INKBLOSSOM NEWS!

It might be the dog days of summer, but plans are in full swing for InkBlossom’s Santa Fe Gathering of Writers, October 26-November 2. We have had a late cancellation, which opens up a spot for one lucky writer. If you’re interested in joining us, read all about the gathering on our webpage, but this spot will probably fill fast, so please don’t delay if you’d like to be apart of this dynamic and supportive writing community.

There might be ONE opening for the 2027 InkBlossom Monthly Writing Workshops. These legendary workshops are restricted to no more than 6 participants. Each month, 3 of the 6 members submit work or topics to be discussed. We also hold readings and other events throughout the year. If you are interested in joining us, please write me at inkblossomwriters@gmail.com

COCO AND BILL MOVE TO MAINE!

Yes, we done it! We’ve left Florida and moved to the wildlands of Maine. We bought an 1868 farmhouse in need of restoration and are having a blast. Beautiful vistas, wildlife, nice people, dark night skies, and whoopie pies! What could be better? You can track our journey on our sister substack: Coco and Bill Move to Maine.

DEETS!

Check out InkBlossom extraordinaire Ginger Pinholster’s latest novel The Train to Santa Fe!

Bonus bliss if you attend InkBlossom’s Santa Fe Gathering of Writers: Dia de los Muertos!

What changes would you like to see in your writing workshop world?

HAPPENING ROUN’ INKBLOSSOM TOWN

We’re getting geared up for the Vermont gathering of writers, which takes place June 19-26 in gorgeous Stowe, Vermont. We’ll write, explore, and make discoveries. And we will take home what we learn, feeling filled up, our skill-set strengthened, our confidence renewed.

That wild west conclave of brilliance, the Santa Fe gathering of writers, October 26-November 2, seems as though it’s miles and miles away. But the time-space continuum has a way of catching up with us. If you want to join the Santa Fe gathering and haven’t been in one of my year-long weekend workshops, you’ll need to apply. If you are or have been in one of these cool workshops, all you have to do is send your deposit. You are not guaranteed a seat until your deposit has been received! I keep these gatherings small, creating spaces attuned to creativity, community, and learning. For more info, check out our webpage.

Bring-a-Buddy Virtual Two-Day Writing Retreats are proving to be wildly successful. The only remaining available dates for 2026 are August 22-23 and September 26-27. Grab your favorite writing buddy and spend two days fully immersed in your story with guidance along the way from me.

CONNIE MAY DONE GONE MAD

On the personal front, three of things . . . I discovered a manuscript I put away 10 years ago. I abandoned it because someone said something mean about it. That was dumb. And now I’m reworking it, having a blast, trying to stop scolding myself for being such a weak-kneed Nelly a decade ago. Who knows, Stone by Stone might eventually find its way onto nightstands everywhere . . .

I’m making jewelry! Check it out! Buy something pretty! Coco May Studios.

And, finally, we’re selling our house! No idea where our journey will take us, but it’s time for our next big adventure. Take a look and, please, share, share, share.

A WORD ABOUT SUBSCRIPTIONS

I do not hide “Tall Tales” behind a paywall. However, if you’d like to become a paid subscriber, your deeply appreciated dollars go toward the InkBlossom Scholarship Fund so that deserving writers everywhere can take advantage of the learning opportunities InkBlossom offers. Thank you!

OTHER GROOVY STUFF

The Direction of Last Things is out on submission! Woo hoo! Please dance the Happy Publishing Dance for me while this book takes its first tentative steps off of my desk.

If you’re so-minded, there are several ways to work with me, all of them right around the corner! Check them out:

InkBlossom Gathering of Writers in Stowe, Vermont, June 19-26

InkBlossom Gathering of Writers in Santa Fe, New Mexico, October 26-November 2

Two-Day, Bring-a-Buddy Virtual Retreats

One-on-one mentoring (monthly or one-off)

Abroad Writers’ Conference in Old Quebec City. Study with me, Amy Bloom, and Josip Novakovich, August 27-September 2

My Substacks are free. However, if you you’d like to become a paid subscriber, your contribution bolsters our scholarship fund that helps writers with the costs of InkBlossom conferences and retreats. Thank you!

The inciting post: “As the industry shuts out more and more voices, self-publishing might be the only answer. Readers don’t seem to care who the publisher is, but those who self-publish have some responsibility to at least have their work copyedited and proofed.”

Bring out the mad dogs! I was accused of demanding that published works contain zero errors. In a perfect world, that would be preferable, but these are, ahem, imperfect times (“North American Treaty Organization,” New York Times?). I think we can all excuse occasional errors (not the aforementioned one), although when copy mistakes appear in my printed work, I want to 1) throttle the responsible party and 2) slink into Corkscrew Swamp and sleep with the gators.

I suppose for many people who love the written word and what stories do for the human spirit, our goal is to tell the tale while respecting the tools we use to convey meaning: words, sentences, paragraphs, and all the fabulous intellectual pigment that turns the alphabet into art.

One mad dog claimed her readers didn’t mind punctuation and grammar errors, suggesting that readers enjoyed the flubs because flaws made readers feel less intimidated by the material.

While I foolishly attempted to defend the English language, another wild dog (sorry, I know, I’m giving wild dogs a bad name) screeched, “What about James Joyce!”

I suppose the person who was unnecessarily attempting to defend Joyce’s honor believed all that stream of consciousness prose was Joyce simply not knowing how to write.

In the month’s following the Facebook fisticuffs, I’ve thought a lot about language and why endeavoring to uphold its forms, rules, concepts, and beauty is important. I keep coming back to this precept: A country experiencing language degradation is a country experiencing societal breakdown. When we misuse, abuse, and ignore our language systems, communication and eventually democracy crumbles. Imagine the word “liberty” is not only an idea but a piece of paper upon which is written all our rights, responsibilities, and privileges. Now, imagine that piece of paper turning to dust.

From the scarily prescient George Orwell:

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aero planes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

Clear communication conveys truths, desires, questions, fears, answers. It allows for person-to-person understanding and fosters civic engagement. Muddled communication creates confusion and misunderstandings that bloom into lies.

If you write something vague about your character, the reader fills in the blanks in ways that might horrify you; the uncertainty of your expression might even bolster their racist, xenophobic, homophobic, or misogynist leanings. If politicians and pundits repeat vague, nonsensical phrases such as “fake news” or label their foe a “low IQ person” or indiscriminately apply meaningless superlatives to sycophants and critics, to golden toilets and Big Macs, to bombs and bimbos, foundational truths eventually erode, leaving each of us to believe whatever we want to believe without relying on empirical facts and figures. Our opinions become not informed modes of communication, but fantasies divorced from reality. And thanks to the proliferation of AI--which remains free of nuance, divorced from genuine human emotion and insight—coupled with “leaders” who use language as if it were a garbage-spewing ignition switch, our brains are beginning to produce similar garbage (oh but for a cliché—garbage in, garbage out!). We can call our neighbor a snowflake without providing any evidence or concrete definition and in the process erode their humanity. The sheriff or the judge or the governor or the president can decide being a snowflake makes you unfit to vote. Democracy and people die when we embrace the vague and meaningless over the concrete and informative.

So, back to the pack who believe the following:

· Punctuation, grammar, spelling, and clarity are superfluous to good writing.

· Basic writing skills that adhere to linguistic systems are too labor intensive, complex, and “woke” to bother with.

· People are basically stupid, so our job is to dumb it all down to the lowest common denominator.

· Let AI do it.

This belief system (I use the word “system” generously) is the antithesis of what art and artists are supposed to aspire to. We are the light that gives meaning to the dark, the sentinel on the hill calling home a lost sibling, the music healing the inflamed void. Let us not—out of apathy, fatigue, or political brain-bleaching—take a hammer to the tools we use to create a better world through stories. It takes a long time to write a novel using only dust. Imagine how long it will take to rebuild a democracy.

Extra points: Read Benjamin Dreyer’s A Word About.

INKBLOSSOM IS BLOOMING

We have two more two in-person gatherings this year: The Vermont Retreat & Conference and the Santa Fe Retreat and Conference. You can read all about them on the website, but don’t dawdle. The application deadline for the Vermont gathering, held in the gorgeous village of Stowe, has been extended—we have one open seat! The application deadline for the Santa Fe gathering is June 30. If you’ve attended in the past, you don’t need to apply, but you do need to notify me that you plan on participating. Scholarships are available.

Calendar – For More Info: inkblossomwriters@gmail.com

A SWEET REMINDER

I do not hide behind a paywall, but paid subscriptions help me fund scholarships for InkBlossom’s various conferences. Your contributions are deeply and forever appreciated. Thank you!

I ask, because I come to you beat up.

When a publisher was eight months late paying a contractually obligated portion of my advance, I was told by someone who was charged with shepherding my career that maybe I should just go get a job at Walmart.

Eventually, I moved on to another “shepherd” who phoned me, demanded that I read the first paragraph of my novel in progress, and stopped me before I uttered the first sentence, angrily claiming I didn’t know how to write.

Those two instances broke me. My confidence smashed, I was unable to tap into why I penned that first story oh so many years ago when I was a child struggling to survive a violent household. Back then, putting pen to paper uplifted my battered soul. I instinctively knew that turning words into worlds that mirrored life was an act of courage, a quiet foray into happiness, a means of survival, a transcendent spark. I didn’t write for money or fame or accolades. In fact, most of what I wrote I burned because I knew if my mother found my scribbles, I might not survive the next beating. There was no transactional purpose behind my pen.

After eight novels and more, I find myself snared in a place that is anathema to the profound call to simply tell the tale. I won’t dumb down my work. I won’t write the same story, rehashing the same concerns, creating the same characters but giving them different names. I won’t give myself over to worn-out, literary tropes. I’m a feral artist itching to explore new landscapes. I love the give and take, the discoveries that happen when working with a good editor. To have someone take your work seriously and help you make it the best it can possibly be is the greatest gift a writer can receive. But, I wonder, is it enough to write stories no one will read? Or is it incumbent that we share our art? Does the writer require a reader? And if sharing is required, how do we do so in a world increasingly hostile to human creativity and originality?

The huge corporate conglomeration we call the Big 5 might not have room for my wild ways. I’m not saying there is no room; I’m saying the ground has shifted and I might need to find a new dress, a new way to be a writer, a way that is less transactional, one that provides me with agency and dignity and reignites the joy of creativity, one that nurtures the silent collaboration between writer and reader.

Big 5? Indie press? Academic press? Hybrid press (probably not; the pay to play scheme seems like a shakedown, but I’m often wrong)? Start my own press . . . hmmm? Self-publish (it’s not the horror show it once was)? So many options! But all of them currently clang with migraine-inducing noise. Have you ever been in a situation where you just wanted to sit in silence while the answer slowly emerges from the gloaming? That’s where I’m at.

I’m not going to let The Direction of Last Things and all the books that follow remain hidden. I adore my readers. The fact that they are willing to spend the time it takes to read a book, which is tantamount to wandering around in my brain for hours on end, is no small miracle. And let’s be honest: Most writers were readers first. We intimately know that books change lives, but they only do so if people read them.

Maybe transactionality isn’t terrible in and of itself. But maybe the transaction needs to shift. Maybe the agreement needs to be simplified, pared down to the important parties: The writer offers the book to the reader, the reader accepts and enters the writer’s fictive dream, and together—in a partnership of words and ideas--the dream that is the book becomes a shared hallucination that, through the alchemy of art, is a marriage of illusion and reality. What magic!

APPLICATION DEADLINE IS TOMORROW FOR STOWE

Having just wrapped the InkBlossom Seaside Writers Gathering in Flagler Beach, we have two more two in-person gatherings this year: The Vermont Retreat & Conference and the Santa Fe Retreat and Conference. You can read all about them on the website, but don’t dawdle. The application deadline for the Vermont gathering, held in the gorgeous village of Stowe, is TOMORROW! The application deadline for the Santa Fe gathering is June 30. If you’ve attended in the past, you don’t need to apply, but you do need to notify me that you plan on participating (for Stowe: tomorrow!).

CALENDAR – For More Info: InkBlossom and inkblossomwriters@gmail.com

TIME OFF

I owe an explanation. I haven’t been diligent with Substack because my health took a wee turn and, though clearly not fatal, I had to address a few things. But I’m back! Thank you for your patience. I deeply appreciate your understanding and the fact that you are sticking with me!

A REMINDER

I do not hide behind a paywall, but paid subscriptions keep the lights on and are deeply and forever appreciated. Thank you!

Subscribe now

The Figueroa Sisters Fellowship Returns!

Thanks to the immense generosity of fellow InkBlossom Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, acclaimed author of A Woman of Endurance and Daughters of the Stone, we are able to offer a $500 fellowship to a female writer age fifty or older. The fellowship will partially cover the tuition for attendance at either the InkBlossom gathering of writers in Stowe, Vermont this June or the InkBlossom gathering of writers in Santa Fe, New Mexico this October. To apply, send a five-page writing sample as a Word attachment (12 point Times New Roman Font, double-spaced, default 1” margins) to inkblossomwriters@gmail.com with the subject line FIGUEROA SISTERS FELLOWSHIP. State which gathering you want to attend. Applications must be in by the deadline date of MARCH 1, 2026. Thank you, Dahlma, for your ongoing generosity and support!

Keep Your Eye on the InkBlossom Calendar—Apply Early—Our Gatherings are Small but Mighty

This week’s postcard and video are all about telling your story. And maybe the postcard’s message is the very best way to approach our work as we enter 2026. Maybe the simplicity demystifies the process: Hey, sweetheart, I have a story to tell you . . .

A Brief Chat Regarding the Importance of Treating your Writing Like a Friend, not a Foe

A Holiday Gift for You

InkBlossom’s Santa Fe Writer’s Retreat and Conference is held every autumn at the Inn of the Governors, a welcoming, gorgeous, and thoroughly New Mexican lodge. At 4 p.m. daily—think of it as a magical hour—the lobby becomes a cheerful gathering place for all who are staying at the inn. The draw? The inn serves New Mexico’s official cookie—biscochitos—and sherry. Strangers become friends, friends share dreams, and all the world’s woes seem, for one brief hour, to melt away.

From my family to yours, here’s the recipe!

BISCOCHITOS, the Official State Cookie of New Mexico

Recipe adapted from Jessica Lynn Writes who got it from Simply Simpatico: The Home of Authentic Southwestern Cuisine (Junior League of Albuquerque). If anyone finds a copy of Simply Simpatico, let me know! I desperately want one for my cookbook collection!

Ingredients

2 c lard (don’t worry; as you’ll discover in my upcoming novel, the brain is 40% fat, which makes lard . . . wait for it! . . . brain food!)

1 c sugar

2 eggs

6 c flour

3 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 tsp anise seed (optional)

6 TBSP sweet table wine (Mogen David, anyone?)

½ c (more, as desired) sugar for sprinkling.

2 TBSP (more, as desired) cinnamon for sprinkling.

The Cook

1. Preheat oven to 350°

2. Cream lard and 1 c sugar until creamy. Add eggs and beat until very fluffy.

3. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt; add to the creamed mixture.

4. Stir and mix in wine (and anise seed, if using) until it’s a dough-like consistency (knead if needed).

5. Roll out dough on a floured surface to 1/8” thickness. Cut into desired shape; place on baking sheets ½” apart.

6. Combine ½ c sugar and 2 TBSP cinnamon; sprinkle lightly atop the cookies, reserving some for #8.

7. Bake 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

8. Once out of the oven, immediately cover the entire cookie with the remaining sugar/cinnamon mix.

9. Pretend that you’re at the Inn of the Governors in Santa Fe, pour yourself a dram of sherry, sidle up beside a fireplace if you can (we should all have kivas), and enjoy your cookies and sherry (or tea, if you’re like me).

InkBlossom Housekeeping

Please consider subscribing to Connie May Fowler and Other Tall Tales. And even better, please consider gifting yourself or someone you love a paid subscription. I don’t believe in paywalls and hierarchies give me scabies, so everyone at my substack gets the same material. However! Paid subscriptions help keep the lights on and, even better, they allow me to offer scholarships for the various InkBlossom writing events held throughout the year.

And speaking of InkBlossom events, please check out the website for details regarding our 2026 offerings. Here is, in brief, sneak peek.

InkBlossom: Things to Know

Check out our InkBlossom website. It’s all new and shiny and totally ready for 2026! Pay close attention to the new two-person, virtual buddy retreats and the Flagler Beach Seaside Retreat and Conference (it has a January 31 application deadline and it’s filling fast).

InkBlossom in Santa Fe

InkBlossom’s second Santa Fe gathering of writers just wrapped and it was an amazing success. We wrote, we discussed each other’s manuscripts, we learned, we grew, and we left inspired. It doesn’t get much better than that! Next year’s gathering will be held October 26-November 2 (Dia de Los Muertos in Santa Fe!). The website will be updated next week!

Coming Up This Month: BookBrain, Plan Your 2026 Writing Life

This year’s BookBrain takes place November 15-16 via Zoom. You still have time to join us, but please let me know ASAP if you’d like to join is!

Sometimes, simply sitting down and writing seems like a monumental task. After all, there is always something else you can be doing. But something else is what prevents you from finishing (or starting) your book. BookBrain helps you discover inspiration, develop ideas, and organize your writing life so that you’ll have the most productive writing year ever.

Book Brain helps writers in all phases of a book’s creation: vague idea to development to finished draft. If your book is but a vague idea, BookBrain will get you started and help you maintain a writing practice that best benefits the planning and execution of your book. If your book is in development, BookBrain will help you deepen your ideas, characters, and plots, bringing them into alignment with the greater whole.

BookBrain is designed to spark your creativity and help you think in more surprising and original ways. It will, if used diligently, act as an accountability buddy.

BookBrain will help you track your book’s progress. Think of it this way: If you write one page a day, in a year you’ll have a 365 page manuscript, which means when you’re ready to revise, you’ll have plenty of material to play with, cut, and shape.

BookBrain helps you identify obstacles that prevent you from writing and helps you develop strategies to overcome those obstacles.

Each participant receives an InkBlossom BookBrain 2026 Literary Planner

I’m currently finishing what my agent and I hope is the final round of revisions before the novel goes out on submission. I try not to dwell on the submission part because as much as I want/need this book to land in the hands of readers, I also must keep my wits about me, which means practicing magic: ignore the submission/publishing part and revel in the creation part.

I pull off the magic when I’m actually writing. But when I’m not writing, I become Connie the Worrier. And, sadly, Connie the Worrier is not creative. She’s a bore, an insomniac, a woman who talks to walls. You know the drill: I guess I don’t need to be overly concerned until the walls talk back.

All of this to say, InkBlossom is about to launch its 2026 offerings. Because of family emergencies, rising costs, and more, inevitably some incredibly talented people won’t be able to, for instance, remain in my monthly workshops—workshops that truly help writers improve their projects while providing community support. It means that because someone falls on hard times, they’ll have to drop out of a conference. I subsidize these writers as much as I can. But let’s be honest: InkBlossom is my job. It’s how I pay my mortgage, car payment, vet bills, grocery bills, light bills, and all the rest. There is a limit on what I can do. So, I’m making an ask:

If the idea of helping writers—of playing an important part in them bringing to full bloom a wonderful novel or story collection or memoir—appeals to you, then please consider giving to the InkBlossom Scholarship Fund. Federal grant funding for artists and writers has disappeared. Just last month, the administration pulled all funding for creative writing NEA fellowships. Given escalating prices amid escalating uncertainties and dwindling funding opportunities, it has never been more important, yet more difficult, to be a working writer in America.

Any amount will help—a dollar, ten dollars, twenty dollars, two thousand dollars. I can’t adequately express the magic you will help create with your contribution.

CONTRIBUTION PERKS

For contributions of $100 to $999, I will gift you a yearlong paid subscription to this Substack, which opens up subscriber-only content.

For contributions of $1000 or greater, I will give you a yearlong paid subscription to this Substack, read your 20-page manuscript, and offer an hour-long, one-on-one consultation (manuscripts limited to 20 pages, double-spaced, one-inch margins, Times New Roman font).

For one month, from September 9, 2025 to October 9, 2025, I will refund to you 10 percent of any jewelry purchases you make from my jewelry boutique Coco May Studios. You must email me (inkblossomwriters@gmail.com) with the name of the item purchased and I will send you 10% back via PayPal or Venmo.

HOW TO GIVE

You may give anonymously or not. If you’d like to earmark your contribution to a specific conference, retreat, workshop, or writer, please email me (inkblossomwriters@gmail.com).

Please specify that you are giving to the InkBlossom Scholarship Fund.

• To pay by PayPal, use this link PayPal.Me/yucatanwriters.

• To pay by Venmo use the username Constance-Fowler-2.

When paying, we ask that you select the family and friends option.

Thank you for considering making a gift. There is a wonderful old neon sign in Perry, Florida that reads Take a Kid Fishing. Well, consider your contribution to be a neon message of hope: I Helped a Writer Write their Book.

2026 VIRTUAL MONTHLY WORKSHOPS—APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN!

Join a legendary workshop as we head into our ninth year! Limited to six writers per workshop, in addition to our monthly meetings, we hold a community-wide reading, and offer a theme-based panel discussion (this year we explored the ins and outs of publishing work in literary magazines). These workshops, which require a year-long commitment, are designed to inspire and problem-solve. The InkBlossom Method—developed over thirty years of trial, error, and experience—while vigorous, avoids the mental and emotional torture of traditional workshops even as it encourages each participant to think about their work in ways that are fresh, original, and complex. We seek holistic conversations that dive into meaning, subtext, possibilities, and more.

Longtime workshop participant and novelist Tricia Bratton says of the workshops, “Connie’s attention to detail continuously challenges us to reach deep and to revise and refine until we unveil the essence of our work.”

Currently, they’re only a handful of openings. The tuition for the year-long commitment is $1,235, which includes a $300 non refundable deposit due October 15. To apply, submit via email (inkblossomwriters@gmail.com) a five-page writing sample as a Microsoft Word attachment formatted as follows: double-spaced, one-inch margins, Times New Roman font. Please put Monthly Workshop Application in the subject line. Thank you!

ANTRHOPIC SETTLEMENT

There is big news on the settlement front. If your book(s) was harvested for AI purposes, please read Brooke Warner’s Substack on the issue. It provides information on next steps.

WHAT I’M READING

Weighing in at nearly 2.50 pounds, Baldwin: A Love Story, is worth every ounce. A beautiful, tender, and probing biography, it’s a must read for all literature lovers no matter how well you know Baldwin and his work when you crack open Nicholas Boggs’ triumphant book.

INKBLOSSOM OFFERINGS

I feel bad that this substack is mainly full of InkBlossom news, but sometimes a gal has to throw down the 411 and hold the glitter (is 411 a thing anymore?). So please pardon the info-heavy nature of this particular installment of Connie May Fowler and Other Tall Tales. I’ll be back to my old, surly, wondering self next time. But for now, look at all the cool stuff InkBlossom is offering. Not everything is updated on the website yet; that will happen in the coming weeks. But if you have any questions, just drop me an email (inkblossomwriters@gmail.com).

FALL NOVEL RETREAT: September 19-21, 2025 - virtual

SANTA FE WRITING RETREAT: October 20-27, 2025 - in-person

2026 MONTHLY YEAR-LONG WRITING WORKSHOPS – virtual - website not yet updated

BOOKBRAIN: PLAN YOUR 2026 WRITING LIFE: November 15-16, 2025 - virtual

WHOLE NOVEL PROJECT 2026 – website not yet updated - open to TWO novelists and/or memoirists who have solid drafts and are ready to enter the polishing stage - virtual

SEASIDE WRITING RETREAT- FLAGLER BEACH, FL - March 22-29, 2026 - in-person

3-DAY SPRING VIRTUAL WRITING RETREAT – April 24-26, 2026 via Zoom -website not yet updated

VERMONT NOVEL RETREAT AND CONFERENCE - STOWE, VT – June 19-26, 2026 - in-person - open to all prose genres - website not yet updated

3-DAY FALL VIRTUAL WRITING RETREAT – September 18-20, 2026 via Zoom - website not yet updated

SANTA FE WRITING RETREAT AND CONFERENCE - SANTA FE, NM – TENTATIVE DATES: October 16-23, 2026 - in-person - website not yet updated

BOOKBRAIN: PLAN YOUR 2027 WRITING LIFE– November 21-22, 2026 - website not yet updated

A BONUS FROM THE PARIS REVIEW ARCHIVES

Given the fact that our cultural treasures are being systemically dismantled and, as a result, our cultural memory is in danger of disappearing, I’ll leave you with a fascinating Annie Proulx interview conducted in 2009 for The Paris Review. I do this not only because the interview is a worthy read, but because I feel an urgent desire to harvest and store, as in: We all need to become a cultural vault lest we forget who we are and where we came from.

Being human: Remember everything you can. Write your heart onto the page. Do not forget who and what you have loved and love. Celebrate even the smallest creation, the most minor revision, because the measure of our humanity lies not in what and whom we disappear, but in what and whom, with love, we make visible.

UPCOMING FOR MY PAID SUBSCRIBERS!

I’m going to keep up with Bedtime Stories for the foreseeable future, even though I’m sort of embarrassed by them and am unsure if anyone is listening. Your thoughts on this are much appreciated!

I think I’m going to begin recording some other stuff, such as an old short story most of you don’t know about. I might—might—even serially record a novel of mine that’s been sitting in my drawer for NINE years!

I think I’ll start offering some short bits about the basics—dialogue, characterization, scene, pacing, and all that jazz. Still mulling.

And in the new year, two new initiatives: a literary salon and author interviews!

Read more

This is my tale, my ramble, my revelation of truths I’ve long secreted in bruised places lest I get a reputation.

Let’s start at the beginning.

When I was in second grade (yes, you heard me), the elementary school held a contest among second graders: Write an essay about why we love the American flag. Ta-daa! I won. But the win was reversed because an adult decided that a second grader could not have possibly written whatever drivel I’d penned (I’m pretty sure it rhymed). This horrible behavior on the part of an anonymous adult(s) did not stop me from writing, but it did enforce my growing suspicions of people in authority and their demands for mediocrity.

Over the years, I wrote like a child possessed—poems, stories, cartoons, plays, songs. If it involved storytelling, I dabbled. Despite the violence and poverty that defined my childhood, when I put pen to paper, I grew wings.

But in undergrad, something horrible happened: Literary Territorialism. The poetry and fiction professors—long at war with each other—treated me like Solomon’s baby, each claiming me for their own, metaphorically ripping me in two, neither understanding that a person could be a prose writer and a poet. Hell, I could twirl a fire baton while spitting rhymes. But the two professors, enemies unto death, remained staunch in their genre nationalism, fire batons or no fire batons.

When I went to graduate school, I again wrote poetry and prose, won awards in both, was published in both until the head of the department (self-important male poet) said during a midterm conference (not sure why we were having one since he wasn’t my professor), something to the effect of You’re poetry is meh. Concentrate on your stories.

Gutted, I haven’t written a poem since.

I wrote a novel in 2016 titled Stone by Stone. A terribly-important-friend-in-my-literary-life (who is a very nice person, by the way) had nothing positive to say about it. In fact, the manuscript was so bad, my friend couldn’t read it, couldn’t get past more than a few pages. It was as if I’d forgotten how words work, that me and my hand of thumbs could only clack out meritless gibberish. I’d read from the novel at public events and shared it with trusted readers who were published writers (looking at you, Crystal Wilkinson). Everyone loved it, except for the friend who seemed intent on repeatedly thrusting their workshop-hewn pitchfork into my heart and soul. Perhaps they didn’t realize the harm they were inflicting, or maybe they did. Maybe they relished the sight of blood. Whatever. The truth is, I was a willing victim, grateful even: My friend is simply trying to turn me into a REAL writer, after 8 published novels and a movie and more. All those publishers and readers must have been idiots, said Stockholm Syndrome Me.

Eventually, adrift in the I Suck Sea, I perished. I doubted everything about myself, most supremely my life as a writer. I had to come to terms with what looked like facts: I was a fraud. Yes, I’d been defrauding readers, publishers, agents, editors, libraries, conference hosts, and my family since 1998.

There was nothing left to do: I buried the manuscript in my Word files never to be seen again.

Until this morning.

I don’t know how it happened—maybe aging, maybe time, maybe exhaustion with my internalized Doubt Devil (again, the intersections!)—but in the past couple of months, I’ve started to bloom. I’ve started saying EXACTLY what I think, which is dangerous. But it’s also liberating. This has spawned a realization that might come naturally to most of you but not to me—this, the legacy of being an abused kid: If I don’t stand up for myself, no one will do it for me. If I don’t BELIEVE in my own accomplishments and talents, why would anyone else? Growing up, I heard adults say these sorts of things all the time. I’ve had shrinks say them to my face. I’ve had friends repeat them so often it’s as if they are on an eternal rinse cycle. But until your bones have firmed up—and for some of us that takes decades—this rather pedestrian step-into-your-magnificence screed swirls like dead leaves on a stormy November day.

But this morning, as Hurricane Erin churned offshore, bringing with it a fresh breeze that took some of the sting out of summer’s triple digits, I opened my eyes to a feral thought that blew in like a gust that had been tapping at my window for years, trying with all its might to come in from the heat: Crack open Stone by Stone, Connie. Let’s see how bad it is.

So, I did. I read the first six pages as if they were written by some other writer, which is always a neat trick if you can do it. Stockholm Syndrome Me might have devolved into recriminations and self-blame: Why do you believe the Doubt Devils? Why take their opinions as gospel? Why, Connie, are you such a freaking nub?

But my liberated self rose above the self-blame trap. It marveled over sentences and word choice and tension and restraint and plot and setting and character. If I possessed the talent of levitation, that would have been me on the ceiling in a sequined ballgown dancing like Fred Astaire.

I’m fine-tuning a handful of plot points for The Direction of Last Things, the book I tremorously moved onto after I gave up on Stone by Stone. After “Direction” goes out on submission, I’m diving back into my abandoned novel, a book nearly destroyed by my dearth of self-worth.

To hold my feet to truth’s fire, I’m making a public promise: Eventually, Stone by Stone will see the light of day.

Here’s the pencil-sharp point of this ramble: Writers have to believe in their work even as they take in notes from trusted readers, whether those readers be friends, betas, agents, or editors. I’m always looking for ways to improve my work—that never ends—but to survive the process, you have to develop a strong inner core (think of it as your inner belly six-pack no one else sees). Yesterday, I spent two hours discussing “Direction” with my agent and she gave me terrific notes. I am jazzed and can’t wait to see where they lead. The notes didn’t destroy me. Far from it. The agent believes in the book and wants it to be the very best novel it can be. What a gift! You don’t want sycophants pirouetting down your margins or Doubt Devils stomping through your paragraphs. You want smart people willing to tell the truth and who have the gift of question-asking. Why does Sally Sue go to the roadhouse? Did she know he was the preacher before she met him behind the roadhouse? Why did the wolf have to die? Is it too obvious? Question-askers open up the closed windows of your imagination, if you let them.

A good rule in a game with few rules: Understand the quality of the notes being given. If they are dismissive, don’t succumb to the Doubt Devil. Rather, move on. If the notes are celebratory and rendered in what I like to call the Universal Creative Spirit, pay attention. Return to the page, carrying the advice deep within you. The notes do not mean you failed; they mean you are on the right path.

I’m not so deluded as to think I won’t ever again succumb to a Doubt Devil. But I’m learning to recognize the phenomenon. There’s no room in my personal or creative lives for someone who gas lights, knowingly or not. This is not a get-out-of-hearing-things-you-don’t-want-to-hear-card. It’s part of a complex strategy for surviving and thriving as a writer.

The great writer William Maxwell almost stopped writing and, like me, it was his own writing that convinced him to keep going. My dear friend, the writer Brad Watson who passed in 2020, was once feeling so terrible about a novel-in-progress that he started a fire and tossed the entire manuscript into the flames. As he stood there, morose, sipping a beer, watching the flames consume his book, he began reading pages not yet burned and realized, Hey, this is pretty good! He quickly retrieved from the fire all that he could.

I think many of us have been there, standing at that fire, feeling hang-dog terrible about our work. But know this: The fire doesn’t want your pages. Your readers do.

UPCOMING INKBLOSSOM EVENTS!

Virtual Fall Writing Retreat - September 19-21 via Zoom.

Santa Fe Writers’ Retreat and Conference - October 20-27 - Special Guests: Literary Agent Darlene Chan, Publishing Industry Guru Julie Trelstad, and Novelist Jo-Ann Mapson.

Read more

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

It’s a perfect description of the current crime syndicate running the the show these days. It’s so ridiculously on-target for the behavior of present day demagogues and dictators and oligarchs and west wing worms, that I often find myself reaching for my worn out copy of “Gatsby” to reread the prophetic lines from the novel’s final paragraph:

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

But why oh why must we continually repeat the sins of the past? We KNOW Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Tom Buchanan, et al, were awful human beings who sought absolute power at the expense of humanity. Yet, here we are.

And again, I revisit “Gatsby” for a morsel of insight or inspiration, a crumb of guidance. In this morning’s reading, I ran across these lines, which I surely have read innumerable times (I think I first read the novel when I was 12), but this time, they struck like an arrow:

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”

That is exactly what we’re doing. Our social media posts: a blank stare. Our ineffectual protests: a blank stare. Our enraged late night talk show hosts: a blank stare. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud and support all of our efforts, but they aren’t changing anything. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Gone. The truth from the Smithsonian archives? Gone. The government workers who helped people whose names they never knew but whose needs were, and remain, great? Gone. The government workers who simply told the truth? Gone. What’s next? Libraries? Social security? Gay marriage? Women’s suffrage? Equal rights? Our government drops bombs on foreign lands not as an act of global protection but as an act of domestic manipulation.

I don’t think the calvary is going to save us. All those vapid party-goers getting drunk on Gatsby’s bootleg booze are stand-ins for our legislators. Most of the political class who are posturing outrage are doing so because they are testing the waters for presidential runs, not because they care that many of us are experiencing concentration camp nightmares even as we struggle to put food on the table or convince our insurance companies to pay for our medications and needed surgeries or supplement our children’s education with reading and science and art so that they don’t grow up to be the sociopaths next door.

Our blank stares are going to have to turn into specific answers that levitate us beyond outrage, no matter how justified said outrage is.

If you’re reading this, most likely you are an engaged and creative person. If we sail Fitzgerald’s ship into the past, we will find crimes against humanity, but we will also find acts of courage and kindness and care. In order to feed, clothe, and provide basic medical care, we might need to reconstitute the social welfare clubs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These secular clubs were more than social hubs (important in and of itself). They were places where folks organized around various causes and helped one another (clothes, food, medicine, childcare, and more). Neighbors might once again need to love everyone’s children, casting a net that provides sustenance for body and brain—food, books, love, safety, creative play. Perhaps every street needs to become a Sesame Street. I keep thinking about, for instance, neighborhood sponsored story times; these might prove especially important in underserved rural and urban areas. Finally, perhaps we’re all going to have to pitch in and practice eldercare because warehousing the old and frail and dying—or rendering them homeless—is not the answer.

Speaking of answers I have very few, but my impulse is this: When our government refuses to provide essential services we pay for through our tax dollars, we’re going to have to come up with citizen-born solutions. We can scream, cry, pray, and vote for regime change, but until that day happens, we have to take care of one another. As we get ceaselessly born into the past, let’s reacquaint ourselves with what our ancestors did to survive and model that for our own day and age.

Yes, Gatsby was better than the whole damn bunch of them. And so are we.

SUNDAY NIGHT BEDTIME STORIES WITH CONNIE MAY FOWLER IS ABOUT TO LAUNCH!

When I first started hosting writing retreats—this was pre-covid—we began each day with a morning reading from a favored text and the faculty member would, in brief, discuss what they admired about the excerpt. The readings were designed to jumpstart the participants’ creativity and provide a jolt of inspiration. When we went virtual, we delivered these readings via email. I’ve continued this practice whether the retreat/conference I’m hosting is in person or online. These recordings have proven to be incredibly popular and, so I’m told, helpful. Think of them as petite gems that cast a shine, a spell, on your own writing process. For my paid subscribers only, I will begin posting similar readings on two Sunday nights a month. I’ll read from classics, oldies but goodies, contemporary, and brand new works. Designed to inspire you to sit in that chair and write while giving you a wee bit of a craft talk, you can dip into them at your own pace and as many times as you wish. I’d like to get to the point where I can post them weekly, but I don’t want to over promise. This Sunday night, the first one drops. So if you’re not a paid subscriber, maybe you want to become one, and if you are, I hope you will enjoy Bedtime Stories!

A NEW ARTFUL CRAFT, A NEW ENDEAVOR: COCO MAY STUDIOS

This might speak loudest to those of you who write novels: They take so long to complete, that finding other artistic endeavors that you can see through from start to finish in an afternoon or a week or even a month is balm to the creative soul. That is one of the things that prompted me to start making jewelry. I’ve gotten a tad bit prolific with the gemstones, earthstones, seastones, so much so that I am now offering my creations for sale at Coco May Studios. As of this writing, earrings and necklaces are posted, but I’m adding bracelets, bookmarks (jewelry for your books!), and brooches soon, so check back often and please subscribe to the CocoMay newsletter. Instagram and Facebook pages will launch soon.

DON’T MISS IT: INKBLOSSOM’S VIRTUAL ALL WRITING RETREAT!

The final virtual writing retreat of 2025 takes place September 19-21. These beloved retreats provide abundant writing time, morning inspirations, and afternoon discussions. Join us!

The fact that art saved—saves—me is true to this day. If I didn’t snap shut my doom scrolling with a deep dive into literary and other artful pursuits, I’d become caged in grief, anger, despair.

Despite my magical abilities born of books, poverty is a fog that seeps into all of my literary spaces. I might be, for instance, the workshop leader, but usually I’m the only one who grew up on welfare, with one parent, in conditions so squalid and violent that if it were happening today, my sister and I would be yanked from the home. Indeed, I sit around our digital Zoom table and listen to the poor being referred to as “those people” and “those people” get blamed for all manner of things they aren’t exclusively responsible for—Trumpism, domestic violence, Christian nationalism to name a few—and though, with varying degrees of success, I attempt to keep my voice steady, in my heart and brain, sinew and synapse, I’m screaming.

Inevitably, I out myself—I grew up desperately poor or We lived in a tiny, vermin-infested, wheel-less pull behind with no heat or ac and often no electricity that I called The Blister or Our house was so overridden with roaches, they fed on my skin as I slept and my mother always brightly said, “Don’t worry; they’re just nibbling a little.”

Yes, I say these things, but I’ve come to recognize that for some folks poverty is a distant shore, yet one more Other, and to imagine what it’s like to watch your mother attempt to stretch that watery broth for one more night or watch her shape paraffin wax into a tooth under scalding water because her dead husband knocked out her incisor when he was alive and dentists are far beyond our reach, or going with her to the pawn shop to pawn my sister’s wedding gifts so our electricity can be turned back on, is incredibly difficult, nigh to impossible if you haven’t walked in shoes with more holes than soles.

I’ve come to understand that plenty of privileged people hate poor people and not out of malice but because they’re scared they might become one of us. I have compassion for that. I’m scared that one day I’ll wake up and look like a heroin-ized, American South version of Zsa Zsa Gabor. But I refuse to hate Zsa Zsa even if I can’t fully decode what life is like for a ridiculously rich, diamond-draped, Hungarian socialite.

Here me roar: Literary spaces should never be devoid of empathy and compassion. But this absence is real. The virtue deficit arises whenever a story surfaces about domestic violence—Why doesn’t she just leave?—and I have to put on my activist cap and explain to the person who, again, asked the question out of naivety, not malice. When race is discussed, often the opposite happens; a well-meaning white person will white-splain to the person of color what the person of color’s experience is. Again, not malice, but definitely wrong-headed.

When class and poverty are the topics, I hear a lot of blame, the undercurrent being people are poor because they’re lazy, and our country is in the shape it’s in because poor people vote against their own interests (the wealthy carried Trump into the White House in 2016 and those numbers only marginally ticked down in 2024). I avoid offering long explanations about how difficult it is to find affordable housing, especially since first, last, and damage deposits can snowball into a down payment equal to purchasing a house. Or how landlords require renters to meet impossible thresholds, including impeccable credit, something that is becoming an unreachable goal for increasing numbers of Americans. I don’t explain that if you’re poor, proper nutrition is an issue, medical care is an issue, transportation is an issue, education is an issue, environmental safety is an issue, housing is an issue. I don’t explain that these insurmountable hurdles keep people trapped in poverty.

I don’t blather on because these truths, at least to me, are self-evident. That, and I don’t relish the role of Poverty Tour Guide. So I say less and fume more.

And that has to stop.

The writer Lee Cole has an article on Lit Hub titled, “What Does it Mean to be a Working Class Writer at Iowa Writers’ Workshop: Lee Cole on the Absence of Working Class Perspectives in Our Literary Institutions.” Cole writes, “While institutions—MFA programs, lit mags, publishing houses—have done much to include and elevate underrepresented groups on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation, they’ve done far less to include and elevate those from underrepresented class backgrounds.”

This is certainly true at the MFA program I taught at for fifteen years. As we rolled out long-overdue DEI programs and policies, I, along with students from working class and poor backgrounds, brought up the issue of class, asking that we do exactly what Cole calls for—“. . . include and elevate those from underrepresented class backgrounds.” To say that these suggestions were scoffed at is an understatement. An administrator actually rolled her eyes at me when I made the case for said elevation.

When I enter a room full of, for instance, wealthy library patrons (God bless them; we need people who support the arts now more than ever), I feel like an imposter, as though the stench of poverty clings to me. And maybe it does. Because I can’t tell you how many times 24 karat gold-plated ladies at literary events corner me and say, pretty much verbatim, “You made it out. What can’t they? What’s wrong with them?”

I hide my hurt and anger behind my magnolia smile and attempt to explain, but I never get very far because their eyes glaze over and they wander off while I’m in mid-sentence.

We do a lot of blaming in this country. But we’re terrible at elevating. In fact, I might sound like I’m blaming rich people for their often terrible attitudes about the poor (let’s be honest; there is no way Elon Musk could enter my childhood and survive). But I’m not blaming, not really. I’m pushing open a window, asking for a conversation, hoping that our literary institutions will lead the way, because if the voices of the poor and formerly poor are not heard, we as a nation are truly impoverished, our moral center shattered amid the gold toilets of the few.

ON THE ROAD!

This Friday InkBlossom’s Vermont Novel Retreat kicks off in Stowe, a ski village that’s awfully nice in the summer, too. I can’t wait for my extended family of writers to join together for a week spent immersed in their writing and community.

At these retreats, I offer micro-lectures on books I love. Here’s my list for this year’s retreat. It’s a sweet combo of old and new, featuring novels, short story collections, and an enduring climate memoir:

· Richard Bausch’s The Fate of Others

· Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

· Samuel Kolawole’s The Road to Salt Sea

· Amity Gaige’s Heartwood

· Jill McCorkle’s Old Crimes and Other Stories

· Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness

PS: InkBlossom offers scholarships for all of our offerings, making events accessible for rich, middle class, working class, and poor alike.

COMING UP!

InkBlossom’s Santa Fe Writers’ Retreat and Conference and our virtual Fall Retreat.

Also, in July, get ready because I’m launching my love project: Coco May Studios.

HARD WON ADVICE!

Don’t doom scroll. Write!

Start a Substack

Yes, I am late to the party. Friends and colleagues have been pestering me for years to substack but I’ve been so busy with writing and InkBlossom and jewelry designing (a new endeavor you will no doubt hear more about) that I simply haven’t gotten around to it. Until today. When inevitability collided with a flare up on an old stomach issue. When I simply didn’t feel like doing much of anything. When the guilt of procrastination outsized my need to rewatch Emily in Paris (a lowbrow pleasure that I’ve kept secret until now).

Here’s what you can expect. I’m migrating away from my SquareSpace-hosted newsletter. This means if you subscribed to InkBlossom News, I’ve take the liberty of moving you to Substack. It also means in the time between exporting my subscriber list and actually creating my first stack (see what I did there—I have no idea if I’m using the lingo correctly but when has that ever stopped me?) some of you probably cancelled your subscription (heartbreaking!), but those cancellations might not be reflected in the exported list so you’ll just have to cancel me again (heartbreaking x 2!). I’m sorry about that, but I think we can agree technology is surely an old testament god.

In terms of content, you’ll still receive InkBlossom news, ruminations on writing-related topics, book jazz, random recipes, and pretty pictures of the jewelry I’m creating under the moniker Coco May Studios. I’ll keep dog and cat photos to a minimum—promise! I will eventually create a paywall for some deep dive content, but what that will look like is still murky to me largely because I am a stranger in SubStack Land.

All that being said, I’m really happy to be here and I hope you are too. I think this format affords the possibility of having brilliant discussions, which I would love. The real world—you know, the one that exists beyond our screens, feels unfamiliar, scary, exhausting. Let’s consider this our chattery, a place where art and literature, curiosity and kindness, new ideas bright with possibility and old ones bearing wisdom’s patina mingle like a gorgeous gathering of tapestry threads. Can you feel the silk?

Pablo Neruda, Murmur Lee, and. Scout having a conclave on the back porch of the sea shack. Sadly, only Pablo is still with us. Quick! Tell your sweetie you love them. Life is but a flash!

If You’re a Human Who Writes, AI Possibly Slayed the Em Dash

I LOVE the em dash. It’s elegant. It’s unobtrusive. It supports the flow and rumble of my prose. But Miles Klee in Rolling Stone tells us AI bots have scoured our literature so thoroughly that AI-written drivel looks as though an antique Gatling gun was loaded with a universal supply of em dashes and aimed straight at robot-penned stories.

Evidently, a subset of humans—those with paltry writing experience though they present themselves as punctuation experts—have reductively decided anything with an em dash is AI-created.

This excerpt set my jaw aflame: “And in a recent viral Instagram clip from LuxeGen, a lifestyle podcast aimed at a Gen Z audience, one co-host referred to the em dash as ‘the ChatGPT hyphen.’”

No. It’s a tool that human writers have employed to great effect for centuries.

Klee writes, “Nor is there reason to believe — when even purportedly sophisticated AI filters can falsely identify authentic writing as ChatGPT-generated — that the appearance of any single form of punctuation is a telltale marker of bot text. ChatGPT itself, which if nothing else should know about the history of its own training, will inform you that em dashes ‘by themselves are not a reliable sign that a text was AI-generated,’ and that the popular misconception to the contrary may be a vestige of earlier, less sophisticated models.”

But we are now faced with a situation in which humans who are not adept at punctuation but have mouthy platforms have decided em-dash use is a sign of the Devil in bot clothes, and therefore, even if ChatGBT tells them that use of the em dash is not an AI marker, they do not believe it.

This is not just a parlor game played out on social media, podcasts, and robot circuitry. I only know about the buffoonery because I, along with all her other clients, received an email from my very fine and brilliant literary agent advising us to beware of the em dash (cartoon em dash stabs me in the heart).

I never imagined a punctuation mark could make me lose my shit—but there you have it.

InkBlossom Goes to Santa Fe and the Application Deadline Looms

I love me some Santa Fe and our writers who attended last year’s magical retreat/conference fell in love with the place too. This year, our second, promises to build on the magic and good work with visitors such as Whiting Prize winner Samuel Kolawole (if you haven’t already, read The Road to Salt Sea) and literary agent Darlene Chan, senior agent at the legendary Linda Chester Literary Agency. This is a full immersion week in your art and craft in a supportive, nurturing environment. But you need to act soon. The application deadline is June 30. For more details, you know the drill: visit our webpage.

Blooming InkBlossoms

VCFA alums continue to dazzle.

Let’s face it. Those of us who teach have favorite students and Robert Macauley was one of mine. His memoir, because I knew you, How Some Remarkable Sick Kids Healed a Doctor’s Soul, is garnering rave reviews including this from Kirkus: “A luminous meditation on the beauty of life, even in its most wrenching moments.” Order it now or run to your nearest indie bookstore because it comes out tomorrow!

Many VCFA folks know, love, and admire alum Duston Spear, myself among them. She just sent me great news. Black Rose Writing is publishing her debut novel, Bird Girl. Duston writes, “A debut novel at 75 ( August , 2026).” Congratulations, Duston! And, hey, isn’t 75 the new 50?

I used to be a poet. Some say I still am, but I’m without confidence. In my undergrad days, I wrote a chapbook with my fellow Immanentist poet Stephen Sleboda. I’m thrilled that Steve’s latest collection is out TODAY. As I say in my blurb, “I Can’t Believe I Lived Wild & Raw explores the sacred and profane, the lived and the imagined, the desired, the attained, and the never-could-be.” I’m so proud of you, Steve Sleboda, my old friend. May Thing-Thing poetry forever live (if you know, you know).

It’s a Wrap

That’s it. My first SubStack. If you get this it means I figured out how to send it. If you didn’t get it, I’m stuck in my office chair, weeping, damning technology, and rifling through my contacts for help.

Also, my darlings, I’d love to hear from you.

Subscribe now

Contact:

Connie May Fowler

InkBlossom Writers

conniemayfowler@conniemayfowler.com

inkblossomwriters@gmail.com

cocomaystudios@proton.me