Ok, Maybe I Meant Quarterly
Erratic Newsletters Probably Aren't Ideal
It’s been a wild few months. I added about 15k words to the Witchy cancer book with my publisher’s suggested additions and rewrites. The manuscript has been accepted into the publisher’s process and is slated for Spring 2025, which means my next howevermanymonths will be full of editing, I’m sure. It’s exciting as hell, honestly.
My sabbatical from corporate work ended in February when I took a contract BA position at a local healthcare software company. As always, a new BA position is a weird mix of drinking from a fire hose and downtime that makes a new employee nervous. I like the company and my co-workers, and I love that there’s flexibility (which is why I’m doing this newsletter at 1:30pm on a Friday…I hit my 40 hours for the week earlier today).
In other news, my next published freelance piece will be with The Black Fork Review in April. I’ll send the link as soon as it’s live. This is ridiculously exciting for me, because literary magazines are a level I wasn’t sure I’d get to with writing (and has felt unattainable since all the rejections I got during college). It’s also exciting because apparently I might be eligible for the Author’s Guild with three freelance pieces published, and call me silly but that feels just as validating as receiving my advance from the publisher for the book.
Still working on getting two short stories published. One has the most gorgeous rejection I’ve ever had, and I’m pretty consistently getting rejections that include an invite to submit again, or something complimentary in addition to the no. Writing is a long game, after all, and when I get discouraged I go look at a new list of markets and submit to at least three (who accept simultaneous submissions), and then work on something else.
I’ll keep working on making this newsletter interesting and consistent (I wrote “regular” first but that makes it sound like fiber powder, and I shouldn’t really be comparing it to bathroom activities). If you want more of the non-writing weirdness around here, check out my blog at No Pithy Phrase.
Jess