Category Archives: Education

Looking Behind and Looking Ahead

by
megrad2

Graduation from SPC on May 4, 2013

I have not made a post in quite some time. I apologize. When you’re a college student/author/publisher/editor/part-time employee it’s hard to find time to blog.  I am enjoying a nice summer break, though, so I hope to be able to catch up on my posts.

First, let me catch you up on the recent past. After a grueling spring term, I graduated from St. Petersburg College with my Associates of Arts degree on May 4th. It may not seem like a very significant accomplishment to some folks, but it means the world to me. I am an older student (47…not afraid to say it) who was told in high school by a guidance counselor not to waste my time with college. I wish he could have been there as I not only proved that it wasn’t a waste, I did so by graduating summa cum laude with a 3.95 G.P.A. and by being a finalist for one of SPC’s most prestigious academic honors, the Apollo Award. I didn’t win, and that doesn’t matter. Just to be considered for it is a huge accomplishment that will no doubt have a lasting effect on my life.

Ahead lies my goal for a BA in English Literature. I’ve chosen to remain in this area and transfer to the University of South Florida—St. Petersburg campus. I’m not quite ready to move out of Tampa Bay or Florida yet. The St. Pete campus of USF is gorgeous. It sits right on Tampa Bay with lovely water views from nearly every building. I’m looking forward to starting my classes in the fall…one of which includes a literature class on the occult. Hell yes!

Now for the present and future of other aspects of my life.

This summer while I am off I have many goals. Here are a few.

  • Employment. I lost my student job at SPC, so I’ve been working on updating the resume and creating a portfolio. I hope to use it to land my next job.
  • Writing. I have lots of writing goals for this summer.
    • More Blog Posts. That’s a priority. Need to get back into writing more frequent updates and doing the writing prompts again.
    • Parker’s Pygmalion. I’ve decided to upload my Phi Theta Kappa award-winning short story to Smashwords as a free e-book. I have to start doing this indie thing soon anyway, and this is a good story to start with. If it works out, I will likely add it to Kindle on Amazon as well.
    • Kill the Crow. I’ve begun putting the stories into one document. I still need to finish writing and editing a few of the tales for the book, and get it formatted for publishing. Once  that’s done, I will upload it to Amazon…maybe Smashwords again, too.
    • Quellseek: Army of Empaths. I have people who will murder me if I don’t finish this novel,  so I’m working on it. The biggest problem I’m encountering is that the plot bunnies have tortured me with another great idea, one which I’ve started the research on already.
    • The Dragon Siblings. See above. I’ve got Phandara and T’kanyae (a.k.a. Kane Anthony) Morphyrades story starting in my head and I’ve begun a research project on it involving (fictional and real) sorcery and alchemy.  I don’t even have a title for this yet and have no clue about the scope of it, because Quellseek and that series MUST come first. The tale of Rafael Errick, Emory Atarem, Marta Sanis, Alverin Ness, and Wellynd Niles/Well-and-Truly must be brought to a close and that could take 2-3 years to tell it all. The Dragons will happen at some point, though. They’ve sort of already happened in some pre-cursor/same multiverse short stories.
  • Publishing and Editing. 
    • The Were-Traveler. Yes, I also edit and publish a speculative fiction magazine. It’s a rewarding venture I dove into like a madwoman and for the moment I’m enjoying it. Not quite ready to give it up yet. I recently posted the descriptions for up-and-coming issue themes. I’m looking forward to some of the upcoming themes. I may have to pen something myself for the Lovecraft/Poe issue. So tempting.

Life is going to be a challenge for me once school starts again in August. I have decided to attend USF full-time, which means I will have even less time for the other parts of my life than I do now.

Going to do as much this summer as possible…got to get it while the gettin’s good.

2013: Adaptations

by
© Redshinestudio - Fotolia.com

© Redshinestudio – Fotolia.com

Here we are, this year coming to a close and staring down the barrel of a new one.

2012 was a great year. Many good things happened. I won some awards both for academics and for writing. I didn’t publish as many short stories, but I feel like the ones I did publish were better stories. I got paid for my first story, Nowhere Land, and that story got some great reviews. I had my first reprint: my story The ABCs of the Apocalypse was reprinted in The Best of Friday Flash, Volume 2. I had a vampire story, The Bloodletter’s Tale, published in the Flashes in the Dark e-zine. I have a story called The Apprentice’s Mother, being published in the Sunday Snaps anthology soon.

I ventured into journalism, writing a story for the school online newspaper about President Obama’s visit to one of our campuses.

I was nominated by my school for the All Florida Academic Team. I had a short story win two academic awards.

I did not do everything I planned to do in 2012. I’m still working on getting my book of short stories finished and out there in the world.

That being said, my list for 2013 contains some items of old business.

There are also some major changes in store for me in 2013, some life adaptations that I’ll be making. But as a friend of mine, Sophie Solitaire once told me: “You have to adapt or you will die.” Sophie is a character in my post-apocalyptic story Sophie Solitaire: Confessions of an End-Time Girl. 

2013 Goals:

Writing/Publishing Goals:

Kill the Crow – Get the stories that are going in it finished, get them all assembled in anthology format and find beta readers for the book. Find out how I can publish to both Smashwords and Amazon. If anyone reading this can help me with beta reading or publishing suggestions, please comment. I need all the help I can get.

Quellseek: Army of Empaths, Book 1 – This is the novel I started for NaNoWriMo this year. I want to finish it and let it sit for a bit before I start editing. I’ve also begun note-taking and planning the second book of the series: Blood War. 

Blood War: Army of Empaths, Book 2 – The second book of Army of Empaths. I won’t give too much away, but Quellseek ends with some cliffhanger stuff. I want to start work on Blood War right way, while the momentum and juices are still hot and flowing.

Army of Empaths, Book 3 – I want to begin planning what’s going to happen in the 3rd book while I’m writing the 2nd book, taking notes as I go along on anything that might be a loose end that would need wrapping up. We don’t like loose ends.

Short stories  — I’d like to get some short stories written, I don’t know if I’ll have time. If I get invited to write another eMergent story, I’d definitely say ‘yes.’ I love working with Jodi Cleghorn and the eMergent crew.

I’m also planning a children’s fantasy about a dragon princess, but it’s just in the beginning/tinkering stages right now. And I’m playing with the idea of putting  a volume of poetry together.

The Were-Travler — My first year as a fiction magazine publisher went pretty smoothly. Ever since the mag was listed on Duotropes, the submissions have been pouring in. It may be that I’ll need someone to help me with it eventually, but I’m having a lot of fun with it and definitely plan to keep it going.

Academic Goals:

Find a new school. In May, I will receive my Associates degree. I need to make up my mind about what university I’m going to attend to get my Bachelors. I need to make this decision soon. It hasn’t been easy. I’ve applied for some scholarships, we’ll see what happens. 

Awards. I’m trying to get another short story ready for Phi Theta Kappa Regional Awards for this year. I’m also entering a poem.

Survive Spanish 2. I need to pass this class in the Spring. It will count toward my BA. I haven’t been able to practice my Spanish much since I took Spanish 1 in the summer, so this will be hard. I may have to get a tutor. :(

This is what I hope to accomplish for 2013. If I can achieve a fraction of it, I’ll be happy.

I wish everyone a successful and happy new year ahead!

September: Down the Home Stretch

by

It’s September.

It’s that time when leaves begin to change color from green into vibrant oranges and reds (if, unlike me, you live somewhere where they do that).

It’s also a time for recollection. What have I accomplished the past eight months? How do I move down the home stretch for the remainder of the year?

Accomplishments:

Although writing has been slow during the past eight months, I’ve still been active. I had a story win some awards. Shiny New Pants, which won 1st place at Phi Theta Kappa’s Florida Regional Conference and took 2nd place in the Carolyn Parker English Awards (sponsored by of St. Petersburg College/Gibbs Campus) was recently published by the college’s online arts magazine Ember Skies. You can read it here.

The anthology Eighty Nine published by Literary Mixtapes received a wonderful review from a reader. The reviewer ranked my story Nowhere Land among her top favorites in the book. There’s no words for how great it makes a writer feel to have their work loved by a reader. It’s just….WOW! This is the second person this week to compliment a story of mine, and it’s giving me incentive to get my butt back to writing something…anything!

I have two stories coming to print soon: The Best of #FridayFlash, Volume 2, will be reprinting my science-fiction The ABCs of the Apocalypse, and I have a horror tale titled The Apprentice’s Mother appearing in the anthology Sunday Snaps coming out in October. 

On the academic front, I was nominated by my school for awards: Coca Cola All-Community College Academic and All-Florida Academic Teams. I got a pretty medal in Orlando for All-Florida, and it has led to me being recruited by some of the top schools in the nation. In addition to the Carolyn Parker English Award mentioned above, I also received the Steve Meier award and scholarship from the PTK chapter at my campus (ETA WHO? ETA NU!!) for my involvement and contribution to our Honors in Action project: Science Fiction as a Record of Culture and History. I was thrilled to to be the first recipient of this award, named in honor of our recently retired advisor.

If I have been thin on the writing front, I’ve made up for in editing/publishing. My online speculative fiction e-zine The Were-Traveler is still kicking and was recently added as a legit market on Duotropes. I’ve even had an author come forward and suggest an article for the next issue, which I love! Please, by all means, if you have an idea for something that may lie just a little outside the current theme, let me know. I may like the idea and say “Go for it!” as I have in this case.

Down the Stretch:

The editors of Ember Skies have asked me to write some articles for the college’s online newspaper, The Sandbox. I’m thrilled to be asked and I’m hoping to write a book review and/or some articles for them before the end of the year.

I’m planning to write and submit a short story to Phi Theta Kappa’s literary journal Nota Bene. That would be a nice feather in my collegiate writing cap.

I’m planning another project with my PTK teammates for Honors in Action, and I’m also chairperson this year for Native American Week on our campus so I’m going to be very busy planning events for that.

The Class of 2012 community college graduates will be getting their Associates degrees on December 15th. I will be one of them.

I would like to get some formatting work done on my own anthology, a collection of my short stories titled Kill the Crow. I’ve been working on the cover art and trying to get some of the last of the new stories finished. I hope to start formatting it by the end of the year, at least for the Smashwords market.

Whew! All this and trying to remain a geeky college student. It’s going to be a challenge. Think I can do it?

Creating a Writing Plan

by

I cherish the time off I have between college terms. I haven’t had a whole lot of time off lately: my last two terms only had a week and a week-and-a-half between them, so needless to say, I’m feeling a bit burned out.

I’m going to take this month I have off between now and the start of the fall term (which will be my final term at the community college before I transfer to my bachelor’s program…god knows where) to finish up a few writing projects and at long last get started on formatting my book of short stories for Smashwords and Kindle.

I’d like to see Kill the Crow come out early in 2013. I hope to round up some beta-readers  for it and try to find an decently priced editor (if I can) before the end of the year. If you are interested in beta-reading the book, please let me know.

I need to finish some stories for the book, too. I have three open stories that I’d like to fit into the anthology, including the title piece. I’m waiting for two stories to be published in other anthologies so they can be added, as well.

How to get things done if you’re a scatterbrain like me?

Well, one of my favorite ways of holding myself accountable for my actions is by making lists. I like lists. I look at a list and go “Oh, there’s that item I need to do.” I feel a sense of profound contentment, and a certain amount of evil pleasure when I check things off the list. Check. Murdered another one!

Another method of personal accountability for me is taking that list and going public with it.

Here is my writing plan for the next month:

  • Finish short story: Kill the Crow and the other stories that I need to get done for the book and for The Were-Traveler, etc.
  • Start the story I want to submit for consideration to Nota Bene, the fiction journal for Phi Theta Kappa. Right now I have an idea for this, but it’s speculative fiction, although it’s literary speculative fiction. Have to see where it goes, but I definitely want to submit something to this.
  • Finish outline for Waking Annastella. This is my “Sleeping Beauty in Space” science fiction story that I’ve been working on. I have the first chapter and part of the second written already.
  • Begin formatting Kill the Crow for Smashwords.
  • Blog something at least once a week!

This is probably as much as I dare to try and accomplish in a month, since I will also be putting a lot of my energy into applying to transfer colleges (writing college essays) and trying to acquire scholarships to see me through the pursuit of my bachelor’s degree.

Be on the lookout this summer for a lot of #amwriting and #wordmongering from me. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get to participate in a #FridayFlash!

2012: The Year of the Dragon, or, The Year I Plan to Breathe Fire

by

Chinese astrology is fascinating.

I was born in the Year of the Snake, 1965. (Always knew I belonged in Slytherin. Heh.) But I was conceived in 1964, which was the Year of the Dragon. This is probably why I love dragons.

Dragon-years are good years for me, and this one will be no exception.

During the fall of 2012, the first leg of my journey toward becoming a college professor will be complete. I will graduate community college with an Associate of Arts degree and move on. Where to? Likely I’ll transfer to the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, although I’m getting some nice emails (and even gift baskets with chocolate!) from other schools.

I’m going to focus more on writing fiction in 2012. 2011 was my toughest academic year thus far, and I was pressed to make it through this fall with only a slight dent in my GPA. I wrote lots and lots of school-related stuff, but nothing I could submit for fiction publication. That will change.

Writing goals:

  • I have a few stories to finish for the horror and sci-fi/fantasy collections.
    • When We Were Kings, fantasy, origins story. I can’t say any more without spoilers, but I LOVE this one!
    • Kill the Crow, horror. Revenge is black and feathered!
    • Eyes in the Dark, horror.
    • Lighthouse Man, science fiction
    • And a few others
  • Novella, novel: I’ve been planning a harpy novel, but the Muse won’t leave me alone about the “Journey of the Misbegotten.” Imagine an alternate world, with an alternate Hell. Imagine the devil as a mad scientist named Howard and his minions are his genetically tampered amalgamations. When Howard the Evil Creator’s greatest possession (the nine oracular pigeons) go missing, he sends a crack team of his sorriest amalgamations on a quest to track them down.
  • I’ll be writing another Literary Mix Tape story, I hope. About the song Hotel California.
  • Harpy novel. Hope I can get it started this year. Thanks to Laura Meyer for helping me think through my MC’s name: Mallory.
  • Keep working on “The Mages of Morrow” novel. Really, I’ve written over 50,000 words on the thing. I’d like to see it go somewhere!
  • BLOGGING! Going to do more of it. Still going to do prompts and such, but I want to start putting up more regular posts…regularly.

Several good things are planned for 2012. Some of them even include dragons. ;)

2011: The Year of the Roller Coaster

by

Image courtesy of Fotolia

2011 was a year with more ups and downs than a roller coaster for me, and I know I’m not alone in feeling that way. The job hunt was not going well, I got way behind on a lot of bills, got broke, and ate a crap-load of Raman noodles. All while waiting for student aid to come in. I finally got a student job at the college right when Fall Term started. YAY. It’s part-time and does not pay much, but it’s something. And I’m learning a great deal about the administration side of how a college works, information I’m sure will be useful when I finally get to be a professor.

As for writing, 2011 saw my first paid short story, “Nowhere Land” from Literary Mix Tapes “Eighty Nine” anthology. This was one of my best stories to date. Another of my best, also appeared in a 2011 anthology: “The King and His Twenty-Three Subjects,” a fantasy story appeared in the Florida Writer’s Association all-dialogue anthology “Let’s Talk.” I also wrote my first collaborative story, an apocalyptic short story titled “The Blight” told completely through emails with my friend zombie-master Jim Bronyaur. Speaking of zombies, I published a story in the Zombie Survival Crew’s anthology “Undead is Not An Option” about four foul-mouthed teenagers whose zombie role-playing game “Crunch Time” suddenly becomes a real struggle for survival against the undead horde. I started the year publishing a science fiction story that I also posted as Friday Flash and submitted to their Best of Friday Flash Volume 2, and hope to hear about that soon. Literary Mix Tapes also gave me a great writing start to 2011 by publishing my story “Sophie Solitaire: Confessions of an End-Time Girl” in the “Nothing But Flowers” collection.

I started an e-mag, The Were-Traveler this year. The first issue was released on Halloween. I’m looking forward to continuing it.

I taught my first class…a lecture for PINAWOR on the benefits of social media for writers. They were very social media shy writers, so I’m not sure I made much headway with them. But I learned what I ought to do and ought not to do the next time I make a presentation.

I fell short in some areas of my writing:

  • I wanted to have my first e-book collection released by the end of the year. Stuff came up. Mostly school work.
  • I did not blog as much as I wanted to, even though I got an award for Versatile Blogger. *smh*
  • I did not complete my novel that I started during NaNoWrimo 2010. I worked on it a little. Added a few words here and there.
  • I left a few stories hanging on the back-burner that really need to get finished as they are going in the collection.

All in all, an okay year.

But okay is not good enough. I want to be better than okay.

And for that, you’ll have to read my upcoming post about how I plan to set 2012 on fire!

Eighty Nine Release Scheduled & Let’s Talk

by

What happens when you take a playlist of 26 songs from the year 1989, put them in a hat, shake them up, draw them out one-by-one and match them with an author, then tell that author to write a speculative fiction story about the year that was ’89 and use the song as a prompt?

The answer is Eighty Nine, the latest anthology edited by the ultra-talented Jodi Cleghorn of Literary Mix-Tapes and eMergent Publishing.

I’m thrilled that my story, Nowhere Land, based on David Bowie’s song Tin Machine, is in this book. I’m extremely proud of this story, and I’m even more proud of the work my co-contributors put into this book. Each story is a unique and wonderful treat to read.

The official release date for the book is October 25th. There will be a launch on Facebook for the book, so look for updates from me on there or on Twitter soon about that. I will blog it, if school work allows. Here is a link to Literary Mixtape’s site where you can pre-order the book and read a sample. 

I have another story coming out in an anthology soon, possibly this month. It’s another story I’m very proud of, and I wrote it around the same time as Nowhere Land. The anthology is the third collection from members of the Florida Writers Association. It’s titled Let’s Talk and it’s a compilation of stories written entirely in dialogue. I’m pleased that my fantasy story The King and His Twenty-Three Subjects will be in there. It’s recognition from my local peers and it’s a damn fine story. I’ll keep you posted on that one, too.

I’ve also done the incredibly crazy and ambitious thing of starting an e-zine. The Were-Traveler started as an idea for a story about a werewolf on a Gen Ship. Whenever the ship enters a lunar system, he turns and things get, well, a bloody mess. The story idea hasn’t panned out yet, but I used the title for the name of the blog. Take a look at it and send me some submissions, why don’t you?

East of Eden is still Eden…

by

Sea Oats by Maria Kelly

This week is going to be a hectic one. Starting now.

I have an essay for British Literature I to finish, then upload to online class and an online test in Meteorology to study for and take. After that, I have one more section of Algebra homework to complete that’s due tomorrow.

Tomorrow starts the beginning of a week of doing more things with the honor society, Phi Theta Kappa. We’re having our new student orientation tomorrow that I’m helping out with at the afternoon session. I’m also starting a study group with one or two fellow Algebra students. So tomorrow looks like an insanely busy day: work, Algebra class, study group, PTK orientation.

I’ve typed up notes to use as talking points on why these new recruits should join Phi Theta Kappa. It’s one of the Level Three tasks for the Five Star Competitive Edge program, so I thought I’d do it. And it’s something I believe in. PTK, I believe, has given me tremendous advantages I would not have had otherwise. Transfer colleges are seeking me out and contacting me, simply because I’m a member.

A core group of our PTK chapter are also preparing to visit Stetson University in Deland, Florida this coming Friday night and Saturday for a regional leadership conference. I never like to turn these chances down when they are offered because I’m one of a couple of non-officers who get invited to go. While we are there, it has been suggested we might take a side trip over to Daytona, since we’re so close. Dip our toes in the waters of the Atlantic-side of Florida. I’ve been on the east coast before, in Tequesta (No, I didn’t see Burt Reynolds, who lives there), and I’ve dipped my toes before. Honestly, the Atlantic beaches don’t look all that different than the Gulf beaches. East of Eden is still Eden. Florida has its faults, but it is still paradise to me. Damn, that sounds like a Jimmy Buffet song. Besides, I’ve lived here over twenty years and I’ve never been to Daytona. I love visiting new places.

It’s not a weekend trip, so I’ll be home late Saturday afternoon or evening.

I wanted to get a blog post up about this, because it is important to me. All aspects of my education are important to me. I never thought I’d be attending college, seeking a degree at my age, let alone be in the honor society.

Also, my online presence will be scanty this week. I will still put up an image prompt tomorrow (maybe another Hodgepodge of three or four images) and I’ll post the Five For Friday prompt before I leave. I want to get as much homework done for the week as possible, so I don’t have to take much of it with me. It’s a bitch hanging out in the hotel room doing homework when the rest of your buds are out having fun.

I’ll be doing another blog post later today or tonight about writing stuff. What’s going on in my writing and all that. There’s lots of news on that side of things, too, though it may seem I’ve been slacking there. So much news I wanted to keep the two posts separate.

This is one of my “I’m still alive…just buried under an avalanche of school stuff” posts.

Classes, collaborations and other craziness…

by

I’ve been long absent from this little blog.

But I’m back. From outer space. I just walked in to find you here with that sad look upon your face. Okay…enough disco drama.

What’s up with me?

Well…I’m almost through with this term at school. I’m finishing up my project for Creative Writing class. It’s a 5 k short story called “Drowning in Shallow Water.” It’s literary. It has heroin junkies. And the best damn description of a dragon tattoo, ever! I’m also working on a flash for a class contest. There’s money involved. And cake.

I’m also giving a class. I’m giving a lecture on April 23rd about the benefits of social networking for writers. I’ll be wearing my “tweet me” tee-shirt and trying to sell Twitter and Facebook to writers who are reluctant to use these outlets. Should be fun. I’m not going to make a dime for it. I’m doing it because of my pure love of Twitter and other social media.

I’m writing another story for the Literary Mix Tapes crowd. Jodi Cleghorn has done it once again, assembling an incredible cast of talented authors to tell some speculative fiction stories related to the year 1989.

I submitted a story to the Florida Writers Association anthology “Let’s Talk.” The stories are required to be all dialogue. There will be 60 stories chosen to be in the anthology. Out of these, ten will be judged the best and placed in the front of the book. The judging for this year’s anthology will be done by W. Bruce Cameron, bestselling author of “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter” and “A Dog’s Purpose.”

In other news, some of you know already that horror author extraordinaire Jim Bronyaur (whose new book “In the Corner” just came out) and I are going to be collaborating on a book sometime in the near future. Before we do that, however, we are also making plans to write a short story for the anthology contest “E-Pocalypse: E-mails at the End.” Should be a lot of fun. And whatever we come up with is sure to be twisted as hell.

In publishing news, my story “The Apprentice’s Mother” was accepted for publication in the anthology “Sunday Snaps: The Stories,” put together by Susan May James to benefit charity. Authors used Susan’s photo prompts (the “Sunday Snaps”) on her blog as inspiration. I chose the picture of the creepy door knocker for my story.

And soon…very soon…the Zombie Survival Crew anthology “Undead Is Not An Option” will be released. It features my story “Crunch Time.”

So… Until next time…

It’s been awhile…

by

Just realized I’ve been very lazy in the blog posts department.

Sorry. Life’s been kind of challenging, as it can get sometimes. I’ve been suffering from the kind of exhaustion that only copious amounts of coffee seems to cure. Thyroid medication has been increased, so there is hope for an improvement in this area soon. Plus, I’m eating better and exercising more…and that should help to raise my energy levels, too.

There’s been a lot going on.

I’m working on two (well…really, three) projects right now. I can let you know about two of them at this point anyway.

Project Numero Uno is my literary short story for my Creative Writing class. It’s called (tentatively) “Drowning in Shallow Water” and it takes place in Tampa Bay, Florida, where I live. The story centers around Dalton Shay, a poet/writer coming to terms with his addiction to smoking heroin. Dalton’s character is actually loosely based on a person I used to know.

Project Numero Dos is a short story that was sitting on my back-burner for awhile called “Nightjar.” Some writers insist that their back-burner stories are dead and they can never revive them. I don’t find this to be the case with me. At least I’ve been able to go back and complete a couple of back-burner stories.

“Nightjar” revolves around a shapeshifting sorceress seeking revenge on the magic-hating, off-world invaders that executed her husband. I started it, then put it aside when I got stuck in a place with no clear idea on how to move forward with the plot. A few nights ago I went to bed, and as I normally do when I lay down to sleep, I let my mind wander…and lo and behold, the way forward was revealed to me. My muse likes to get me in bed sometimes. ;) So, I’m interested to know: Do you have back-burner stories? Do you ever complete them?

Publications: My story, “The ABC’s of the Apocalypse” has been released in the anthology “Cosmic Catastrophes” by Static Movement. Currently, I’m looking to either submit it again somewhere or find a way to bring it to audio and perhaps also post it as a Friday Flash. It is one of the best stories I’ve written so far.

Aoife’s Kiss magazine (through Sam’s Dot Publishing) has published my science-fiction poem “Before I Was Numb” and they used it to advertise their March issue. I describe it as “android angst that rhymes.” This poem is my first-ever sale. I will receive $5 and a contributors copy of the magazine.

Soon to be published is my short story “Crunch Time.” It will be published in Zombie Survival Crew’s “Undead Is Not An Option” zombie anthology. I’m very proud of that story, too, although it is probably the most profanity-laden tale I’ve ever penned.

It’s Spring Break this week and I’m trying to catch up on some writing projects that I know will probably get put aside once school starts again. I hope to find enough free time here and there to say “Hi” to my friends on Twitter and Facebook and update this little blog a couple times.

You can also keep up with what’s going on in my writer world by visiting my Facebook Author’s page and clicking “Like.” I’m going to be having some give-aways and contests in the future and you don’t want to miss out! Click here: Maria’s Evil Facebook Empire.