UPDATE: The contest has ended. My short story, "A Trench is No Place for God," is now live at Nefarious Muse. And not just live, but live as part of the 2008 Nefarious Muse Short Fiction Competition. Please, go to their great fiction site, read the entries, and vote for the best. Of course, I am hoping your vote goes to my story. In case you vote otherwise, realize that I know where you live; thank you IP Address and Google maps. Click on the icon to the left to go straight to the comp homepage. Voting is open until March 14th, so don't miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity to help me win a prize.
Tag Archives fiction
No Record Press has just posted my story, "Car Dodging." More importantly, the editor for No Record Press, Miles Newbold Clark, has written a fantastic novel called None of This Will Do. Now What? which I called, in my Depraved Press review, "one of the best novels of 2007." I know what you are thinking - favors, right? - but know that I didn't even know about None of This Will Do. Now What? until Mr. Clark notified me that my story would appear at No Record. So, read None of This Will Do. Now What?, first. Then, if you have time and energy enough after taking in that true work of art, head over to No Record Press to read my story, "Car Dodging." Here's the author notes on the story: Easily one of the most polarizing intros I’ve ever written. I love this intro, and though it might…
The interview is a rare opportunity to experience the inner workings of a person. Unless that person likes to call himself a writer, then the interview is just old news to those who've read his stories. Fiction can be the ultimate autobiography, though a structured and controlled autobiography it is. Fiction is makeup.So what's a writer to do when he wants to wash away the mascara? He answers some questions in an attempt to categorize his life, similar to the desires of the protagonist in Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea: I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. And like this protagonist the writer understands that "You might as well try and catch time by the tail." Jason Kane and Justin Holt, both writers themselves, were kind enough to pretend I had interesting things to say, to pretend I had a some…
Any form of expression is arguably one committed "under the influence." What we eat, what we say, how we walk—hell, human beings simply walking is really just a biological influence. But historically, for writers, one of the most iconic influences of all time is Absinthe—The Green Muse; a devastating liquor. Everyone from Ernest Hemmingway (his short story "Hills Like White Elephants" comes to mind) to Joey Goebel (with his novel Torture the Artist) has capitalized on the image of Absinthe. What better way to weave my own way into this cultural icon than by way of a lit mag called The Green Muse, with "Refill," a story about a man governed by substance? I suppose a better way would have been for me to actually use the word "Absinthe" somewhere in the story. But I didn't. One of my writing heroes, Denis Johnson, has a few pertinent words on…
Online literary magazines seemed to me for the longest time some form of blasphemy. Not much compares to the tactile and aesthetic appeal of a printed, bound journal. Maybe that sounds a little creepy, but I'm a creepy guy. So when writer and friend Christopher Dwyer posted over at Write Club about this online lit-mag called Dogmatika I wasn't exactly crushing keys to get over there. But call me a convert.Dogmatika was the eye opener. It stands as not only the first online lit-mag that I read with regularity, but also the first I loved so much that I felt compelled to submit my own fiction. Head over to Dogmatika now to read my short-short, "Petty Injuries." Maybe I was a literary snob. Maybe I yearned too much for the prestige that comes with a printed journal. Maybe I was too focused on the canvas, not the art. I think…