Rock you like a hurricane

My friends on the East Coast weathered Hurricane Irene with some flooding and power outages. The storm was a non-event in New York City, although the media hype late last week made it sound like a disaster movie in the making. Still, better safe than sorry. Here in Atlanta, it's been sunny and hot all weekend. A little rain would be nice. We've been in the 90s pretty much all summer long and I can't wait for cooler weather.

Earlier in the week, the East Coast was hit by a 5.8 earthquake. We felt it here in Atlanta for a few seconds, too. I had just come back to the office from lunch when my publisher said, "I think we're having a little earthquake." The newspaper racks shook and the light fixtures swayed. I jumped on Twitter and, sure enough, the quake in Virginia had been felt all along the East Coast. With the temblor and hurricane, the right wing Christian crazies were out in full force proclaiming the end of the world brought about by, naturally, the gays.

While all this was going on, I was desperately trying to finish up the Java Monkey Speaks Anthology, Volume 4 and get it to Lulu for printing in time for next weekend's Decatur Book Festival. Uploading a book to Lulu is pretty simple, but the cover design process is a pain in the ass. Still, the end product looks good and it cost nothing to set up the book and get it into the Lulu store in both print and ebook editions. Poetry Atlanta Press will release the anthology (which I co-edited with Kodac Harrison) on Sunday night, 8 p.m. at the special Java Monkey Speaks open mic as part of the book festival. Natasha Trethewey (who has a new poem in the anthology) will be the featured poet. If you can't wait for the festival, you can purchase the anthology at Lulu right now at this link. It's only $6.28 for the paperback or 99 cents for the ebook! Now that is a bargain!

I'll have an announcement about the release of the ebook version of Remain In Light on Sept. 1, so check back here for info. You can still read the first four chapters of the novel at this link and the book trailer is now embedded in the sidebar of this blog.

Thanks to everyone who has purchased a copy of the newly re-issued edition of Slow To Burn from Seven Kitchens Press. Publisher Ron Mohring said he was fulfilling 10 orders this weekend, so I'm very pleased to hear that. You can order your copy at this link and if you're in town for the Decatur Book Festival, stop by Eddie's Attic at 1:15 p.m. next Sunday for my reading with Michael Montlack to pick up a copy. There will also be copies throughout the weekend at the Local Poetry Stage at Java Monkey Coffee House.