notes & things | 8/23/2026
This weekend had just the slightest tinge of fall about it. The weather was still rather humid, but the light is subtly different and we've reached the point where the sunsets seem swifter and the cicadas are making their late-summer racket. We saw a play Thursday night (a very fun and weirdly dark Adolescent Salvation at Theatre Wit) then booked it out of town and out to Elgin, where J had a wedding gig on Friday, which granted me a full-day mini retreat once again. I was able to finish the initial draft of the train station play and able to get a start on a new project that features e-mails from the dead. Even better, and in line with the fall, we stopped to get breakfast at a donut shop already selling cider donuts, the first sign of autumn for reals. We have another couple short weekend stays over the next two weeks, one combined with a show (Mean Girls!!!) out in Aurora and then another jaunt in Wisconsin over the holiday weekend. I'm finding these little retreats are good for locking in on projects that need a little more time and attention than my daily writing (which is more fenced in by paid work and editing sometimes). It's amazing what forcing yourself to sit down with less distractions can get done. We arrived home yesterday and I've been loafing a bit today, getting nothing much of anything done, though I am ready to plunge back into layouts and reading submissions this coming week.
We've been rewatching SOMETHING VERY BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN before bed, which is really good horror for the small screen and, as soon as we finished, I wanted to watch it again knowing how it ends. It was similar with WIDOW'S BAY last month, which we also watched twice all the way through. I think many directors sleep on the longer series format as a vehicle for horror, but it might allow the sort of storytelling and lore that best delivers it. It's also especially delightful to engage truly original work that isn't existing IP or based on something else like a book or game. We also got out to see TEENAGE SEX & DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA , which was a whole delicious clot of blood and desire, I highly recommend.
As I turn an eye toward fall as August reaches its sultry end, I start fighting urges to buy new notebooks and folders and things that remind me of back-to-school shopping days of lore. The Loyola students are moving in this week, which means street parking out front has been a nightmare with the move-ins (much to J's frustration) , but the neighborhood gets a lot more populated and energized every fall when it happens. I am ready to take the A/C out of the windows and smell the trees before they start to let loose their leaves. ready to catch that first drift of woodsmoke from someone's chimney.
Last week, I got a good number of play submissions out in a time for a couple deadlines I wanted to hit, including a couple of big swings that may fall short. It feels rather hopeless to be trying my hand at a new genre and new rules of sending out work and knowing that rejection never really gets any easier, even when you feel like you know what you are doing (which I don't necessarily.) I also have some more ideas knocking around I want to get wrapped before the end of the year.
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