Second Sunday Brings First Sunday Prose

Well, this Sunday’s Bloomington Writers Guild First Sunday Prose (see December 4, et al.) was, indeed, on the second Sunday, but not because of a wayward calendar. Rather, the first Sunday was New Year’s Day, an official holiday, and so host-venue Morgenstern Books was closed, making this, thus, the first available Sunday reading to start 2023.

Then, also, it was to be all “open-mic,” with a special ten-minute time slot offered for readers, though many, it turned out, were still hooked on the more normal five-minute limit. Though I, taking advantage of a relatively short sign-up list, most likely went closer to about 12 minutes — and even that skipping over some phrases and sentences to keep it short. And one more thing out of the ordinary, usual coordinator Joan Hawkins would be a little late, and so had deputized Last Sunday Poetry leader Hiromi Yoshida (see, e.g., October 30) to start things going.

That being done, with an audience of perhaps about twenty I came in third of four signed-up readers as well as Hiromi herself leading off (with a short poem — as several others read poetry too, but as Joan later explained, “we’re easy”), plus two more readers including the by-then-arrived Joan, with a break and then three more audience recruitees. My story, originally published by Untreed Reads in 2011, was “I’m Dreaming Of A. . . .” (also to be re-published in MONSTORM: A CHARITY ANTHOLOGY, cf. December 21, et al.), on how one year’s hypothetical “white Christmas” proved instead to be a nightmare.

And then, event over (and, yes, I had myself checked the weather forecast before finalizing the story I’d read), one person glancing out a window noted that it had begun to snow.*

*Nothing came of it, though.