February: We celebrated Valentine’s Day for the last time in our old Benson home and prepared to move across midtown to Dundee.March: My novel excerpt “River Ward, 1917” was accepted for publication in Boulevard; “The Approximate End of the World,” which was previously published in Boulevard, was noted in the Thirty Other Distinguished Stories section of New Stories from the Midwest 2012.April: While a freak snowstorm hit Omaha, Nicole and I were off in Los Angeles soaking up the sun in Echo Park; another excerpt from the novel, “The Hyphenates of Jackson County,” was a finalist in the Summer Literary Seminars Unified Literary Contest, but did not take home a prize.May: The list of upcoming fellows at Akademie Schloss Solitude was announced, which means a good chunk of my 2014 will be spent in Stuttgart, Germany; I was also profiled in Creighton University’s Alumni Spotlight feature, since, you know, I’m so distinguished and what not.June: A short story, “Shame Cycle,” was accepted for publication by Gargoyle, which should be out in June 2014; the novel-in-progress was long-listed for Inkubate’s Literary Blockbuster Challenge; I offered some summer reading recommendations via The Kenyon Review.July/August: Things slowed down midsummer, but we piloted a pontoon boat around the Ozarks and went to a baseball game in Kansas City.September: A trip to Chicago with the girls; began taking some writing classes at the new MFA program of Creighton University.November: “Impertinent, Triumphant” was accepted for publication by Five Chapters–look for that in March; I won the Marianne Russo Award from the Key West Literary Seminar and will be there for eleven days next month.Happy holidays! Here’s hoping everyone has a rewarding and profitable 2014. And that we’ll hold everything together during what promises to be a busy, stressful, lonely, and amazing year.
Theodore Wheeler 