[ image via tumblr ]

My breath is venturing out into the air with a wispy white coat on, and everyone walks around with a twinkle in their eye. Lately, I go to school each day telling myself firmly that I'll never be too old to wear mittens. I get curious stares from passerby nonetheless when they see me with a pair of them on. Carols that I've known by heart for years come barging into the radio again. Roads freeze over. Hot cups of tea become a staple of my diet. Particularly eccentric teachers at school deliver rants about "non-denominational winter holidays".

It's the holiday season here where I am, that fabled most wonderful time of the year - and it's also the time here at this blog when I take a moment to thank all of my readers. Near or far or in whatever place you may be right now, I'm ridiculously grateful that you use some time in your day to read and support my thoughts. 2013 is my second year of blogging and has been an incredible revelation to me all the way through. And those of you who have stuck with me in this crazy year are perfect brilliant people. Thank you.

Bundle up - or if you're in the southern hemisphere, you should be summer-ing down, I suppose - and do enjoy your holidays! Know that I'm wishing everyone well no matter what you celebrate or who you're celebrating with. Smile, if only because the world needs more of you smiling. Give this season a smile, a laugh, a day worth keeping forever.

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Hello again, everyone! It seems most of my latest posts have been about publication, which is terribly exciting, in all honesty.

First up is Foxglove Hymnal. The piece that's going in there is called "Finger Bones", and it's a little flash fiction I wrote when I was angsting about a big upcoming piano competition. (Which I ended up placing second in, hahaha.) Obviously, it centers around a piano, and it has some horror/macabre-ish elements. The reason this achievement is doubly cool for me is that "Finger Bones" was my first attempt at that genre.

Foxglove Hymnal is a relatively new publication. It's a quarterly mag focusing on fantasy and horror, and my piece will be in its first issue, tentatively slated for release sometime this winter or perhaps early spring. (Not totally sure on that front.) But apparently there are going to be illustrations and everything, so it's pretty exciting, plus each issue will be free to read online.

You can go to their website at http://foxglovehymnal.com/ for more info about this ~ :)

Next is Hogglepot. I first discovered this bi-weekly journal when I went looking for a story by Kimberly Karalius (I've mentioned her before, I hope - she's awesome) called "The Mattress Pea". It's still in their archives, by the way, if you do some digging around.

This piece, called "The Silence", was written for a contest hosted by the Figment group The Imaginarium, which I've mentioned before as well. The prompt was to use the concept of a time-left-to-live countdown (like the movie In Time) as the center of a story. I took an old idea - revolving around a violinist, aliens, and figurative fire - and spruced it up a little, ended up winning the Imaginarium contest, and submitted it to Hogglepot after a few edits.

Hogglepot has been around for a while and accepts science fiction, fantasy, the works. It's also got stories by a few other writers I admire, like LiAnn Yim, so I was really excited to get this acceptance. "The Silence" is planned to go live somewhere near the end of January, free online.

Their website is at http://hogglepot.com/, and the link to the piece will obviously be coming your way when it exists.

Lastly, there's The Plum Collection. It's a bi-monthly zine made up of submissions from 13-19-year-olds, describing itself as believing in the power of teens to make a change in art/literature and define what being young truly is. Lightly subversive, you know?

My piece in there is called "The Lexicon of Winter". It was written a little strangely - a story told in the format of "dictionary definitions". Still, I enjoyed writing it and it was a nice, fresh break from the other recent stuff that's been deeply rooted in the fantastical.

They operate out of Tumblr, so here is http://theplumcollection.tumblr.com/ - with the issue I appear in being released in January.

So that's that! Exciting publication news is always nice; remember to check out my "Pubs, Etc." page for a full list!

EDIT (January 19, 2014): "The Silence" is up! http://hogglepot.com/reading.php?date=20140119&vol=2014vol1

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