I want a new, new river every time I look down

We saw my father off at the airport tonight. He is going to Greece with Maria, to help her settle her parents' affairs in Sparta. (Her mother came from Xirokambi, where they say the bridge is the same one Telemachos drove over with Peisistratos, coming to see Menelaos and Helen; the family's olive groves are there. Her father was born in Pylos.) Since it was not feasible for me to stow away in his suitcase, I have submitted a strongly worded request for photographs and travel stories. I am home with new books and cats, one of whom is still freaking out over the hot air vents while the other now lies down beside them and rolls over to have his belly petted in warmth. We lit the candles before leaving the house.

What did you bury before those hands pulled me from the earth?

My short story "The Creeping Influences" has been accepted by Shimmer. This is the one with the genderqueer narrator and the bog body in 1930's Ireland; it was accepted earlier this year by another market, but the sale fell through about a month later in one of the weirder experiences I have had in publishing. I am very, very glad it has found a new home and I am glad that home is Shimmer. They are a new market for me; publication is slated for early 2017 and I'm looking forward. They do illustrations. The story is my longest successful attempt at historical fiction to date; it takes its title from Seamus Heaney's "Bog Queen," the second of the six poems collected in North (1975) which describe and contemplate Irish and Danish bog bodies. I was scared by one of them as a child. Years later, this sort of thing happens.