The Last Sunday of June 2025

No church, but I did get my laundry done. I did crash a little after coming back from the laundry. It remains too hot. When I finish this post, I will be taking another shower. 

I found out how come I cannot print - wrong ink cartridge. Letters to print and they will have to wait.

Dishes done and pork chops for dinner.

Posts drafted, but nothing else written.

The bedroom put in order, but my mail remains unread.

A trip to the convenience store before sunset.

Some readings that I did not think needed a full post about:

"Lessons Learned From A Green Meadow," rejected:

Thank you very much for entering the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest for the 2nd quarter 2025 (stories entered between 1 January and 31 March 2025).

We appreciate your talent and hard work to produce this story. However, this one is not quite ready for us yet. Keep writing though, don’t give up. In order to help you, we’ve provided the list below of common reasons that a story needs some work. Definitely consider revising it accordingly and entering it again.

Here are the most common reasons:

Failure to Launch: Your story begins too slowly. There isn’t a lot of room in a short story for long introductions. As much as you might love the introductory scene, if it doesn’t help the story hit the ground running, consider whether you are beginning your tale too soon. Is there a good narrative hook? Have you let the reader know where they are in time and space? Are you introducing your protagonist—or any character—for the reader to follow? And please, don’t send us stories that begin with the character waking up. Most editors hate that trope. Give us interesting action. Make us want to follow your character through the entire manuscript. Make friends with your dynamic verbs. Don’t “was” us to death.

Needs more Science Fiction or Fantasy Elements: This contest publishes only speculative literature. We do not accept mainstream stories. If there is no science fiction or fantasy element introduced early enough for us to recognize, that also helps to bring about the conclusion of the story, this may be the reason why you are receiving this letter. Just because a story takes place in a science fiction or fantasy setting doesn’t make it science fiction or fantasy. If the plot can be moved to any other setting, with any other characters, with no change in the outcome, it’s probably not speculative literature.

Not Sticking the Landing: Your story peters out, or doesn’t end in a way that satisfies what you promised the reader in the beginning. Beginning with one character and ending with another but making no reference to the initial quest at the end, or going off on a tangent that leads the story in a completely different direction confuses and frustrates the reader. You might have submitted an excerpt from a longer work without making it stand on its own. Make sure that you finish your plot.

Playing in some else’s sandbox: You may have decided to write a story using a trope that we have seen far too often. Vampire or werewolf stories, angel stories, secret aliens living among ordinary people, the protagonist suddenly discovering that s/he is immortal, powerful, the Chosen One, the long-lost child of the monarch are all well-worn and tired. Those tropes may even have vocabulary which has become all too familiar in similar stories, and will make yours seem like a poor copy. If you have a new and original take on a typical plot and write it well, send it! We’d love to see it. Or you may have impinged on copyrighted or trademarked worlds. Fan fiction is not allowed, especially in an ongoing property, such as a popular movie, television show, game, or book series. But even if the universe you chose is well out of copyright, you may not have a unique enough take on it.

Reality check: Your plot or character behavior is wildly implausible, so much that it stopped us dead. This doesn’t mean that magic can’t exist. It means that a character in danger of losing his life isn’t going to philosophize about unrelated subjects for sixteen pages. Is the reward for fulfilling the quest ridiculously small or entirely pointless? Characters don’t work against their own self-interest. Even self-sacrifice fulfills some inner need. Look at your plot from the point of view of a stranger. Would a reasonable being act that way?

Too Much Violence: Stories featuring egregious violence, gore, or torture are not suitable for this contest. If it’s not necessary for the plot, then cut it out. Otherwise, revise your story and send it elsewhere. Send us something else that fits our guidelines.

Too Much Sex, Sensuality or Profanity: Our anthologies are meant to be read by young adults on up. If the theme is too adult, or there are “on screen” sex scenes, it’s not for us. If you can tone it down, you may rewrite and try again. Otherwise, there are other markets that will accept it. Some sensuality is fine, even welcome, if it works in the plot. One F-bomb won’t scuttle your story. Long passages of swearing aren’t suitable for this contest.

Children’s story: As above. Our anthologies are meant to be read by young adults on up. If the plot is too simplistic, if the characters are led by the nose to their conclusion, that’s why you’re receiving this back.

Devotional or Political Content: If you have a specific point to make that feels as if you are lecturing the reader, please consider a market that publishes that kind of material. If we are overwhelmed by your agenda, we ask you to tone it down and concentrate on a plot that will please a wide variety of readers.

Please give your story a good look and see if you can revise it to suit the Contest’s guidelines. If that doesn’t work out, please write something else and send it. I am certain you have many ideas you’d like to explore.

The Contest website has so many items to offer you in regards to writing. We are dedicated to helping our contestants improve their writing skills.

Available to you are:  

1) A free online workshop that you can do on your own schedule which features New York Times bestselling authors who all want to help you make it in this field.

2) A blog with articles regarding writing, the contest and our quarterly winners.

3) A forum designed to help you with dozens of topics.   

4) An award nominated podcast with interviews on professionals and New York Times bestselling authors.

Take advantage of them all. You can find them at www.writersofthefuture.com  

I also recommend that you get a copy of the Writers of the Future Volume 41 to see the stories that recently won. 

I look forward to your submission for this quarter which ends on the 30th of June, which is in a few days.

Here is the link to enter: www.writersofthefuture.com/enter-writer-contest.

Maybe it’s not American greatness that brings immigrants here (News From The States)

But there is no divine light drawing immigrants to our shores. They are borne here by heartbreak. The heartbreak of a birthplace that cannot be a home. The agony of choosing between likely suffering in one place and guaranteed suffering in another.

A kinder country might re-center the discussion of immigration on that pain. It could even lead to a more humane and logical policy, one that understands that the poor and the desperate, not the wealthy and educated, are most likely to immigrate. It would give people of good faith the space to build their lives. The opportunity to find the lives their homes couldn’t provide.

That wouldn’t erase the core sorrow of the immigrant experience. But it wouldn’t pile needless suffering on top of it, either.

And it would allow immigrants to find a way forward, as my mother did, without finding their path blocked by a masked man with a gun. 

Of all my family trees, the only with an immigration story is the Haslers. Even in that story, there is nothing explicit about what my ancestors were leaving - on the implicit sense of a hardscrabble life in Switzerland.  That was 1849. My mother's side came here before the Revolution; I assume, prodded by Englishmen. Nowhere do I see any reason for the terror MAGA has towards immigrants.

“Ancient and Modern Both”: Painter David Ligare Draws Inspiration from John Steinbeck and Robinson Jeffers (Library of America)

from "Heaven Looks Like Us" (Cleveland Review of Books) - Palestinian poetry. Of the excerpts, this one I liked the most:

The Best Way to Give Roses

by Yahya Ashour

My father never gave a bouquet of roses

to my mother,

he gave her rose seedlings.

My perfect holiday reading, by Bernardine Evaristo, David Nicholls, Zadie Smith and more (The Guardian)

“O Indispensable Books!”: A Peek at Edmund Wilson’s Summer Reading List (Library of America)

Southern Humanities Review issue 58 no. 2 is available now.

Woven Tale Press has a new edition.

This from Cool Beans Lit has been in my inbox for too long:

Visit Cool Beans Lit to read our newest issue "Summer 2025."

You can view the issue in three ways:
1. Interactive pdf flipbook
2. Downloadable print version (pdf)
3. Hyperlinked on our website by author
Linked here: www.coolbeanslit.com/vol-2-issue-2

And I have whipped the email into shape. It will probably lose that shape by the time I get off work tomorrow.

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