The official release for Scrap: Salvaging a Family (ELJ Editions) is in two weeks, but you can read about it now. The journal Your Impossible Voice has published an amazing review by Wilma J. Kahn. What a blessing to my eighteen-year project!
A memoir in flash, Scrap focuses on three discrete parts of Castle’s life in relation to her parents, especially her father. “Scrap” is a multivalent word around whose every meaning and nuance Castle fashions poignant—and sometimes horrifying—flash prose and poetry to reveal her family in all its human pain, mystery, and love.
REVIEW OF SCRAP BY WILMA J KAHN
On a related note, the journal Fictive Dream published my flash story, “The Nice Girls.”
THE NICE GIRLS
LatinosUSA has put Kin Types on its Bookshelf! And MasticadoresUSA has published a poem from that collection: What Lies Inside
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The Sweet Acacias have blossomed! I have such a love-hate relationship with these guys. They are so sweet smelling, but gosh, everybody is “allergic” to them! They bloom at least twice a year.
I’ve mentioned here that I haven’t had time to write in the last few months, but I am trying to write a few tiny drafts now. If I can accomplish first drafts of flash or poems, a few a week, for a few weeks I will feel better. I don’t feel as well when I’m not writing. I feel distinctly WEIRD.
Lately, I’m reading a mystery series by Kate Ellis–the Wesley Peterson books–which feature contemporary murder mysteries with archeology stories. I learned about the Plague Maiden. Have you ever heard of her? She appeared before a community was hit by the Bubonic Plague or Black Death. She was a woman, sometimes a skeleton, dressed in white and carrying a rake or a broom to sweep away all the dead. In the book, she sometimes wears a red scarf.
Do a quick Google search if you want to be creeped out by the variety of depictions of this scary folk character.
I feel like she needs to show up in a story I write, but I have no idea how or when. Maybe you would like to write a story about her? If so, post it so I can read it!
