This is a little something I’ve been cooking up for a while.  I’d been wanting to do another installment of “Level Up Your Poetry” for Sidequest, and I had the perfect opportunity with the Dangerous to Go Alone! 2 anthology.  I posed a question to my fellow contributors to glean their advice for writing game-inspired poetry. 

Shoutout to the poets who shared their wisdom:  Gwendolyn Maia Hicks, Marisca Pichette, Paula Ardito, C. Payne, Sarah Jane Justice, Jennifer Elise Wang, and J. D. Harlock. 

I didn’t stop there.  Coming soon, an interview with the anthology’s editor, CB Droege. 

I’m back with more good news about The Inca Weaver’s Tales: My mini-chapbook has been nominated for the Elgin Award for Best Chapbook!  Huge thank you to the kind person out there who read it and felt it worthy of nomination.  I’m in very good company!  Lots of awesome poetry to explore.  I see my friend Brian U. Garrison’s chapbook, Micropoetry for Microplanets, on the list of nominees as well.  He signed my copy of his book at a local event last month and did a great reading. 

Another huge thank you to the team at Sword & Kettle Press for publishing my chapbook!  I wrote all the poems from scratch when I saw their call for submissions for the New Cosmologies series.  They were so great to work with on edits, and they put so much care into the layout, illustrations, cover design, what cardstock to use, the stitching, and even how they packed it for shipment. 

If you’re interested in learning the “behind the scenes” of my research and writing process for this book, I talked about it on the podcast Into the Looking Glass: Exploring the Magic Behind Speculative Poetry. 

I’m right in the thick of developmental edits on my fantasy novella, Thrice Petrified.  My publisher has started working on the cover design.  We’re on track for a release this year!  Not gonna lie, that last sentence feels really good to say, considering how much of my life I’ve spent dreaming of being a Writer, struggling to improve and grow throughout the years (a never-ending process), and getting to know these characters in particular so I can share them with readers.  It won’t be long now…

Last night I got to check out the proof of the Claw Machine anthology from Little Key Press.  What a lineup of stories!  I love seeing creative interpretations of this theme, and getting to be part of it feels like a prize of my own. 

I have a couple other things I have to keep under wraps for now, but one more update I can add is that I’ll be a panelist at this year’s Worldcon in Seattle.  Schedule to be determined. 

If you’ll be in Portland this June on Friday the 13^th, mark your calendar for the launch party for Claw Machine: The Anthology.  Come hang with contributing authors at Up Up Books at 6pm for readings, giveaways, and all kinds of fun. 

Our editor, Elle Mitchell, is handcrafting miniature items based on each of our stories.  She’s posting photos of them along with interviews with each of the authors in the Kickstarter updates.  My interview is in Update #6.  Check out the full series of posts to learn what arcade machine we’d each be, what drew us to this anthology, and more. 

If you can’t make it to the book launch, we’ve got a virtual reading in the works, too. 

Are you a fantasy fiction writer wanting to spread your wings and try poetry?  Or a poet looking to dip your toes into the fantasy genre?  I’m teaching a workshop next month called The Art of Enchanted Form: Making Poetry Speculative.  It’ll be online on April 12^th, hosted by the awesome lit mag Lucky Jefferson, and available for free (with a sliding scale pricing option).  Tell your friends! 

Meanwhile, I’m working on edits of my debut novella, Thrice Petrified, I’m planning my trip to Seattle for Worldcon this summer, and I just got word this evening from the editor of Claw Machine: The Anthology that our Kickstarter has fully funded!  Spring tends to be a tough season for me creatively—hard to pinpoint why—so I’m hoping to ride this wave of good news and pour my energy into the novella.  This is new territory for me. 

I’m excited to have written a poem—er, “received a transmission” for Project Abeona called “Space-Grown Chocolate Tasting Notes.”  I won’t do justice to Project Abeona if I try to describe it, so I really hope you’ll check it out, especially if futurism, space exploration, and scientific poetry are your jam. 

I have it on good authority that this poem/transmission was inspired by viewing cacao pods in Ecuador, reading a book about how chocolate is processed, and bringing space travel into the mix. 

What prize will you snag?  Claw Machine: The Anthology has officially launched its Kickstarter campaign!  This book will feature dark speculative stories themed around—you guessed it—claw machines, including my story “Narrowly, Narrowly Caught.” 

I hope you’ll allow yourself to get ensnared in this captivating theme.  Please help spread the word. 

Some generous soul out there nominated my poem “Bridge of Grass, Bridge of Suspension,” from my mini-chapbook The Inca Weaver’s Tales, for the Rhysling Award! 

I’m in good company—there are so many jaw-dropping poems on the nominee list, I encourage you to go read as many of these works as you can find.  We won’t all be named finalists, alas, but it’s an honor to be nominated.  And please go read others’ poems, too.  Maybe you’ll find some new favorites. 

This particular poem of mine was a last-minute addition to my mini-chapbook.  When Naseem Jamnia was working on the layout, they reached out to see if I had any pieces to fill out a couple extra pages.  Provide readers with even more poetry?  The answer is always yes!  I wrote “Bridge of Grass, Bridge of Suspension” that evening as the bonus poem.  I had already done some initial research and brainstorming. 

I want to leave you with the final two lines of my poem: 

“(Where we have canyons of difference
we are in direst need of bridges.)”

This year’s Worldcon Poet Laureate, Brandon O’Brien, is starting a weekly column about speculative poetry on the Seattle Worldcon blog.  For the first post, “Con-Verse: Welcome,” he reached out to members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) for our takes on this expansive type of writing in which anything, truly anything, can happen on the page.  I mean that in the sense of both form and content: the speculative genres open up the content to whatever the imagination provides, and poetry as a form allows pretty much any structure to coalesce on the page. 

Anyway, Brandon’s blog post is a great way to hear from an array of voices and get a solid foundation on speculative poetry.  I based my contribution on some of my previous thoughts from Worldcon 2020.  I think Brandon’s column is due out on Mondays, so keep an eye out for more Con-Verse.