November Chill, Book Publishing and PR Questions, and Trip to the Woodland Park Zoo

typewriter and fall leaves

November Chill, Book Publishing Biz and PR Questions

The dark, cold, rain has definitely set in here, as darkness starts about 4:00 PM now. I’ve been working more indoors, reading, and sending work out. But not just sending work out—thinking about the machinations of the publishing world, thinking about PR and what we can expect from our books and our publishers, especially because tomorrow I’m recording a tutorial on PR for Poets for Writer’s Digest and I did a talk last week on the subject.

Typewriter with mushrooms

Book publishing itself has changed so much since I started in publishing, working at Microsoft Press in 2000 as an Acquisitions Editor. Now Microsoft Press no longer exists, and books on technology are considered obsolete. People are reading less, reversing the trend of reading more during the pandemic. Books are selling fewer copies, publishing continues to encounter problems of plagiarism in AI, it’s harder to get the word out about individual books from small presses now than maybe ever in my life, and I don’t want to lie about how challenging it is now to younger writers. I am sending out my own seventh (!) manuscript and the landscape is more expensive (those fees aren’t getting cheaper, and you’re less likely to get a book or subscription than you used to be) and more challenging than it was back in 2003, when I sent out my first poetry book manuscript. Social media doesn’t seem easy to navigate right now, with more and more people totally stopping posting or just getting off of socials altogether (for their mental health, or just because socials have become more annoying). There are still people going on book tours and doing readings online and in person, there are still people buying and reviewing books. there are still people that care. That’s what we have to remember.

Glenn and I with fox lantern

Woodland Park Zoo in Winter with Lanterns

It’s usual for us to take a chance on a sunny day and try to go to the Woodland Park Zoo before their Zoo Lanterns lights are completely up—we like to see the animals more than we like the illuminated lanterns—so we took advantage of a rare sunny Sunday and visited some of our favorite animals, including the jaguar, the snow leopards, and of course, the red panda (and we heard the zoo is getting two more red pandas in 2026 with an expanded forest feature). The antique carousel is sentimental for us because we rode the carousel when the same carousel (!) lived in Cincinnati back when we were teenagers, and my mother loves carousel horse art.

With wings

We learned the zoo, after losing its last Northern gray wolf, took in endangered Mexican gray wolves, which are rare, and are helping with reintroducing cubs into the wild in Arizona and New Mexico. We also learned the beautiful mother the snow leopard cubs—you can see her in my previous posts about the cubs had passed away at the age of 20. I wonder if the bird flu is still endangering big cats—I heard recently it has been decimating populations of elephant seals in the wild—because it’s hard to keep wild birds, squirrels, and rats totally out of habitats. Anyway, there were lots of foxes represented among the lanterns this year—as well as an absolutely terrifying giant centipede—why? It did get us a bit in the holiday spirit too—we used to shop every year at the zoo’s gift shop for gifts for our young nieces and nephews for Christmas—now they’re too old for most of it (although I’m not!) Here’s wishing you a day or two of brightness during your November dark and remember to acknowledge the hard parts of life while still trying to celebrate the good. And best of luck with your writing and publishing journeys.

Beginning November: Time Changes, Halloween and Talking with Poetry Students

Bob’s Pumpkin Farm with Moon

Beginning November: Time Changes, Halloween, and Talking with Poetry Students

The time change is always rough here, but at least after two days of storm and rain, we had sunshine today and enough autumn leaves left after the storm to actually admire.

I love Halloween, the kids are always adorable and we had neighbors over pre-trick-or-treating for wine and appetizers, which reminded me of pre-pandemic days, when we’d have tons of neighbors in the driveway for drinks and food and the kids would run around like crazy.  We made one last visit to Bob’s Pumpkin Farm the night before Halloween, when it was clear and cold and the moon shone down. Farms at night are really beautiful.

Goldfinch on spent sunflower

Also this week I had a chance to talk to students at the University of New Orleans. The students were uniformly intelligent and asked great questions, questions that took on the difficulties of publishing, the state of the world of poetry, questions that were larger than perhaps I could answer. It reminded me to be hopeful, because the world is going to be in their hands soon, and perhaps they will do better than my own generation, or the one before that. Do I sound old when I say that? Perhaps.

Anna’s hummingbird with (still blooming) fuchsia

How are you doing, my friends? November can be a tough month of shadows. Remember to donate to your local food banks as they are stretched thin with the end of SNAP benefits, and maybe invite someone you think is struggling over. It feels like a month to be kind, when the government is failing to do its job and the false king is building a guilded ballroom while people in his country go hungry and while the GOP doubles people’s health insurance premiums. I am angry, yes, but also I remember that we each have a responsibility to vote, yes, and also to our neighbors, and the community. How can poetry make this better? I don’t have the resources the tech billionaires do, and making a living as an artist or writer in this country is harder than ever. But I can still do something. It’s good to remember. I will leave you with a few images of nature at her most beautiful, even at the end of the harvest season, as we turn to winter.

A Week of Poetry Friends and Readings, Horror Poetry, Halloween/Samhain and Some Real Life Scares

Lesley Wheeler, J.T. Manning and myself at J. Bookwalter’s Poetry Reading

A Week of Poetry Friends and Readings

This week was a riot of activity in my relatively quiet life – my friend Lesley Wheeler, at the end of a massive two-week book tour in the Pacific Northwest. She visited the Hoh Rainforest, did readings in Port Angeles and Bainbridge libraries, and toured the region’s lakes and visited a mushroom conference as a guest of honor. Then did readings in Kirkland and Woodinville. I get tired just thinking about it!

It was good to spend some downtime with Lesley—in between events, we even got to take her to McMurtrey’s pumpkin farm, where we took a tractor tour of the farm, and caught up on life, books, and news. You can watch a bit of the reading, with me reading a few introductory spooky poems and Lesley reading from Mycocosmic and Unbecoming, plus a Q&A. Lesley shines like the professional she is.

Here’s the reading:

Here’s the Q&A session:

The day Lesley left, Kelli Russell Agodon was the featured reader at the Copper Canyon fall fundraiser, so we tried to make it on time (despite massive rainstorms and equally massive traffic)—arrived an hour late at the spooky historical mansion (only accessible by tons of stairs—not so great for the handicapped among us) but it was nice to meet some of the new folks at Copper Canyon and it’s always a pleasure to see Kelli read. Kelli read from Dialogues with Rising Tides and from her upcoming book too.  I also got to see my old friend, poet Elizabeth Austen, which was really fun. Elizabeth helped me a lot when I was a Jack Straw poet and gave me so many good tips about reading on the radio.

Red finches

Horror Poetry, PR for Poets, and Real-Life Scares

Tomorrow I’m recording a tutorial on Horror Poetry for Writer’s Digest and the 30th I’m talking to a class at University of New Orleans about publicity and poetry. Doing the tutorial was an opportunity for me to do more in-depth thinking about what makes a horror poem a horror poem—does Sylvia Plath count? Louise Gluck? Am I a horror poet?

But real life threw in a real scare in the middle of spooky season—my father went into the hospital last night with a serious illness, so we’ve been texting and talking to mom and dad back in Ohio. Hopefully he’s in recovery by Halloween.

Yes, Halloween is Friday, so going about my normal routine (besides the tutorial and the speaking engagement) and decorating, buying candy, etc. This is the time of the “thinning veil”—the time of year when the membrane between the living world and the afterworld becomes more porous, a holiday celebrated long before All Hallow’s Eve, Samhain. Samhain (practiced by my mostly Celtic ancestors) was a time to light fires and much like today’s Day of the Dead (which originated in Mexico and Central America), remember loved ones who had passed and set a table setting for them at feasts.

A storm has blown down a lot of our leaves and branches around town, but here’s a photo of one of our maples before the storm. When the regular news is horrifying, and things in our personal lives are in turmoil, it’s a time to consider the blessings of autumn – how the death of our flowers and our long sunny afternoons just means rebirth in the spring, that this is the time of year to think about the ones we have lost and celebrate the good things we have. Time to rid yourself of bad habits and doubts. I am thankful for the friends I have, the consolations of reading, for my family, my home. I am thankful for you, readers. I hope you light a candle and celebrate this season in a way that brings a new hope (and not just the Star Wars kind). Happy Samhain, Day of the Dead, and Halloween to you all!

Upcoming Appearances and Poet Friend Visits to Woodinville, Halloween and Horror Poetry, and The Big Dark Begins

Me at JB Family’s Pumpkin Farm in Woodinville

Halloween and Horror Poetry, Plus the Big Dark Begins

The days are getting darker, the rain and wind have arrived, and the big dark has truly begun—waking up in the dark, coming home in the dark. A freeze overnight took care of all the area’s beautiful dahlias and sunflowers in a flash. I was happy we got to spend some time with the sunflowers before their disappearance. Still, plenty of pumpkins everywhere, though, as my sweater indicates.

Glenn as evil cyberpunk scientist, me as cyberpunk replicant

This week at Book Club we discussed early cyberpunk and the newly translated Japanese classic short story collection Terminal Boredom and had a costume contest with a cyberpunk theme. We’re reading poetry—Martha Silano’s Terminal Surreal—for November, meeting on the 12th at J. Bookwalter’s Woodinville Tasting Studio, if you want to attend. Then we’ll be reading Solarpunk—Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower—in December.

I’m doing a tutorial for Writer’s Digest next week on the history and practice of horror poetry, which seems appropriate for spooky season (and also, you know, the political atmosphere these days). It’s been fun seeking out older horror poems as well as thinking about what makes a poem technically a horror poem. I’m also doing a talk the day before Halloween at the University of New Orleans about publicity and poetry, which is its own kind of horror, right?

Me in Halloween sweater at McMurtrey’s

Upcoming Appearances and Poet Friend Readings in Woodinville

Speaking of appearances, my friend, excellent poet and fiction writer Lesley Wheeler is in town and doing a reading and Q&A with us at J. Bookwalter’s Winery this Thursday at 6:30, followed by an open mic. I’ll be introducing her and reading a few spooky poems to get us in the mood for the season. Then Lesley will read from her new book about the underworld of mushrooms, Mycocosmic. Our Q&A will feature both Mycocosmic and her novel Unbecoming. It’ll be worth your time to come out, because Lesley doesn’t make it often to the West Coast, as she lives in Virginia, where she teaches at Washington and Lee and is the editor of Shenandoah Literary Magazine.

I’m excited to see one of my old friends in person—it’s always great to catch up with Lesley—and she’s been on a whirlwind tour of the area, doing readings all over the place, and she’s also reading this Wednesday at Booktree in Kirkland.

I am wishing you all a good week. I am going to try not to pick up any bugs with all the things going on. Wish me luck! And No Kings!

October – Trip to Skagit, Application Anxieties and the Mid-Career Writer, Reading Early Cyberpunk

Roozengaarde’s Dahlias and Sky

October Trip to Skagit Valley

We had one day of warm sun and seventy-degree weather so we took a quick day trip up to Skagit Valley, where we stopped into the Northwest Museum of Art, Roozengaarde’s gardens to pick up our daffodil and tulip bulbs, and Gordon’s Pumpkin Farm, where, fun fact, a small black kitten walked up to me and meowed while I was looking at pumpkins, which seems like the most Halloween thing ever. We also saw eagles, herons, a seal, pelicans we mistook for snow geese, basically all the wildlife you could hope to see in October.

Pumpkins at Gordon’s Pumpkin Farm

I immediately feel physically better when I go up to Skagit Valley – less traffic? Cleaner air? Friendlier people? Abundant wildlife? Whatever it is, it just feels as if I literally breathe easier an hour north. I also found a dress with a book print that’s perfect for readings. It’s the little things.

Anyway, if you get a sunny day in fall in the Pacific Northwest, it’s worth the side trip to Skagit Valley. It’s no substitute for my missed trip to San Juan Island, but it did put me in better spirits.

At McMurtrey’s Farm with dahlias during sunbreak

Application Anxieties and Reading Early Cyberpunk

When I got back, I had more mental energy and took on two tasks I’d been putting off – applying to residencies and fellowships. I also looked around at who to send my current book-in-progress to, thinking about where I am in my writing life (what do I actually want at this point? What am I aiming for? Are people reading poetry right now?) As a midlife, mid-career writer, it seems like a good time to take a moment and think about the habits and goals I’ve become accustomed to since starting to write and submit in my teens. Am I trying to support myself with my writing (and if so, how do I do that better than I’m doing it now?) Am I trying to reach the right audiences? How do I determine whether I say yes or no to an assignment or request? How do I find the right publisher (because it would be nice to find the right publisher that I could stay with the rest of my writing career?) Here’s more pics from local pumpkin farms:

Harvest Supermoon

Our J. Bookwalter’s book club is reading a book that just came out in English translation (but the stories were written and published in the seventies and eighties in Japan,) Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki. It made me think about Philip K. Dick’s sixties-era Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep in that it plumbs strangely prescient subject matter – population collapse vs overpopulation, teens obsessed with screens to the point of violence, and a very 2020’s kind of detachment and way of examining gender and class. It also has things in common with Yoko Ogawa, a Japanese writer I very much admire, and Osamu Dazai’s whose ironic detachment in his many books the 1930s set a standard for Japanese literature. It’s interesting to think what people in the past thought the future would be like – and how much they got right or wrong. I’ve been investigating Solarpunk over the past year, partially because I believe if you can’t imagine a better future, you won’t get one, and the relentless oppressiveness of recent dystopian writings, I’m trying to think of how to write a way to a better future for people and nature. I’m trying to be brave and face some things – like disability and chronic illness – more directly in my writing, and in doing that, to maybe make things better (?)