Readings and signings and basic housekeeping.
A Perfect Facebook Life is out tomorrow and I’ll be doing a virtual signing over on Facebook Live.
Signing my books is one of my favorite things, but I can’t sign my books this time because (womp womp) pandemic. What I can do is sign post-its during a Facebook Live tomorrow and send them out to you. Voila: remotely signed book. Want a post-it? Watch my Live tomorrow afternoon or DM me your address!
A Perfect Facebook Life is nearly here! To celebrate the upcoming April 6 release, join me at 7:30 pm ET on Monday, March 29 for a celebration of humor with two very talented, very funny women writers for Funny on Facebook, a preorder event for A Perfect Facebook Life. (On Zoom, of course, because pandemic.) You can RSVP for the event on Facebook.
My co-readers are Alena Dillon and Katie Eber, and I am so excited to share the Zoom stage with them.
Alena Dillon
Alena Dillon is the author of Mercy House, a Library Journal Best Book of 2020, which has been optioned as a Paramount+ television series produced by Amy Schumer, The Happiest Girl in the World, forthcoming next month, and My Body Is A Big Fat Temple, a memoir of pregnancy and early parenting, forthcoming in October. She lives on the north shore of Boston.
Katie Eber
Katie Eber holds a B.A. in English Literature from Roanoke College (Class of ‘11) and is a 2014 graduate from the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Fairfield University. At Roanoke, Katie’s poetry earned her the 2011 Charles C. Wise Poetry Prize and, as part of her senior seminar’s fun-loving and witty team, won the annual English Department’s Reindeer Games (which, as a result of that year’s raucous competition, were discontinued shortly thereafter). She was also the recipient of the Trueben Award at Fairfield University. Katie was a nominee for a New England Emmy for her writing on a public television childrens’ interstitial show that used an egregious number of music puns, and in kindergarten was awarded “Most Quiet Rester,” her most prestigious award to date. Her work has appeared in Spry, White Stag, Hobo Pancakes, Quail Bell Magazine, Limp Apple Review, and one of those is not a real literary journal.
Katie enjoys good beer, good sandwiches, and advocating for widespread use of business hammocks (you can find them in the hammock district, off Third). She resides in the shadow of the Metacomet Ridge in Wallingford, Connecticut, where she served as the second town Poet Laureate.
Join us at 7:30 pm on Monday, March 29th on Zoom. You can RSVP to the event on Facebook (of course) or use this link to enter the event.
Guys, I’m shutting down The Garrett. (That’s what this blog used to be called.) Or, at least, I’m changing it.
When I put this blog together in 2009, back when people were still naming their blogs, it was an appropriate piece of my online platform. Seven years ago blogs were something writers – especially unpublished writers – were expected to have. It was a way of building an audience, publishing essays, clearing my head before writing fiction and writing online diary entries. And I loved it. I blogged regularly.
That’s no longer true, for the Internet in general, or for me personally. Social media has taken over a lot of the territory once occupied by blogs, and as a freelance writer, I’m less willing to self-publish the essays I could be pitching elsewhere. (Also, now that I have a family and have seen lots of female writers get shouted or threatened off the web, I’m not as willing to write personal diary entries for the world to see. I’m getting old, kids.)
So what happens to the old posts?
What’s going to happen to this space? Well, I’ve already disentangled this blog from my domain name, ajoconnell dot com.
That said, my current plan is to keep the old content, so if you feel the need to discuss Harry Willson Watrous’s painting The Drop Sinister (many visitors do, amazingly) or if you too were a Catholic child plagued by fears of Immaculate Conception, you should still be able to read those posts.
My current plan is to keep all my old content and incorporate it into a new site as a sort of “What I’m Doing Right Now” section. That section probably won’t be the front page, as it is on this site, but it will be an area I can update.
In the meantime, while I’m building, everything should remain as it was and then, one day, when you least expect it: hey presto! New site!
Yeah, but…
“But A.J.,” you may be saying. “That means everything will be pretty much the same, right? Why are you getting so maudlin about it?”
Well, invisible reader in Internetland, let me tell you. Things ARE changing. When this site is reborn — sticky and squalling — as part of a bigger professional writing site, it will lose some of the personal flavor it’s had since 2009. For me, an era will end. A good era.
This blog has been my only website for seven years, and it’s been a part of a community, and although I haven’t blogged regularly in a while, I’ve come to enjoy my interactions with my readers and the informal blogging style I could use here.
So, hey, guys. I don’t know if any of my original readers will see this, but you made The Garrett what it was. Thank you.
Hello everyone!
Thanksgiving is coming up in the U.S., and to celebrate, I’m offering my short story, Final Statements for free on Amazon, from today until Wednesday, the day when we will all be cooking, traveling, or frantically screaming that company is coming and why isn’t this house clean already.
Just go to the link for the free short story. (It is an e-book, so you will need a reader or an app to read it.)
After all, Thanksgiving is a family holiday, and Final Statements is a story about family. Maybe not a great family, but hey, let’s celebrate all families.
Alumni and faculty book signing at Trinity College.
And now from the department of Hey, Guess What I Forgot to Announce:
I was part of a book signing at Trinity College’s Reunion Weekend on Saturday. I loved it, but not gonna lie: it was also very strange. (I never thought I’d be signing books in the store I spent so much money in as an undergrad.)
I’m just posting one photo here, but the rest are over on my Facebook page.
I was there with A.J. Kohlhepp, Todd Coopee, Peter Swanson, Jennifer Prescott, Paul Sullivan, Paul Assaiante, and Lucy Ferriss, Trinity’s writer-in-residence. It was a good mix of veteran writers, new writers, fiction, nonfiction, YA, adult, New York Times best-sellers, self-published and indie writers. You should obviously check them all out.
Hello everyone. Happy Easter week! To celebrate the alleged start of spring, I’m making my short story “Undertow” free on Amazon this week.
The promotion starts tomorrow, March 31, and ends Saturday, April 4.
What’s the story about? It’s a supernatural horror story about a young woman who falls in love with the ocean. But then the ocean loves her back, and that’s kind of a problem. There are mythological creatures in it, and it’s creepy. But then, most of my fiction is on the creepy side. It’s part of my charm.
If you like supernatural horror, please check it out. Here is the link.
Just a quick post to tell everyone that Julie over at Books and Insomnia reviewed Beware the Hawk. It’s a really good review. I might have danced around the kitchen when I read it. Check it out. Then check out the rest of Julie’s blog. It’s a really great site, and she must read constantly, because there is always new content up over there.
Thank you, Julie! And have a good weekend, everyone. I definitely will.
Good news! John, the editor over at Geek Eccentric, saw my post from a few days ago about DinoLand getting taken down for the holidays and, because he’s awesome, gave me a present: even though the rest of his site is dark for a while, he put my chapters back up.
Not only that, but he tarted them up and made them easier to navigate; you can now click from chapter to chapter by using the links on the left. My fiction has rarely looked so good.
The latest chapter was posted last week, so check it out.
Thank you John!
Good news! John, the editor over at Geek Eccentric, saw my post from a few days ago about DinoLand getting taken down for the holidays and, because he’s awesome, gave me a present: even though the rest of his site is dark for a while, he put my chapters back up.
Not only that, but he tarted them up and made them easier to navigate; you can now click from chapter to chapter by using the links on the left. My fiction has rarely looked so good.
The latest chapter was posted last week, so check it out.
Thank you John!
UPDATE: John, over at Geek Eccentric, has reposted the chapters, and they are better formatted and more navigable than ever. (So no PDF Party.) Thank you John!
I have a bunch of posts that link to Geek Eccentric on this page. Some are to articles, and most are to my serial novel, DinoLand, which has been running there for almost all of 2014. Well, Geek Eccentric has gone dark until 2015 because the site is reinventing itself and the published chapters are currently unavailable, so I’m temporarily taking down the link to DinoLand.
To any readers, I am very sorry for the interruption. If there is an interest in reading any of the chapters during the hiatus, please contact me. I’ll hook you up.