Publication Announcements Archives » Page 3 of 11

Vertigo Unbalanced is now available to read FOR FREE in the new Nova Parade anthology from Solarcide Magazine

July 2, 2012

The guys at Solarcide do wonderful work. One could argue that I say this only because they've been kind enough to interview me about, among other things, my penchant for domestic grotesque fiction. That One doing the arguing would be wrong, however, as Solarcide has been a refuge for great literary content for long before I tainted them with my talk of familial morbidity. Solarcide extends their great work into the world of anthologies with the publication of Nova Parade, a FREE .pdf download collection of stories from some fantastic writers, many of whom I shared space with in the Warmed and Bound anthology, in addition to Nova Parade (my story "Vertigo Unbalanced" appears in Nova Parade). Here's a table of contents for you. Click over to Solarcide to download the free collection. Richard Thomas – On A Bent Nail Head Martin Garrity - Walking On Water Bryan Howie –…

Why You Will Never Stop Reading Books by that Shitty Author You Secretly Love

May 11, 2012

Extree, extree, this just in, Caleb tells you why you may have shitty taste in books. New article at Slothrop.com just went live, titled "Why You Will Never Stop Reading Books by that Shitty Author You Secretly Love." A taste: My goal here, it would seem, is to strip away the magic and aesthetic pleasure from the reading experience until all that remains is a conscious system of if/thens made to cultivate so much data and worry that you’d be better to build an apocalypse bunker, devoid of all text, than to crease the spine of a highly anticipated blockbuster from James Patterson (though, you’d be wise to avoid the latter no matter my intentions with this blog post). Yes, it seems that way. But no. Rather, it is important to understand the very basics of the free will argument if we are to at all suppose books as a unique…

The Author Who Gets Free Drinks: a (Hopefully) True Story, live (again) at Broken Piano for President

May 3, 2012

Patrick Wensink kindly re-posted my short essay thing "The Author Who Gets Free Drinks: A (Hopefully) True Story," over at his blog, Broken Piano for President, which not coincidentally is the title of his recently released book. Head over to the site, take in the story. It's about Tom Waits, free drinks, and Southwest Airlines. Here's a lick: This is the already true part: in June of 2008 I stood on a beach in San Diego wearing a full suit, paying more attention to my watch than to the ocean in front of me. For a boy from Kansas City, where the largest body of water might be a wort vessel at the Boulevard Brewery, this transposed priority says a lot. I had a flight, and as always, the airline schedule superseded any perceived relaxation. And it’s especially hard to relax when, with my suit beachwear I looked the part of a…

Writer’s Block is Just an Excuse for Broken Storytelling

April 26, 2012

Just live, late, late last night, a new post over at Phil Jourdan's Slothrop blog. Writer’s block has nothing to do with motivation (if the story is working, you’ll have plenty of motivation). It has nothing to do with a weak plot (plenty of great books are weak on plot; The Great Gatsby is “guy moves into a house next to rich guy”…that’s about it). It has nothing to do with your own seemingly problematic writing environment (Chuck Palahniuk wrote Choke while bound up in a hospital bed; you aren’t allowed to complain). Most of the time writer’s block is simply your brain’s reaction to a weakness in your story. Head over to Slothrop to read the post. Leave a comment. Let Phil know how much you love the article. Maybe he will have me back. Also, as a bonus, this article can act as a glimpse of what I’ll be teaching for June’s Tallgrass…

Writing a Book Doesn’t Make You an Author

April 14, 2012

The first of my hopefully long-running contributions to Phil Jourdan's Slothrop blog is now live. The title, Writing a Book Doesn't Make You an Author, isn't meant only to be an attention grabber, but is actually true. I know, truth, right. Here's a taste: The role of author has transformed almost as drastically as has media distribution support system. Authors can no longer be expected to simply produce content. Anyone with $10, a manuscript, and access to the internet can get a book listed on Amazon within minutes. Rather, the role of the author is to be an active, participating member of a book-loving community—by both consuming and creating content—and most importantly by legitimizing the importance of the literary community itself to those who may not be a part of it. Head over to Slothrop to read the post. Leave a comment. Let Phil know how much you love the…

Brand new story, “Different People Entirely” in the Ice Picks anthology. Horror? Yep.

April 1, 2012

When anthology editor S.S Michaels approached me last year about contributing a story to the Ice Picks: Most Chilling Stories from the Ice Plaza anthology, I hesitated for a moment. I never thought of what I write as horror. Grotesque? Sure. Morbid? Sometimes. Horror? No. But the more I thought about it, the more I accepted that a stretched definition of horror (never mind that I didn't even consider a narrow definition at all) could very well encompass my work. Other people have thought of my work as horror, so I broke down and thought of the solicitation as a challenge. I came up with "Different People Entirely," a story of a breaking family that embarks on a vacation to the Ice Hotel in Scandinavia. How does the family fare? Read for yourself. The anthology contains stories from the following authors: Jeremy C. Shipp Caleb J. Ross Robert R. Best David…

New short story available at Amazon.com, “The Lipidopterist.” Man collects human lips. Ex-wife wants half of his collection.

March 9, 2012

It has been a while since I've had a short story to whore out to the world. While I've been busy bombarding poor souls with news of my 3 recent book releases, I haven't had much to say in the way of short stories since...well, since September, if you can count my non-fiction piece "Denis Johnson Almost Drank My Pee" as a short story at Dark Sky (though "short story" implies fiction, and the Dark Sky piece isn't). Anyway, my story "The Lipidopterist" is now available as a Kindle story over at Amazon.com. I recently read this story in St. Louis at the Meshuggah Cafe. The reactions were quite good, I must say. I believe it is also part of the Kindle lending library thing, or at least will be shortly. Still, though, it's only $0.99. Fork over the coins! Available now from the fake publisher Viscera Irrational. Buy. Read.