Readings, Voting, Book Fair and More
This past weekend was busy one full of readings and traveling!
On Saturday I went to Noblesville Creates for the book launch and signings for the Gal’s Guide Library Anthology: Nourish (available on Amazon). My two poems, “A Verse for the Canner” (a free verse poem about gardening and canning) and “Cooking Genealogy” (a Spanglish haiku about tamales), were published in the anthology.
Sunday for the Nourish book tour we read at Indy Reads where 40% of the profits sold went to Indy Read’s and their community outreach. We had more signings and a Q&A.
Voting for the People’s Choice award has begun and now until May 2nd you can vote for your favorite piece in the Nourish anthology.
This weekend (4/20) I will be at the HEPL local author fair in Fishers. This annual book/author fair allows local authors to sell their books and meet new readers. I will be selling all three of my books (which includes my latest release, Limestone Versified) along with the Axolotl zine (for MOJA charity), and some custom stickers I made. I will also be reading from 3:20 to 3:30 pm EST in the Reading Room.
An anthology I have a poem in is launching a Kickstarter campaign! The Neurodiversiverse: Alien Encounters – A Sci-Fi Anthology is by Thinking Ink Press and explores alien encounters and how they intersect with neuro divergence. I saw the call for this anthology and it took me a while to explore what an outer world encounter would look like and how could an alien relate to my mental health experiences?
Soon, I recalled one of my favorite sci-fi games of all time, Mass Effect. I’m a huge fan and have been in love and engrossed by the expansive universe since my freshman year of college (and a forever Thanemancer). Inspired by the Drell of the Mass Effect universe, I wrote the poem “A Conversation with a Drell” exploring how a Drell (an alien with perfect memory and untimely flashbacks) might relate with experiences of OCD and PTSD. The result was fun! The poem has been re-titled “A Conversation with a Xotiran” (which I created from the Uzbek word “Xotira” which can mean memory or flashback) after conversations with the editors. One to help strengthen the meaning of the poem and two just in case EA/Bioware gets grumpy about me name dropping their species (have mercy on me, big corpos!). You can pre-order this nerdy, sci-fi anthology through the Kickstarter above.
I think that’s all my updates for now! There’s more upcoming publications but I’ll continue to share as more comes available.
