I It’s 4am on 5/27/2024.

II It’s been an interesting few months. I got fired in November. Ran a gofundme to support me in December. Also, got admitted to Chicago’s Art Institute as a student. Started fighting with Unemployment in January. Drained my measly 401k in February. Finally got my money from Unemployment. Received a read from a cherished friend, because of which I’m moving to Chicago in July.

III These poems and fictions, like my life at the moment, are about change. Resisting it. Surrendering to it. Massaging it and its outcomes.

IV One is about getting revenge for other versions of you because you couldn’t get revenge for yourself. One is about the specter of grief and the art of letting go. One is about listening to the world we found amid the buzz of the world we’ve made. One is about becoming an alien and falling in/out/in love. One is about the powers of love, admiration, and becoming. One is about being taken and choosing to stay. One is about the travaux a woman survives and who she’s meant to be afterward. One is a force of nature and/or a woman scorned. One is sci-fi synesthesia. One is about the journey, what you lose to embark and what you find along the way.

V I want to apologize for the false start on the issue I was meant to edit in January and the late release of this issue. It was all me, my anxiety, and depression. Life was life-ing and I couldn’t articulate my needs or stop feeling sorry for myself for feeling like I let the community down. These are not excuses. They are explanations.

VI After this editorial, I’m going to finish a collection and a novel, both of which I’m blurbing before I head down to StokerCon in San Diego, then Nebulas in Pasadena, hold a week, and then heading to a writing retreat in Albuquerque to work on a novella to exchange with Wil Ralston. (I also like overtly complex, compound sentences.)

VII I’m a firm believer that creating new work is easy. Easier than non-writers think. A person can dash off a few thousand words and it will be a fiction or it will be a poem or it will be a document between. And then dash another and another and another. I think what slows writers down in production is the attempt at being profound. Or, more importantly, writing something that matters.

VIII For me, all the great literature being made holds a portion of its writer long after the piece is edited, submitted, rejected, submitted again, accepted, edited by an editor, formatted, and published/sent to print. The version I love to read is the one where an author answers the question, “Why should this story come through me?” It’s not always conscious but it’s specific. And, honestly, I can’t always read the answer, but it’s always on the page.

IX I love a well-constructed piece but I’m more inclined to wrestle with one that means more than its words. I have the good fortune of sharing these words with y’all.

LP Kindred,
Los Angeles 5/27/2024

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