Personal Site Up and The Externalist Under Construction Soon

My new personal web site is up and some of my more popular blog posts from here are moved.  I’ll continue to use this blog for reviews and commentary posts, but most of the announcement-style posts will end up over there.  At least, that’s the vision. 

The Externalist web site will be coming down for a few days later this week for a complete redesign.  This part of a large vision for The Externalist and I am positive that our readers will like the changes!  In the meantime, you can download a back issue absolutely free on the Archives page.

I post announcements of new content on both sites over on Twitter.

Another Note on Rejection Letters

I first wrote A Note about Rejection Letters in March of 2007, one month before Gary Wilkens and I founded The Externalist: A Journal of Perspectives.  The Externalist is more than two years old now, and as I continue to receive rejection letters of my own, I’m forced to consider the whole process from the other side of the desk.  I know now that a rejection really might have nothing to do with the quality of my work.  I know now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if an editor takes the time to write a note on my rejection letter, that is a positive sign (unless, of course, it says something like “Don’t ever submit to us again”).  I know that good writing is turned down all the time and that if one market doesn’t like a piece, another market still might.  Interestingly enough, none of this makes me feel any better.  Rejection is, after all, still rejection, right?

This Father, Deserving

I once wrote the wrong name on a Father’s Day card.  I was twelve and I’d had a few fathers by then, some “official” and some not.  Fathers were fleeting things–like butterflies that fluttered just an inch too high for me to reach when we lived in northern Idaho, or the jets that flew so high and fast that they were out of eyeshot by the time I knew they were there when we lived outside McChord Air Force Base in Washington, or the thunderstorms that appeared out of nowhere and dissipated just as fast nearly every summer afternoon that we lived in Glen Burnie, Maryland.  And fathers’ temperaments varied to about the same degree.  So you can imagine that as I’ve read various articles this past week about Father’s Day, its role in family life, and its value and celebration mechanisms as compared to Mother’s Day, I found myself nodding at all of them even when one disagreed with another I’d read the day before.  The truth is that fathers day meant very little to me until my second husband proved just how important fathers really are. 

Weekly Book Recommendation 6/10/09: Neil Gaiman

A couple years ago, I stumbled upon an author that I’d never heard of, but in such a way that I knew I should know who he was. That is to say, a movie trailer specifically gave his name which happens so rarely with any author short of Stephen King or John Grisham that I was actually surprised by the inclusion (pleasantly surprised as authors get little enough attention in an A.D.D. culture already). After seeing the movie which made me laugh harder than I’d laughed in a long time, I decided to do a little research on this author, after which point I promptly went to the bookstore and purchased four of his titles. What can I say? I was feeling brazen.

Review of Star Trek by a Star Trek Hater

As a person who writes science fiction and fantasy, I have a terrible confession to make. I hate Star Trek. All Star Trek. As a child, I would occasionally dart into the living room when someone was watching it on TV and I’d roll my eyes at the horrible special effects and dart right back out again. When I was a teenager, I watched the Next Generation because I had a terrible crush on Will Riker. Later, I would bury my head in a book while my husband watched Deep Space Nine. I saw a grand total of two episodes of Voyager and I didn’t know they made a Star Trek Enterprise until I was looking at the Wikipedia article just now trying to remember the name of Voyager…

The Externalist Issue 12 Live

The Externalist, Issue 12 is live and ready for reading with fiction from Dylan Gilbert and Ron Burch, nonfiction from Tom Sullivan and Normal Ball, and poetry from Ed Bennett, Lee Passarella, Donovan White, and others.  Topics in this issue include the economic crisis, Guantanamo, global warming, peace, war, and globalization.

Where Do I Send This Stuff? Notes on the Submission Process

I understand why novelists get agents.  I really do.  If I could be a writer and never write a cover letter or sort through potential markets, I would be in Heaven.  Unfortunately, that isn’t how the real world works–and short story writers and poets rarely get agents.

The cover letter issue has been covered in every writer’s instruction guide out there, but the most we typically get from those same guides on deciding where to send our artistic darlings is “Familiarize yourself with the magazine.”  Am I the only person that finds this advice utterly useless, especially in regard to poetry?  I’ll give you–this is important advice for the freelance article writer, but all too often the same magazine or journal that writes in their guidelines, “Familiarize yourself with our journal” also writes “Open all to all or most genres.  Send your best work.”  Say huh?

Inauguration Day Reflections

I keep thinking that today is the day I can breathe a long sigh of relief, as though the past 8 years are behind us now and we can start moving toward a better future. Yet, I read in the news that President-Elect Obama has said that he won’t make an investigation into the actions of the current administration a top priority of his administration. I am beyond disappointed in this statement. It takes away my hope and replaces it with fear. Can our country live with this gaping wound? Should our country live with this gaping wound?

Read a Studs Terkel book this New Year (or how my book collection shrank)

As I pondered my approach to the last book recommendation of the year, I looked over my bookshelf and through the several boxes of books that sit in my bedroom because I didn’t have a shelf to put them on (our house is small and already fits seven people).  Many of the books there would have worked, but I wasn’t struck by them so much as I was struck by the books that were missing.  Then I remembered when I had gotten rid of them, and I couldn’t help but feel a little sad and a little happy at the same time.

I was thinking of my collection of Studs Terkel books–selections of paperback editions that had been highlighted and underlined here and there, but that for the most part, were surprisingly clean copies for college editions.  It isn’t that I didn’t use these books as much as my other texts, but that I chose to use notecards instead of in-copy marks because I wanted to share the books with friends and family. 

A Kinda-Sorta Christmas Poem

I don’t usually have a lot of trouble writing from a prompt, but this year, as I sat down to write my annual Christmas letter to go out with Christmas cards, I decided I’d try to write a Christmas poem to go with it.  Perhaps because this year has been so full of trials, I had a hard time getting any particularly Christmas-y words down.  Not because I don’t feel the holiday spirit, but because I’m thinking so much about what that really means to me.  The villanelle that arose wasn’t what I expected, but perhaps will offer a little hope to someone during a difficult holiday season.  Sometimes we forget to be thankful for the trials in our lives, but without them, there would be no life to remember.  Enjoy, and happy holidays:

Caveats for Hope

Harken well each tribulation
without which we could not know glee.
Heralds of joy and celebration,