Smiley Face on Manhattan Bike Path

Two months since my last post? How did that happen? Oh, right. Work.

I’m at the tail end of my penultimate semester of teaching. My final school task this month is to grade a 3-inch stack of papers.

Isla Holbox

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading and writing, with a bit of travel thrown in. On a beach in Mexico I plowed through 150 pages of Proust — particularly apt, because this was the part about Marcel’s time at the beach resort in Balbec, where he first sees Albertine. More on this in a later post.

Other future posts: Jeanne Birdsall’s Penderwicks series, Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street series (many references to Proust), Ella Pontefract’s Yorkshire histories (dales and villages).

As for my writing, the good news is that I start a sabbatical in September, with the specific goal of readying at least two more manuscripts for submission. I’ll get a head start on these projects this summer. The even better news is that I was accepted for an Artist Residency at the Grunewald Guild for the month of December. It’ll be a time for me to do nothing but read and write. Expect some photos of the snowy Cascade Mountains in Washington.