Phantom Seed in Palm Springs!

The Phantom Seed reading in Palm Springs was a smash success! Tonight, Monday, October 27th - we've arrived home, in the desert - we had many readers, each of them astounding, and I felt, after a long day glued to the computer knocking out author introduction and biographies for the Heyday Desert Anthology, so rejuvenated by their comradery. So necessary, breathing is like air itself, and language, stories, words, a soul name.

I was isolated in this desert, and now I'm connected in the night sky with other stars - a constellation of stories, young and wise, old and new-scratched. Phantom Seed No. 2. The following, friends from years and friends who are new, writers whose words I admire so greatly - inspiring our rather large turnout of attendees in the library's gracious back room! This is what makes a community, people gathering to tell their own stories, around a sort of virtual campfire, the village feeling, the mingling with diverse others, and pulling a little bit out of that alone-world and making contact points, like stars, a little soft darkness remaining between us, but a common glow and pulse connecting us all from not-so-far. Reflecting the sun, each and every one of us!

I gather the courage to write - to really let my voice open up and words to spill, and let it all go. Tonight, I was so honored to join the following: Larry Hogue, Bill Luvaas, Linda McMillin Pyle, Julie Paegle, Mike Cluff, Phyllis Costello, Lee Balan, Randy Maxted, Ching-In Chen, Chris Clarke....some came from so far! And so I feel a little less alone, and a little less OCD about wanting to pour my heart into a missing lover, missing lover, now the story will come. Your heart is here with mine, although I can't reach you to tell you how thrilled I am that I've done so well and so suprisingly with Phantom Seed. I'm truly floored at the response, the need, the desire in our community of writers for this little magazine. I found an empty shell and imagined things inside of it, as I did and do with you. So much has grown. Words are printed, and the world is a little more fluid because of it. Imagine, for me, my heart inside of yours, how it's already grown.