Submissions are closed for the premiere edition of Teach. Write. Thanks to all who submitted. I will be getting in touch with contributors as the month progresses. Tomorrow I will begin putting together the journal of poetry, prose and essays that will launch on September 1, 2017.

It has been a busy summer, and although I did not complete my two major writing goals, I have made progress on both and am looking forward to continuing that work while I begin teaching. The teaching will always come first, of course, but I am determined that I will use my time wisely and work on my writing projects each day. I want my students to be disciplined writers, so I need to make every attempt to be disciplined in my craft as well.

By the end of November, I will have completed the rough draft of my novel, Flood, a mystery/thriller set in Alabama during the early days of Obama’s first presidential run. The idea for the novel started as a short story for my unpublished novel Mordecai Tales, but on the advice of some of my writer friends, I decided to turn the idea into a novel. Portions of the book were workshopped at two different conferences this summer, and the feedback I received from fellow writers as well as two excellent instructors, Jane Smiley and Sheryl Monks, has encouraged me to complete the work.

I also will have completed several drafts of my new play, an adaptation of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book. I have spent many hours this summer re-reading and studying the The Ring and the Book, which has re-kindled my interest in this novel-length poem that is considered Browning’s crowning achievement but is little read today.

To prepare for writing the play, I also read Dared and Done: The Marriage of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, which includes fascinating biographical sketches of both writers as well as excerpts from their vast correspondence that is extremely helpful as I write the play. A third helpful source I completed reading early in the summer is Derek Parker’s non-fiction book Roman Murder Mystery: The True Story of Pompilia, an informative re-telling of the factual details surrounding the 17th Century Italian murder case on which Browning’s magnum opus is based. 

I am excited to complete both of these very different works and am truly enjoying the process of writing, something I hope to pass on to my students this semester.

My other big writing event was the publication of a short story “I Have Not Yet Returned” in the anthology Unbroken Circle: Stories of Cultural Diversity in the South published by Bottom Dog Press as part of their Appalachian series. You can purchase a copy of the book with its 26 stories and essays about the modern South through the publisher’s website or at amazon.com.