The editing and proofreading is done. The cover is a show-stopper (thank you, Jay Miller of Great Bend, KS!). In June 2020, Katie Myrdal has been sent out into the world in the hope that readers from big cities and small towns across the Midwest and elsewhere will come to be as fond of her as I, her WordMother, am. She’s about coming of age, fish out of water, urban versus rural, a beloved landscape, and (I think) some decent writing. One more thing I’ve learned is that I had the easy part, the fun part – the imagining and thinking and inhabiting and the messing about with words. Tracy Simmons and Meadowlark Books have the hard job: perfecting, designing, checking and re-checking, emailing, planning, devising and conniving, to give it its best launch. I thank them from the bottom of my heart! Opulence, Kansas is now available from Ingram, IndieBound, Amazon, and direct from Meadowlark Books.
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Wanderlust Journal, an online journal of travel writing, has posted a postcard by me. It’s a lovely feature combining photographs with brief “stories” (< 50 words) inspired by a journey or a visit. It was an engaging exercise to try to distill an emotional experience down to a couple of sentences!
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The equestrian magazine, The Plaid Horse, published my essay Hanging It Up in September 2019. It is dedicated in love and gratefulness for 23 years with a generous bay thoroughbred mare who shared her athleticism and grace with me in priceless ways. Read it here.
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Going back to the beginning (sort of), I thank the late, lamented Zahir Tales for the 2008 publication of my first short story, Pendulum, a ghost story set in Paris’s Pantheon. My husband and I were sitting there one winter day, and as a security guard ambled past, he grabbed hold of Foucault’s pendulum and gave it a swing to set it going. We thought that was a delightful thing to have in your job description. The resulting story allowed me to reanimate some of my heroes who lie entombed in that cold, depressing building. You can read a copy here: