I’ve been burying myself in some projects lately, not sparing much free time for other activities, but I hope all my efforts aren’t for naught.

On top of the list, I’ve finally begun sending poetry off to editors for publication. I’ve entered a couple contests, the big one being with New South for a grand. I’ve sent some pieces to Atlanta Review and The Blotter as well. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve also been working on a collection of short stories with a working title of Tales From An American Sunset. Here’s a snippet from the second story in the collection, A Short Drive to Crazy:

…Clara now was lost in a dream. A dark dream. There were no images or conversations. No colors, no sound. Just blackness, raw and wide. She felt no pain and had no tears to weep. She was deeply unconscious, free from the world, no longer driving down 225 in Chatsworth, Georgia. No longer able to hear her son calling on the cell phone still located in her cluttered handbag….

…

Clara stirred ever so slightly. The aphotic world she silently inhabited was now punctured by a repetitive sound. Growing more resolute, Clara identified the sound. It was knocking. At first, as if waking from a dream, she thought someone was at her house. She didn’t know what she was occupied with, but she needed to answer the door. In her mind, she let her visitor know she’d be right there. In reality, she mumbled through blood-splattered lips to the effect of “emmh.” Her consciousness grew more in touch with actuality as it left the vortex of her unconscious state. The knocking continued as she came to. Her eyes began to work again and they led her to the source of sound. Too woozy to be effectively startled, Clara discovered a man at her car window wearing a worn-out red baseball hat and dusty blue overalls smoking a cigarette. Her eyes scanned his now delighted wrinkled face, peppered with a cocktail of black and white stubble…

 

More later.

Currently Reading: Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs; The Complete Poems by Walt Whitman

On This Day: 1920-39- 39 IWW members indicted in Chicago for “conspiracy to overthrow the government”