“Writing is its own reward.”-Henry Miller

I have had an excellent writerly week.

The week kicked off on Monday with my interview by Marvin Smith on the latalkradio.com program, Answers 4 The Family. I have listened to the podcast of the interview (here for those of you with the patience to listen) and am of the slightly biased view that I didn’t totally screw it up. It comes across as a casual conversation about social work and my novel attempt to portray the profession in a credible, caring and gently creative way. There were, at the end, two questions/comments that reinforced for me that good social work is happening out there and having impact. Still, Like a Child to Home, for that brief ¾ of an hour, got some sizable promotion.

On Tuesday, I was advised that a short story of mine, Hell is a Holiday, had been shortlisted in the Federation of BC Writers Write On contest. The fact that the main character, private detective Turk Hammer, is an actual turkey (of the fowl persuasion) may have impaired the ability of the story to go much beyond the short list. Still, it was nice to be noticed.

That same day, Editor and poet Holly Harwood e-mailed me an Author’s copy of Words Fly Away-Poems for Fukushima. (Here is the Face Book link for the project.) This fine book, on the verge of release, and whose genesis was the horrifying tsunami that overwhelmed Japan in March, 2011, has poems from poets around the world. My contribution, Japandemonium, was written for a fundraiser for the people of Japan and read (I would like to say performed but will stick with “read”) at the March 2011 Audio Arts Open Stage on Denman.

So, this coming week I will spend a bit more time actually writing. That fundamental activity sort of went out the window this week.