So last month I talked about my yearly reading goal, which averages out to about 6-7 books per month. Yeah, I totally missed that mark again. Only four reviews completed in April, though technically I have two in the wings I'm still working on that were finished in April. With the end of the semester rapidly approaching I'm expecting that to get at least marginally better, but then the books are going to be in competition with the garden, so it's hard to say. It's hard being an adult, man. I remember devouring books as a kid, probably because I literally had nothing better to do. C'est la vie.
AWP in Minneapolis was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the sheer amount of panels available with wonderful information was a blast! I also got to see one of my favorite authors, Benjamin Percy, again. I originally saw him at a reading he did at my school, where he read from his book Red Moon. We had read Red Moon for class that semester so it was very well timed. Then I walk into a panel at AWP and think, hey, that guy's really familiar... then he starts talking and, oh yep, that's devil-voiced Benjamin Percy. So I picked up his new book The Dead Lands in April and have a review of that coming up as well.
The downside of AWP was the sheer amount of people. I'm not all that comfortable with crowds, so have several thousand people jammed into one area got extremely overwhelming for me. Add to that a huge string of bad luck that whole week and I ended up leaving a little early for a couple days, and skipping Saturday entirely in favor of retail therapy. Luckily since I live in the area, and only paid a student's fee, it wasn't too big of a deal. I still recorded some great lectures. I hear next year is in LA, so yeah, skipping that whole cluster right there.
So what's coming up in May? May is jam-packed. Biggest news? Getting married. Yeah, no big. We're walking the Minnesota AIDS Walk and taking some vows at the finish line. Should be a good time.
Some garden sales and farmer's market outings are on the horizon, but sadly because of work I couldn't fit in the other conference I had my eye on, the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference in Bemidji. It's on my list for next year.
Additionally, I'm set up now to take playwriting as an independent study in the fall, and may start working with the theater department again. The department head is already hoping to have a student-written play to enter in a national competition, so, you know, no pressure or anything.
I've got a couple finished-ish pieces from this semester to work on and one out for submission as we speak (although now, of course, there's changes I'd like to make to it so if it comes back I won't be heartbroken). Here's to a summer of reading and writing!
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