Crazy Days/Crazy Nights

Greetings, dear readers and friends! I hope you are all enjoying a bit of summer fun– swimming, hiking, travel, plus homegrown tomatoes on your sandwiches, strawberries on your breakfast cereal, peaches in your ice cream maybe –I hope you are blessed to have such options. And I hope you have the time to lie in a hammock, or on a beach, or in an air-conditioned room–and read a book!

I have a couple of announcements this morning! First, I have signed a contract with She Writes Press to put out another novel in September of 2026. I’m not going to tell you the title of the book yet, because the publisher tells me they often persuade their authors to change the working title. I’m eager to see what suggestions they have.

I’ll give you this: the story is a little bit like the movie Harold and Maude–but Harold is a withdrawn middle-aged woman who’s been stuck in the anger stage of grief ever since the disappearance of her 12 year old daughter five years earlier. And Maude is a crow, an actual talking crow, who brings her out of her grief so she may experience joy again.

Yes, it sounds a little strange, but you’re gonna love it. But not till September of next year.

In the meantime (here’s my second announcement), I’m going to take the month of August off for a bit of R&R, and maybe a little marching in the street holding signs and flags. We’ll see. Don’t worry, the posts will continue with reruns of past #FlashFictionFriday offerings. I hope you’ll find an old favorite or a new story to love.

I leave you with a recent poem I wrote with a prompt from Two Sylvias’ Press. The idea was to take paired words (like salt and pepper, day and night), and change them somehow. In present circumstances, it seems appropriate to turn the language upside down. Here’s goes. . .

Crazy Days/Crazy Nights

My day was all
ice cream and quakes
alternating between
sweet treats and small eruptions.
Nuts and chews
followed by
mutts and shoes.
Bread and roses
devolving into
meds and poses.
Fish and lips/
wish and quips.
Day and kite?
No, day and fight.
		Nigh night
		from the Fog and Phony Show.