Later, in Literary News

A terminal diagnosis makes you do odd things. When they first tell you that your life span, with treatment, is approximately one year, it seems the only sane response is to run around shrieking. But running around shrieking gets tiresome very quickly. Eventually you start to feel silly. You start wondering: what's the hurry? Still, I managed to freak out for a solid month or so before realizing that I have this gorgeous, happy life, and I'd better live it as well as I can, and not just as long as I can.

And wonderful things are always happening. Not the least of which is that a few of my favorite writerly people have had some happy successes lately:

Jordanne Fuller, my own, grown up baby girl, has garnered a lot of attention for her fantasy stories, publishing a zillion pieces of short fiction in several anthologies. She has a unique, witty voice and a deft touch with weird, dark stories. I'm very proud to be her weird, dark mother.

This gorgeous and strange deck of cards is entitled the Family Arcana, and it comes straight from the brain of one of my favorite mentors, the menschy Jedediah Berry. The Family Arcana is a surprisingly riveting story about a family in crisis; a family that would be very comfortable in a Shirley Jackson novel, a family whose stories can be shuffled and strewn about randomly, and yet still arrive in your brain as a cohesive narrative.

Inge Trueman, my lovely sister in Crabapple Mews Collectivity, is launching her second novel, When the Wheels Fall Off, today. It's a sequel to her wonderful A Root Beer Season, which I read with great enjoyment. I highly recommend you spend some time with Sonja Pfeiffer as she comes of age at the local A&W.

Extra points for people who remember drive-in restaurants.



Lastly, my collection of short stories is now available in soft cover from Amazon's Createspace, and will be available on Amazon proper in a few days. The copies created by the Collective have been held up by the literary mavens at Canada Customs. I assume they're all occupied with pouring over my masterpiece, and that's why they've kept it so long. Unless my dear Jane Cawthorne, another writer whose work I greatly admire, threw something else in the box that Canada Customs found even more interesting than my work.

If you do decide to buy a copy, enter 5Y6JL2QV for the friends' discount.

And if you have literary news of your own, please share in the comments!