No posts since March 2020? Really? To claim it was Covid-related would be an understatement.
The year, plague year 2020, has been catastrophic on all levels for many people. I have to report that I have been one of the fortunate ones. As a professor in higher-ed., it has been quite a task alone to work through these times, but many things have happened, and some have fallen by the wayside. In a year of pandemic, upheaval, and tumult, I have been uplifted by all the writers and publishers who have not been daunted by 2020. Here’s my year-end work summation:
Picking up from March 2020 I was scheduled to read some poems for the GRCC Public ENG DEPT Reading Event on Mar 26 but this was cancelled due to Covid. I found a new market with the incredibly prolific and subversive ALIEN BUDDHA PRESS and published the following poems: “Eviscerated” and “Private Hell Perdition” in Alien Buddha Press Gets Rejected, “Nightmare Tracks” in Alien Buddha Press HOUSE OF HORRORS 3, followed with a SONGS OF SELAH podcast reading live on Halloween, and “From The Office Of Dead Letters” THE ALIEN BUDDHA WEARS A BLACK BANDANA.
My work in the Weird Fiction and Art community has continued with: A review of Matt Cardin’s TO ROUSE LEVIATHAN “Epistemological Alchemy” in DEAD RECKONINGS #27 from Hippocampus Press Spring 2020 and reviewed Richard Gavin’s GROTESQUERIE from Undertow Publications “A Weird Tarot Deck” and Robert Eggers’ film THE LIGHTHOUSE “The Light That Never Warms” in DEAD RECKONINGS #28 Hippocampus Press Fall 2020 . I was delighted to be accepted in S. T. Joshi’s new scholarly journal of Weird Fiction with “The Cosmicism of Elfland” in PENUMBRA No. 1 also from Hippocampus Press!
Fell short on a short story publication this year but managed to make my goal of tripling last year’s output. There have been other derailed projects. As lockdowns have devastated the music industry nothing has been done or has happened with THE HICKKICKERS or other music side projects. Along with that, the release of what was REALMS OF FANTASY 2020 by Mythopoeia Games Publications has been delayed to 2021 and will be retitled REALMS OF FANTASY COMPLETE. Lastly, the “Bullets For Breakfast” script is all but over on its path to production.
We have two new cats — VINCENT and VICTOR in the home to make the year and I have been admitted to the Esoteric Order of Dagon (literary branch). Lastly I will be writing in the 2021 MARCH PLAIDNESS competition writing for HELMET and their song “Unsung.”
Accolades to everyone else that has endured through plague year 2020. On to 2021!