April linkspam

It’s been a weird month, but then it’s been weird for all of us, hasn’t it? We are only two weeks from the end of the semester here at Donald Media Towers. My husband is about to finish his bachelor’s degree and not-graduate with the rest of the class of 2020; I have taken an extension on Ye Olde Thesis to get it knocked out in the summer before starting my new endeavor (read the last blog post on this list, if you missed that).

I’m under house isolation for the most part, having ventured out only for such thrilling moments as medical treatments or an insurance-funded car repair that required my actual presence for paperwork. The rest of the time I’ve been in the house, sending my essential-worker husband or son out on our errands, and sooner or later I’ll get them trained on how to follow a shopping list.

Teaching is pretty much wrapped up except for student conferences and grading the final projects, and my student work is… well. Let’s just say grad students and instructors are no less prone to procrastination or the mental malaise that has gripped so many of us in this time of plague. I see all these posts saying that it’s perfectly all right not to suddenly take up a new art form or write a novel or otherwise take advantage of all this home time… but then there’s those pesky deadlines.

So two weeks from now begins the summer, and I will not have any steady gigs for this breather between one program and the next. So it’s going to be freelancing, fiction and Ye Olde Thesis. Which probably means more essays and website design, because I can procrastinate like nobody’s business.

Most of my volunteer work is on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. The American Cancer Society chili fundraiser/author fair scheduled for May 2 is postponed until further notice, and the Breakfastival of Hope scheduled for May 30 will likely be in August. The Cardinals ticket sale is on hold until we hear if there will be a baseball season, and right now I’m just crossing my fingers that the fall festival will happen so we can hold our annual book sale.

This has been disappointing for me, as I have lost two friends just this month to cancer and I’m more than a little pissed off about it. Rest assured our Relay for Life team will be raising money for cancer research one way or another, virus bedamned. In the meantime, you can donate here.

Essays

“Unexpected Gifts” (Medium), featuring a photo by my son, Ian Smith, because it was better than my photo by a long shot, pardon the expression. I better up my game! This one was posted on Patreon first, because Patreon always gets first dibs.

“Peace which the world cannot give, I give to you” (Medium)

Journalism

Highland High explores graduation options (Highland News-Leader)

Highland staying vigilant against coronavirus (Highland News-Leader)

Highland faces budget questions amid pandemic (Highland News-Leader)

Future of marijuana dispensaries on hold for now (Highland News-Leader)

Caterer donating meals during pandemic (Highland News-Leader)

Fiction

“Fever” (exclusively for Patreon)

(And a sooper-sekrit project I can’t tell you about until the contracts are signed. Ooo, mysterious.)

Patreon/Blogs etc.

Patreon subscribers received their annual bonus, which was a copy of the River Bluff Review, a literary magazine only distributed in dead-tree edition that included two of my stories this year. They also received a matted photograph. See what you miss by not subscribing? And there should be a lot more fiction in the coming year… for details, see below!

Elizabeth, what are you going to do when you grow up? (that itty bitty announcement here)