I will, however, be doing a reading on July 21 at the Bitter End, a famous old folk bar in Greenwich Village. It's part of a celebration of the fifth anniversary of Literary Kicks, Levi Asher's pioneering short-story website. Everyone is invited. I'm not sure yet if Levi will be charging admission, but if he does I'm sure it won't be much.
I haven't decided what to read yet, although it may be one of the upcoming short-story prologues for the Five George Washingtons. I like these prologues very much, although several people have already very helpfully said they don't.
Over the past few months, I've been dealing with an extraordinary string of rejections: of the stories, of my attempts to get a new and more permanent job, even of me personally, by a man with large eyes whom I very much liked and wanted to date. It's been a terrible time, and it's been hard to keep my confidence up. My friends are supportive, but busy with their own lives; my parents tell me to give up writing, that it's getting me nowhere. "Enough with this Internet," my mother says.
I'm hoping that by the time I return in September, the world will seem like a much sunnier place.