O Maine, addio

In the last week, I ended my seven-year sojourn in the State of Maine, a period that had, until now, been coterminous with my literary career. After several years of unemployment and underemployment, my spouse was offered a good position in her field at an institution in Poughkeepsie. This also opened the possibility of living much closer to her parents, that is, two of the beloved grandparents of my two children. (The third beloved grandparent, my mother, is in Florida, a state I avoid as much as possible.) Since my spouse's field is librarianship, I still need to find work in order to make the finances of this move work, but I have some prospects, and so, overall, it seemed worth the risk. Maine has inspired many, but not all, of my stories, and the corner of New York State in which we find ourselves has inspirations of its own. For example: right now, over my laptop screen I can look through the kitchen window, over the deck of the rental house in which we are living, and see the height of land known as Storm King. So I think we made the right choice.

In the chaos of the move, however, I lost track of publication schedules, and thus overlooked that the book Geek Out: Queer Pop Lit, Art & Ideas, ed. Sage Kalmus, is now available as an ebook or a paperback. In this book one can find my short story "O terra, addio" (quotation marks are part of the title, as it is an allusion to Verdi's Aïda). Much of the story takes place at Lincoln Center in the City, a place I will be able to visit more often now than I did during my Maine exile. I encourage you to order the book. I will, as soon as we are done unpacking our existing library.