What drew you to submit your work to RED SKIES?
When I saw the submission call from Splintered Disorder Press desiring to curate interesting views on 2020 and living through this wild existence, I was so excited to write a sonnet about my unique experience. You see, in 2019 I started writing a hybrid experimental novella called Flutter: Southern Gothic Fever Dream. Flutter, a fantasy inspired by a sick child’s imagination in 1883 Pensacola was inspired by my own modern woods in 2019 Pensacola. I live amidst a lot of longleaf pines. I lost about six of them in Hurricane Sally, and I suffered their loss like friends. They’re celestially high skinny trunks inspire my imagination so much it was easy for me to develop the character of Sylvia Dandridge, a child who suffers from scarlet fever, and finds magic in her skinny tree surroundings.
The novella is not all hampered by the constraints of reality – though I did do a lot of research on what 1883 entailed in Pensacola. It’s why I chose scarlet fever as the disease that Sylvia Dandridge suffers from during most of her time of the novel. Scarlet fever was the largest killer of children at the time. As I say in one of the footnotes of the novella (the novel uses a structure of sonnet then a chapter-like footnote. A plot point of the story is that Sylvia has been sick most of her life and effectively quarantined to her estate, Longleaf with parents and servants. In doing research I discovered that my city prior to 1883, being a port city, experienced a devastating yellow fever outbreak. The disease caused so much harm that quarantines were legally established. I used this info to make Sylvia Dandridge a survivor of the yellow fever outbreak.
The most significant thing I learned from this though is that for the first time in my life in 2019, I heard the word “quarantine” in a legal sense. It felt so strange to think of a place – the place I live in had gone through a quarantine. In 2019, this was an alien term to me. I remember struggling to think how that would work and so happy I didn’t know.
Little did I know that only months after my book would be published, there would a second quarantine in Pensacola. Work would stop. People would wear masks if they would have to leave their homes and try to stay home as much as possible. It felt so surreal to experience this after having only stumbled upon this subject in history so recently. Very long story short, I had been waiting for someone to ask me about my unique experience of writing of quarantines so shortly before living through a modern one. This is what I did in my sonnet “Southern Gothic Quarantine.”
What writers have inspired you?
I have so many literary inspirations – certainly Shakespeare for inventing the structure I use to explore topics the most, Shakespearean sonnets. I internalized this structure a long time ago – I’m in my forties and started writing these in high school and got a scholarship for creative writing graduate school. I love older, traditional writers like Poe, Dickinson, Plath but I also inspired by living writers like Joyce Carol Oates (who I feel a kinship to in the drive to always be working and even criticized for being prolific at times), Maya Angelou for her voice, Anais Nin for her unabashed exhibitionism and ecstasies, Nabokov for his style and vocabulary. One of my favorite contemporary poets now is Michael Chang who is so fiercely intelligent and funny and a genius with words. I always am slayed by his creations.
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What projects are you currently engaged with?
I’m a writeaholic – always finding new projects. I think that comes from being a late starter in the literary world. While I went to school for creative writing in my 20’s, I didn’t publish them save one poem which was submitted by a partner of mine at the time. I was too afraid. So, now, having only been in the literary scene for three years, actively publishing and putting myself out there, I feel like when I have an idea for something there is no postponing time – I act.
So, for instance, my publication schedule in 2021 right now involves a hybrid experimental horror novel, Crow Carriage, coming out in the summer, a full length poetry collection, Puritan U Succubus Alumnus, coming out in the first of the year. I have two other manuscripts in the works, one fantasy oriented and one erotic. I’m editing an anthology for The Daily Drunk on the film Eyes Wide Shut (anyone who is interested in submitting to that there are guidelines available at Eyes Wide Shut Anthology Guidelines). I also edit a poetry journal Pink Plastic House a tiny journal which has expanded this year into a collective of mini journals to take work in different genres like eroticism (Poke, a journal of kink and erotica), horror (The Haunted Dollhouse) and historical (Victorian Dollhouse) poetry. You can read all of those and lots of my own writing and order books of mine at my website. When ideas take hold of me now, I express them in the way I once internalized and repressed them. I became who I was meant to be and I will never stop.
How have you spent the year 2020?
I’m a reclusive person so the idea of staying more at home wasn’t the most disturbing part of 2020. I did miss writing in coffeeshops which I like to do as it gets me away from the distractions of household chores and such. The biggest challenge though to me is living through a pandemic confined to one’s house when one’s house becomes a construction site – and not really feeling like one’s house at all. I live in the panhandle of Florida on the water, and we experienced the ravages of Hurricane Sally particularly hard. My house was flooded, and mold remediation was performed taking about half of my house down to the studs. I’m living in a few rooms of the house, and that has been intensely tough. The construction of that part of the house begins after the holidays, and I can truly say I’m counting down the days – though the noise here is going to make for a rough working environment. Between the pandemic and the hurricane, this has felt like the roughest of years.
How have you maintained your artistic skills during lockdowns?
I can’t believe I am able to say this but I published 200 pieces of writing this year. I write every day – even if I don’t finish something and I publish a lot. I tried to be extra diligent about all of this during the pandemic as I was so afraid that depression would creep in and take from me the momentum that I have worked so hard to build in my writing practice. I suffer from depression and anxiety, and though it may be hard for people to believe who watch me from afar, I truly felt that I could go from years of accomplishment to a dead halt if I allowed myself to slow at all.
Having said that, now that the end of the year is at hand, I have slowed a bit – not much but I feel the weight of the year upon me now, the stresses that I internalized and tried to keep at bay. Everything seems heavy and in the cold, movement seems strained and hard to begin at times. Yet I am still going, and I’m fighting the good fight. I believe that consistent practice of your art is key to keeping your skills sharp and your muscle memory attuned to the dance of writing.
Is there one daily ritual or routine that you commit to following?
I believe in the discipline of writing every day. I don’t believe you’re not a writer if you don’t write every day. I can’t say what other people need as a writer and I certainly know not everyone is physically able to do this. I don’t write whole poems or chapters or even pages a day – every day; some days I certainly do. But every day I make time to work on a piece of creative writing. My fingers and brain are trained to sink into that space of creative. In fact, if I don’t get that time, that exercise of that writing muscle, much like exercising my body, I get grumpy.
I know it’s a privilege to be able to do this in practice though (even if it’s not something that is always easy for me to accomplish either.) So I would say if you can’t do it every day, to strive for that (and certainly I have had days where I too am a striver), and in so doing you will write more, practice more, fine tune your craft. And I will also add that everyday you should read some writing, too, because it’s a study of craft to do so as well. And if you can’t write that day, you definitely should be reading those days. O
You have written an extraordinary amount of sonnets. What originally drew you to the craft? Are there any other forms of poetry that interest you?
I keep track of my publications on Scribophile, a writer’s site where I began my writing career a few years ago. They have a publication tracker and I’m at 718 right now. Those are not all sonnets. I have published essays, books, free verse poems, short stories, a novella and they are listed amongst these accomplishments. However, most of them are sonnets. I was taught when I was in high school how to write a Shakespearean sonnet, and I obviously was hooked on the form as I’ve done it for decades since – even when I didn’t publish them.
What I like about them is that form – specifically that form forces me to be concise. Shakesparean sonnets are only 14 lines. I’m actually a longwinded person and can sometimes obscure a good point in a long litany. I can also by nature of being raised by puritans be bashful about certain things. I don’t get those luxuries of length and liquidity of verbose prose, the watering down of things in Shakespearean sonnets. I’m forced to be bold and fierce, qualities which I think a lot of people associate me with me now when in fact they are necessities of the form. It’s been good for me in that way – Shakespeare has honed a weak girl’s voice into a weapon. My poetry is exhibitionistic, uncomfortable and hard for me to write. Doing those things in a safety net of a Shakespearean sonnet makes it tenable. So it’s a default in my life.
You can read a sonent I wrote about this relationship to Shakespeare and my feelings about what he has given me with his form here in Cabinet of Heed: Ophelia Interrupted – you can also read an assortment of my sonnets on my website here.
Before the pandemic, you started working on a writing project with the plot of a quarantine. Has living in an actual pandemic made an impact on your prior ideas? And, has it managed to inspire the original piece further?
Flutter Southern Gothic Fever Dream definitely was the first time I internalized that people lived in a quarantined world. It’s so strange to think about not having read this book and experiencing the quarantine outside of that context. In a way, I think it prepared me that this was indeed a thing that happened in history and that it does come to an end. I related to Sylvia Dandridge’s character because even before the quarantine I lived a very reclusive life, but by choice. And I had my ways of going out into the world – I was a coffee shop writer for instance, didn’t socialize but sat and wrote in public which felt like a cure for loneliness. There is a distinct difference there when the isolation is voluntary and can be abandoned in moments.
I will say that one area that is distinctly different for me and my character Sylvia Dandridge is that she did not have the internet. She would have loved the internet. Instead of Twitter drama, she invented her own in characters she created in the woods like spectral mermaid mean girls and boyish bee demons who bloom you with a kiss. Online, even during a quarantine, you can sign on and find all of these things there for you. I still invented a lot like Sylvia did during the hurricane though. But it’s nice to be able to have virtual friendships. They were my friendships long before the pandemic.
Is community important to your writing? Are there any magazines or small presses that you feel a strong attachment to?
There are so many magazines that have done me the honor of championing me over the years. One of the first to do so was Moonchild Magazine edited by Nadia Gerassimenko. She’s a fiercely talented writer and devoted editor with a true maternal nature. Also one of my early champions was Rag Queen Periodical edited by Kailey Tedesco. The magazine is still available in archives though isn’t publishing now but it was one of the highlights of my career to be chosen for this journal by Kailey who is an intensely talented and beautiful person. I love Yes Poetry edited by Joanna Valente, again a writer that I admire and I remember getting that first acceptance by them and just feeling like I had made this great accomplishment. The same kind by said of my acceptance at Glass Poetry when that happened. I can remember where I was when I got that acceptance – at a dinner surrounded by nonpoets and having to explain my jubilation and what it meant when I spied that acceptance in my email. They have such a high standard for the work they published. It felt magical. Also I love 13 Myna Birds published by Juliet Cook, an artist and poet I admire endlessly. She has such a particular aesthetic that she brings to her own work and curating work that is about quality dark writing expressed often in familiar, comforting pastel palette that is my love language. I contribute to two presses Burning House Press and Punk Noir Magazine and that is truly an honor because they publish very cool work and I feel honored to be a part of that. Recently, too, I have fallen in love with some newer presses like Fahmidian Journal , Wine Cellar Press, Crown and Pen Zine which both care about writers so much and really do a stunning presentation of work that is beautifully curated
As for small presses to work with on books, I’ve been quite a lucky girl in that regard. I began my authorship with Maverick Duck Poetry who has published three books of mine. Kendall Bell has been a friend and champion of my writing before anyone else discovered me only to be followed by Hedgehog Poetry who published my next book, Shakespseare for Sociopaths and then my full length Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir. I published a book Dewy Decimals this year with them about my sexual education in the library and next year I’ll be publishing two Puritan U Succubus Alumnus, another full length and my very first hybrid experimental novel, Crow Carriage. I’m endlessly indebted to them. I’ve also had the honor of publishing books with APEP Publications, Roaring Junior Press, Thirty West, Bone & Ink, TwistiT Press and would recommend working with any of them.
Some small presses that I would love to work with some day are Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, Really Serious Literature and Blood Pudding Press. I am in love with their creations and the spirit of their editors, their work ethic, all of it.