My writing life last month was composed almost exclusively of commenting on student essays, posting announcements, and answering emails. Teaching two courses and forty students in a six-week-long intensive summer session was worth it financially, but stole any time I had to get significant creative work done. I made progress, but didn’t finish as strong as I’d hoped. Now that the semester is all but over,and I’m looking forward to the clouds parting. There are still three weeks of summer left, and soon I’ll have days free to finish rewriting the novel I first wrote around this time last year.

I did make headway, and for now that’s all I have to make me feel as if I did some good. I finished the 9th draft of my revised novel, which is for all intents a new book, and completed a third 40+ page outline/editing guide to revise what I have now into a final draft. I hope to have that finished by this week or next, then I’ll only have to line edit the copy and send it off to see blue skies again. I hate missing deadlines, even when they’re self-imposed, but the monsoon of student writing and lessons left no time to be of a single mind.

In addition to finishing the 9th draft of the revised novel and the editing guide, I stole a night to finish a book review of Carol Matos’ new poetry collection The Hush Before the Animals Attack  from Main Street Rag Publishing. That review is now forthcoming in Fjords Review where my review of Catherine Gammon’s novel Sorrow will appear next month. Gammon’s novel was released by the great indie press Braddock Avenue Books which consistently releases great reads and deserves your support.

Lastly, on one of the few days I scheduled out, I was honored to be a Featured Author at The Holler Poets series in Lexington, Kentucky. It’s always fun to share my work with readers, even as the one prose mutant in the crowd, and I had a great time reading in one of the best dive bars I’ve ever visited.

Rays of sunlight are breaking through the seems in the clouds above, and my faculty inbox grows quieter with each passing day. I look forward to feeling the heat on my face, and getting back to the words alone.