I'm a Philly artist with a rare book library day job; teacher and trapeze performer; many-projects pollinator; and queer married parent. Writing stories about demons. I love metaphor, systems, and emojis. 💐🔹 https://rilesmith.neocities.org
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Thrilled to share this first published work from my universe of demon-lover stories! 🐉🍅💥 As a disabled parent, "Marriage is Convergence" is extreme personal to me; it could have been written in my own blood. But nothing in this story is autobiographical except for the dueling top-volume iPads.
It was also fun for me to dig out my current stories - 2 forthcoming this year, 2 in submissions - and evaluate their 😈🪝✨
I so loved this practical tour of problematic opening paragraphs in short story submissions, from @devonhalliday.bsky.social - for sure, reading unsolicited submissions is a fast (and sometimes painful) education on what works and what doesn't!
devonhalliday.substack.com/p/red-flags-...
I'm so very very thrilled that my first demon story has found a home in print!
I can't wait to share more about this - it's a journal I'm so honored to appear in, and this story was a delight (and fever dream 😈🍗🍅💥) to create
As a writer/editor as well as theater maker, I have gotten to experience the larva-to-butterfly cycle of creative production from many vantage points. Whether it's 📖 or 🤸♀️, an outside eye who will lovingly but objectively encounter your work-in-progress is the highest gift.
I'm setting off emoji fireworks 🎇🎆🎇 to celebrate an encouraging short-story rejection (with actionable feedback!) from a magazine I'd love to appear in 🎆🎇🎆
My series of circus watercolor portraits have been a big part of my year - really stoked to offer holiday commission opportunities to aerialists and other movers who want to collaborate! 🤸♀️🎨💝
(Not truly a sales post bc I have 3 followers here 😌 but it's nice to mark the occasion in my diary!)
Oh life! I'm hanging on! Moments pile upon each other, meaningless each by each, together resplendent and ephemeral. 🍁 Yesterday I pushed up into a bridge for the first time in 100 years, painted it, had a sweet call with my babe, then said goodbye to this foster cat who taught me what love could be
Witnessing cat family dynamics up close makes me see how much their emotions/relationships are completely not like humans' - yet my human projections are the inescapable framework I bring to living with them. 🤷 Splitting up this family feels so morally wrong, even though I know it's right for them!
Fostering kittens is a fascinating way to experience linear time - this terrified handful of fluff transformed into an confident, elegant teenager in just a few weeks. 🩶
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Avoid these common mistakes in your cover letter and opening pages
