Kitchen Explosion, Plus Other News

Well, not literally.  But close.

In the past month or so, we discovered water in our basement.  Which led to the discovery of a leak in our kitchen.  Which led to the discovery of all our pipes being old and rusted.  Which led to our replacing every single pipe in the house and having a kitchen which is composed mostly of absences - our cabinets and half our floor are now gone.

My kids love it.  Not only do they get all the microwavable junk food they'd like as we're waiting on the kitchen being repaired, but our house has been turned topsy-turvy - the dining room is now the playroom, and the family room is the dining room as we shuffle things around to make room.  On top of all that, my youngest, Aerin, just started crawling.

It's been an eventful month, to say the least.

So I am sorry to say that I have been neglectful of my writerly duties.  But while my real life might have been on hold to deal with this emergency situation, the writing world has marched on without me.

I've had three stories and an interview come out.  First of all, my story "A Body at Rest" was published in Enchanted Conversations.  This was one of my favorite pieces to write - it's told with a mixture of classic fairy tale and modern sensibilities.  It's loosely based on the story of Rip Van Winkle.

My second story is "An Absence of Stars," published in Corvus Review.  Like most of my literary endeavors, this was a difficult piece to conceive and to write - it's about the depth of everyday reactions to extreme situations.  I hope you enjoy reading it.

Last but not least, I have a couple of publications with Bewildering Stories - I had my flash fiction story "Supply and Demand" included in the Second Quarterly Review and was also interviewed by the magazine .  I always worry about the questions to an interview - do I reveal too much?  Too little?  Is anything I say about the writing process interesting or is it a yawn fest?  Please feel free to let me know what you think down below.

So, all in all, I have neglected all social media as I've been trying to get my feet underneath me in RL.  But since the situation has calmed down, I am slowly working my way back online to try to ease my return to the virtual world.

 Despite things being up in the air with our home, the kids and I have been enjoying this lovely weather we've been having.  Hope everyone has been having a great summer!