Phew.or, Julie's first print review

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I got a whole stack of the new Dialogue in the mail today thanks to my poem in its pages.

You’ll like the poem. It’s sexy.

ANYWAY, I was flipping to the table of contents to admire myself in print (a natural impulse) but I landed in the toc’s list of reviews first and it was a long list! So I read that first. And what was the very last one, but a review of . . .Just Julie’s Fine.

Ever since Alison Maeser Brimley’s story “The Pew” appeared eight years ago, she’s been an artist to watch and so her opinion on Julie . . . would hold weight. I mean, if I were reading her review, it could well make or break my desire to read a book.

And let’s be honest: I wrote a book with so many landmines that the odds of me screwing it up or angering people were always high.

So it is with perhaps more relief than joy that I share with you that Alison gave Julie a positive review!

Phew!

Anyway, see what she has to say then pick up a copy or ask your library to do it for you.

(If you need even more convincing, Julie J. Nichols wrote the very first review of Julie and it’s also pretty persuasive. You’ll know this Julie from her genuinely hilarious review of Byuck.)

Nature’s Semaphore as Election Metaphor

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We stand on the porch of our beachside Carolina home
and see the black mountain range of cloud race toward us
at 140 miles per hour—though it looks still—

flashing with lightning and slowly swirling
like a childhood nightmare
or a missile
falling on someone else’s children.

The future always is far far away

until it isn’t

and we’ve either
battened down our whatevers

or we haven’t....

Either way:

the wind will blow.