It’s been so intense the last few months with the run-up to the Shop opening and the end of semester and the end of my school board service and Kavi’s prom / 18th birthday / high school graduation, that I’ve kind of felt like I didn’t have time to think or even breathe.
Today was my first day after all that, the first proper day of summer, it feels like, and I really meant to take the whole day off, but I’m feeling so behind that I couldn’t bring myself to do that, so I worked most of the day instead. And did laundry. Sigh.
I have to do better — I need to slow down and pace myself. Working on it.
But in the meantime, let me note:
a) I’m doing a reading TOMORROW at Tuesday Funk (Tuesday 6/3, 7:30 p.m. at the Hopleaf Bar), so Chicago friends, I hope you’ll consider joining, and I may treat myself to Ethiopian food beforehand if you want to join me for dinner, probably at Ethiopian Diamond? I’ll note, though, they have me scheduled to go last in the program, so if you’re coming to hear me read, you’ll be sitting through all of it. But they always put on a great show, so you won’t regret it. 🙂
https://www.tuesdayfunk.org/about.html
b) AND, I had two poems come out in an Indian anthology this week, “Sing, Silvered Tongue: South Asian Women’s Poetry of Trauma.”
• available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Sing-Slivered…/dp/B0F9XCBCSZ/ — I’m not sure how easy it’ll be to get at in-person US bookstores, but you can certainly ask!
c) AND, I can’t believe I forgot to note that last week I had a story published at The Sunday Morning Transport, “For Ever and Ever” — it continues the story of Anju (two earlier stories published there, “Expulsion” and “Fated,” (and Connor Nevitt, we need to update my stories page with those two, remind me)). You can read an excerpt on the site now, or read the whole thing (and the previous two stories) with a 7-day free trial.
d) I’m going to have the registration page up for UV resin classes very soon, I promise (as soon as I teach Connor how to do that, or maybe Stephanie can do it for me…)
e)) FINALLY, Benjamin Rosenbaum and I are teaching a 5-day writing workshop in Chicago, August 4-8, registration link will be up VERY SOON, as soon as I talk Connor through it, so please comment here if you’d like to be tagged into that when it’s up.
Whew. I think that’s most of the most urgent things to tell you. Maybe. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some. Sigh. I’m going to get my brain back soon, I swear. In the meantime, here are some flowers from my shop.
And oh, here’s a teaser for the story…
Anju read him Winnie-the-Pooh the night before she boarded the shuttle to exile. Banned from her home planet, forced to leave her son behind.
She was Kanga, trying to keep her voice cheerful, secretly panicking about what could happen to baby Roo if she let him leave the safety of her pouch. Roo could fall off the bed, down the stairs, off a cliff. When you become a parent, your heart starts walking around outside your body. If anything happened to her son, Anju’s life would be over.
Rohit was playing Tigger, jumping around his bedroom, ignoring every request to come back to bed, get under the covers. Yet she had no heart to scold him.
“Rohit, love, stop jumping around.”
“Amma, don’t be ridikkerous! Tiggers don’t jump! They bounce!” And off he went, bouncing, black hair flopping in his eyes.
He needed a haircut. Would her cousin Vasugi remember to take him for regular haircuts? If Rohit had hair in his eyes, if he couldn’t see, he was more likely to fall.
The little man in the dingy store frowned at his screen. “You’re short; this’d cost another two thousand credits.”
“Will you take these?” She offered her wrists, adorned with a pair of gold wedding bangles. He nodded, his fingers flying. Old-fashioned, a keyboard, but some folks preferred that interface; it was fast. Less than ten minutes before he lifted his hands. “Done.”
She’d thought it would be hard, giving up her bangles, but Anju found it surprisingly easy to strip them from her arms. She’d never been to this part of the city before, but Vasugi had a friend who knew someone.
Anju couldn’t get her record completely expunged, but now accessing it popped up a string of small misdemeanors. Nothing that anyone would flag as a problem for a trader. Her almost fatal assault on Bedi hidden far down the list, misfiled. Just far enough that someone might overlook it.
It was one of her father’s ships that got her the job. But she got no favors after that. Anju slept in the same bunks as the other crew—six of them, crammed in close quarters to maximize cargo space. She ate dull but nutritious paste, drank water recycled from body fluids—not so different as on Kriti, where everything was saved and reused for the terraforming effort. But on ship-scale, that process was closer. Intimate. The first time she lifted a glass of water to her lips on board, Anju gagged and had to force it down. It tasted like nothing.
Keep reading with a free trial here:
https://www.sundaymorningtransport.com/p/for-ever-and-ever
