As regular visitors to this site know, I was laid off last month from my job of five years
That was a downer, but having some extra time on my hands has proven beneficial to this site. Glory and the Golden Apple, for example, got two new episodes, several new cartoons, and a new gateway that includes the first use of color on the site.
I've also begun a new short story, "Greta Floating, Lillian Straight Ahead."
No promised finish date....the last story I tried to write in a hurry was Charlotte's Mirror.
Three years later, it's still unfinished and still a disaster.
I'm still willing to send a free poster to anybody who can suggest a good ending for the thing.
Let Go was the first story I ever published, although Say Goodbye To The Sea was actually accepted for publication first.
It's about a woman laid off from her job - which, at the time, had never actually happened to me. Now seemed like a good time to exhume it from the archives.
Let Go first appeared in the Manhattan Spirit newspaper in January, 1992.
Speaking of stories that lack endings, Blue Flower of Happiness is now sporting a new one.
Blue Flower went up on the site as an unfinished story, had an ending tacked on just before Christmas, and then became unfinished again when I decided I really hated what I had written.
The new ending is better, I think, although I'd still hesitate to say Blue Flower is entirely done and I won't ever touch it again. There's some stuff I'd still like to work on, particularly Lee's closing words.
Amy Beauty Rose, one of this site's most popular stories, will appear in a traditional print book, "Coffeehouse: Writings From the Web", edited by Levi Asher of Queensboro Ballads.
To say the least, Levi and I didn't exactly agree on everything having to do with the way the book was put together, but we're still friends, which is saying something.
Levi hopes to set up a few in-person readings from the book in the New York City area. I'll let you know if that happens.