Good morning, friends. I have fed the cats, taken my monthly shower (and daily meds), and am ready to share with you some recent developments. I’ll try to keep this quick.
Firstly, there are two new publications out there who are kind enough to include my work. The first is the Forge, who have published several of my stories over the years and have been hugely supportive of my work. This time around is a flash fiction piece called “All of Us”—a finalist for their annual short story award—but if you dig through their archive, you can also read “Perfect Water Aglow” and “Mascara,” which each include interviews with their founding editor. The second publication is the anthology Best Small Fictions 2025, which includes my micro fiction “Pristine” (originally published in Notch). It was an honor to be recognized by each of these publications. I hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.
Secondly, in just a few weeks, a new Plaster Cramp EP will land. XI: White Circle is a continuation/shadow companion to last year’s X: Ultramarine, containing alternate arrangements of the forebear’s songs as well as a pair of brand-new tunes. The artwork for the album is a detail from a small sculpture by Terry Conrad, an old college friend and a phenomenal artist in his own right. Terry and I will be sharing more collaborative work soon, but until then, I hope you take a peek at White Circle’s lead single “Your Foolish Skin” and let us know what you think. It’s a digital-only release set to go live on numerous online shops and streaming services on March 26th, but you can pre-order the album on Bandcamp orpre-save on Spotify now and receive notice the moment the full EP becomes available.
Thirdly, on March 12th, my partner Genevieve and I will each be sharing work at the Food Collider event at Pizza by Alex in Biddeford. Doors are at 5PM with readings/performances starting at 6 PM. For more information and tickets, click here.
Fourthly, my long-form interview on Scott Sell’s Random Rules radio show has been archived and available for streaming.
And finally: over the years, many people have asked how best to purchase my books, and I’ve almost always reverted to useless shyness, garbling something vague and unhelpful. It was recently made clear to me, though, that my reticence to say “buy this here” was helping exactly no one. The truth is, there is no single simple answer because there is no single type of publisher I work with, which can get confusing. So let me make this easy. For my more traditionally published works, buy through Bookshop.org, which has the best profit sharing for me, the publisher, and independent bookshops. For more subversive work, buy directly from Publication Studios, as they are the ones who most often indulge my weirder impulses. For self-published reprints of White Horses and The Opposite of Prayer, buy directly from Blurb. You can also request my books through your local library. But if you can help it at all, do not buy from Amazon. I hope this is helpful, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re a champ, and I thank you. The world is especially terrifying right now without any signs that it’ll likely soon abate, so be kind to one another, look out for one another, and with inner-fortitude and the strength of community, we’ll survive this shit show.
Douglas W. Milliken 