late-octoberish

I started this entry a week ago and then everything tipped sideways and I lost the thread.  Mostly I am muddling through, working on press business, trying to jam too many manuscripts into next year's schedule, and beginning to look at edits for major characters, whose release is aimed for December. ..It's full on fall, now, the last few leaves hanging on straggly trees and I've been indulging horror movie marathons and occasional chocolate binging in preparation for Halloween (for which I will be, in the 1950's theme we agreed upon at work-- dressing as a beatnik, complete with turtleneck and beret and long cigarette holder.)  Halloween makes me all nostalgic for childhood especially, those trick r treat expeditions and the ensuing aftermath of zombie movies and getting to stay up as late as we wanted, no matter if it was a school night (no doubt high from all that sugar.)  Of course, Halloween as a grownup usually means booze and parties, which will be happening again (or on week nights any other year for the last few, working in the library on the actual day.)   But there's something lost in that transition to adulthood, somehow....

I am also knee deep in the hotel poems, as well as maybe toe deep in the text that will accompany the strange machine collages in the next zine project, all about atomic energy and pinup girls and 1950's false nostalgia, which I am hoping to have wrapped up in the next week.  Also, another visually oriented project with the botanical paintings and some found text I'll be finishing in November.

So another week following another 2-day weekend shift in the library and I really made some progress on my own work, including fine tuning the final adjustments on ghost landscapes and some serious writing progress on the creepy motel project, which is turning out to be sort of novel-like, but in this case collaged together from all sorts of things like letters and postcards and news clipping and journal notes.  It is also a story within a story, or maybe more like a ghost story within a ghost story. Yesterday had me frantically googling things like "grisly hotel murders" and "1950s cigarettes smoke by women" and "route 66 motels", all the sort of research that I very much like doing..

Otherwise, am making my way through a few more chapbook layouts, making a few final decisions for next years chapbook series (we are beginning to unveil next year's authors on the FB page, so keep an eye out there to see what's coming in January...).  I am also plotting how to finish the remaining zine projects for this year, and what might be coming down the pipeline in terms of creative projects for 2015. I am hoping to have the apocalypse book in the bag by the end of the year, so that leaves the motel book and some strange fragmentary beast that may be the beginnings of another book.

So long time no update and I am a bad, bad blogger, but much has been afoot in the sea beneath the blog, the current under the silence.  First there are dgp manuscripts--so many pages of poetry, that I am just beginning to get a handle on.  I've been doing second read-throughs on the maybe manuscripts and releasing other back in the wild as I go.  I've been trying to get back on schedule for this year, which I am about a month behind on, but it's slower going, with a bunch of stuff still in the layout process and others just about ready to go.  There is also much afoot in the general poetry arena..upcoming readings, features, book plans, manuscripts.   But still I get antsy about other things I want to get done, mostly in the arena of paper goods and zines, including a good restocking of things for fall.

In more frivolous pursuits, I am salving my hatred of cold weather with pumpkin donuts and new dresses, most notably this modcloth lovely, which I fell in love with immediately and bought (even though it necessitated some ramen eating at the end of the pay period, along with this skirt.)  After payday, I also procured some  new boots and tights (which I figured since I will probably wear them for the next 6 months, I might as well indulge myself.)

I am definitely ready for sweater weather, having revamped my built-in drawers and moved my soap supplies to the kitchen. Which of course, since I had more room for sweaters in the drawers, meant I had more room for boots on the closet shelves, which of course meant I had to buy some more.  I did manage to find & replace my fave black pair that I wore the soles off of last winter, and managed to get an identical pair in brown.. 

Outside of impulse control issues when it comes to retail, and some weird romantic re-emergences that will be, by necessity, shortlived, I am just trudging on through...