Casey Update (including stories! and play!) & VCon 37

Not a lot to report. Cancer apparently gone, site slowly healing, and I am back into life full tilt. Perhaps a little too fully tilted. But so much attracts me! There's a three day retreat this week with monks and nuns from Plum Village. It is focussed on healing, which seems not a bad topic for me. I look forward to it. I am also busy critiquing a pile of stories for VCon, preparing for our play, taking classes at Inspire Health, etc...

I started a wonderful class on Roman Britain at SFU Continuing Ed. That lit a candle under me to get out Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars and reread various papers on Celtic studies that I have in my files. I'm starting to lead my sangha every few weeks, am active at yoga again, and then there are all those nieces and nephews... And yet!

In the midst of it all I managed to get two new stories into circulation (and one older one that I had let drift). So out there in the mail system is a Scottish ghost story ("In Days and Nights The World Is Spent"), an allegory concerning cannibalism ("Eating Our Young"), and a story about David Bowie's mum ("Mother of the Star").

I'm also gearing up for the new session at the Kyle writer's group, which starts next week. Last year, when I was able to go, I used that time for polishing a collection of poems I have written, and I will be doing that again this year, so likely I won't be doing much more story writing this year.

Not to be forgotten, the last weekend of this month is VCon 37, which I'll be attending with my nephew Theo Campbell. The Pallahaxi Players Readers Theatre is putting on our second show, "And Then Some" by Matthew Hughes. Matt's work appears regularly in Fantasy & Science Fiction, and he is the author of The Damned Busters, Tales of Henghis Hapthorn, and The Other.

This story will be in an upcoming issue of Asimov Magazine, but we get a sneak preview at VCon. Besides being general dogs-body for the performance, I get to play, er, the sound effects... Be there or be square, my friends.

Casey

Spring Fling

Started just before last week's surgery:

So with all this cancer stuff going on writing and critiquing activities went on the back burner. But the flame simmered still, and now, three weeks after my resurrection, I have been attending a variety of writing groups, writing and brushing up on poems, and doing marathon critiques of other people's writing to catch up on what I've missed.

I've also signed up for a novel revision class (Reverse Outlining by Lois Peterson at Port Moody Library, 23 June), to see if I get inspired to resurrect my shelved tome.

Cool conjunction of worlds: I've started at the Callanish Writes, a writing group for people who have been through the Callanish Society cancer retreats. It is wonderful. We gather for three hours, do a brief meditation and read two or three prompts (also known as poems and quotes) and then write together (each our own thing) for a period of time.

This time we wrote for ten or fifteen minutes, then had the opportunity to read aloud (twice) what we had written. You have the choice of whether to hear responses and the responses are from the heart, not the head. It isn't a critiquing group, but a place to find expression and to connect with others around our experience. Obviously there were tears but there was much laughter as well and I loved it. Also the lunch. Callanish does good lunch. There will be, I think, a book at the end of this--at least in previous years Callanish has published a collection of some of the pieces written by the group. So let me know if you are interested.

Looking forward, VCon 37 (28-30 September – Sheraton Vancouver Guildford) will have a Pallahaxi Players Readers Theatre despite my own difficulty in writing a play this year. In my stead the lovely and talented Matthew Hughes is writing a play based on one of his current works of speculative fiction. (To Be Revealed.)

And after the surgery...

Not a whole lot more to add to that, naturally. My stomach is settling after the third and (please!) final surgery and here's hoping the site heals well and quickly so I can get back to that wildly active and deeply rewarding life. Oh, wait. It's still deeply rewarding. And hey, I kind of like it not being wildly active. Hmmmm...

Hugs!

Casey