Ashley Ream

Not me but I relate. (Photo by kirinqueen. Used under Creative Commons license.)

It’s summertime. There’s really no denying it, and here in L.A., it will last until almost Halloween. The thought of this makes me want to throw myself face first onto the couch with a chest-rattling sob.

Summer has never been kind to me. My childhood memories include the bottle of neon green aloe vera gel kept in the fridge for the inevitable peeling, blistering, lobster burns. I remember hours spent in a rickety fishing boat, the seats of which had been wrapped in prickly, scratchy AstroTurf. (No, I really don’t know why.) It smelled liked gasoline and fish guts. I’m sensitive to mosquito bites. So much so that they swell up monstrously and leave the limb feverish and in need of ice packs that must be changed every twenty minutes. Read the rest of this entry »

Ya’ll, LOSING CLEMENTINE was short-listed for the Balcones Fiction Prize. I’m so pleased I could bust. Huge congratulations to the winner, Hanna Pylvainnen, for We Sinners. I’m going to celebrate my runner-up status with a tiara and a cookie. You know what? TWO cookies. This is special.

I’m in fantastic company. The whole short list was:

Relative Strangers by Margaret Hermes
Sighs Too Deep for Words by William Jack Sibley 
Slant of Light by Steve Wiegenstein (Blank Slate Press) 
The Galaxie and Other Rides by Josie Sigler (Livington Press) 
The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets by Dianna Wagman (IG Publishing) 
Losing Clementine by Ashley Ream (William Morrow)

Cookies and tiaras for everyone!

So very close to finishing the first (of several) drafts for the new book in progress, my days look like this.

Pre-dawn run does a writer good.

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