notes & things | 8/31/2026
The past weekend not only included another little mini writing retreat out in the burblands, but also a production of Mean Girls out in Aurora that put even the Broadway tour to shame in terms of staging, performances, and a slight rearrangement in newer productions that changes the Act I closer. The writing spoils of the weekend were a draft of a short play I was aiming to submit and a bit more work on the train station / time travel script I worked on last weekend away. I actually have next weekend on the books as another span of hotel work time for a wedding J is doing up in Wisconsin, so the summer is ending as lively as it started. (plus we have a drive-in trip planned the following weekend (they are showing Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark, the latter of which I saw originally at the drive-in as a kid when it came out in the early 80s.)
We are on the very cusp of September and the fall months. Today was stormy and gray, but we're in for a couple of hot days this week. I have been over summer mostly for the past month, but I still want the next month to go by slowly, since I am not quite ready for full-on fall til closer to October. I have much spooky fun planned though as we move into the cooler season, including a new zine project of haunted seaside poems, the release of The Midnight Garden special edition, a fun new video poem project, and some more play and drama developments as we move into fall. I will also be doing another art advent for the month of December, which is always fun and somewhat festive.
I am also wading further into the summer submission pile and finding much to love there. We wound up cresting just under 500 manuscripts as the midnight hour approaches and the period officially closes, so I have my work this fall cut out for me. I am also plotting some future reading periods for other kinds of books than chapbooks, including some full-length projects I am taking on a handful of. These usually mean a little bit longer of an editing process than shorter books, but it is nice to be issuing some chunkier volumes. The perfect bound books, while more a design challenge sometimes, do not require as much physical labor and time in assembly, so potentially we can take on and dream up more projects like anthologies and such.
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