Hello from the Writing Table!

Where I am working away at my dinner table while workers work away at the attic. We have the framing up, siding on, windows installed… It’s looking like a bona fide second floor up there. Meanwhile, I remain neck deep in edits, essay drafts, book rewrites, though now with a nice, glowing tan from our trip to Saint Martin. Getting back to the grind has not been easy, but I am dealing by tanning in my backyard with lots of sunscreen, bug spray, wine and a few good summer reads.

By the way, the library’s summer reading challenge is in full swing. Do me a favor — join the challenge, set the Madison branch as your library, and do some reading at least 15 days this summer. Every 15 days logged reading this summer gets you a nice coupon for treats around Nashville. I’ve already got my Jeni’s Ice Cream coupon and am saving it for a hot day.

Now put on your sunglasses and let’s gossip.

Submission Success Story — “Role Play” published in The Pinch

We all have to have that pandemic-era story and this is mine. This one is a strange story about a woman who gets pregnant during the pandemic and gives birth to a baby none of her friends believe is real. Then again, is the baby real? Or is she engaging in a hallucinatory version of parental role play?

This story came from a disturbing trend I heard about on Instagram, called “role play,” where people who want but do not have (or can not have) children take publicly-available pictures of other people’s babies and pretend they are their own. Yes, it’s creepy. Yes, it’s sad. No, you really shouldn’t post pictures of your children’s faces on the internet.

As we aging millennials wrestle with our own fertility and we as a society wrestle with the strange effects of a wild west internet, this story felt very prescient and timely and damn near wrote itself. To be honest, I didn’t even realize the baby might not be real until a critique partner asked if she was. Truly, I don’t know.

(Side note: I wrote this story on my handy dandy Free Writer, which is an overpriced clickety-clack typewriter that has a screen made of e-ink and can send your draft to your email upon completion. It’s the only thing I’ve written on my Free Writer. But it was damn good. Let’s take a moment to salute the Free Writer that is currently stored in my basement along with many other relics from the Writing Attic while we wait for renovation completion.)

Here are the details:

Total time spent on submission: 1 year, 1 month, 12 days

Response time from The Pinch: 143 days or roughly 5 months
Total rejections received before an acceptance: 16 (3 close calls, 3 higher tier form, the rest form)
Pay: None but the glory.

Read it here.

New Podcast: Beach, Books, & Beyond with Elin Hildebrand & Tim Ehrenberg

I’ve never in my life read an Elin Hildebrand novel and I have no idea who Tim Ehrenberg is. But I LOVE this podcast. It’s an immediate listen as soon as a new episode hits the feed. Elin and Tim’s book banter is lovely to listen to and every time makes me want to just curl up and read, read, read. Juicy books, fast-paced, romantic, intoxicating—I just want to do nothing but read everything after I’ve listened to an episode.

They also interview bestselling authors about their work, the business of publishing and book selling, the writing life, everything. They sat down with Colleen Hoover, Jodi Picoult, Kristen Hannah, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Ann Patchett (of course), and on the newest season, Sarah Jessica Parker, to talk her new publishing imprint. It’s so interesting to hear major authors who have been household names for decades talk shop. It feeds me in a way other writing podcasts do not.

Anyway, 10/10, highly recommend.

Listen here.