Happy Halloween!  I’ve got several new poems out this weekend. 

First up is “Dancer Summons,” my belly dance poem appearing in the new issue of The Common Tongue Magazine, which is full of dark fantasy stories and verse to scratch that Halloween itch.  Coincidentally, later today I’ll be participating in a dance event for the first time in over a year and a half. 

Next are two poems, “Merfolk in the Ghost Net” and “The Kraken’s Bight,” in the new issue of Seaborne Magazine themed around Storms, Omens & Monsters.  I love the illustrations by artists Ioan Nicolae Ciontea and Caroline Scamell accompanying my poems. Seaborne Magazine donates a portion of their revenue to charities that support oceans and marine life; this issue supports Surfers Against Sewage.

Finally, “The Devil with the Golden Hairs Earns His Sleep” is in the Magic issue of Analogies & Allegories Literary Magazine.  I was inspired to write this poem while thinking about how my dad used to recite the Grimm fairy tale “The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs” to my sisters and me when we were young—except that he always called it “The Three Hairs of the Giant.” He recently told me that my grandmother used to tell it to him in Spanish. 

If you want to finish off your Halloween with even more poetry, one of my fellow contributors to The Common Tongue Magazine, Brittany Hause, put together a great list that you can find at this link.

My poem “Sea Grass Supplication” is available to read online in The Curator Magazine.  I wrote it this past winter during my family’s beach trip.  We’d arrived just in time to enjoy the sunset shown below.  Our trek through the sea grass made quite an impression on me. 

Speaking of vegetation that makes an impression, my family went to a corn maze this past weekend.  It was rainy, super muddy, and great fun.

Part two of my essay, “Level Up Your Poetry: Anatomy of Two Gaming Poems,” is up now on Sidequest (you can find the first half here).  In this new installment, I break down two of my poems (“Lava Reef Cooldown” and “The Deku Butler’s Son”) as examples of the approach from part one in action. 

On a related note, I’ve got several brand-new poems due out in various publications soon.  These ones won’t be about gaming, but they do run the gamut when it comes to structure and genre.

It’s time for masks, the sacredness of human touch, and … hair magic?  No, I’m not talking about COVID, I’m talking about my story “Desert Locks” from GigaNotoSaurus.  It was just selected for the new volume of Best Indie Speculative Fiction, which is due out later this year and will feature works from 2020 that first appeared in small press and indie publications.  I had a story in Vol. III, and I’m honored to be included again in Vol. IV.

Part one of my new essay, “Level Up Your Poetry: Video Games and Ekphrastic Verse,” is up now on Sidequest.  If the combination of poetics and digital games intrigues you as it does me, I also included links to some additional resources.  More to come!

Happy October!  The leaves and weather are starting to turn, the Halloween decorations are out, and here in the U.S. we’re smack in the middle of National Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month. 

If you’re in the mood to listen to some spooky poetry, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has its annual online Halloween reading page, where you can find audio recordings of poets—including yours truly—reading our work for your eerie enjoyment.  This year you can hear me reading “The Banquet at the Center of the Maze,” which originally appeared in Coffin Bell.

I’m back with a new video game poem at Sidequest.  This one is based on a somewhat obscure RPG for the SEGA Saturn called Shining the Holy Ark.  Really, it’s intended to capture the feeling of completing RPGs in general.  And I’m not going to lie, as I was writing “Restoring Order to a World Hooked on Strangeness,” I was thinking a lot about what life will be—is?—would be?—like emerging from the COVID pandemic. 

By the way, I also have an essay due out soon at Sidequest about writing video game poetry, as I really enjoy the topic and find it an underutilized source of inspiration for poets.  The essay will come out in two parts.

Sweet!  My 100-word story “When You Wake, You’ll Have Cake” just won Rune Bear’s Summer 2021 Quarterly Contest!  The theme was Inner Worlds.  This little drabble was inspired by lyrics in a lullaby book I read to one of my sons when he was younger.  We’d gotten the book from the library, and I remember wishing I knew the melodies to more of the lullabies so I could sing them to him.  Instead, I tried to make the most of enthusiastic recitations, and he was a patient, willing audience. 

By the way, if you’re craving more strangeness in a sugary setting, my friend Maggie Slater’s new story, “Candyland,” just came out today in Apex Magazine!

Triangulation: Habitats is here!  This anthology of speculative stories and poems about sustainable living spaces is available in ebook or paperback. 

From the times I’ve traveled to Ecuador to visit family, I’ve gotten to see the Andes, the tropical coast, and the stunning Galápagos—but one part of the country I haven’t been to yet is the rainforest.  I’ve wanted to since I was a kid, but it hasn’t worked out.  That made the research for this latest story, “Discount Night at the Haunted Eco Lodge,” a bit frustrating, especially since I did the bulk of it during COVID lockdown last year.  I leafed through a book on ecotourism filled with jaw-dropping photos of sustainable tourist destinations around the world, while the prospect of traveling seemed so very far away.  I read people’s accounts of Amazon hikes and studied itineraries of lodges throughout South America, all during a time I I felt nervous about setting foot in my local grocery store. 

That’s why I’m especially pleased that readers can now take this journey with my characters.  Welcome to the haunted eco lodge.

How cool is this?!  Victims and Villains is hosting an online event this Saturday, bringing together various guest podcasters and gamers to celebrate art, gaming, film, and mental health.  There’s nothing about that sentence I don’t like.  Anyway, one of the podcasts will be Black Women Are Scary, and I’m thrilled that they’ll be reading my story “Neck of the Woods” as part of this event on Saturday, August 21^st at 8pm EDT (5pm my time, PDT) on Twitch. 

In other event news, registration is now open for Fall classes at the Hugo House, including the workshop I’m teaching with Elizabeth Beechwood in November.