I’ve received a nice spike of traffic and new followers lately so I wanted to say welcome and hello!
In keeping with social media list memes, here are 10 things about me, in case you’re new here. I’m…
- …a writer of dark speculative fiction, poetry, and personal essays, with recurring themes that include the Pacific Northwest, feminism, climate change, esoteric subjects, magical realism, apocalypse/dystopia, and dreams. I released a new collection of dark speculative fiction, published by Aqueduct Press: Cul de Sac Stories. Check it out here!
- …one half of the collaborative podcast project, Beneath the Rain Shadow, with horror fiction author Clay Vermulm. We challenge each other to monthly writing prompts towards our goal of writing a book of short Northwest-based horror stories by end of year (Rain Shadows). Our goal is to show what’s behind the curtain in the writing life, with regional pride and playful approaches to dark subjects.
- …active in several writing communities include the Cascade Writers Workshop, the Seattle chapter of the Horror Writers Association, the Port Townsend Writers Conference community at Centrum, two critique groups, two writing accountability groups, and more.
- …an avid hiker and walker (mostly solo) and often post pictures in social media of my wanderings. When the weather warms up, I take those wanderings to the waterways in my kayak.
- …a busy amateur kitchen gardener who also grows lots of flowers! Right now my raised beds are burgeoning with tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, kale, lettuces, spinach, radishes, chili peppers, bell peppers, and probably some things I’ve overlooked.
- …living with multiple sclerosis and other neurodivergent challenges, as well as multiple kinds of arthritis. My experience with new diagnosis of an incurable chronic illness in mid-life is the foundation for my first book, Intention Tremor, which contains poems and nonfiction that chronicle the first five years of my life following that surprising news. To that end, I am a former patient advocate and columnist, and I recently retired my credentials as a sleep health educator and technologist. You’ll find my experience working with chronic communities informs a lot of what I do.
- …the former publisher of the now archived anthology, Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism. I continue to hold a deep and abiding respect and appreciation for literature that falls into this specialized and powerful niche. RIP to my man, Bruce Taylor, “Mr. Magic Realism,” who worked so hard with me to see this vision into reality.
- …into sharing memes in Instagram that push us to think more closely about our purpose as humans, neighbors, artists, women (or men or nonbinary), workers, parents, and souls.
- …native to the Pacific Northwest and love living here in this corner of the world.
- …currently creating experimental films, especially those which blend image and sound together with my original poetry. My first original poetry film collage, “Look Up,” has been accepted into four film festivals (Rehoboth Beach, DE; Bremerton, WA; Columbia, SC; Copenhagen, Denmark). I love short films, independent ventures, experimental work, and regional or niche festivals. I also use these skills to make book trailers for my own books.
If you want to keep up with any giveaways and special news, I’d highly recommend you sign up for my mostly monthly author newsletter here. It’s where I cobble together all the different things I’m doing in one spot (filmmaking, publishing, writing, my MS journey, gardening photography, hiking/shinrin-yoku, podcasting). I also shout out great Substack finds, update my Sellman Shelf at BookShop.org, answer reader/fan questions, and I even throw in a recipe from my kitchen.
You can find me in socials here as well.
Keep in mind that social media can be fleeting these days… I lost my 15-year-old Facebook account last spring! If you really enjoy an author’s work and want to follow them, it’s better to find them at their home page (here’s mine!) where the content is owned and reliably present.