Hello, friends!

Once again we must beg your forgiveness for the prolonged absence. We’ve been busy in our “real” lives doing “work” for “money.” Such crazy times we live in!

Nonetheless, we thought we’d drop by to share some exciting news with you. First up, the truth must be told: We are a human person! Yes, despite the fact we consistently refer to ourselves in the first-person plural, we are a single, individual human person. We have a name. That name is “Marie Kare.”

Why share this information now or at all? It pertains to another piece of news: This Marie person entered our first book into the Robert and Adele Schiff Contest for Poetry and Prose. To our utter shock, our submission fared surprisingly well, and this Marie person (not “Certain Doom”) was named as a finalist!

We wanted to share our excitement and gratitude over our inclusion but reckoned it necessary to clarify why “Certain Doom” makes no appearance in the finalists’ list. Rest assured, we considered insisting they use “Certain Doom” but chickened out because we are chickens.

Still more news: Though we didn’t win, the folks at the Cincinnati Review liked our writing so much, they requested A DOZEN EXCERPTS to print in their next issue. “Hooray! Hooray!” we cried. And then: “Oh… shit…” Turns out, the fact that we self-published our book disqualifies us from the print publication. We were just too eager to share our nonsense with the world. We made such sad faces when we realized our mistake. Just like this: 😦

All of this brings us to our final, exciting-to-us, but possibly less-exciting-to-you piece of news: The kind folks at the Cincinnati Review are allowing us to submit an altogether new book for consideration and possible inclusion in next year’s Summer issue. Why is this less exciting for you? Well, we are hoping to take several weeks off from posting to the site in order to focus on writing while still doing all that “work” for “money” we mentioned before.

We know this is not ideal. But, we’d need at least two additional asses in order to even half-ass continued posts to the site right now. You deserve better. You deserve a whole ass.

We do hope you’ll understand. If you miss us at all while we’re gone, we will likely make occasional posts to our Instagram. Or, heck, you could always drop us a line!

Thank you so so so so so so much for being terrific and wonderful.

Yours forever,

Certain Doom