If you read Scenic Writer’s Shack you know the site just sponsored a writing contest.
I’m THA-RILLED to report that my story won first place!
The contest rules included writing about a refrigerator delivery. What a fun assignment.
Photo by Vika Kirillova on Pexels.com
Filed under #AmWriting, #writingcommunity, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Microfiction, Writing
This story was so difficult to write. I agonized over it, rewriting it again and again. Here is the finished project. It was inspired by a weather event in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on May 13, 1980. Hope you like this story! A huge thank you to Editor David Sexton and the wonderful journal WENSUM.
Filed under #AmWriting, #writingcommunity, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Microfiction, Writing
Silver Birch Press has a new series, My Favorite Things. In such fraught times moments of joy are so important. So without further ado, here are one of my favorite things, my boots:
With My Boots On by Luanne Castle (MY FAVORITE THINGS Series)
SOMEONE ELSE WHO LOVED HIS BOOTS
Filed under #AmWriting, #poetswithcats, Poetry
A big thank you to Editor Barbara Harris Leonhard at MasticadoresUSA for publishing my very very sweet but unique story “How to Save Lily” from the wonderful workshop by Lorette C. Luzajic and Meg Pokrass that produced my story “I Want a Cat” that was published a while back.
The art by Fiona Hewitt that inspired the story.
Comments Off on How to Save Lily at MasticadoresUSA
Filed under #AmWriting, #writingcommunity, Flash Fiction, Microfiction
If you’ve been reading this blog for some time you may remember the year of cat rainbow heaven (2021). In July of that year, my daughter’s cat Isabella Rose passed. We had a close relationship because we used to babysit her at our house a lot. Perry loved to watch over her, so we called him the babysitter. When Izzie suffered a sudden and never diagnosed illness and was failing, my daughter asked me to come to the emergency vet so I could say goodbye. When I got there, the on-call vet pressured us to let him euthanize her before she coded. They never told us what was wrong. We all–but especially my daughter–still miss her a lot.
A month later we lost our sweet sweet boy Felix.
A month after that my heart completely broke with the loss of the amazing love (and nurse to all who are sick–human, cat, dog), Pear Blossom.
Pear Blossom
What a difficult year. But what followed was a worse year. Heart-rending family troubles, and the loss of Tiger Queen Princess Mimi. I wrote a hybrid poem/story/journal that is mostly nonfiction (some time elements were shifted, etc.). You could call it hybrid nonfiction/fiction. Founder and Editor of the new journal Feed the Holy, Barbara Harris Leonhard has published this piece today. I hope you cry a little, but then can smile.
Tiger on the piano
If you’re still reading you can also find three of my collages at the journal Thimble. Yay!!! You can find them all at this link. Let me know which one you like best if you have time to check them out!
You might figure that someone who revised the classic tale of Red Riding Hood in her chapbook Our Wolves might be interested in fairy tales. And I am!!! Today I have three fairy tales I’d like to share with you. The first two are new publications, and the third is personal.
This flash story, “The Floromancy of Identification,” in Panoply is in the folk tale style, but puts a new spin on things. The whole issue is wonderful, and I think you can skip around from this link to mine to other poems and stories.
The second is in the new issue of Last Stanza Poetry Journal and responds to the cover image, an illustration by Swedish artist john Bauer and in the tradition of troll literature. The idea of a changeling has long fascinated me. Definition from Oxford: “child believed to have been secretly substituted by fairies for the parents’ real child in infancy.” Trolls are also known for creating changelings by stealing human babies.
You should be able to click on the cover image below to get to Amazon.
Last Stanza Poetry Journal Issue #19: Fable
Now to the third fairy tale. The gardener and I are celebrating our FIFTIETH wedding anniversary this month. I know, wild, huh? And just like in fairy tales, we have had some real curveballs thrown at us by trolls, giants, and monsters (which are sometimes us).
But we prevailed, and here we are: fifty years out. It’s so hard to believe since I can remember all those early days so well.
The “kids” and baby grandson all took us out for a wonderful dinner and gave us a poster montage featuring the legendary (to our family) photo of the Holiday Inn where we had a dinner-dance reception (and even found some vintage postcards of the hotel). The marquee out front has our names on it. The kids love that photo, and my brother resends it to me every year!
Full disclosure: above photo is at the 42nd anniversary point . . . . But I kinda like it.
A big thank you to Editor Barbara Harris Leonhard at MasticadoresUSA for publishing my fun cat fantasy based on an assignment from first grade that I found (and Barbara published here–I will post below) and stimulated by a painting used as a prompt (but not enough to credit in the story) from a wonderful workshop by Lorette C. Luzajic and Meg Pokrass. The workshop was about guilty pleasures, and one of mine is cats!!!
My parents adopted my brother two years later, but in the meantime, I did get a black kitten from the family across the street whose cat had kittens. My mother named my cat Toby.
Filed under #AmWriting, #poetswithcats, #writingcommunity, Flash Fiction
On Friday I picked up a navy gift bag of Kana’s cremains from the vet’s office. The ashes are in a little cedar box, and they came with a pawprint and two tiny vials of fur marked “Kana Castle.” I’m going to order a little brass plate for the box, just as I did for Tiger Queenie Princess Mimi, Felix, Pear Blossom, and Macavity. Of course, I took photos of everything, but I won’t trigger you by posting them! Everything is on the bookshelf altar of my late furbabies.
The wonderful Cleaver Magazine has published a flash story I wrote about being a medical student on “Grand Rounds” with a mentor/teacher doctor: Another Week Left of Grand Rounds with Dr. Webber
The flash editor Kathryn Kulpa worked with me on little revisions. She was very helpful. Her new chapbook was just released, and I ordered it, but it hasn’t arrived yet. Here is her book launch: For Every Tower, a Princess book launch You can hear little short readings from some of the other Cleaver faculty.
The baby goes to “school” part-time, and Grandpa and I have him part-time. He is very active, preferring to be crawling rather than sitting still, and standing rather than crawling, climbing rather than standing, and he can’t wait to walk on his own, which he can already do while holding my hands. He turned 8 months old Thursday. I set up 3 electric jack o’lanterns to get him used to Halloween! He LOVES his swim lessons. He even will float on his back with one hand under the back. And if I ask him if he likes school, he laughs a gleeful sound. He doesn’t say anything yet, but I am working on “grandma” being his first word. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
It’s been hard to write, between the baby, my painful legs (tendinitis all over), and lots of other life stuff going on, but I plan to take Kathy Fish’s Immersion tomorrow. It’s a 3 day writing party that is free if you are a paid subscriber to Kathy’s substack, which I am. The Art of Flash Fiction Sign up if you want to join me there Sunday, Monday, Tuesday!!!
It’s been hard to juggle baby care with everything else that I’ve had going on. That’s why I’ve been an on-and-off blogger lately. I have a lot of catching up to do on blog reading.
But I am happy that the baby is doing well. He’s now 4.5 months old and started to teethe. He actually started Thursday afternoon. He was cranky, which is unusual for him as he’s a very chill little soul. Mid-morning he chewed in his sleep. He drooled. Awake he put his hand in his mouth. His bib in his mouth. The burp cloth. His toys. His books. My clothes. Then he wouldn’t sleep, but just fussed. Finally the thought of teething hit me. So I soaked a baby washcloth in very cold water and put a corner of it in his mouth. Within a minute or so he fell asleep! That’s when I was 99.9% sure he was teething. Before he went home I felt his gums and sure enough on his top gum I found a little sharp point . . . .
I’ve been watching him for over three months now! Hope I can keep this up as he gets heavier. He weighs 15 1/2 pounds now. You might think that I would get stronger with the gradual increase of weight, but NO HAHA.
On another note, why do babies need such massive amounts of equipment and supplies?! The gardener keeps saying, that’s enough now, but it’s never enough because he keeps growing and developing.
Unfortunately, I introduced Hudson to the original Baby Shark song, and now I can’t get it out of my mind. EAR WORM. If I ask him if he’s Baby Shark, he laughs. If I say, “I’m Grandma Shark,” he laughs even harder.
I did participate in something this weekend that was not very time-consuming. That is the Flash Flood 2024 Write-In. Have you ever heard of Flash Flood? https://www.nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/index.php/flash-flood/ If you write flash stories you can submit early in the year (check website for dates) and then a weekend they publish them one at a time. That weekend was this past one this year.
Then they also have the write-in where they post a writing prompt every hour for 24 hours. https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/ I decided to do that this year, although I couldn’t do all 24 as we had a big family party for the baby. I wrote ten stories and was pretty excited that they chose nine of ten to publish. Keep in mind, I spent about 15 minutes on each story, so they are really more like highly pressurized rough drafts. But I feel pretty good about how I did. Here they are:
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/why-wind-laughs-by-luanne-castle.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-princess-and-peanut-by-luann-castle.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/elemental-ghosting-by-luanne-castle.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/list-for-involved-grandparenting-by.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/grounding-by-luanne-castle.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/a-is-for-accolade-by-luanne-castle.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/in-manner-of-fairy-tales-by-luanne.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/i-am-whole-and-ubiquitous-by-luanne.html
https://thewrite-in.blogspot.com/2024/06/marianne-examines-physics-of-prolonged.html
Doesn’t it sound fun to participate? You should try it next time!
Just as I go to hit PUBLISH on this post, I feel the symptoms coming on of a bug that the Gardener has been wrestling with since Saturday night. Oh no.
Filed under #amreading, #AmWriting, #writerlife, #writingcommunity, Fairy Tales, Flash Fiction, Grandparenting, Writing
Wow, The Hemlock published two of my tiny stories–and I didn’t even know they were accepted. Great surprise today! A big thank you to the editors.
The link below will take you to the Summer Issue 2024 for downloading. My stories are on pages 35 and 36.
Here are the stories. The first one is very surreal, but I am very partial to its weirdness. The second one is much more realistic. Hope you enjoy them!
Filed under #AmWriting, #amwriting, #writingcommunity, Essay, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Microfiction
