notes & things | 9/7/2026
We find ourselves in September and the light is already dwindling earlier each night. This weekend brough the final writing mini-retreat of the summer, this time up in Wisconsin along the lake. I was able to get polished drafts on both the Indiana hotel play and the train station / time travel project I've been working on, as well as two more scenes in the play about emails from the dead. While we'll have a brief stay out in McHenry this weekend for a drive-in jaunt coming up fast, this was the last working hotel trip for the summer, though J has more out-of-town wedding gigs in October, so I will probably tag along for those. We've been talking about the novel collaboration project we've been picking away at very slowly, and how we need to set up a weekend for both of us to work with more concentration and time, probably in Wisconsin or Michigan, so maybe we'll do that in November-ish. Fall is this swiftly moving downhill slope toward the holidays, so I am getting ready to hold on. We have a lot planned for October on our calendar and I have even more in my creative work. #31DAYS OFHALLOWEEN will be happening, as well as some new releases, including a couple recent plays and a poetry/image project, THE MIDNIGHT GARDEN, I plan to release as a special Patreon edition.
Last night, after we got back from Wisconsin and settled in, we ordered pizza and started watching The Hunger Games movies, which J has not seen, in prep for the upcoming prequel I'd like to check out in theaters. I've only read the original trilogy and only seen those, so we'll have to check out the other prequel sometime before it releases. There are lots of promising cinema options coming up, including the Practical Magic revisit, which I am approaching with caution lest they ruin my enthusiasm for the original. We also have a few shows coming up in the next couple weeks, including one about AI and siblings called Sisters at Writers Theatre up in Glencoe, which is an amazing black box space, as well as the Dirty Dancing Broadway tour, and a witchy play by smaller storefront company, Idle Muse in the Edge Off-Broadway spaced up here in the neighborhood. I also just bought tickets for Kokandy's Sunday in the Park with George, which we will actually probably be seeing again likely out in Aurora over the winter in a bigger and more elaborate production than this one's mounting in the Chopin basement, but Kokandy always does surprising and delightful things with small spaces. Even their production of Hair, though it's not a fave musical or era of mine, was really cool upstairs in that space a couple weeks ago.
Other things on tap creatively this fall are my own. Since I cheated on poetry all spring and summer with writing all these plays, there is still the next Greek project to dig in on, as well as some other play ideas that feel really sparkly right now, including one set the night Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. I also need to eventually turn an eye to the next full-length book project, which is more than 3/4 of the way finished. I do already have a working title I will share closer to the end of the year as it takes shape over the next few months.
Otherwise, it's a lot of galleys and edits on the first few chaps of the dgp season, and reading more submissions as I go. I am trying to enjoy fall things, like pumpkin spice creamers in my coffee and apple cider donuts, fall treats that vanish all too soon amid the downward slope. The weather, after a hear streak last week, has settled back into something more manageable. Soon we will be taking out the AC's and I'll be pulling out fall jackets, at least for the evenings of not the warmer afternoons.
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