things (both random and profound)

*I have a new poem in the inaugural issue a nifty little UK based journal Blue Eyed Boy Bait. Since I don't have the time to submit much new work out into the world these days, my new publication frisson was badly in need of a jolt. Maybe I will work harder on trying to fix this..

*In dgp news, Critical Mass, the blog for the National Book Critics Circle, gives a nice little nod to Flood Year and dgp...Karen Weyant also has some complementary things to say here.

*I will be announcing final decisions on next years publication slate in this next week, as well as releasing a couple of new titles as I finish them. I have just about every book for this year laid out and ready to go to the authors if they already haven't, so amazingly am feeling pretty much caught up if a little tardy. I have been working like a madwoman to get book stock built back up after the sale craziness and have been in the studio every morning over the last two weeks making books. My arm hurts a little from the trimmer and I have a couple of rather wicked papercuts but we are in good shape, especially since I inherited a hardly used swingline booklet stapler from the library when they were moving departments around that doesn't require me to jimmy the staples every time I use it..


* Next weekend I am participating in a poetry panel during the Open Books grand opening. It's two days of festivities and a bookstore with a great cause behind it. See more details here.

*I'm hitting that point in the year where the lack of daylight starts to make me a little melancholy. I feel like I notice it more on the weekends when I sleep later and then have only 5 or so hours of light in which to accomplish anything. At night, I keep thnking it's later than it is. At least during the week, I am up earlier and notice it less. There aren't any windows within my vantage point at the library, so it's not much different than a couple months ago, the plunge into nightfall so early. This is the time of year when I feel most like I could just give everything up and move toward the sun, how easily I could abandon Chicago and everything here, the life I've built, and run off to Aruba or somesuch. A few years ago, I even went so far as to search for jobs somewhere in the south, but was tethered here by the MFA program at the time. Even I know spring will come around again and I will be in love with Chicago all over again, but the winters just seem to get harder.

*I spent the weekend mostly on random crafty things, wrapping a ridiculous number of bars of soap, making a few more of the japanese teacup candles, tea towels, and some pillows that were actually a bust (well temporarily until I can get something else to do them correctly.) Last night, watched the original version of Quarantine, Rec, which was pretty much shot for shot the same, except in Spanish, but the end was a bit clearer and hell more scary. I also caught up on Fringe, but despite drooling like a schoolgirl over Joshua Jackson, have yet to warm to the characters enough to really like it, even though the premise and plotlines are interesting enough. I have also been reading a book called Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott that dovetails nicely with that, all weird science and ghostly repetitions. I find myself devouring alot of fiction these days, novel after novel, mostly because of my problem with the sideways seating buses that allow less bouts of staring out the window and daydreaming. It also allows less time for obsessing, so maybe it's a good thing.