Poetry acceptance, and lots of Tucson love

Well, it finally happened.

Among my many, many rejection letters I found (gasp!) an acceptance.

Wild Violet Magazine wishes to publish “The Second to the Last Time.” It’s a prose poem with a killer ending (or at least that’s my humble opinion) and the editor said that it really spoke to her.

So that’s one piece of good news.

The other is that I just got back from 10 glorious days in Tucson, where I took care of some stuff that needed to be taken care of, wrote like crazy, ran like crazy and hiked.

I stayed in the Happy Casita, where we stayed for three months last year. Such a cozy spot, I got sooooo much writing done. Wish we could buy the place and live there forever.

Happy casita living room. I did most of my writing from the couch.

But, talking about buying a place, I checked out a couple of condos when I was down there and we put an offer on this humble little beauty. It’s exactly what we want, an adobe-style, Tucson-looking (no prefab, modern living-in-the-foothills lifestyle for us), near the river wash trails with a separate kitchen and front, back and side yards for the dog. It’s also a fixer-upper, which we swore we did not (did not!) want. Yet the minute I walked inside, those shabby walls and horrid carpeting from the 80s welcomed me. And it felt like home. It’s funny how that happens, isn’t it? We’re hoping to live half the year in Alaska and half in Tucson, a perfect mix of weather/seasons/running and hiking opportunities, etc. Until then, fingers crossed.

The seller accepted and we’re now under contract–that’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s a short sale and lord knows when the bank will get back to us about whether they’ll accept or reject our offer (we went in about $6,000 under asking price and heard from the realtor that the bank doesn’t want to budge).

Crazy times.

And then, a few days after I got back to Anchorage, I got sick. Well, it wasn’t unexpected. I had been fighting a cold the whole time I was in Tucson and add a 21-hour flight (gotta love those loonnnggg layovers) and my body trying to adapt from running in 95-degree temps to 35-degree temps. Yeah, that didn’t go over so well and I ended up lying on the sofa and binge reading/binge watching Netflix for almost three days.

But I had a magical time in Tucson, and some magical experiences. One was running in the dark at Sabino Canyon and passing a small deer. A moment later I heard a strange tap-tap-tapping noise behind me. I turned around and the deer was following me. I was running with a deer! It was so awesome.

A few minutes before I saw the deer.

A couple of days later, as I swam at the Catalina High School pool, I noticed the lifeguard peering into the water at the deep end of my lap lane.

“What’s up?” I said.

“There’s a black widow hanging where you’ve been touching off,” he said.

I swam closer and sure enough, a shiny black widow with an egg sac was hanging off the wall of my lane.

“Cool,” I said. “You aren’t gonna kill it, are you?”

“Nah,” he said. And he and another guy got a fly swatter and transferred that spider, and her egg sac, into the brush outside the pool area.

That very evening, as I ran at dusk through Rio Vista Park, I saw a bobcat. It was so. frigging. cool. I was running along, lost in thought, and noticed something ahead. I assumed it was a coyote but as I got closer, I saw that it was a bobcat. It made that growling noise that house cats make when they’re annoyed and I backed up a bit. We just stared at one another for about a minute and finally I turned and ran the other direction.

Blurry pic of a bobcat, see it standing there?

Like I said, wild times.

I also worked out some of the kinks in my next novel. It dragged in the beginning (oh, how it dragged!) and I knew I needed to pick up the pace but could not figure out how. I struggled and struggled and was ready to give up on the damned thing when wham!, it hit me one evening after eating two blue corn tamales, and I stayed up all night writing like mad. I love when that happens, don’t you? (I, of course, give credit to the blue corn tamales.)

And here’s a little bit of Tucson love for everyone.

 

 

20 thoughts on “Poetry acceptance, and lots of Tucson love”

      1. Not writing much yet. Running is kind of a hit or miss thing. Run well for a couple of weeks, then something happens and I take a few days off that stretch into a week or more. Run well for a couple of weeks. Rinse and repeat.

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    1. Thanks, Kev! I’ve submitted a poetry manuscript to so many contests and alas, no acceptance. Will keep trying. Also, I’ve behind but don’t worry, haven’t forgotten about reviews/testimonials, etc. Soon, I promise. Truly!

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    1. Thanks, Carrie. The house is dragging, and dragging. Might be months before we know. From what I’ve heard of short sales, the banks really don’t give a damn and do things totally at their own small pace. Anyway, enough of my woes. Hope you’re having a great week.

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  7. You’ll have a lot of good times there, Tucson is a haven for writers with a running problem.
    About that bobcat – darn! Everybody I know who passes through Tucson has seen a bobcat…. and I have yet to see one. Must be something about an inner peace…or predator-animal spirit?

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    1. I usually run at dusk or early in the morning, right when the critters are either coming out or heading back to wherever they escape from the heat of the day. Pretty cool. I also saw a coyote the following evening. Keeping my fingers crossed I never encounter a mountain lion.

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  8. Congrats on the acceptance! Great photos! Wow, definitely some wild times! (I shuddered about the black widow though….) You are so good to run in 95 degree weather. I just can’t stomach that! Have been very lazy during our current heat wave. Can’t wait for it to cool down! (Although 35 is too cold…. Just want our nice mild SD weather like we’re used to.) 🙂

    Exciting about the house! Good luck!

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    1. Yeah, the black widow was a bit shudder-worthy, especially since I had been touching down on the wall right next to her for like forty laps. Yet also kind of neat, since she didn’t bite me. Still, danger lurks in the most unlikely places. Take care. Pets to Rita (Seriously had the greatest beach walk ever yesterday afternoon. So awesome to watch her run over the sand.)

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  9. Congrats! and fingers crossed! and get better! And YIPPEE, you’ll be living closer to me and we for sure will be getting together! Be careful of black widows. My pet sitter was bitten at my house, and her leg was in bad shape for weeks.

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    1. I know, it will be cool living closer. And the black widows are kind of scary. Who would have imagined that one would be hanging from the side of a swimming pool? I don’t wear my contacts when I swim and so I can’t see much, and when I think of how many times I touched the side of the pool before pushing off for the next lap, well, like I said, kind of scary. And also scary about your pet sitter bitten at your house. Ouch!

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