If globes were square

I should know better than to write that I will update my blog more regularly.

I returned home from Arizona into a whirlwind of cleaning and rearranging. After the wide open spaces and skies of Arizona, the flow of the living room felt off, cluttered. We moved one of the bookcases up to our bedroom and shifted the furniture of the living room around so that it now feels more airy.

My friend Al and her two boys arrived from Paris, and the older kids attended science camp, while the younger three went to summer camp. This week we have free to explore Chicago and have random kid-generated adventures. It’s good having them here. I miss our lazy sleep-deprived afternoons in Frankfurt from oh-so-many-years ago, and I’m grateful for this time to reconnect.

Then the Fourth of July brought family aplenty at a bbq/family reunion hosted by my parents. Good to have chats with cousins I haven’t seen since the last family shower. Kids and cat survived nightlong fireworks well enough, although I fell asleep in my youngest daughter’s bed with contacts in.

This week brings decisions about the cover and release party for The Silence of Trees, calls and emails to secure special guests and entertainment for the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, and preparation for an online class I’ll be teaching it the Fall.

I also plan to start reading my next book to the kids (S.C.). It’s the first that’s age appropriate, and though I tell my children stories randomly on walks, at bedtime, and so on, I am excited to share my written words with them. We’ll see what they think.

Published by Valya

Valya Dudycz Lupescu has been making magic with food and words for more than 20 years, incorporating folklore from her Ukrainian heritage with practices that honor the Earth. She’s a writer, content developer, instructor, and mother of three teenagers. Valya is the author of MOTHER CHRISTMAS, THE SILENCE OF TREES, and the founding editor of CONCLAVE: A Journal of Character. Along with Stephen H. Segal, she is the co-author of FORKING GOOD: An Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of The Good Place and GEEK PARENTING: What Joffrey, Jor-El, Maleficent, and the McFlys Teach Us about Raising a Family (Quirk Books), and co-founder of the Wyrd Words storytelling laboratory. Valya earned her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies and magazines that include, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Kenyon Review, Culture, Gargoyle Magazine, Gone Lawn, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium. You can find her on Twitter @valya and on Mastodon.social @valya

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