AMBER BUDD – Author

With only a few weeks left in my current (and final) semester of undergraduate, I’ve been spending the majority of my time finishing up large projects and preparing for graduation in early May. As such, it will likely be a couple of weeks before I am able to put up another book review. There are just a few too many things to keep track of at the moment for me to provide any useful reviews, but the reviews will return once things get a little less exciting around here. Between my college graduation (and Honors Academy graduation, which is a separate event), one of my cousins’ high school graduation, and the other cousin’s confirmation, our family has a busy month ahead.

After graduation, I’ll be taking a break from school during the summer. I was accepted into Lindenwood University’s MFA Writing program, so I want to have a brief breather before that begins in the fall. The thesis for the program is to write a complete novel, and I’m planning on using the summer to write some more short stories/flash fiction and begin planning a couple of potential novel ideas to use for my thesis. In theory, I should only need one novel idea. But I always like to have a few backup options, just in case one doesn’t work out – especially when it comes to my MFA thesis.

Onto the actual writing updates. Because of a publishing class that I’m taking this semester, I’ve been submitting to a large number of literary journals and magazines as part of the class requirements. As of right now, four of my short pieces have been accepted by various journals, and a longer sci-fi story that I wrote as my undergraduate capstone project won Lindenwood’s undergraduate creative writing award and will be published in the university’s undergraduate journal. All (or most) of the pieces should be available to read within the next month and a half, so I will talk more about those once they’re actually published. Until then, I’m going to keep writing/submitting pieces and making notes for book reviews to share with you all in the near future!