Anyway, I am honored that Mr. Thomas and his editors like my submissions.

A free Flashshot subscription will get you a strange, new short delivered to your email box every day.  It only takes a second to read, about the same time it takes to dig a quarter or an i-pod or a gun out of your purse, pocket or desk drawer.  Each daily flash is weird enough to stick with you during the day, giving you something to ponder while you're avoiding your boss who seems to creep up on you, like, every fifteen minutes or so, or while you're sneaking out for a cigarette break and contacting the mother ship, or while you're pretending to work when you're really planning tonight's temporary stashing of corpses in the supply closet, or while you are rounding up volunteers for your next zombie attack in the employee lounge.

Since Flashshot offers only the finest in oddball, quick fiction, written by only the finest of writers, many of whom are normal and nice, and since it's so easy to subscribe and receive, and since it's such a pleasure to read, I recommend it highly.  So join the fun.  Subscribe today.

My name is Louise Yeiser.  And I approve this message.

Merci to the Boy Wonder

Thank you to Rob McEvily of Six Sentences for publishing 3-Minute Reading, which is sort of fictional and sort of isn't; but if there's anything I've learned from James Frey, it is to call my work fiction if some of the facts are a little askew, even when the piece is only six sentences long.

Multiple home-run hitter Rob McEvily is a phenom to watch.  In two years, his little Six Sentences blog has turned into a literary vehicle for hundreds of writers, and last spring he welcomed the arrival of his firstborn Six Sentences book-in-print, 6S volume 1, available at CreateSpace  and Amazon.com.  Six Sentences can be found in blurbs, blogs, links and lists all over the internet; and if you don't believe me, I invite you to do your own google search and see for yourself.

Congratulations to Rob on his smashing six-cess.  I am delighted to be a part of it.

Acknowledgement

Thank you to Pen Pricks, for including me in their July issue.  And just in case my readers reader can't find my contribution, I am the 27th essay of 41, give or take....  Don't forget to check out my nifty bio; but of course, the contributors are listed alphabetically, so guess where I am?

That's right.

The End

FLASHQUAKE Mar 1 - May 31, 2008

I threw on my sweats and marched down the hall. "Just because someone broke into my house and hurt me doesn't mean I have to hide, God damn it," I thought. "I haven't done anything wrong and I'm not ashamed! Nothing's changed. Nothing!" But when I opened the front door and took my first step outside, I hesitated, alarmed that the sky and the hill and the street opened before me, shimmering in vastness. The scene was so huge and so endless and so wrong that I couldn't catch my breath. I felt a pain slash through my chest, left side, and doubled over. Slowly I backed up to the door, opened it, and let myself in. I sank to the floor and stayed there until I could breathe again. "Maybe it's a little too soon," I thought, willing myself not to cry. "I can try again tomorrow." In my mind, I had already crawled back into my friend's bathrobe and was lying, curled in the corner, on his couch.

***

After a week of waiting, my left eye opened. "Treat yourself to a coffee," the doctor said. "There's no permanent damage." I wanted to celebrate with a vanilla café au lait and take my perfect eyesight out to my favorite coffee house, the way I used to. But the bruises were still bright and they scared people, making them stare and clutch their children close and move away, creating a vacuum that sucked me to the front of the coffee line. "What can I get for you today?" the server asked without smiling, his eyes unwavering. "What happened to the line?" I thought.

***

I was angry. So very angry. I had gone to some dreadful, night-terror place that was slanted sideways, while my friends continued to exist in their safe, little, flat worlds, those lovely, frosted-glass shelters that were as certain and predictable as the lighting of a lamp with the flip of a switch. I never questioned. Until now.

***

The officers at the scene had come and gone, leaving a trail of evidence unexamined and uncollected. I didn't know what to do. "Don't let the police rape you too!" my best friend had yelled at me, waving her cigarette in the air. When she left, I washed my hair and never let her near me again.

***

I didn't believe there was really a man standing there, so I looked again. Yes. There was a man. I sat up in bed, screaming. It sounded garbled. This couldn't be real. But it was. I heard an explosion when he sprang at me with his fists. Over and over. Eyes. Cheeks. Nose. Chin. Back to the eyes. Again and again. I could hear the smack of bone against bone, but my face had gone numb. My head kept snapping back and forth. Crack! Crack! I was trying to cover my face with my hands, but couldn't. At some point, I stopped seeing. And then I stopped screaming. And it was only then that he stopped hitting. He pulled me from my bed. While I begged him not to hurt me, he dragged me around to the other side of the room and forced me to lie face down on the floor. He knelt behind me, forcing my legs open with his knees, and pulled my nightgown up. I felt something poke my back. A finger? A knife? A penis? "I have money I can give you. Please don't hurt me." He told me he didn't want money and he wasn't going to hurt me. He was going to "make love" to me. That's really what he said. "Make love."

***

"You used to live in La Jolla?! Why in the world did you move back here?" I had never been very good at answering that question. It made me think of the Cove, bathed in sparkles first thing in the morning, and the tops of its white-and-brown dappled rocks covered with seals, jutting through the brilliant blue, and the surfers heading out from the sheltered beaches of Wind 'n Sea, waiting on their boards for just the right wave, and groups of white-clad people in neat rows, dancing, turning and bowing their slow tai chi movements. I often jogged off the sidewalk and down a trail through the rocks. I used to look up at the dark, tinted windows facing the water, wondering if anyone was sipping coffee and gazing out over the sea, or if they were too busy, in typical So Cal fashion, tearing through the house, looking for keys, straightening ties and hunting down briefcases, on their way to downtown San Diego to earn the right to keep up with the Joneses next door, who had a two foot high, purple quartz pyramid (for peace) on a pedestal in their great room, and a Mercedes convertible tucked into the garage, and a vacation home waiting in the south of France.

My quiet beach existence turned upside down in the middle of the night, during a full moon, when a man roused me from my dreams, beat me, pulled me from my warm bed, dragged me across my room, threw me to the floor with my face turned toward the bathroom door, and sexually assaulted me. The rug fibers were scratchy under my cheek, but I couldn't see them. I do not remember how long it lasted. I do not remember how long I was in the Emergency Room, or when I was able to sleep again. My left eye opened a week later. The blood in both eyes cleared three weeks later. The bruises and swelling were gone six weeks later. My illusion of safety was gone forever.

"Why in the world did you move back here?" my Cincinnati friends persisted, not knowing what had happened. I never talked about it. I had moved back home as soon as I was stable enough. Years.

"Oh," I said, smiling. "I can think of a few reasons."

Louise Yeiser is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Modern Witches, Wizards and Magic (Kerlak) and in ezines Tuesday Shorts and Six Sentences. In June, 2007, one of her pieces was used by Dr. Paola Trimarco in a presentation on flash fiction, during a one-day conference, sponsored by Edge Hill University in the UK. Louise studies Creative Nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh and lives in Sewickley, PA with three English Mastiffs and one cat.

Copyright 2008 Louise Yeiser

About flashquake

Moving Right Along

Published again!  I haven't the slightest idea why Newspaper Boy from my last entry intimidated me so.  I must have been ripe for a meltdown anyway, and simply read his comments at exactly the wrong moment.

I'm zooming about in hot pursuit of admission materials for Carlow University's MFA low-residency Creative Writing program.  If I am accepted, I will get to spend eleven blissful days writing and receiving instruction at Carlow's sister school in Carlow, Ireland, a golden and wonderful opportunity.  I'm hurrying the process along as fast as I can and have already submitted two essays to mentors at Pitt for their comments before my final rewrites.  A lick of a 41¢ stamp (or two, depending on the thickness of the packet) and then off I will go into the cold, snow and ice, to the post office's outdoor, drive-by mailbox with the slot that my car's side mirror always wants to bump.  Once I readjust my mirror, my next step will be to gather together and tweak twenty five pages of work, which I consider daunting, despite the strong encouragement and soothing reassurances from my current professor.  "Don't worry, be happy," he suggests, right?  Of course, right.

So off I go!  See you next week.

From Louise

2nd Tuesday Shorts Publication

Published January 08, 2008

Word count: 96

My childhood Christmas pageants had angels and animals and Mary and Joseph and a crèche and a doll and a tin-foil star; and I loved my halo, and belted out, "We wisssshhhhh you a Merry Christmas...; and here in 2007-08, it is politically incorrect, and possibly illegal, to say, "Merry Christmas;" so I'm confused, a bond I share with my 83-year old father.  Although he has an excuse, being an octogenarian and all, I do not; and I still want to wisssshhhhh you a Merry Christmas; and I'm allowed, since I used to be an angel.

Bio:   Louise Yeiser thinks she studies Creative Nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh, lives in Sewickley PA with a host of pets, authors Sneak Peeks, and has been published in Modern Witches, Wizards and Magic (Kerlak Publishing), and online at sixsentences.com and Tuesday Shorts; but she isn't sure.

Copyright © 2008 Louise Yeiser

Friday's Lullabye List, Posted on Thursday

Wow.  I completely forgot about my latest 6Sentences.com piece, which I wrote for my friend Peter, also known as Pita Pita Bread (for an explanation, see no. 3 here), and which was published for the world to see on Christmas day.  I had better get cracking, since that was my last submission; and ordinarily I like to have my stuff sprinkled into the writing that waits in the 6Sentence.com pipeline.  Many thanks to Rob McEvily, who was kind enough to showcase all my writing in one click, something that he rigged up in my bio, and that came as a complete surprise.  Thank you, Rob.

---

Yawn.  Today is the second day after Christmas, and I am deep into the post-Christmas/pre-New Year’s lull.  What a boring place to be.  It’s too early to get rid of all the Christmas stuff that decorates the house, lights every nook and cranny, and hangs from staircases, trees, and ceilings.  My plants have been abandoned to the sunporch, where they are looking dry and droopy, so that I could fill the windows with pine sprigs that are also looking dry and droopy.  I know how long it took to set Christmas up, and I know how long it will take to break it down, packing and storing it in some way that will hopefully make sense to me next year, when I go through this again.  It’s time for thank you phone calls and notes; hard to do when I am as lethargic and sluggish as I am now, wanting nothing more than to sit on the couch and watch Gilmore Girl reruns.  I’m working my way through Season 7, and am happy to report that Lorelei has had the sense to give Christopher a  second chance, or is it his third?  He is the father of her 21 year old daughter, Rory, who is getting ready to graduate from Yale.  All in all, the Gilmore girls are much more exciting than life in the lull between Christmas and New Year’s.

---

Soon.  Two more days.  Only two more days before I find myself on the plane to Atlanta, Fort Myers, and then to my father’s condo in Naples, FL, for my annual pilgrimage/escape/flight from reality.  If only I could get off my behind, and get myself movin' with the same enthusiasm I had before Christmas, when I was preparing for my First Annual Christmas Eve Open House from 6 to 11 that saw 50 attendees this (my first) year, I would have my house cleaned, my laundry done, my suitcases packed, and I would be downtown, hopping from ballet to show to restaurant to coffee house and back again.  As it is, my energy level is as drizzly as the weather outside, the tops of my feet feel like a horse stomped on them, and my back feels like I tried to bend over and pick up a 300 pound weight while standing on my tiptoes and twisting my body into an unnatural angle.  I would rather merge into this spot, where I sit on my chair at my table, in front of my computer, on my sun-porch-gone-gray that faces into the morosely damp weather, and drink coffee, write, read, let myself get as dried out and droopy as my plants, and completely give into this tired, and gloriously temporary, lullabye groove.

Submission and Shamelessness

After countless torturous, bloody, blunt and bitter rejections, I have finally written something that has been accepted and published on Tuesday Shorts, which can be found right here.  You'll have to go to the right side of the page and hunt for it, as it is buried among several other less worthy shorts penned by various scribblers who have taught writing, edited, published, and won awards; and I haven't won anything in my entire life except for a case of Seagram's 7 in college and a $35 gift certificate in an October charity raffle.  Anyway, the point is that my blog is in good company and is easily recognizable by the name Louise Yeiser, which is attached to it.  I know that, for the most part, almost everyone on God's green earth has read one version or another of this piece and is bored to tears over it, but we're going to have to just deal with that and go on with our lives the best we can.

Tuesday Shorts is dedicated to short fiction of 100 words or less, so I have had to take my (somewhat to mostly) nonfictional pieces, act like I made them completely up, edit out all the non-essential ingredients and submit.  Prior to this, it has been their job apparently to publish everyone but me.  What a feather in my cap to finally be included.  Hypothesis?  Successful sneakiness is irresistible any day of the week.

First Tuesday Shorts Publication

Opera and M&Ms

Word Count: 100 words

I went to the opera and discovered that I could sneak a jumbo-sized package of peanut M&M’s in my purse and eat them, one by one, without crinkling the plastic wrapper or rustling my purse or squeaking my seat or scrunching my body sideways or chomping or lip-smacking, while my neighbor in the section across the aisle crinkled, rustled, squeaked, scrunched, chomped, and lip-smacked her way through the last half of the first act and the entire second, craning necks and inspiring stage-whispered tsk-tsk’s.  “It simply isn’t done,” my mother would say, hiding her pride in my discreet, lady-like sneakiness.

Bio:  Louise Yeiser is a published writer, and student of Creative Nonfiction at the University Pittsburgh.  She savors the live theater experience to its fullest.

Copyright © 2007 Louise Yeiser

All That Glitters

They dazzle me at SixSentences.com.  I try to twinkle right back.  They indulged me on 04.22.07.

Sparkles

by Louise Yeiser

I remember summers in Cape Cod at my grandmother’s cottage, sitting on a stool, watching a white curtain curving, flowing, waving into a sunny room that smelled like cedar and pine, and standing in front of a three-tiered rack of baubles, staring at rows and rows of colored, flashing birth stones, fashioned into rings and necklaces, each for a dollar. I fell into the bright, endless spectrum of radiant rubies, precious peridots and luscious, lavender amethysts, and I liked it. “Mom, please?” I begged. “No, they’re only glass,” mom would reply absentmindedly, as she filled her red basket with paper towels, tissues, and Pond’s cold cream that felt like Crisco icing on her cheeks at night, offering me no safe landing for a goodnight kiss. Glass or stone, no matter. I wanted the twinkling on my finger, around my neck, so I could sit on my stool and be the magic, and move the sparkle through the sunbeams of the window with the curtain, and turn it this way and that, and continue my forever freefall.

6S

Louise Yeiser, author of The Secret, is a published writer and Creative Nonfiction student who collects diamond rings.

Daring Ado About Something

My to-do list is pretty straight-forward―dry cleaners, grocery store, vet, drugstore, bills.  The only stickler is the item, "Rewrite Dare," so I am clicking onto its last revision, pulling it up from the deep, dark recesses of my computer folders, wiping off the dust, and reading it.

"Good Lord," I think.  "How can I make this more interesting?"

Over the last couple years, I have been amazed at how much my writing has changed.  And it continues to evolve. Thanks to my current writing classes, I am tuning into the story, plus the story behind the story, the one that grabs the reader and resonates with some deep universal truth; and I’m not quite sure what that even means yet.

I constantly travel back to my old blogs, find them less than satisfactory, and rewrite them.  If you browse through my archives, it isn't hard to find an entry that is totally different from the original post you may remember, especially since I am incapable of providing links to my old work without changing at least something.  So it is often that I am crafting 2 blog entries at the same time, like a good 2-for-1 sale.

Dare is one of those pieces that has been tweaked repeatedly over the last two years, and submitted to all kinds of contests and publishers.  Kerlak, who picked up and published My Little Elves in the anthology, Modern Witches, Wizards, and Magic, returned Dare to me, asking me to rewrite it; since they liked it, but it didn’t quite fit the theme they were looking for.  During its revision, I came to the conclusion that it didn’t lend itself well to the spin they wanted, so I saved it in my REJECT folder, and haven't looked at it since.  Until today.  Originally it was a writing exercise in which I embellished, developed, and rewrote some poetic narrative, and created a fantasy where I meet a mysterious being who gives me clairvoyant advice in an eerily empty store.  It has ethereal qualities that are meant to stir the imagination, but little more.  I used to love it.  And now I’m not so sure.  Yesterday I studied the criticism provided by "A Woman’s Write," and today I am re-reading it through lenses that are still being forged by Dr. Gee (Readings in Creative NonFiction) and Ms. Kay (Public Relations Writing).  I don’t quite know what to do with it from here.  What is its point?  Where is its hook?  What makes it unique?  And how do I do that?

With my coffee mug on the nightstand next to me, and my dogs around me, I sit on my bed and work, with nowhere to be for another three hours.  There is a steady, gentle rain falling outside my window.  I love the sound it makes on the wooden deck outside my door, and on the cedar roof above my head.  I think this is a perfect writing moment.  I'm curious to see what I can do with it.

Modern Magic

I am a published writer and I will never be unpublished again.  Ever!  I am so excited about this, I can hardly sit down.  And since I’m a pretty high energy person anyway, this extra oomph puts me right over the top.  I’m spilling out of myself and I can’t help it.

My debut piece that is out there for the world (or at least pieces of it) to see is one of my first writings; so, of course, not my best.  I expected my editor to clean it up for me, and add a punchier last line; but he left it fairly intact.  Barely 500 words long, it is an essay masquerading as a short story about some little magic beings―elves, to be exact―who used to live in our house when my boys were growing up.  The story begins on page 163 of Modern Witches, Wizards, and Magic, edited by Charles Dinkins, published by Kerlak Enterprises.

The way the story got accepted for publishing is almost as silly as the story itself.  Last spring break, I hatched what I thought was a brilliant idea.  I decided to give myself an assignment designed to toughen me up for the inevitable profusion of rejection letters that seem to shower themselves on writers everywhere.  How many people have told me they could paper their walls with them?  So, I gave myself the assignment of submitting 5 pieces to 5 different places, expecting 5 different letters of rejection, so that I could begin developing a nice, thick skin to protect against future rejections that could really sting.  I submitted examples of my writing to 2 publishers, 2 contests and 1 online magazine.  In my batch of responses, I received two contracts, ready to print out and sign.  I was completely flabbergasted.  I still am.

Of course, I’ve always been blessed with tremendous beginners' luck.  When I competed in my first dogshow with my Josie, the first show dog I ever owned, I walked into the ring with her, won my class, and then took Winners Bitch over professional handlers and breeder/handlers, for a much coveted 3 point major.  I was in such shock that the judge had to point at me repeatedly, before finally getting into my face, and yelling, “You won!”  Anyone who has watched Westminster on TV knows that this is totally not done, and is totally not cool.

When I first realized that my book was indeed apparently being released for national distribution, I adopted an I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it attitude.  There were so many delays surrounding its publishing and distribution, including Hurricane Katrina, that my stance on the matter seemed 100% justified.  Even after I could see with my own eyes that the book was available for sale in the on-line bookstores, and had ordered a dozen of them from Barnes & Noble, I remained unshakably committed to my skepticism.  Then, when I was notified that shipment would be delayed, I thought, “I knew it.  Never gonna happen.”  I remained suspicious.  In a big way.

My two complimentary copies of the book beat the Barnes & Noble shipment by a day.  When I discovered them sitting in my mailbox, I think I went temporarily insane, exhibiting strange behavior, such as shouting, singing, jumping up and down, and skipping around the back yard, yelling, "Yippeeeee!!"  Thankfully, no one called the police.  Or if they did, the police considered a visit to my home unnecessary.

My father and stepmother sent flowers, which came yesterday, and enjoy a place of honor in the middle of my kitchen counter.  I spot them every time I pass through the downstairs of the house.  What selflessness.  With everything else going on in their lives right now, with hospitals, doctors, nurses, caregivers, medications, and transportation issues, they somehow managed to find the time to send me flowers.  The little note attached to a large rose-like ivory flower with petals rimmed in green, read, “Whoopie!  Congratulations!”  I’m glad I’m going back to Cincinnati next weekend, so that I can give them thank you hugs in person; and tell them how much I appreciate their thoughtfulness.

That’s my big news for this Friday, November 11.  I thought I would be able to work in the Friday catblogging theme somewhere; but, alas, all I could come up with were some cute pictures, thanks to my son, Jeffrey.  I think they turned out very nicely, don't you?

Have a good weekend.