In April I will be going to Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Short Story Intensive in Las Vegas, which is my reward for working hard on short story craft throughout 2019. It is a five-day intensive workshop taught by Rusch and limited to just 15 writers. You have to be approved to get in. I can’t wait!

Rusch is an award-winning short story writer in multiple fields. She is an award-winning editor of Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine. She has won awards for the anthologies she produced. And she’s done this for decades. Finding someone who knows as much about writing award-winning short fiction would be pretty tough.

By all accounts the workshop is hard. I just got the pre-workshop reading (or at least some of it). I will need to read the five books of short stories she has assigned before the workshop. That’s about 2,500 pages. I believe that there will be pre-workshop writing as well, but I haven’t received that assignment yet.

Learning is so critical to everything we do. Being able to afford the time and the money to take these courses is an absolute delight. Obviously I hope I will go on to win awards for my short stories as a result of all this learning. Making oodles of money would also be fun. But even if I don’t, the learning itself is worthwhile.

I know that this post was one long squeee! I am pretty excited. I’ll let you know which short stories I especially like as I go through the books. No analysis, though. Dean says we need to save that for the workshop. He said to just read these stories for pleasure, so I’ll let you know which ones strike my fancy and why. If I am still doing this daily blogging thing in April and if I can, I’ll let you know what I think of the workshop.

I hope your learning is also leading you to exciting new places. Be well, friends!