Football Stadiums of Light

All Pelee Island Stories are set on this lovely little patchwork rock.

Friendship lifts you up. Being my amazing friends, you must have noticed just how wonderful you all are, but sometimes friendship rises to a level that amazes even me.

Jane Cawthorne is giving me a book! She's publishing my (slim) collection of short fiction through her very cool Crabapple Mews Collective. I don't have enough stories to bundle for a publishing house collection, or the time to write more. Or, to be honest, the time it would take to to pound the pavement for lit mags to publish me. This is, possibly, the only way I'll actually get a book of my work made within my natural life time. And Jane raised the funds, through a whirlwind GoFundMe campaign, to make it happen.

The director of our MFA program, the esteemed Meg Kearney,  has a single piece of dogma she imparts at every opportunity. It's a sad fact that envy often acts as the black heart of a program full of talented creatives. Meg's solution is to have her students fall in love with someone else's work. Of course, I fell in literary love with Jane. Her solid, flowing prose, her subtle insights into the human condition--her work is beautiful to me and we're lucky to have it in the world.

With friends like that, it's hard to believe in a world that also has cancer.

And there's more good news--an agent is interested in my YA novel! She's only asked for more chapters, so it doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it's a good solid bite and I'm happy.

Also, my friend Sharon Wynne made me chocolate mousse. It's hard to believe in a world that has both chocolate mousse and cancer. I think I'll opt for the one with chocolate mousse.