Half moon laugh dopplers deepening grasshopper sky

As I’ve posted here previously, I’ve been trying to get other creative work done while working of the self-publishing-bits of my cookbook, and this should be possible in theory – a lot of people manage to edit or polish one project while also writing another project, lots of people can balance not only two, but three or four projects at a time. I have even managed this fairly well in the past. But it’s not something I’m doing very well at this year. The cookbook is still taking far too much of my creative energy.

Yes, I wrote a poem every day in May, but as I’m reviewing the poems, there are maybe three that might go anywhere and I haven’t finished a short story with any kind of a future in what feels like ages. I did finish one story this morning, but even while I was working on it, I knew that it was too much of a personal-ramble to actually consider it going out into the world. I just finished it to practice finishing stories. I do need that practice. I still have too many stories sitting around without endings.

I have a cover for my cookbook now, and I’ve been getting some very useful feedback from beta readers recently. There are two readers that still need to complete reading the book, and then I’ll be done with that phase! Unfortunately I recently discovered I also need to re-do the book’s index, because for whatever software-glitch reason it does not update with changes and I don’t know how to fix it other than to do it all over again. Hopefully it won’t take me as long the second time as it did the first!

I don’t have a back cover for the print version of the book yet, because I need to come up with some words to put on the back as a blurb. The pressure is crushing.

I am learning some of the practicalities of self-publishing now. Some of it is easier than I expected. Some of it can go suck an egg.

There will be both an e-book and a print version of my cookbook available to purchase, and I am still hoping that it will be available by the end of August. Or early September. I have a feeling there is a point in time not too far in the future where all of it will at last just come together in a metaphorical snap of the fingers.

As I’ve been poking away at the cookbook and feeling like I’m slacking on the new-writing front, I’ve been getting a bit more reading done in the past little while – my most recent read that I will pass on as a title you might want to try is My Antonia by Willa Cather. It was my first time reading this American classic, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, even if I did accidentally skip an entire section while reading in bed one night. (I realized what I’d done and went back and read the missing section the next day.)

Now I’m slogging my way through a little French literary novel I found on a shelf – it seems to have won some fancy French literary award – which might explain why I’m having a hard time with the language – it’s using high-level fancy-pants words. The book is short, so I still hope to get through it early this week. My pile of books to read, just like my pile of stories to write, seems to be stuck, not getting any smaller.

I am up to 136 submissions of stories and poems since January. (My target is 180 submissions, or four separate publications, for 2025. Two publications to go!)

Did I tell you that I had some more poetry accepted for publication? Yes! Three poems of mine are scheduled to be published with a Canadian magazine next summer, in 2026. I was surprised when three out of five I sent in for them to consider were accepted! One was a poem I’d been holding on to for a long while, and I completely rewrote it, keeping only a few of the original lines, after receiving a critique on the original through Rattle’s Critique of the Week. It worked – really well – the magazine that accepted was the first magazine I sent the rewrite!

And! A little story which I originally wrote as an entry to Globe Soup‘s Inspired by Art Flash Fiction competition last year has been accepted for publication and should be appearing into the world next month. I have a couple of different “versions” of this story, which was one of my favourite stories I wrote last year, and I’m pleased to say it’s my favourite version which will be published. The story is a “twin” story to a story that I’ve submitted to my friend’s ‘It Takes A Village’ anthology call. Updates on this soon, I hope!

How are you doing?