We’re finishing up Oregon’s spring break, and while I worked for most of the days, I took yesterday off to go with my family to the Mount St. Helens Visitor Center an hour and a half north in Washington.  My older relatives recall the ash from the 1980 eruption landing in yards and gutters here in Beaverton.  We can see the flattened peak on clear days from Portland, but this was the closest I’d ever gotten to it.  We got gorgeous weather for our visit.  In the gift shop, they had glass ornaments handmade in Ecuador, so I had to bring one home with me. 

This morning we stuck closer to home and went to the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge.  We lucked into more great weather.  My older son commented as we walked about how peaceful it was, and then he shared with me how he thinks there are various types of “Oregon peaceful”:  beach peaceful, forest peaceful, desert peaceful, mountain peaceful, cave peaceful.  (I was very tempted to tell him he has the makings of a great poem in that insight, but that doesn’t seem to be his thing.)  When we got home, I realized that a lot of my novella, Thrice Petrified, is about restoring some of those types of peacefulness to the landscape and the creatures (fantastical and otherwise) inhabiting them. 

We interspersed additional types of fun into the other weekend and evenings of spring break, such as basketball games and a couple of movies.  I also received the proof of the Clocks anthology to review, plus I just got an acceptance for a poetry reprint.  And I’m making slow but steady progress on my current writing project.  All in all, a great week. 

The Kickstarter campaign for the upcoming Clocks anthology has officially launched!  This is your chance to get early bird rates and directly support the authors and artists contributing to this themed exploration of clocks and what they can represent, as shown through speculative fiction.  The book comes out later this year from Little Key Press and includes work by the following: 

Chantell May Saunders, Charlotte Van Ryswyk, Courtney Raines, Elizabeth Jaffari, Erin Hall, J.S. Mercer, James Carraghan, Katherine Quevedo, Katrina Jax, Madi Haab, Mia Dalia, Niyyah Ruscher-Haqq, Raymond Brunell, Reign Reeves Pearson, Rose Wilde Hall, Sarah Walker, and Susan E. Rogers. 

I’ll have a new story, “Gearheart,” in the upcoming anthology Clocks, from the press that brought you Claw Machine.  What can you expect this “time” around?  According to the editor, “As you move from one narrative to the next, you’ll find yourself lost in fog, grasping at a young love, risking it all to save a dying world. Pages will swallow you whole as you slip through time, challenge what it means to live, and create an automaton.” 

We’ve got a Kickstarter campaign launching later this month.  You can sign up to be notified when that happens (I’ll also post about it, of course). 

I’m also involved in another exciting project that will have a Kickstarter later on.  More to come on that.