The Residency for my MFA was quite an adventure – got to see Yusef Komunyakaa, Dorianne Laux, and Marvin Bell read and teach – and, of all things, Sharon Olds reading humorous poetry along with a jazz bassist. Surreal. Met a lot of nice writers as well, including this wonderful fiction writer named Debra Magpie Earling, who is just a beautiful person inside and out, who writes the kind of lyrical, mesmerizing fiction that I would call some of the best poetry I’ve heard. Her new book (which is not yet published)will be fantastic, based on what I’ve heard of it.

I’ve been sick/swamped with work since I returned, which is a good thing for my freelance writing and editing business, but bad for blogging 🙂 The weather here has been perfect too, sunny and 80 with a breeze, the blue water right outside my window…ah, it takes a lot of discipline to work at all during the summers here. This morning I saw a heron, two bald eagles, and a doe walking around in my yard. Wildlife abounding.

Got a rejection note for my poetry today and that was discouraging, although it was countered by an acceptance of one of my poems in the Washington poetry anthology put out by Floating Bridge called Pontoon. I am still hoping for some good news on my poetry book, which is out at several publishers.

I’ve been writing up a storm on Web services security too, it seems. Everyone wants to know more about security, especially with all the viruses and attacks that have been raging lately. I’ve been reading all the books I could put my hands on that address this subject and if you paste them all together, they just about give you enough information. Maybe my next tech book should be on this…

Well, I was a busy worker bee this weekend. New version (2.0) of the WSE came out at Tech Ed, so I had to take down my old downloadable sample (based on the tech preview version of the WSE 2.0) and build a new one taking into account all the changes they’d made to the code. I do that for free, because I love WSE programmers, (aww…)and I have read many tech books with samples where I was like, gee, I wish I could download bits that actually matched the current product release. I vowed my book would actually have up-to-date bits as long as possible…

I’m also trying to read about fifty poetry journals for reviews on NewPages.com, and found a couple where I started to remember why I read poetry in the first place. I mean, I read these poems that were really lyrical, then funny, then cutting, then heartbreaking, all in the right places. Spoon River Poetry Review was one of them, and I also really enjoyed this new journal, Cargnegie Mellon Poetry Review, and one I had never seen before, 5 AM. I guess it’s nice not to have to work so hard to appreciate poetry, you know, when an image just grabs you right off and then every line is perfect, you wouldn’t cut a word, and you can actually follow the train of thought in the poem, but it’s not over-explained, there’s still mystery. I have to say Beth Ann Fennelly has a new fan, I just discovered her. And I wrote about eight poems this week, one of which was worth anything, but still, that’s darn productive, I think.

I’m also writing a grant proposal and working on a tech article or two, and getting ready to start an MFA program. It feels strange to be going back to school again, but let’s face it, in a truly geeky way, I “just love learning.” Plus it’ll put me in touch with people who really love writing and manage to make a living involving poetry in some way. My mom just went back for her Phd this year, which is pretty darn inspiring to me, and she just got to interview the Halo 2 programmer team for one of her classes. She knows more about the game than I do now. Sweet, huh? I was like, where can I sign up for that class again? (PS – November release is what they’re saying now. How long have we been waiting for this?)

So, no barbeques and lounging by the pool this weekend, but I’ll make up for that sometime in August…Also, since Angel is now off the air (sniff sniff, goodbye Buffyverse), and Alias is gone til 2005, and the Daily Show seems to be in endless repeat mode, I seem to have all this extra TV-watching time to work. Now, if they load up all the summer and fall with reality shows, I may start to hate TV so much I will never watch again, and then I could take up one more hobby, like, say, fly-fishing or whale-riding or something.

(PS – Speaking of TV shows – My little brother has been putting pressure on me to go out and buy the DVDs of the Cowboy Bebop series sight unseen, because he is sure I will love it. No offense to him, but since he is an unqualified anime fan who has been known to spend hours watching Dragonball Z (which I refer to as Dragonball Zzzzz….) I want a second or third opinion. Any thoughts on this show? Post a comment!)

Did I say I had free time? Because what I meant was, I have no free time…I just had three projects happen all at once, so now it is back to work work work all the time…that’s good though, I like feeling productive. Another personal goal is to post some updates to the site with new WSE book code when the new version of the WSE 2.0 drops, which should be soon. My code was based on the tech preview of 2.0, and things like namespaces will change. Lots of fun for me, as you can imagine. Oh well, that’s what happens when you write a book before the final version of the product has shipped. Note to self: avoid the bleeding edge.

Just listening to the Radio Sunnydale soundtrack from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I have to say I recommend it. Many good tracks.

OK, back to work I go!