Posts Tagged ‘ETs’
June’s Bloomington Writers Guild “First Sunday Prose and Open Mic” (see May 5, et al.) at Bloomington’s Juniper Gallery did double duty, honoring Pride Month with its two featured readers, as well as with stories for, literally, all ages. It’s also the last until September, going on summer vacation for the next two months, when it will resume with an altered time slot, from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. instead of its current 2:00 to 3:30.
First up for this month was children’s story writer/illustrator Gail Fairfield who began with a short grownup piece for Pride Month, of two older women discussing holding hands at a table, followed by several selections from THE MOSTLY TRUE STORIES OF ROLY POLY’S GREAT LAKE ADVENTURES — holding the book up from time to time so we could see the pictures ourselves! — from her series of children’s books starring a rambunctious as well as extra-cute puppy. Then, second, came Bloomington PetsAlive executive director David Dunn, and a frequent contributor to DRUNK MONKEYS magazine, with two “very queer” stories, the first aimed toward young adults, the opening chapter of a first novel he has in the works, and second, for adult readers, “Anastasia Canary and Her Paranormal Lovers” with themes of extra-terrestrial abductions and environmental intervention.
After a short break, moderator Molly Gleeson introduced, in turn, four “open mic” readers of which I was second with a story published in 2021, in a special issue of FRIGHT NIGHT aimed at young adults new to reading horror, “Upward!,” about a being with, at best, only spotty memory, struggling upward through darkness to . . . what?
Let us take a trip way down Memory Lane, to an anthology call for a book called FAKE NEWS (cf. February 4 2020; June 20 2019) and a story “tentatively” accepted for it, “Country Doctor,” of UFOs and ETs and other such letter combinations originally published in BOOK OF DARK WISDOM, Summer 2005. The FAKE NEWS call actually goes back as far as 2018, but the gears of publication sometimes grind intensely slowly. But then Sunday night came another glimmering! Cordelia has been working hard on the proof for Fake News. Here is what we have now. If you have ANY changes, please send them to me. I also need your final bios and answers to
the questions I sent you. The cover is also done, so this is the LAST stage before Cordelia and I put this together and send it off to the printer. The goal is to get it to the printer by mid-September so it can hit the market in October, during election season, when the phrase “fake news” and “#fakenews” should be trending.
So, burning the Monday post-midnight electricity I went through the story as it will be printed, finding all to be well, and sent my “okay” back along with the information requested, the latter in essence a repeat of material sent last February — this saga has multi-level chapters! But if all goes well, it looks like the FAKE NEWS may be hitting the (electronic, anyway) bookstores in not much more than another month!
jamesdorrwriter 