Blog — david estringel

Well, it is now 2024 and a new year of writing and magazine editing lay before me. Exciting. Scary. Potentially the stuff nervous breakdowns are made of. Regardless, I am optimistic. I can’t really look ahead without taking stock of 2023, however. Luckily, last year was a great year for publication, with acceptances from Cowboy Jamboree and Literary Heist, two lit pubs that I have always wanted to get into, as well as three chapbooks and my latest poetry collection Blind Turns in the Kitchen Sink (Anxiety Press). Last year was also a first with the publication of poetry, fiction, AND nonfiction. While I have historically focused more on poetry, I am kinda digging prose at the moment and plan on focusing on that for a while. Once in a while, poems do come through and I, of course, will jump on them when opportunities present themselves (I don’t want those muscles to atrophy), but I started out wanting to write short stories, so I am going down the road less traveled.

We’ll see how it goes.

So, as we approach 2024, taking stock of days gone by and making mental lists of what to keep and what to ditch will be a pretty commonplace activity. Given this, I have decided to start fresh with a new website. While I am quite emotionally attached to davidaestringel.com, I would be the first to admit that it has evolved (devolved) into a hot mess of creative sprawl.

The new site is much cleaner, and the organization much tighter, so navigating it will be way simpler than before. Plus, it is oh-so sleek and sexy. Take that, 2023!

So, feel free to navigate the site and take a look around. I update regularly, so the info you see should be pretty up-to-date.

Another change is the long-time-coming launch of The Argyle Literary Magazine, my new lit mag. That “bad boy” has been in the works since 2020 (the idea since 2018), but life has thrown more than a fair share of challenges my way that have put a stopper in that plan time and time again, including the death of two parents, three dogs, multiple bouts of financial messiness, the COVID pandemic and subsequent lockdown, six job changes, and teaching English and composition to high school students and college freshmen (the last one hold potential to be the most traumatic). Regardless of all the drama, the time to launch The Argyle has finally come, and I couldn’t be happier. I am currently in the process of curating the inaugural issue and am having quite a hoot. I have a talented line-up so far, so we will see how that goes.