Brianna Privett

I forget sometimes that I have this space to log my creative works without broadcasting what I’m up to for comment on Facebook, et al. Since I use brianna.org as a tech playground for testing things like, oh, I don’t know, Google Buzz, anything I post there is distributed instantly to every damned social network I have signed up for – and I sign up for them because it’s my job.

At any rate, it’s been a swift six months, devouring 2010 like lightning. I’ve written some songs, some short stories, and I’m seeing progress on both fronts. I sent out a few queries for my first YA novel, Cheshire Cat Moons, in March, got a good response and am currently revising it before sending it back out. I stopped reading slush for SH because I couldn’t keep up, but boy did I learn a lot.

This past week we’ve finally set up our library in the room formerly known as The Blue Room. Six tall bookshelves and a rough count of 1,000 books unpacked later, I’m revelling in having all our books easily accessible again. And a touch of extra shelf space to fill up with new stuff – we’ve been on a book buying moratorium for the last few years. Ban: lifted!

So that’s what I have been doing – writing, gardening, working the web, and unpacking books. Currently I’m editing a short story about inherited ghosts, and another about walking houses. In spare moments, I’ve been devouring the archives of the Paris Review and trying to get my own writing to a point where I enjoy re-reading it.

Oh yes, and I’ve been informally logging the books I’ve read this year to see if I make it to 100. As a kid, this would have been cake, I read about three times that amount yearly, but this year I’ve been chewing up short stories like they’re going out of style, and I haven’t counted those toward my book reading goal. At any rate, the last book I finished was The Hunger Games (enjoyable, predictable but with lush descriptions of food – I’m a sucker for that) and I am currently reading The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman and really loving it.