Category Archives: Uncategorized

My short story, “Euler’s Identity”, will appear in an upcoming edition of Prime Number Magazine. PNM is published by Press 53, a small press based in Winston-Salem, NC. If you have a moment, please visit both sites.

This is the first piece I have submitted and my first acceptance. Thanks to all who read and commented on the story. Particular thanks to Jamiee Wriston Colbert and Ben Percy.

* Online lit mags are publishing some of the most intriguing writing available today. Every Monday, I post a pointer to a site that offers fiction and/or poetry either as free content or as samples from subscriber issues. Today’s pointer is to Neon.

I really like the visual layout of this site– stark, simple, with intriguing photos.

About Neon:

Neon is a UK-based literary magazine, published online every quarter, and featuring the kind of imaginative, stylised poetry and prose not generally found in British magazines. We focus particularly on the new, the experimental and the strange.

Some themes we are interested in include: isolation, post-modernism, technology, dislocation, apathy, the apocalypse, memory, Kirk Cameron and urban decay.

We have a strong, unique aesthetic that we work hard to maintain. We serve our readers by publishing the best fiction and poetry we can find. We serve our writers by making the submission process as easy and friendly as possible.

*

fiction excerpt from Arijit Sen’s, “Chairman Mao, In Retirement” (I can’t get the formatting right, please follow the link above for proprer layout, my apologies to the poet):

To fill the day Chairman Mao goes on long walks. He buys a gold-tipped cane from a vendor stand, walks leaning heavily on it. He kicks at errant pieces of gravel, imagining the stones are the stars of the universe. He reads The Collected Works of Charles Dickens till he falls asleep in the study each night, head drooping on fleshy chest.

What to do with what remains? Salvage. Adapt. Repurpose. (pt.1 here)

Jewelry made from books. Beautiful.

For anyone interested in tackling the fabled Slushpile:

If you’d like to become an Apex submissions editor, drop me an email (jason at apexbookcompany dot com). Please answer these five questions in your email:

1) What are your all-time favorite Apex Magazine stories and explain why.

2) What is your least favorite Apex Magazine story and explain why.

3) Do you have any prior pertinent experience?

You’ll be expected to evaluate at least 20 stories a week.

Like peanut butter and banana sandwiches, the awesomeness of this combination  seems obvious only in hindsight. I salute your genius, Messrs. Anderson and Stall.

via The L.A. Times:

Zombies plus Trekkies. What could go wrong?

Has the zombiepocalypse ended its undead run on bookstores yet? Not if Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall can help it. They’re the authors of “Night of the Living Trekkies,” in which zombies infect a Star Trek convention. The book comes from Quirk, the same publishing house behind “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”

I’d probably be very confused by a currency not of my nation.  I might also spend it on one of the LIMITED EDITION PUFFIN DESIGNER CLASSICS. The Secret Garden is especially beautiful.

at Puffin Classics:

The Secret Garden
Designed by one of the most celebrated picture book creators of the 21st century, Lauren Child.

Their first (and apparently last) digital issue is the best thing I’ve read on my iPad. Whenever anyone asked me how capable an eReader the iPad was, I would show them VQR. This whole saga is disturbing and very sad.

via the New York Times:

Esteemed Literary Journal Closes Offices After Suicide

The award-winning literary journal The Virginia Quarterly Review has canceled its winter issue and closed its offices in the aftermath of the suicide last month of its managing editor and a subsequent investigation by the University of Virginia, which operates the journal.

According to his family, the editor, Kevin Morrissey, 52, had been the target of bullying by Ted Genoways, the journal’s top editor, who was on leave at the time of Mr. Morrissey’s death. Mr. Genoways has denied the accusations.

via examiner.com:

The 50 best author vs. author put-downs of all time

39. James Jones, according to Ernest Hemingway (1951)

To me he is an enormously skillful f#*&-up and his book will do great damage to our country. Probably I should re-read it again to give you a truer answer. But I do not have to eat an entire bowl of scabs to know they are scabs…I hope he kills himself….

* Online lit mags are publishing some of the most intriguing writing available today. Every Monday, I post a pointer to a site that offers fiction and/or poetry either as free content or as samples from subscriber issues. Today’s pointer is to Twelve Stories.

Another one to add to my bookmarks– quality fiction of various lengths presented in a clean and readable design.

*

via the About page:

WHAT?

Twelve Stories is an online literary journal dedicated to publishing quality short fictions of up to 1,500 words each.

WHY?

Why not? Terrific literary journals abound; and, like them, we value writers and superior writing. Twelve Stories is a place to celebrate these things.

We pride ourselves on our streamlined, story-centered design. Nowhere on this site will you find advertising or much else but a clean portal for what we hope are stories readers can connect with.

*

Fiction excerpt from Ben Loory’s “The Shield: A Fable”:

A man and his wife are walking through a museum when the man sees a shield on the wall. Look at that! he says. Isn’t that remarkable?

The two of them walk a little closer.

What’s so remarkable about it? says his wife.

Well, the workmanship! says the man. It’s exquisite!

It’s just a shield, says his wife. It’s a big hunk of metal. There’s not even anything painted on it.

Well I think it’s nice, the man says, after a while.

But there isn’t really much more to say.

Still hammering out the 2nd Packet for school. Mild panic, like having a full bladder while driving– you know you’ll get home eventually, but many speed-bumps and potholes lie ahead. To distract the mind, a short story by Colm Tóibín.

via The Guardian:

I have come back here. I can look out and see the soft sky and the faint line of the horizon and the way the light changes over the sea. It is threatening rain. I can sit on this old high chair that I had shipped from a junk store on Market Street and watch the calmness of the sea against the misting sky.

I have come back here. In all the years, I made sure that the electricity bill was paid and the phone remained connected and the place was cleaned and dusted. And the neighbour who took care of things, Rita’s daughter, opened the house for the postman or the courier when I sent books or paintings or photographs I had bought, sometimes by FedEx, as though it were urgent that they would arrive, as I could not.

As I would not.