Waxing Gibbous: A Study in Moonlight

Sometimes I take pictures of the moon. It's a thing I do.

Here is a photographic study and experiment from last night's Waxing Gibbous Moon. That is both moonlight and some ambient streetlight thrown off the gate in front of me.

Derecho storm knocks out power

So, the short version ... the power's back on. 

And the long version ....

We lost power due to the derecho that rocked (in a bad a way) the nation's capital Saturday, May 21. 

CBC stories are here and here.

Electricity returned May 24, only for our block to lose it again the evening of Thursday, May 26. 

Power returned yesterday, May 30, at about 4:30.

We had to say goodbye to a friend, and have been been parenting,  juggling teleworking, running our home offices, planning for imminent surgery and generally just trying to get through. Stressed, but okay.

Did we miss much?

Grief, twisting and turning

You can try to avoid grief, and push it back, but it remains, fixed,  immutable. How you talk to it is about all the control you have, like trying to reason with a drunk.

Approaching full dark

Describing going full dark this past fall at my other blog, Coping in Covid: A Writer's Journal.

WROTE Podcast Interview

I was on the WROTE Podcast talking with the ever-congenial Vance Bastian and Baz Collins about my upcoming Lethe Press collection Fear Itself, Burly, the writing and editing life, inspiration, and revising my second horror novel. I owe a great thanks to those two. In the interview, I even trace my earliest writing inspirations to comic books and Sunday matinees watching creature features such as "The Blob and "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" at the Port Theatre in Cornwall.

I also decided to talk publicly about the loss of my sister Kim this fall. Over the years, she had saved a stack of my earlier writings, including annual traditional Halloween stories and even the high school columns I wrote for the daily paper in my hometown. So since Kim always believed in me, and I miss her, I thought all of this worth mentioning.

There are shout-outs aplenty, including to my sisters, Steve Berman and Jerry L. Wheeler.

If you listen to some of it or any of it, please let me know how it goes. While I have the Irish gift for the gab, I cannot, ironically, tolerate hearing my own voice for too long.

Here you can listen to the Wrote Podcast S7Ep15 – James K Moran – Dramatic Shenanigans.

Locus Magazine Awards hopefuls

Feeling pleased; as mentioned previously, three major Lethe Press projects I worked on in terrible 2021 are possible Write-in votes for the Locus Magazine Awards. The Locus Awards are an annual set of literary awards voted on by readers of the science fiction and fantasy magazine Locus, a monthly based in Oakland, California and are normally presented at an annual banquet.

I would be very grateful if you took the time to vote for any of these works, which I proofread:

Best Collection: Fit for Consumption, Steve Berman (Lethe). On the left.

Best Novelette: “Unwelcome Boys”, Steve Berman (Fit for Consumption)

Best Anthology: Burly Tales: Fairy Tales for the Hirsute and Hefty Gay Man, Steve Berman, ed. (Lethe). Bottom, centre.

Best Short Story: My hopeful Billy Goats Gruff redux, "Three, to the Swizz'!", a story appearing in Burly.

Very happy to say that my publisher, Steve Berman of Lethe Press, is up for Best Editor. Go, Duke!

I just filed a review of Charles Payseur's The Burning Day and Other Strange Stories (Lethe), up for Best Collection, with a prestigious speculative-fiction publication. On the right.

Michael Bukowski's ribald and wonderfully weird Monstrous Mythologies (Lethe) is also up for Best Art. Centre.

Here's the voting link. You need to register but need not be a Locus reader).

Mad, stressful Wednesday, Possible Awards

What a mad, stressful Wednesday after a dry January in which I not only got rolling on my horror-novel-number-two revisions for Monstrous, the short-story revisions for my collection Fear Itself and filed a book review, I also landed a new job. But more on that later, once the letter of offer is all wrapped up.

Today’s been all worrying about ice damming on the roof, leaking into our master bedroom, as in 2021. Ice damming occurs when layers of snow and ice accumulate on the roof. The simplest way to describe it as that the bottom-most layer warms because of the ambient heat in the house, melting any snow or ice there, which then flows under the eavestroughs, frozen over with ice from the subzero temperature, and the water finds any which way it can into the house. So it's like a horny teenager trying to find any which way to get relief. 

Pardon the bawdy comparison, but I feel I'm allowed the dirty reference or two, given all that is happening simultaneously.

So I have been up there, not getting sexual gratification, mind you, but shoveling snow, or wiping the water leaking above the window into our room. That has been most of my day, really. Hence my use of “stressful”.

On the other hand, as is typical in the writing life, there are compensations. At the same time, I am feeling ... somewhat pleased?

Three major Lethe Press projects I worked on in terrible 2021 are possible Write-in votes for the Locus Magazine Awards. The Locus Awards are an annual set of literary awards voted on by readers of the science fiction and fantasy magazine Locus, a monthly based in Oakland, California and are normally presented at an annual banquet.