This fall has been a crazy time, and I’ve fallen far behind on my reading. I’m just about to plunge in again and am excited to have on my nightstand a bevy of books written by friends, old school chums and local writers. Here’s a list of what I’ll be enjoying for the month of December:

Domestic Apparition, by Meg Tuite.

I started this book a few months ago and can hardly wait to get back to it. The story of a young girl’s interactions with her dysfunctional family is freshly compelling, mainly thanks to Tuite’s evocative prose and anti-sentimental stance.

After the Tsunami, by Annam Manthiram

Another great one! This story tells the story of a man who loses his family in a tsunami in India and later goes to live in an orphanage. I’m amazed at how quickly Manthiram cuts to the heart of a scene and the gift she has for plumbing the depths of a character’s psyche.

Lamb, by Bonnie Nadzam

Bonnie recently moved to Fort Collins, and I had the pleasure of hearing her read from Lamb a few week ago at Matter Bookstore. She blew me away with her compelling story of an older man who strikes up a friendship with an eleven year old girl. Nadzam’s descriptions of landscape are among the best I’ve ever read—she has a gift for mirroring a character’s psyche with the natural world.

So There!, by Nicole Louise Reid

Nicole and I attended graduate school together, though she was a few years ahead of me and already a rock star. Her new book recently came out and I’m eagerly awaiting my copy in the mail. Nicole has a gift for lyrical prose and I’m sure it’s going to be as amazing as her other work.

Peter Stenson

Peter is someone I met just last night, at a Colorado State MFA reading. Peter read a story whose title, as best I can recall, is “127 Miles from Indianapolis, Indiana.” The story was dark and compelling, his accomplished lyricism the balm to a bittersweet plot about a young man’s longing for connection. Peter recently sold his first novel to Random House and I can’t wait to read it.

So, just a few notes ago I was remarking on how lucky I felt to be living in Santa Fe, and what a positive effect it had on my writing. Fast forward a few months and now here we are, in Colorado—a  move that was conceived of by, well, me.

Although I still feel as though New Mexico has captured my heart forever, our migration north was motivated by many factors: affordability, education, the chance to garden again. Though I looked forward to the move, I was also apprehensive about uprooting in the middle of working on my story collection. Would the move negatively impact my writing?

The short answer is—yes, it did. Focusing on paint chips, settling Lu into her new school and unpacking all worked against me as I tried in vain to pick up where I’d left off. When I finally did have time to write, I loathed the pages I produced and despaired of writing anything decent ever again.

Still, I wrote. And wrote and wrote and wrote. I crumpled pages, cursed my computer and took up writing on Lucy’s old portable typewriter, just to see if it would help. The surprising thing was, it did! For me, staring at a blank page on a typewriter is far less intimidating than sitting in front of a blank computer screen. For the first time in months, I felt I had the freedom to make mistakes, to take bigger risks, to start over after getting lost in blind alleys. For a few days I pounded out the beginning of a new draft, then took the work upstairs to my computer for completion. Words flowed. I was amazed.

All of this has made me wonder about the creative process, the shifts in consciousness that have developed as we make technological gains. For now, I’m okay back on the computer. But part of me wonders: should I stick to the typewriter? What do you think? Are there any non-computer tricks you use to get back on track?

The other day I was notified I received a scholarship to this year’s Squaw Valley Conference. I’m absolutely honored and thrilled, and can’t wait to get there. I have a lot of work to do in the meantime — writing new material, polishing the old stuff. My intent is to carry with me the best I can do; I hope I succeed.

Santa Fe is a great place to live if you’re a writer! It seems every other day I meet someone who’s writing, has written, or is planning on writing something. The other day in spin class I learned my teacher edited the papers for the Mark Twain autobiography recently published!

We’ve been here a year and a half now, and I couldn’t feel more blessed. I love this community and all the friends we’ve made; I love that my part time job at the Rotary Club led to a great friendship with a writer who’s now 1/4 of the writing group we started.

Most of all, I love the great thinking-time long walks in the high desert afford, where the view of the mountains is constantly changing. Yes, it’s dry. And windy. And cold in the winter. But I’ve come to learn that living in a harsh climate fuels my creativity–this morning I wrote a micro-fiction about a little girl hunting Easter eggs while her mother gathers up the bloodied remains of a rabbit killed by coyotes. I have high hopes for it, and the life we’ve made here in New Mexico.

My story “The Ugliest Drowned Man in the World Washes Ashore Lake Michigan” was selected as a storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Story of 2009.  I’m so thrilled! I’d also like to thank the lovely Roxane Gay at PANK, for the nomination.

As Howard Junker likes to say every time he rejects me, onward, upward!