Good news! My flash story Reflections took third place in the 2018 Parsec Short Story Contest. An earlier incarnation of this story was a finalist in the 2017 Podcastle Flash Fiction Contest where it won this encouraging review:

It’s exciting to see this story do well but I have to admit I’d love to see it published soon. The file sends me pouting glances from my computer screen, “Please, Jennifer, I want to be read.” I think of the main character, Meriden, who I’ve tweaked, rewrote, deepened, and edited several billion times, and I would like to see him come alive in someone else’s imagination. He’d do well there. He’d be happy. It’s time to retire him from contests and find him a home.

A non-fiction article I wrote about our local water system is available to read for free at Connecting Albert County. I had fun learning how my community built and hand-laid wooden pipes to feed the village in the early 1900s.

My middle-grade short story, Toby’s Alicorn Adventure, will be published in the September 2018 issue of Cricket. This one’s my first professional sale and it’s going to be exciting to see the illustrations. The story contains dragons, unicorns, witches, fairies, flying hippos, pirates, and Saturn. Whichever the artist chooses to illustrate, it’s bound to be fun and I hope the kids love it.

In the meantime, I’m busy editing a novella and writing a new short story. Summer can be a struggle with young children and heat, but also full of unexpected inspiration.

An old nugget of advice I’ve heard from many sources (most recently from writer Richard Thomas) is wafting through my mind this week and I’d like to share it:

See you this Submission Sunday and happy writing in the meantime.