6/11 Reading at Berkeley Cafe

You can feel it in the streets, on a day like this the heat, it feels like summer! I hope you all are doing well and staying cool. I know summer hasn't officially started yet, but it feels like it. I'm posting because I will be performing a reading this Thursday, June 11 at 8 p.m. at the Berkeley Cafe in Raleigh. I'm excited to read with some familiar faces, and with John Kessel who was professor emeritus at NCSU when I was in the MFA program. For those of you that don't know, Dr. Kessel has a space route in Star Wars named after him (the Kessel Run). He's an established science fiction writer. On that topic, I've received agency representation for my latest completed speculative manuscript Rapture Ready and other projects. I'm having fun writing speculative fiction and have even begun writing a new Afrofuturist manuscript this summer amid another part time job and home improvement projects. It's in its infancy, but we'll see how it turns out. Yesterday, I attended an open house at a wedding venue with my fianceé Elisha and, afterward, went to a poetry reading and book release for my friend Fred Joiner at Shadowbox Studios. Fred is an established poet and The Mirror in Our Music is his first full length collection. It feels great to see someone get their flowers after years of effort, especially because I've been trying to get published myself for some time. I'm glad I got to see members of the triangle's writing community last night and hope to see a few more at my reading Thursday. Here's hoping I'll have some good news to report about one of my fiction manuscripts sometime soon. You could always come to the reading to hear a piece if you don't feel like waiting!