News:

My plague poem “Sacrificial” came out in The Cleansing Power of Fire from Infested Publishing on June 21.

“From Black Clouds” comes out today in Kosmos Obscura from Graveside Press. If you buy it directly from Graveside, it’s $1 cheaper, so if you have a yen for some cosmic horror, head here. Storm horror is my jam. It haunts my dreams, so it haunts my fiction.

We’re nearing the end of the opportunity to submit for next month’s Shallow Waters contest, under theme Mystical Listicles, with yours truly selecting the finalists. The sub call ends at the close of June 30.

Works in Progress:

I finally finished editing Tooth & Claw (Meridian Book 7), worked up the synopsis, and sent it in, but I’m kind of ashamed that I kept missing important emails from my publishers while I was struggling to get things done the last two months. I check that email regularly for a few weeks at a time, then stop for a while, and naturally, that’s when the emails were sent. So embarrassing and unprofessional of me—a tragedy of errors. I swear I’m not ignoring emails on purpose.

I’m supposed to work on May Cooler Heads Prevail next, which is a harder and harder story to handle as cooler heads continue to not prevail and actions continue to not have consequences. I can’t deal with this world at all. I don’t know how to function when things don’t at least sometimes work as they should. Maybe Cooler Heads will end up autobiographical if things keep making my brain short out.

Books I’m Reading:

The Fisherman by John Langan
Raising Loki: A Memoir by Elliot Manarin
Haunted Plano, Texas by Mary Jacobs

Things I’m Listening To:

The Blacklist playlist
Reputation by Taylor Swift
The Shadow Theory by Kamelot
Showtime, Storytime by Nightwish

Things I’m Watching:

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Jurassic World: Dominion
Nefarious
28 Weeks Later
Trainwreck: Poop Cruise
Ocean’s Thirteen
CSI: NY series
Doctor Odyssey series
America’s Got Talent series
Home Town series
Home Town Takeover series
Abbott Elementary series (finished)
Brooklyn Nine-Nine series

Poem of the Week:

smoke on the horizon like clouds pluming to the atmosphere
into anvils with black underbellies with static electricity
smoke on the wind without the benefit of hickory breathe
in the poison particles piercing filters and penetrating cilia
smoke on my mind with a fire in the sky and poison in my blood
scattering in the cells like atmospheric ice released in rain