(Insert Engaging Title Here)
So...in my efforts to get more engaged (see exciting title above) I am revisiting the blog. Of course, then I realized that my website has two blog tabs: one proclaiming proudly, "BLOG" and the other muttering "Blog" somewhat sheepishly. The former is the remains of my old Blogger feed. This one, the sheepish one, is tied to this website and is only sheepish because I haven't done anything with it as yet. Eventually, the old Blogger feed will go away and this one will come out of the shadows and establish itself as the one and only supreme BLOG...but that hasn't happened quite yet.
In recent news, A Phantasmagoria has been announced as a BRAG Medallion honoree. Check them out if you don't know about them already. They are lovely people. Really lovely people. They liked my book. They said nice things. They are the best people ever.
Also, as a direct result of the above, Charla White has interviewed me for her website, WordsAPlenty. Check it out here...you know, if you like. She also wrote a beautiful review of A Phantasmagoria.
In new projects...there are about half a dozen, and I really don't know which one is going to win out this time. This happens to me all the time when I finish a project and look for a new one, so I know, or at least I hope, that eventually one will take over...but the range is all over the map this time, from a literary memoir to a contemporary epistolary novel, to a weird fantasy plunge a la wonderland. We shall see what emerges.
To return to A Phantasmagoria for a moment...it was possibly the most cathartic book I have ever written, and definitely the most terrifying to release into the world. I'm one of those writers (though perhaps I shouldn't admit it) who tends to not realize what they're really doing until after they've already done it. I finish writing something, emerge from the vortex, go back and read over it, and then think, Oh, so that's what was going on that whole time. Interesting. Of course, every book ends up being personal. Bits of me break off and get into all the characters. Occasionally, I get ahead of myself and a book comes to mean more to me afterwards than it did at first, which is weird. But A Phantasmagoria was written very much in the moment, as an expression of my journey of the last four years.
...and I think I've rambled enough for this post. Cheers!