Hello, Friends: 

Fall is just around the corner (trust me, it’s still technically summer, but I want it just as bad as you do). Pumpkin Spice Lattes are readily available, which means snarky tweets about hating on PSL are being met with tweets about how PSL are fine and everyone needs to calm down, sweaters are coming back for their time in the spotlight, and I am counting down the days until I can decorate for Halloween without seeming too OTT. Autumn in SoCal is still something I am not quite used to; I rarely miss Massachusetts, but there is something about cardigans and boots and that unique smell of fallen leaves and firewood and crisp air that makes me long to to be eighteen again, marching through campus at Salem State University, drinking a hot cocoa from Dunkin Donuts.

Lately, I have been trying to keep my brain as relaxed as possible, as I am pregnant and exhausted all the time and really my energy and patience is at an all time low. I have been cooking again and watching a lot of tv, from The Great British Baking Show to GLOW to Pose to Castle Rock to a maybe ill-advised rewatch of the fourth season of Bojack Horseman. I find myself unable to deal with the harsh realities of real life: this country, social media trolls, real life drama. So, I refuse to for now. And that’s ok— we all know our limits, and The Great British Baking Show is probably not going to harass me across multiple social media platforms. I mean maybe it will— Paul Hollywood seems sort of intense.

There are changes afoot at Drunk Monkeys. First, I want to welcome Ashley Perez to our fiction team! She will be helping April Jones vet your amazing stories. Ashley is an incredibly supportive and loving force in the literary community in Los Angeles and beyond, and we are psyched to have her with us. Hi, Ashley, hello! 

We’re also debuting our fundraiser this month. The link is not live as of this writing, because, honestly, dear reader, I am in pregnancy hell, where I have the attention span of a goldfish.  But today’s Labor Day, anyway, and I refuse to make you read a fundraiser when you’re (hopefully) relaxing on what I am going to assume is a well- deserved day off. Check our social media accounts on the 7th. I assure you we’ll let you know when it’s rolling. This fundraiser will allow us a year of paying our contributors for 2019, which is a main goal of ours. With your help, we will be able to focus on making payment a priority for our writers while working to get our ducks in a row in a fancy self- sustaining sense. 

The year is winding down, and what a year it’s been so far. What a year it will continue to be. As always, I wish you peace and love and good writing vibes, snuggly autumn blankets, warm cider, nice candles, soups and stews, fall feelings, and a sense that you are an important part of the literary world. 

Best,
Kolleen Carney Hoepfner