I had a wonderful time at the Beaverton City Library’s Local Author Fair this past weekend. 

I got to talk to so many people about what they enjoy reading, and I met some lovely fellow authors from the area.  Elizabeth Beechwood and I had side-by-side tables, and one highlight was when Mindy Hardwick, one of the other participating authors, came over to tell us she had taken our workshop Creating Nonhuman Characters while writing one of her children’s books, The World Is a Sniff—which features a dog narrator!  We also got to say hi to the always fabulous Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito as we visited each other’s tables. 

Later in the weekend, I finally visited Next Level Pinball Museum in nearby Hillsboro.  Several folks had told me how much I’d love it, and they were right!  It’s room after room of arcade games and pinball machines, with collectibles displayed over every inch of the walls. 

That was a lot of excitement for me in one weekend.  At least I have some time to recover before StokerCon… 

It’s another smorgasbord of updates! 

I had a wonderful time joining two classes at my alma mater, Santa Clara University, as a virtual guest speaker over the past couple weeks.  One of my professors, Kirk Glaser, whom I’d run into at the AWP Conference, invited me to speak to the Genre Writing and Literary Magazine Production classes.  We covered a range of topics (rather like this blog post), from special considerations in speculative fiction worldbuilding to contract negotiation.  I really appreciated the students’ engagement and thoughtful questions.  I also attended a virtual poetry reading Kirk did last weekend with Kimiko Hahn and Vijay Seshadri, and I was blown away by all three! 

Meanwhile, the lovely folks at The Hyacinth Review reprinted my poem “The Devil with the Golden Hairs Earns His Sleep,” a retelling of the Grimm fairy tale “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” in which we hear from the perspective of the poor unsuspecting monster. 

Later this month I’ll be participating in the Beaverton City Library’s Local Author Fair, along with my frequent partner in crime workshop co-leader, Elizabeth Beechwood.  If you’re in the Portland metro area, come out to my hometown and say hello! 

I’ve got a couple of StokerCon panels in the works, one for the virtual version of the conference and one for the in-person version in San Diego. 

And one last quick update, the Kickstarter campaign for Phantoms from the Sky is wrapping up soon, so if you want a copy of this science fiction anthology (along with some themed poems I wrote as a bonus), show your support now!