N.M. Cedeño
I spent part of April reading to vote for the Derringer Awards and to come up with my nominations for the Anthony Awards. The Derringer Award Winners were announced May 1 by the Short Mystery Fiction Society. I’m happy to recommend all of the Derringer Awards winners to anyone looking to dip their feet into the world of mystery short stories. If you have time, read all of the Derringer finalists, too. All of the stories were extremely well done. The Anthony Award nominees also have been announced.
Then, April’s reading fun ended to make way for May’s madness.
May is one of those months that I hope to survive and not drop any of the many balls I’m trying to keep in the air while dealing with whatever curveballs the world throws at my family.
May brings the expected…
Torrential rains causing Flash Flooding. Tornado watches and warnings. Hail. A family birthday. Mother’s Day. AP Exams requiring early morning drop-offs. The end of the college semester and dorm move-out. Tech week for a senior showcase musical review plus two performances of the review. A high school graduation with a family party planned and invitations mailed to celebrate it. Etc.
These May events mark the passage of the season like clockwork. From the end of school events to the spring storms, I’m used to dealing with these things.
This May has also brought the unexpected.
This month’s unexpected events so far include a car wreck, knocking a vehicle out of commission, so that I have to drive my offspring everywhere again. This driving includes 7:30 am drop offs at the high school for AP exams and 9:00 pm pick-ups at the theater after rehearsal for tech week. As a bonus, I get to deal with two insurance companies calling and emailing me for information. On the bright side, the motorcycle rider who collided with the bumper of the car was miraculously uninjured. (The call telling me that the accident involved a motorcycle was heart-stopping. They aren’t called donor-cycles in hospitals for nothing.)
The second unforeseen event was the sad and horrific suicide of a high school senior that my daughter knew. Knowing that a girl so full of promise ended her life a mere three weeks before graduation is gut-wrenching for everyone, even those only tangentially connected to her. For my child, who saw her every day at school, the death came as a terrible shock.
So, of course, since my brain is spinning, I started an unnecessary project– stripping the paint from a 1960s Drexel secretary desk that is in need of refinishing. My dear brother, who goes to more estate sales than he should, dropped…er gifted the piece to me after his wife rejected it for their house. The process of refinishing the desk is coming along slowly since I’m only working on it an hour or two a day, here and there. I needed a somewhat mindless, manual project to work away some stress. Scraping and sanding has been therapeutic and soothing.
When I’m done with the refinishing project, I’ll have something tangible to show for my labors and a sense of satisfaction in a job well done, like the feeling I get from writing a story but without the deep concentration needed to invent a plot and characters. That deep concentration is eluding me at the moment, so I’ve been editing what I’ve already written more than writing new material. However, in spite of May’s madness, I have submitted three stories to magazines already this month. I hope to submit a few more since I’m behind schedule on my submissions for the year.
I do have three stories accepted for publication at the moment. I’ll provide more about those stories when I have fixed publication dates.
I hope your May is going well!
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N. M. Cedeño is a short story writer and novelist living in Texas. She is active in Sisters in Crime- Heart of Texas Chapter and is a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. Find out more at nmcedeno.com.
Ink-Stained Wretches 