It’s a new publication day! Memoir Magazine published my creative nonfiction piece, “Shot-Gun Sucks,” and rereading this morning I’m now firmly stuck in the day when this particular episode of my messed up childhood happened. It was a day not terribly unlike this one–early spring, still a bit of a chill in the air and bright sunny blue outside. I’m looking out my window now as I’m writing this (yes, those are Halloween blood spatter window clings in the background image here), and there’s not a cloud in the sky. And even though my beloved raspberry-colored Chevy Spark (named Ruth after the tough-as-nails Ruth Bader Ginsburg) is incredibly reliable, I can picture my mom’s old VW bug parked menacingly at my childhood house, hear the backfires, smell the nasty exhaust fumes.

One hopes that clunker has been put out of its misery by now and is not still terrorizing children. Then again, what a fun story that would make. Stephen King’s Christine without the old, dead gross dude possession–instead, it would be possessed by the souls of all those traumatized kids. Ha! Maybe I’ll tuck the idea away for a future Devil’s Elbow series book (yes, A MISFORTUNE OF LAKE MONSTERS–out summer 2024 from CamCat) is the first book in the series…and that is totally counting chickens before they’ve hatched because no one has agreed to making this a series yet. So maybe keep your fingers crossed for me, ‘kay?