alien buddha press

Allison

Green Light: A Backstory

In June 2021, I took part in Jami Attenberg’s 1,000 Words of Summer. I wrote at least 1,000 words per day for two weeks, and those pieces included all nine flash stories that eventually ended up in Green Light: A Gatsby Cycle. (The first few days of writing were something else entirely… but we won’t go there.)

Janet had already found her poems. In fact, her idea of using the first page of each chapter is why I used a sentence from the first page of each chapter to start a flash story. But we didn’t collaborate. It wasn’t until later that we put it all together and realized… hey, this works!

We sent Green Light out into the world—to nine publishers total! The last submission was to Alien Buddha Press. Red loved the book but had never worked with two authors on one project before, so he encouraged us to each submit our own books instead. And we did! (Janet published ghosts passing through and I published Won’t Be By Your Side.) 

However, as the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby grew closer, we knew we needed to get this book out in the world. With all the excitement celebrating that centennial, it would be perfect timing! So we reached out to Alien Buddha Press once more, hoping that Red would be willing to work with us as a duo since he’d worked with us individually. And he agreed! We streamlined things for him (I hope!) and marketed the hell out of the book for six weeks leading up to its publication date of April 10, 2025 – 100 years after the original Gatsby!

Just for fun, here are photos of my original handwritten drafts of the flash in Green Light.

And for even more fun, here are the word counts – then and now:

Chapter 1: 1057, now 738
Chapter 2: 1008, now 729
Chapter 3: 1064, now 694
Chapter 4: 1013, now 700
Chapter 5: 1126, now 732
Chapter 6: 1023, now 714
Chapter 7: 1002, now 705
Chapter 8: 1117, now 712
Chapter 9: 1074, now 668

Allison

Blackout Poetry ala Green Light

Want to find your own poetry from pages of The Great Gatsby just like Janet Dale? She created a PDF of the last page of each chapter of the book so you can find poems.

Instructions and PDF HERE!

Share them with us on social media (or in the comments here, or via DM/email/etc) when you’re done! We’d love to see and share what you create.

Allison

Happy Book Birthday to Green Light: A Gatsby Cycle!

I’m thrilled to announce that Green Light: A Gatsby Cycle, my hybrid chapbook written with Janet Dale, is out today!

Green Light: A Gatsby Cycle offers a striking reimagination of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, told as a collaborative chapbook of found poetry and flash fiction. Using only the first page of each chapter from the novel, Dale and Renner craft a fresh meditation on the classic story—one that explores a boy’s struggle to break free from the place that made him, questioning the very notion of the American Dream.


The authors create a seamless dialogue with Fitzgerald’s work, transforming familiar passages into something entirely new. Each flash fiction piece and poem reflects themes of ambition, yearning, and the pursuit of freedom, while offering a thoughtful exploration of the literary masterpiece.

You can buy a copy directly from me and get it delivered in a shiny green mailer along with a book cover postcard and sticker. 

In the meantime, add it as “Want to Read” on Goodreads and The StoryGraph, then share your thoughts when you’ve read it.

Allison

NEWS! Green Light: A Gatsby Cycle

I’m excited to announce that my second fiction collection is coming out April 10th!

Does that date sound familiar? It might to literary nerds (me) and English majors (also me)—it’s the 100th Anniversary of The Great Gatsby! Since our upcoming book is inspired by that classic, it only seemed fitting to release it on that landmark publication date.

The book is now in public domain, so Janet Dale used the first page of each chapter to create found poetry (aka blackout poetry) and I used a sentence from the first page of each chapter to write an entirely new flash fiction piece.

We’ll share some more insight and glimpses behind-the-scenes in time, but we can’t wait for you to read the finished product in just six short weeks!

Allison

One Year Bookiversary!

It seems very appropriate that my 100th blog post is celebrating one year of my chapbook, Won’t Be By Your Side!

I’m hosting a giveaway on Instagram and Twitter, so check it out and enter to win if you don’t yet have a copy! Entries are open until Wednesday night.

I’m also still sending out signed bookplates, so you can DM me for one of those (no contest/comment required)!

Allison

2022 Writing in Review

Last year, my Writing in Review covered April to December with 44 submissions and 5 acceptances. For coming off an (almost) decade-long drought, that felt pretty good.

This year, I submitted the entire year, with 74 submissions across flash fiction, essays, poetry, and photography. Eight pieces/photographs/chapbooks are still out. I published one poem, 14 photographs, one essay, and 11 flash fiction pieces.

I had a chapter published in the Thirty West #antiwriomo novel, Those Who Scream. I wrote it last November and the book came out in May.

I got my first Best of the Net nomination for my Daily Drunk essay, “Douglas Fir Give Me Heartburn: Exploring the Magic of Christmas Eve on Sesame Street,” published last December.

I got my first Best Microfiction nomination from Atlas and Alice for my flash fiction piece, “No Place Like Home.”

I submitted three different chapbooks or microchaps, and one was accepted and published! Won’t Be By Your Side came out September 23rd and I’m very proud of the stories in that book, along with the cover design, which uses my photograph.

I also designed the cover for my friend Janet Dale’s chapbook, ghosts passing through, which uses another of my photographs.

I also submitted a collaborative chapbook to three places, and it’s still out at one.

I submitted a chapbook pitch to a publisher, which felt amazing even with a rejection because I’ve had this idea bouncing around in my mind since 2011 without any clarity of what to do with it. The pitch pushed me to figure out how to share these ideas, so I hope to work on this project more in 2023.

I also submitted a flash sample to Reflex Press and was accepted to write a piece for their collaborative novella-in-flash. My time will come at the end of February 2023, but I’ve loved getting the pieces in my inbox and letting my imagination run wild with what I might add to this amazing project.

I didn’t keep strict track of the workshops taken, but I think I took 9, either one-off generative workshops or more involved week-long or three-week courses. This is up from… maybe 3 in 2021? I love workshops and feel like I create a lot of material from them, so that’s something I’m going to try and make time for in 2023. I’m already signed up for 3 in the first quarter alone.

I also have other major writing goals for 2023, but since this is a time of reflection over 2022, I’ll recap with a general overview of satisfaction. I feel like I’ve accomplished so much since 2021, and of course the years before that were a desert, so I’m proud of where I am now. I feel like there are still goals to strive for and ways to have fun with my writing instead of always pushing myself to do more.