Holy guacamole, what a week...
Somewhere around June 10th, I received notification from the editors of two—yes, two—print publications informing me that my short stories have been accepted for their upcoming anthologies. They are:
What a week!
My short story, "We, Grits" has been published today! It's online in As You Were: The Military Review, Vol. 14, by Military Experience & the Arts. I'm grateful to have worked with David Ervin, the Editor-in-Chief in bringing this short story to publication.
Sometimes, it feels so good to have your work accepted for publication. Sometimes, it's hard to believe I ever wrote anything worthy of publication.
The roses bloom. The sunflower seedlings thicken. The tomatoes start to set their first fruit. It's raining today for the first time in, oh, I'd say, three weeks. Everyone says it's an unusual spring. Prognostications of drought find their way into our ears. Rumblings of a rough fire season ahead. Mostly, so far, we just need to make sure to water the lawn.
I'd never seen a Stellar's Jay before, having grown up and lived most of my life in the eastern United States where the Blue Jay is the most common jay. The Stellar's all-black head and nape blew my mind the first time I spotted a pair of them at our feeder. The pair, I believe, is nesting over in the fir about 150 meters behind our house, or at least that's where I hear them squawking most of the time. Still, even after seeing them many times now, whenever I catch sight of one or both of them, I can't look away.