Great news for a phenomenal writer and friend, Jordan Rosenfeld. Writer’s Digest Books has accepted her book proposal for Master the Scene for publication in Fall, 2007, and will be included as a feature in their Book Club.

Way to go, Jordan! We all knew it was only a matter of time.

According to this photo taken seconds ago, Darby likes the manuscript I’m editing so much that he is now using it as a pillow. Either that or it’s putting him to sleep.

Perhaps he’s trying to tell me is to stop obsessing and take him for a walk?

Okay. I can take a hint.

Have you been keeping up with Mark Pritchard’s What Are You Working on series? If not, you’ve been missing out.

This week Mark interviews Dashka Slater, a talented woman who was in the same workshop group as Mark and me last year at Squaw Valley.

Dashka workshopped a story that took my breath away. It was funny, heartbreaking, and brutally honest. I loved it. To me, the story already felt polished, but Dashka was committed to improving it.

Now that, folks, is what I call one helluva writer. Go on and read her interview why don’t you.

Check it out–the issue of SmokeLong Quarterly I guest edited received 134644 total page views. How cool is that?

You GO, Smokelong!

I love Jane Kenyon. Fiercely. I do. Here’s a beautiful essay for you–The Moment of Peonies:

It is the month of peonies—the week, the day, and the hour of peonies. In late March their red asparagus-like shoots began to push toward the intensely blue spring sky with its scudding clouds. Through April and May the stalks gained height and turned green; buds formed and swelled tantalizingly. Ants crawled over the veined globes with gathering excitement, and now, at last, comes the hot day after a warm rain when the flowers open. And we are blessed, we are undone by them.

Raw Silk, by my pal Kim Teeple

My husband and I are two of the few people who found Amelie really annoying (I’m not a huge fan of whimsy). However, Dirty Pretty Things kicks ass and I watched Un long dimanche de fiançailles/A Very Long Engagement last night and found it really beautiful, moving. So, I’m two for three in liking movies which star Audrey Tautou.

The premise of A Very Long Engagement is that Mathilde (Tatou)–an orphan who is lame due to childhood polio–is searching for her fiancée, Manech (played by the wide-eyed Gaspard Ulliel), who was lost during WWI.

The circumstances leading to Manech’s disappearance are glum. He was a soldier condemned to death because of self-mutiliation (he intentionally let his hand be shot so that he might go home). Along with four other soldiers are with the similar stigmata of the hand wound, Manech is led through gloomy trenches of the Somme to “no man’s land” (the space outside of the trenches between the French and the Germans).

Mathilde believes that Manech is not dead–although she is continuously told otherwise–and, endearingly, she makes bets with herself (in the oh-so-familiar-to-me OCD way) that if such-and-such happens Manech will come back alive or Manech is not dead. She never gives up hope and uses her inheritance to hire a private investigator to help her find him.

There are several interesting subplots weaving through this mysterious, beautiful tale but none is more satisfying than the final outcome.

Read this sentence this morning and am mulling it over–from And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos:

What I did not know when I was very young was that nothing can take the past away: the past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for the dying.

Yes. Whether you recall the past or not is another issue, but as it existed it cannot unexist. It has happened and cannot unhappen. Bringing to mind, of course, that actions have potential consequences, potential outcomes. Perhaps this is why writing has appeal–in that one has control over actions and consequences?

The phrase “like a placenta for the dying” is perfection.

These are quick. Will take you no time at all to read them all and enjoy. Go on. Do it.

Broken, by Mary Miller

Blood, by Elizabeth Ellen

Two Fictions, by Kim Chinquee

IN THE QUIET, DON QUIXOTE, by Girija Tropp

Caveat Emptor, by Steven Gullion

A Survey of the Works of Ernesto Veto, by Donavan Hall

Girija Tropp generously pulled together a discussion a bunch of us had in regards to an AWP panel Xujun Eberlin attended. Check it out here: Xujun Eberlein’s notes from AWP. Thanks, Girija!