About 20 years ago, I penned (literally) a short about an older woman who, through a series of misunderstood communications, encounters her nemesis from years before. Alas, I lost those pages in one of my many moves. In 2016, however, the main character revisited me, and I wrote a new story about her—Mabel, an underestimated woman who’s fiercely independent, appreciative of beauty, and tenacious when her sense of what’s right and good is challenged....
When you believe in independent publishing as a political act, start wondering about alternatives to sending out that odd, non-genre 5200-word short story for more submissions—especially to pubs with loooonnnnngggg response times. Especially when you have all the knowhow to publish a valid and properly formatted ebook. Especially when you think the story really is actually pretty fun. Especially when you have the fabulous Katherine M. Lawrence editing. So you decide to throw it out there…...
Now that I’m writing again, I’ve started thinking about the things I wrote before. Last night, that took be down into the (water-damaged) basement to see what I could find. I wasn’t quite sure what was there, because over the years I’ve lived in at least twenty-four different places, and when you’re moving that much, boxes of stuff become these sealed nodes of wonders and troubles, with old bills and old love letters and old photos and old magazines and old what-the-hell-did-I-keep-that-for kinds of stuff, and after enough moves you really just stop looking in them because it’s so much easier to drag them along from place to place, knowing only that there might be something in there you might want…someday, but not today....