Somehow, it’s May already. Spring is flying by, and so did my time at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

The refurbished corn crib that was my studio for nearly two weeks (which I lovingly think of as the Baba Yaga hut) was cozy and a great space in which to work without distraction. It was my goal to draft at least one new story and my novel opening and outline. I lost three days to an unanticipated emergency, but I was still able to produce a lot of good work in that time.

After research, I wrote about 7k of the novel opening and worked out a lot of the outline. I drafted a 3k short story about a couple struggling to survive on a post-apocalyptic Earth where people worship mutants, and got about 1,000 words into an off-the-wall story about a group of teenagers with a very strange addiction. Not to mention the notebook pages I filled with as-yet-untyped work. I also read Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang and about two-thirds of George Saunders’ Tenth of December. And revisited a number of Karen Joy Fowler stories available at Lightspeed. And caught up on some of Shimmer‘s latest offerings.

Overall, I’d say it was a successful residency, and I’d love to go to VCCA again. While I didn’t spend a lot of time socializing, there was a great group of artists there with me who I took inspiration from and can’t wait to continue to follow.

Stay tuned for some news about forthcoming publications. I’ll have two pieces coming out in print!