A Week of Poetry and taking some downtime

: Great blue heron on our street

: Lit Crawl Seattle: Jean Burnet, Maggie HK Hess, and me at the LA Review reading

: me at Capitol Cider before the reading

It’s been an exciting week for poetry events, with a long trip over to Bainbridge Island for a book club visit on Monday, Lit Crawl in Seattle on Thursday, so I’m totally looking forward to a weekend of reading and looking for houses.

Lit Crawl Seattle was a ton of fun – besides the LA Review reading at Capitol Cider (a delicious and gluten-free bar/restaurant, by the way!) with Jean, Phil, and Maggie, which I thought was really high-energy and good, with lots of clapping, laughing, cheering (and look for it up on KUOW eventually -we got recorded!) – I went to the Kundiman reading to see Neil Aitken and Rick Barot, and then to the after-party where I couldn’t do much dancing (ankles still troublesome) but got to see a lot of people at the super-crowded bookfair upstairs at FRED Wildlife Refuge.

And now for some downtime – catching up with friends, family, and reading – and this great blue heron on my street is a reminder that if you look closely, there are miraculous things all around you, even in the middle of the crazy. Sometimes it’s the little things that give you the greatest boost – a little phone conversation with a friend, the glimpse of a heron in a pond you walk by every day.

We have Halloween and birthday parties and get-togethers scheduled all over the next week, so today, I’m looking at some houses, posting this, and committing to spending some extra time 1. reading 2. maybe writing? I got a little potential good news yesterday that I can share shortly too, which was nice after a month of a lot of rejections! And I got paid $$ (yay, speculative magazines that pay!) from my Eye to the Telescope poems, which was also a needed boost to my poetry self-esteem! So think good house and health thoughts for me as we wind into fall…

Turning Leaves, Lit Crawl Seattle, Bainbridge Visits, and Balancing Introvert/Extrovert Time

Can’t believe it’s already late October, with the leaves changing and the days growing darker and shorter as we slip towards winter. (Above is a shot of the Japanese gardens a few days ago…)

Got back yesterday late from a visit to my former home island, Bainbridge Island, for a visit to a book club to discuss Unexplained Fevers – proof that you just have to be up for discussing all your books all the time! Ha! Anyway, it was a little drizzly, but we did get a beautiful view of the sunset over the water, and then the Seattle skyline on the way home.

: Bremerton ferry at sunset from BI

: Seattle nighttime skyline

In two days Seattle’s Lit Crawl is coming up, and I’m reading at 7 PM at Capitol Cider with LA Review! There’s an after party at Fred Wildlife Refuge starting at 9 PM where they’re having a mini bookfair – and I hope I’ll see you there! I’m also hoping to meet in person old blog friend Neil Aitken who is reading for Kundiman. It’s so fun to see people you’ve been internet-friends with for years! This is the kind of thing that makes you feel lucky to live in such a cool literary town.

: Aw, Glenn and I at the Japanese gardens

: Me with red Japanese maple

Here’s a few more pictures from fall in the Japanese gardens in Seattle. We took a trip to Open Books and Bulldog newsstand too, which made it an almost-perfect fall day. We’ve been running around a lot, and for me, as a writer, it’s tough to keep up the balance between extroversion and introversion – fall usually makes me crave more alone time with my books and magazines, time to write and sip hot chocolate (or in my case, a cold-curing concoction of honey, cranberry and pomegranate juice.) I’ve been struggling with staying “up” for events and still having energy to do my writing stuff – I got a rejection from a state grant yesterday, which was rough, I’ve been sick and not sleeping well, and I’m still sending out the fifth manuscript hoping for good news there. The antidote for lots of writer events is downtime, and doing things that feed the writer spirit – art, coffee shops, reading, and solitude. It’s hard to have the perfect balance of the writing life – and October ended up being a lot busier than I planned – so I’m going to try to take a little more off time in November…

Eye to the Telescope, Mipoesis IArtistas, LitCrawl and Other October Adventures

Just in time for Halloween, there is a new issue of Eye to the Telescope, focused on issues of race and edited by Jason McCall, up, and I have three poems in it, “Horror Comics,” “Mermaid on Land,” and “Introduction to Alien Autopsy.” All kinds of speculative and scary stuff, and I think you’ll enjoy reading it. Check it out!

Also, I’m featured in the new Mipoesis IARTistas issue (click on “Preview” and go to pages 4-5 to see it or buy it!) thanks to Rita Maria Martinez-Puccio who wrote the feature! My name is a bit misspelled (it’s Gailey, not Galley) but it’s a really nicely written interview with two poems from The Robot Scientist’s Daughter in it. Thanks to editor Didi Menendez and Rita for their hard work!

I’ve got a bunch of exciting stuff coming up next week – a visit to a Bainbridge Island book club and a reading with LA Review at LitCrawl in the 7-7:45 slot at Capitol Cider (which I’ve been meaning to go to – a cider bar with an all gluten-free menu!) Both are going to be exciting!

I’m hoping to shake off a new ankle injury (after a dental appointment this week I was taking a walk to try to relax after a harrowing hour with a particularly aggressive dental hygienist …and attacked by a Cujo-esque off-leash dog, which didn’t get a chance to bite me, but I hurt both ankles in my escape…) Yes, I would enjoy a whole week in which I was neither sick nor injured. Come on, universe!

Here are two pictures wishing you a happy October from my husband G and I at two local pumpkin patches! Can you tell which is the most sincere? I now have an assortment of weird pumpkins – Cinderella pumpkins, ghost pumpkins – and gourds sitting on my porch. I’ve been putting sweet potatoes in my morning hash and delicata squash in all my desserts…and trying to ignore the increasing darkness (sunset at 5:30, now!) and the upcoming time change!

: Serres Pumpkin Patch with red barn

: Glenn and Jeannine at Dr. Maze’s farm

Melancholy, Saying Goodbye, Happy Mondays and Gray Days

Dear readers, I hope October has been treating you kindly – or at least more kindly than me! I got pretty sick almost immediately after my reading last Sunday, so for several days I couldn’t do anything more cerebral than drink tea and sleep and cough. Just got back from my chest x-ray – no pneumonia, but darn, may need a CT followup for this darn lung problem (fingers crossed I won’t, still waiting for the report from my radiologist and then my asthma specialist!)

The skies have turned gray, the mist has risen to put an almost invisible sort of chill on everything, and I’m especially sad as my dear poetry friend Kelly Davio is moving to London! I’m happy I got to work with her for almost a whole year and am wishing her amazing success and happiness in England, but boy, will I miss her! She has been a really positive force in the Seattle poetry scene while she lived here, and I hope she’ll be back in a couple of years!

In other things I am grateful for, I’m happy that Mary Carroll-Hackett chose me and The Robot Scientist’s Daughter as a “Monday Must Read” on Monday – I was too sick to post that day, but it definitely cheered me up and I was very thankful she did it.

These pictures are from the day of my reading, when we went out afterwards with my little brother and his wife to the beautiful Bellevue Botanical Gardens – so there are Glenn and I in the backdrop of trees. We were able – I don’t know if you can tell – to get pretty close to what (I think) was a red-headed woodpecker, though usually these guys are 1. too shy and b. don’t stay still long enough to get pictures of.

I heard it’s National Poetry Day today, so be sure to read a poem or at least flip through a favorite poetry book before you go to sleep. I am wishing friends Bon Voyage, watching the cold rain move in the sky, feeling a little melancholy with the falling leaves and the shortening days, waiting for soup to simmer and trying to remember the lesson of autumn – that while change doesn’t always feel great at the time, new beginnings are right around the corner.

Off to my Reading in Bellevue, decorative gourd season, and finally finishing my first draft

It’s a beautiful 72 degree sunny day here and I’m off my afternoon poetry reading (3 PM) at the very gracious and welcoming East side locale of the University of Washington Bookstore, in Bellevue! It’s a great place to browse and get a cup of coffee, besides poetry readings. I hope some people show up!

I’ve been a little under the weather this last week, a little cough-and-cold, and the bad news was so depressing – so in between house-hunting (no luck so far) – Glenn drove me out to the Dr. Maze farm, complete with blooming sunflowers, pumpkin patch, and yes, decorative gourds! Usually we miss out on the fun of fall, because it turns cold and drizzly right at the end of September, but this year, we’ve had a stretch of sunny days, and it just makes you appreciate – the mountains, the still-blooming dahlias, sunflowers, even roses, the turning colors of the deciduous trees (usually a storm knocks down the leaves right away.) So even before Thanksgiving, I’m trying to practice being grateful for small beauties.

In other news, I’ve gotten up to 110 pages on my PR for Poets book, and am officially sending it off to my editors! It’s not completely done – I’m still waiting for some quotes and edits on quotes, for instance – but wow! Just a little while ago I only had twenty pages, so this felt like an accomplishment.

The rest of October, I have a book club visit on Bainbridge, and Lit Crawl, and hopefully at least one meeting with my poetry group, so it’ll be a poetry-filled month. Then I will go dormant – maybe do some reading and writing, work on my fifth poetry manuscript some more, and – hopefully – finally find a house to live in!