And my last March reading…I happen to be reading in a coffee shop tonight with a few other talented writers in North Seattle at Seattle Mobile Espresso, 13000 Linden Avenue North – one block west of Aurora, from 7 PM to 8:30, part of the ThirdTuesdays Poets and Writers series.

The weather has been weirdly wintry, my life is in a whirlwind of upheavals, most of which are good. If we hear back positively tomorrow from a seller, we may have a new – and permanent – little homestead to move to within a month! Whereupon we will start the bookshelf-building and painting preparations…

I promised you could see the cover of my upcoming book She Returns to the Floating World soon, and here you go. It’s only the front cover so far, but the front’s the exciting part, right? Let me know what you think. The art work is Rene Lynch, a piece called “The Secret Life of the Forest (A Different Sleep)” which works really well with the themes of the book, I think, all about dream worlds and transformations.

I got to see Martha Silano read from her new book, The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception. The last time I saw her read at Open Books, we were reading for our books Blue Positive and Becoming the Villainess, partners in crime with Steel Toe Books. Her children were babies then – now they’re darling children, complete with giant stuffed ponies and mops of hair, nearly teenagers! Ah, nostalgia. We had a lot of fun and got to hang out with a lot of poets I love that I don’t get to see very often. (Update: for a better recap – with pictures! – check out Kelli’s blog, )Of course, we were nearly done in by a surprise blizzard that shut down the road in and out of our apartment complex, but we managed to get in and out okay (when I got home and saw the news and all the wrecks on the road near our house, I felt like a big risk taker. Then I dreamed about being Buffy and getting electrocuted. So, all in all, a normal day.) This morning the world is frosted in snow, though this being late February, it’s sort of odd for Seattle to be quite this snowy. I am very ready for spring.

Now I need your help picking out an author photo for She Returns to the Floating World. Comment on which one you like best! Thank you for your help. (These will disappear in a day or two.)

I haven’t been writing as much new poetry lately, but I wrote a lyric essay, a book review, and put together several job applications, so I feel productive anyway. I’m also looking for places to rent back up in Washington State, so that takes some time as well. And I signed the official contract for my second book with Kitsune Books, which makes me feel very happy! The more I work with them, the more I like them.

I won a poetry contest involving monsters, and I’m very happy about it. Will post a link when I can! Really, I should write more poems about monsters. This one involves beautiful zombie clone women.

There has been a dustup in the poetry world about charging for e-submissions. I like e-submissions. I remember when I interviewed for a managing editor position at Missouri Review like seven years ago, I tried to talk them out of charging $3 for each submission, which they had to do because they spent a boatload of money on software and hardware for the project (this is before CLMP had an affordable solution, or submishmash existed.) I said: writers are poor. They said: our magazine needs the money. I didn’t think writers would submit, but apparently, they still do. Since then, I’ve done a lot of volunteering for literary magazines, with bigger and smaller budgets, trying to help them generate subscriptions, sell ads, raise money in various ways. Most magazines (not all) are all volunteer-run, and sell amazingly small numbers of copies. Subscription numbers for most mags are in the hundreds, not thousands. Think about the average poetry book, how it sells – and compare that to lit mag sales. Everyone wants to publish in them, but no one wants to buy them. The business model is tough, especially in a bad economy. Of course, most writers have struggled financially during the bad economy, too. My point is: everyone should have a little mercy.

I love the name of the newspaper, because I keep picturing a basket of husky puppies. Is that wrong?