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Category: Publication Announcements

  • Colored Chalk: Issue Six – Waking Up Strange

    Colored Chalk: Issue Six – Waking Up Strange

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    Shit! As a word-smith I would normally attempt to describe my elation with greater pungency. But…shit! Co-editor, Richard Thomas, has taken this new issue of Colored Chalk, theme: Waking Up Strange, and exceeded all expectations. So…shit!

    coloredchalk_issue6coverNot only has he designed a stunning issue, but he has also managed to corral stories by some of the best writers around. I won’t ask his secret, for fear of being an accomplice to something. Look at this list:
    Joe Meno (whose collection “Demons in the Spring” is a finalist for the fifth annual Story Prize for outstanding short fiction), Joey Goebel (author of the fantastic “Torture the Artist” as well as last year’s “Commonwealth”), Rayo Casablanca, author of the forthcoming “Very Mercenary,” follow-up to last year’s “6 Sick Hipsters”), Alex Cassun, William T. Allen, Axel Taiari, Christopher Dwyer, Craig Wallwork, Nik Korpon, Joe Dornich, Jeff Macfee, Richard Martin, Edward J. Rathke, Chris Deal, Simon West-Bulford, and sadly, Caleb J. Ross.

    As always, the issue can be viewed online and can also be printed and stapled for local or distant distribution, depending on your shipping budget.

    Issue Six theme: Waking Up Strange:

    IS IT A FELONY OR JUST A BAD DECISION?

    There are a lot of different scenarios. Most of them involve a drink of some kind, and often an illicit substance or two. Or three. Quite possibly it could be a good idea gone bad. Horribly wrong. Then again, maybe it was that affair you’ve been waiting years to have, the right combination of music and eye contact. Hopefully it doesn’t involve losing a major organ.

    It is disorientation, a familiar moment in a strange new setting. Groggy and tired, your vision is laced with gauze, your head packed thick with cotton.

    Run, run as fast as you can, get out of here now. It isn’t safe. For the love of God RUN.

    Wait. Stay. Her eyes are pleading, her mask, believable.

    The writers in this issue of Colored Chalk all address this theme in one fashion or another. And whether they are literally waking, living their life as if in a dream, or rubbing their tired orbs in disbelief at what they see, all have one thing in common. The writing is strong, and the moment is alive on the page for you to embrace.

    My story, “The E!Morphosis,” might require a bit of direction, so, an author’s statement:

    Much less serious than most of my stuff. This “story” has a cautionary tale veneer, filled out by satirical stuffing. Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” serves as the inspiration. The rest is just humor. Sad humor, as it usually is.

    A helpful glossary. Come back to it once you read the story:
    E! – Television channel dedicated to news of the entertainment industry. Celebrity gossip and top ten lists abound. (31.2 Million subscribers – source: fundinguniverse.com)

    Samantha Gregory – Not a real person. Though how many references are? How many referents, for that matter?

    Us Weekly – A tabloid gossip magazine. Often purchased by The Hills fans. (1.03 million subscribers as of June 2008 – source: ABC Publisher’s Statements June 2004–December 2008)

    The Hills – A MTV scripted reality TV show in which producers attempt to portray rich people dealing with everyday rich problems. These problems include vacation dilemmas, and how best to juggle work, school, and partying. (4.8 million viewers for the Season 3 premier – source: etonline.com; 2.7 million viewers watch The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS – source: weta.org)

    Axe – Aerosol body spray intended to unite date rapists with date rapees. Scents include Enygmata, Phoenix, and X-Treme High Five. ($71 million in annual sales – source: allbusiness.com)

    Axe-wraith – Alternate moniker for the above-mentioned date rapist

    Cosmo – Abbreviation for Cosmopolitan. A cocktail made popular by a television show called Sex in the City.

    Who looks better in the $5,000 dress? – A reference to a fashion column popular in tabloid magazines such as Us Weekly in which two celebrities caught wearing similar outfits are judged harshly in order to determine the next social pariah. Similar in concept to Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” but with more devastating consequences.

    PerezHilton.com – A website dedicated to celebrity worship and crucifixion. (3.2 million page views per day; MSNBC.com gets 65 thousand page views per day – source: statbrain.com)

    Ashton Kutcher – Ashton Kutcher, movie star and creator of a hidden camera show called Punk’d in which celebrities are the subject of practical jokes.

    To all you writers out there check out the Colored Chalk homepage for guidelines and information on the issue 7 theme: Maguffins for Hire.

  • Red Formaldehyde, the most delicious kind

    Red Formaldehyde, the most delicious kind

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    Another fine yarn from ye olde Caleb J Ross takes valuable web space away from more needy charities. This one, an excerpt from my unpublished novel, Stranger Will, is called Formaldehyde and appears at the never disappointing Red Fez.

    Formaldehyde is a bastardized version of the opening chapter of Stranger Will, very much pulled apart and reassembled into something with its own horrible intentions. This is all to say that if you don’t like this story, then you may still love Stranger Will. However, if you do love this story then I take back what I said above; this story is exactly like the rest of the novel.

  • The Dust and the Brush Meet

    The Dust and the Brush Meet

    banner_gdThe new issue of UK’s Gold Dust Magazine is available for sale. Also as a free .PDF download. Acquire by any means necessary.

    gd14Featuring fiction by Alan Kelly, Jim Meirose, Robert Edward Sullivan, Robert Dando, the always impressive Christopher J. Dwyer, the always disappointing Caleb J Ross, THE Richard Thomas, V Ulea, Sam Szanto, and the get-your-autographs-now-because-he-will-be-dead-(and-famous)-someday Nik Korpon. Also, crammed inside is an interview with China Miéville.

    I’m so damn happy to share page space with names like these.

    And now for the self-petting portion of the post. Author’s notes:

    I’ve long been interested in the artist’s (in this case, writer’s) lack of control once a piece has its frame and audience (in this case, its binding and reader). The audience truly has more control over a work of art, writing, whatever, than the creator. A jury of our peers, sort of thing. Authorial intent is important for the sanity of the artist, but intent often doesn’t matter to the audience, sadly.

    What is more important, the concept or the finished product? Don’t know. “Vertigo Unbalanced” explores this idea with an artist protagonist who is obsessed with correcting his painting (to represent his viewpoint as changed since the painting’s creation) even after it hangs on a gallery wall. The original draft had an explosion. I’d tell you why I took it out, but who cares?

  • Colored Chalk: Issue Five – Sins of the Father

    Colored Chalk: Issue Five – Sins of the Father

    banner_fathersonIssue Five of the Colored Chalk zine looms. Kidding. It’s here.

    coloredchalk_issue5coverI don’t want to blow too many minds here, but this issue has some fantastic writing by some fantastic writers (and one shitty writer named Caleb Ross).

    Do we have Peter Schwartz? Yep. Richard Thomas? Certainly. Alex Martin? Definitely. Michael Morey? Let me check…yes. Stephen Graham Jones? Come again? Stephen Graham Jones! Absolutely! Colin McKay Miller? Si. Edward J Rathke? Right. Jason Heim? Affirmative. Charles King? Beautifully. Nik Korpon? In all his glory.

    Don’t forget, Colored Chalk can be viewed online, but it can also be printed and stapled for local distribution. Perfect for coffee shops and nursing homes.

    Issue Five theme: Sins of the Father:

    The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son a thousand times. Of all the false echoes and random bits and pieces of broken verse and mangled axioms that were sunk into my head long ago by an Episcopal Sunday school teacher, this one was far and away the most ominous. I’m confident that some version of the line found its way into a Clint Eastwood movie or two, and was muttered grimly by Clint immediately after hawking out a black stream of tobacco juice, and just prior to putting a bullet between somebody’s eyes. The sins of the father… good God. I have lain awake a few nights thinking about that one. My own father is a good and just man but he does have a dark side, not so dark as some but darker than others. I was never privy to all his misdeeds, but from the stories he told, his had been a wild and reckless youth. Maybe some payback was coming my way and I didn’t even know it…

    So begins an essay by author Will Christopher Baer (Phineas Poe Trilogy). Baer is an intense writer, so it comes as no surprise that his thoughts on fatherhood would be so raw and visceral.

    This month, Colored Chalk examines fatherhood through the lens of sin: alcohol, drugs, murder, anger, violence, indifference, and love.

    To all you writers out there check out the Colored Chalk homepage for guidelines and information on the issue 6 theme: Waking up Strange.

    EDIT: I just received word that a DIY enthusiast dropped a few copies of issue five at Annie Blooms Books in Multnomah Village, (Portland) Oregon. If you spread the word, let me know. I’ll post a link.

  • The Camp moves into the Literary House

    The Camp moves into the Literary House

    The second annual issue of The Literary House Review has just been released. Why should you care? My story, “The Camp,” appears within. That’s why. Never mind that the publication contains 232 pages of genre and non-genre, commercial and literary fiction, along with poems enough to erect a mansion – albeit one inconveniently susceptible to moisture (guess what paper, you make a better art medium than a wall!). Never mind that The Review is available to buy here or here and is archived at New York Public Library, Rockefeller Library at Brown University, RI, and at the University of Wisconsin Madison Library (those are monocle-level smart houses, people). Buy it for “The Camp.”

    Now for the author notes:

    As so many stories begin, “The Camp” was a self-inflicted dare. The concept of “The Camp” is seeded in a desire to explore the horrid through a lens subjectively aimed toward beauty. I told myself that I should write about the hidden beauty in something ugly. How’s The Holocaust for ugly? But truthfully, The Holocaust could have been any tragedy as far as “The Camp” goes (though I would have had to change the title). I wasn’t looking to explore Nazi sympathy; I was simply after finding the pleasant within the unpleasant.

    Read “The Camp” here for free!

  • Snake Girl at 3:AM

    Snake Girl at 3:AM

    I’ve been clicking over to 3:AM Magazine for quite a while now. I can’t remember where I first heard about it (probably from Dogmatika, where I hear about most every great thing in the underground lit scene), so I can’t place praise with full accuracy. However, I can pass on the good word. And what better way to do so than via the news of my own story, “Snake Girl at Scab,” getting some page space.

    Some author notes on the story:

    During my first visit to Portland, Oregon (USA), some locals took us to an event called First Thursdays, a neighborhood art gallery orgy (artgy, if you will) with booths, food, music, and lives to be changed. Most cities have these types of events, but due to a strange encounter involving an emotionless girl carrying a snake, this artgy impacted more than normal.

    The snake girl depicted in this story is accurately described, with absolutely no fiction license taken. When she approached us at First Thursdays, pink lipstick, barefooted, snake in hand, and arm outstretched with requests for money, I was stunned. Granted this is isn’t the strangest thing to have ever happed to me, not by a long shot, but the combination of unfamiliar territory with such a displaced character stayed with me. I want to do more with the snake girl. I’m sure she will turn up in future projects.

    Also, “Snake Girl at Scab” is, in a way, my own sort of scab, patching over a weakness that had been slowly compromising my stories for a while. At the time I wrote this story I had been writing a lot of grotesque stories, forcing visceral imagery and dark situations where perhaps they didn’t belong. Luckily, I’ve aborted these stories so they will never see print. “Snake Girl at Scab” was my way of reconnecting with tried-and-true storytelling.

    Click the link above. Read the story. Then stick around for a bit and check out the rest of the site. I’m serious when I say that 3:AM is an asylum for some of the best underground writers around.

  • Colored Chalk: Issue Four – Big Brother in my Pocket

    Colored Chalk: Issue Four – Big Brother in my Pocket

    Issue Four of the Colored Chalk zine has hit the virtual bookshelves. I swear, this thing just keeps getting better. And I don’t say that as an ego stroke considering I am a co-editor. The proof: I had absolutely nothing to do with this issue.

    This issue contains some fantastic stories by Charles King, Richard Thomas, Jason Kane, Colin McKay Miller, Chris Deal, Michael A. Kechula, Gary Paul Libero, Gavin Pate, Michael Paul Gonzalez, and Tyson Estes.

    As always, the issue can be viewed online and can also be printed and stapled for local distribution. Call it permissible thievery.

    Issue Four theme: Big Brother in my Pocket:

    Surveillance used to be difficult.

    Tracking a person’s every move required a lot of legwork. Following, stalking, tracking, chasing. Exhausting.

    These days, you’ve got digital, got the capability to replicate every letter, every word, every sound, every pixel.

    Record.
    Upload.
    Share.
    Show everyone.
    Tout triumphs.
    Lament setbacks.
    Rant and complain.
    Brag about crimes.

    Monitoring you used to be a challenge, but something changed. Somebody must have promised you something for all your hard work. Promises make people so much more helpful.

    To all you writers out there check out the Colored Chalk homepage for guidelines and information on the issue 5 theme: Sins of the Father. This theme spawns from an essay of the same title by brilliant writer Will Christopher Baer.