Tabitha Nostrand resides in a small farming community near the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, with her partner, three cats, four dogs, a jackrabbit, and a stoat (look it up). Her day job involves repairing tractor engines. Her night job involves her partner, Glenda. Her new novella, The Sweet Dark Envelope, will appear this fall in the Androgyrotic 6 anthology from Northern Mascot Press.

Every weekend, I go to my favorite coffee shop for writing time. I hate driving there – it’s only two miles and comes with a residual guilt of being lazy, wasting gas and adding to our carbon footprint. Still, two miles is a long walk and time consuming because of all the major roads.

So I bought a bike. I figured this was a fantastic solution – I checked online and it should only take about fifteen minutes to bike up. There’s no pollution involved and this would be an excellent source of exercise. Needless to say, I was thrilled with my decision and was looking forward to incorporating this bike ride into my writing schedule.

Contrary to popular belief, and also cartoons, ants do not ruin picnics. Mosquitoes do. Ants try to eat your food, but mosquitoes try to eat YOU, which is a whole lot worse. Where I live, the summers are pretty humid, and mosquitoes rule the night, and also the evening, and also the better part of the afternoon. Its hard to enjoy the outdoors when your children are being drained of what little blood they have.

We are happy to report that Fitted City made record-breaking sales this year. In particular, we are seeing a massive response to our themed accessories, t-shirts, and especially what we’ve designated as “non-essential, mid-value sub-cultural capital”. Our MVPs this year are the steadfast ironic mustache, the labbit, and the YOLO curio. However, our continued success depends on trend forecasting. Our research team, after much procrastinating and some afternoons dedicated to “just figuring things out in their lives, y’know?”, have come up with the following thematic clusters that ID the latest hipster cachets for 2014/2015.

During the course of our lives, we’re introduced to the people who make up the world around us. From birth, we get to know and love our family, and, if our personality isn’t that of a curmudgeonly old man, we’re lucky enough to find friends whom we care deeply for. These relationships grow and blossom for years to come, but those who you’ve trusted to not poison your meals will inevitably succumb to death.