Once in a while I like to take a break from short stories and poetry to write about the act of writing. Most recently, I wrote a guest column for Angry Gable Press called “Motivation Through Collaboration with Your Past and Future Selves.” Any single approach won’t work for every author, but I hope others find it a useful perspective to consider.
I’m also putting the final touches on a new entry in my Level Up Your Poetry series for Sidequest. More on that when it’s published.
Looking ahead, I’ve had a couple of poem acceptances (for Star*Line and Corvid Queen), and I’ve been invited to contribute to a short story anthology—more details soon!
My poem “Rhapsody in Sage” is part of Extrasensory Overload: an anthology of speculative excess from Angry Gable Press. This book gathers all types of speculative short stories and verse in which the senses are stretched to their limits, mixed and mashed, and otherwise played with. I’m honored to be included with all the wonderful writers in here (Angela Yuriko Smith, Ai Jiang… too many to list!).
I had fun writing this poem after an evening hanging out with my mom and sisters during a family trip to the Oregon high desert. The sky was vast and filled with bright stars. At one point, my big sister stepped out onto the cabin’s deck, intending to demonstrate her stargazing app. The tech didn’t cooperate. My mind took it from there. And she was a great sport about me memorializing it through a cosmic horror poem.
We’re getting close to this year’s Willamette Writers Conference in Portland. Please say “hi” if you’re attending the in-person portion. I’ll be speaking on Saturday, August 3rd with Christopher Luna and Ellis Bray on the panel “Poetic Techniques to Challenge, Inspire, and Transform You (and Your Work!).”
One last poetry tidbit (not about me), Seattle Worldcon 2025 announced they’ve appointed Brandon O’Brien as their poet laureate! Brandon is super talented and a wonderful advocate for speculative poetry. I don’t think I’ve heard of a conference having a poet laureate before, so let’s hope this development continues and grows! (The Willamette Writers Conference, by the way, will kick off with an opening poem by Alex Dang.)
I’m very excited that a story of mine was selected for the upcoming anthology Sun Rising Short Stories from Flame Tree Publishing. It’s due out in October. They always produce such gorgeous books, and I love that they publish contemporary writers alongside classic ones. You can get a sneak peek of the table of contents here on their blog.
My newest poem takes shape in Sidequest as one of the ghosts from Pac-Man. “Ghosted by Pac-Man” continues my interest in playing with word placement and white space, stretching my range of speaker voice, and mining video games as inspiration. Enjoy!
Thanks again to hosts Laura Blackwell and Daniel Marcus for having me on Story Hour. Here’s the link where you can hear Brandon Crilly read one of his wonderful cli-fi stories and me read “The Menagerie Machine” and “Song of the Balsa Wood Bird.”
I’ve been making headway on a couple new fiction drafts and working on revisions of a couple more. I like to have a lot of works in progress at a time. I find I’m a very moody writer and like to flit around to what catches my interest at any particular time. The key is buckling down when a project gets close enough to completion so I can push through the final parts. That’s a great feeling.
Before we get to the poetry announcements, first a couple online fiction readings for your calendars: Story Hour will have my friend Maggie Slater reading this coming Wed., June 26th, with Annika Barranti Klein, and then the following Wed., July 3rd, I’ll be reading with Brandon Crilly. Both readings will be at 7pm PDT. I had a fabulous time on Story Hour last year, and this time I’ll be bringing some fantasy.
Speaking of fantasy, my poem “Stained Glass Dragon” is part of the new anthology Here There Be Dragons from Hiraeth Publishing. I wanted to approach the idea of dragons from a new angle for me, and the vision of sharp wings created an image in my mind that resulted in this poem. This anthology includes a variety of stories and poems—a treasure hoard, if you will—for the dragon enthusiasts out there!
Also, my poem “Super Emeralds” appeared in Sidequest. It’s the first in some recent concrete poetry (or visual poetry) I’ve been dabbling with. This one is based on Sonic 3 & Knuckles, in which the titular gems appear as larger and more powerful versions of the Chaos Emeralds from the earlier Sonic games (and if you like this one, you might enjoy my poem “Lava Reef Cooldown”). I’m honored that Critical Distance once again included my work in their weekly roundup of critical writing on games!
Coming up in the next few weeks, a non-speculative poem, a story acceptance announcement, and my panel at the Willamette Writers Conference.
My new story “In Defence of Plant Life” is part of On Spec Magazine Issue #128, Vol. 34, No. 2. I’m excited to be part of the longtime Canadian magazine of the fantastic. “In Defence of Plant Life” is a story about a terrarium on a train. How did it come about?
For Mother’s Day five years ago, I went with my middle sister, our mom, and my mother-in-law to Roosevelt’s Terrariums in Portland. The place was enchanting.
Roosevelt’s Terrariums
Making my terrarium back in 2019
We had such a fun time each making our own terrarium, from selecting the vessel (I picked one with a very narrow neck—definitely limited my options, rather like a writing constraint I guess) to arranging soil, stones, and plants inside. I madly scribbled notes throughout, fascinated by the process.
I cast about right away for a chance to use the inspiration in a story. I combined it with a longtime interest I’d had in setting something on a train, specifically a private rail car. A few months later, my mom and I went to a local plant nursery, Farmington Gardens, for a presentation called My Alien Plant (I couldn’t resist a title like that), which gave me the exact research I needed. The month after that, I went to a one-day writing retreat and started the first draft. I’m so excited the final version is available to readers at last!
By the way, I’ll have some more poetry news to share later this month.
A couple months ago I attended the Terroir Creative Writing Festival for the first time. Omar El Akkad kicked things off with an amazing keynote speech that got me thinking about the privilege of having distance from violence. Kim Stafford led a poetry workshop in which he challenged us to think of poems in broader terms, such as outpourings, manifestos, and meditations. Then in the afternoon I went to a session on ekphrastic poetry which focused on paintings and sculptures. I stubbornly, though, decided to write another video game poem instead. The day’s inspiration mixed in my mind with memories of playing the various Super Smash Bros. games.
Also, my poem “Pumpkin Ash and Cypress Knees,” first published in Boudin by The McNeese Review, has been reprinted in The Hyacinth Review in keeping with their Night theme.
StokerCon was fantastic! Highly recommended. I’ve long thought that horror writers are, if you’ll forgive a generalization, some of the nicest people you could hope to meet. Throughout the convention, there was a real sense of friendliness, supportiveness, camaraderie, whether it was a brief interaction in the hotel elevator or the rapport among panelists. I think it may have something to do with the fact that we get a lot of our darkness out on the page (I’ve heard that mystery writers are, typically, also lovely people).
Thursday evening included a poetry open mic hosted by Linda D. Addison, and it knocked my socks off. Then I ventured to the inaugural StokerConcert, offsite at The Casbah, where I discovered that I really enjoy dungeon synth (makes sense, given the genre has some serious video game vibes). Thanks to Nate Carson of Nanotear Booking for making that event happen.
A cowled Francis Roberts performs dungeon synth at StokerConcert.
Friday kicked off early for me with a reading alongside John Langan, Erika T. Wurth, and P.M. Raymond. The fabulous Laura Blackwell organized a fun lunch meetup. I sat next to Rachel Unger, and we discovered we both have stories coming out in On Spec Magazine (not the same issue, sadly, but that just means you’ll have to check out both when the time comes). I also enjoyed running into my friend Richard Leis at various panels, as we had interest in a lot of the same topics.
Saturday afternoon was my panel “Ancestry as Source: Writing with Deep Authenticity.” Somehow I’d forgotten it was going to be livestreamed, but I guess that means I had less time to freak out about it. L. E. Daniels was our wonderful moderator, and the panel included Douglas Gwilym (one of the editors who gave me my second ever story sale, 7 years ago!), Kristy Park Kulski / K.P. Kulski, Rhonda Jackson Garcia / RJ Joseph, Shane Hawk, and Geneve Flynn. I’m not going to lie, it’s tough for me to be that open and vulnerable about family history to a public audience. I’m a very private person. (Have you noticed I don’t do social media? And that I like to add layers of fictionalization and speculative genre onto anything personal that makes its way into my writing?) Anyway, this felt like a really important topic, so ultimately I was happy to get out of my comfort zone and be part of the conversation.
