2011-My year in publishing.

Here's the count: A total of 53. 26 Flash, 25 Poems and 2 works of Non-Fiction plus 50,000 words for "An Angry Therapist's Thursday Appointments" . Here's a chance to read them all and comment on the ones you like. Oh, yeah, the Bruins won the cup. Fear the beard!

FICTION 

"Aspirations" ,  "Action Figures"  Unshod Quills

"Becoming a Couple" ,  Metazen

"Things About Callie" ,  Blue Lake Review

"I Don't Know Who You Are" ,  In Between Altered States

"Home Invasion" ,  Fried Chicken and Coffee

"Fireworks" , Squawk Back #31

"Multiplicity" ,  Midway Journal

"Shooting Them Out" ,  U.M.Ph.!

"Last Call" ,  Curbside Splendor

"Channeling" , "Bipolar"  Red Fez

"A Little Slice Of" ,  not from here, are you?

"A New Life" ,  "What's in the Clouds", "Some Sort of Anonymous Meeting" Thunderclap V 
 
 "Every Day There Is So Much about Elephants" ,  Smokelong Quarterly 31

"Bonfire" ,Prick of the Spindle

"The Recital" ,  "Divided" The Legendary
   

"Not the Stuff of Fairy Tales" ,  RE: Telling
 

"The Things We Have" , In Between Altered States

"They Covered all the Rust Spots with Bumper Stickers" , 1 AM Project Zine  

"The Soul Must Go On" ,  Metazen

"Entertaining Just An Option" , Monkeybicycle

"How to Give Dating Advice as a State Social Worker" ,  JMWW V

POETRY

"often they fall from the sky"
"Exposed"
"Salmon Fishing in Alaska "
Dead Mule School of Southern Literature

"Back In Boston"
"Her Car is Officially Dead"
U.M.Ph.!

" In A Jam"
Truck

" Seasonal Affective Disorder"
Durable Goods 2009-2010 Anthology

" What do Men Want (in response to Kim A)"
Poor Mojos Almanac, #540

"Forgiveness"
"Wait-You Can't Hide It"
 Istanbul Literary Review

"When I'm Drunk I Think About Phoenix"
The Endicott Review Vol. 28, Issue 1.

"An Ocean Inn"
 Bagels with the Bards 6

" Falling For An Attached Woman"
 Referential Magazine

" When you live by yourself"
 Muddy River Poetry Review

"I take my date and her Kid to the Zoo"
"A Circus Memory"
"All That We Ate"
"A Fifth of Scotch"
"Like Moths in the Night"
Curbside Splendor, Volume 1

" When it is Still Winter"
riverbabble 18

"the girl this weekend"
"An Angry Mel Gibson Gets a Dog"
Howls and Pushycats

" The rain is like the Things You Couldn't Stop"
 Wilderness House Literary Review

"The Enabler"
"starting a poem with "sometimes" is really weak"
 Gutter Eloquence

ESSAY AND NON-FICTION

"Dire Series Memories"

 February 9, 2011, The Somerville News: Lyrical Somerville

"My Personal Catelog of Dating Drinkers and Non-Drinkers"
January 31, 2011, Drinking Diaries

Quite a line-up at Unshod Quills: "You're gonna need a bigger sandwich"

The list of contributors and work in December's Unshod Quills is really fantastic (see below). I love a good themed issue, especially when there are many themes. Dena Rash Guzman and Wendy Ellis  set up this issue with the following themes: Love--Coffee--David Bowie--Joan of Arc--Enough Rope--Childhood--Dancing About Architecture.

I have two new pieces in this issue, "Aspirations" and "Action Figures". In "Aspirations" the story involves a struggling individual reflecting on collectables offered at fast food restaurants. Let's not forget my favorite, "He-Man" Cups.

The line, "You're going to need a bigger sandwich" vamps off this.

The second piece, "Action Figures" is a vamp about bendable figurines modeled after literary figures--but, it's really not about that. Check out what the issue's other writers came up with on these themes!

• Contributors

  • A Letter From the Editor
  • Brian Tibbetts
  • Catherine Woodard – Featured Poet
  • David Tomaloff
  • Frank Reardon
  • Gray Brian Thomas
  • Holly Hinkle
  • James H. Duncan – Featured Poet
  • Jason Herzog
  • Jenny Forrester
  • Jenny Hayes
  • Jimmy Burns
  • Joey DAMMIT!
  • Kevin Sampsell
  • Kevin Shea
  • Khadija Anderson
  • M. Kline
  • Matty Byloos
  • Nancy Flynn
  • Robert Meyer
  • Rusty Barnes
  • Ryan Werner
  • Sugahtank John Roubanis – Featured Artist
  • Terry Faust
  • Timothy Gager
  • Valery Petrovsky
  • W.M. Butler
  • x. joloronde

New story in Metazen ---"Becoming a Couple"

I must say, I love Metazen. I think they "get me" and that's no small task.

Editor Christopher Allen selected, "Becoming A Couple", a story about caring, knowing and then
going out of your way for that woman. A fickle person can make something bad out of that, because  there is only one perfect algorithm for the creation of a beautiful relationship but infinite possibilities which can lead to failure. That fickle person doesn't have to look, or work to make up excuses, because any of them will do at the time they are needed.

Writing can be cathartic, at times, but also, at others, communicative. Last August, during a brief open window was when "Becoming A Couple" was produced.

Also of note, Jason Jordan from What to Wear During An Orange Alert was reading it too!

Me and The Circus

F. John Sharp from Right Hand Pointing noticed the circus often pops up in my stories and poems. He's correct, of course and what follows are examples of this :

The following quote is from the "Smoking with Timothy Gager" interview at Smokelong Quarterly

“The opening sentence also chains to the one that follows. I have many friends that champion causes and during the week this was written I'd heard from two about how I could change the life of an elephant by protesting the circus. The circus comes up often in my stories and poems, so off I went. “








Below you can click the links for pieces from where the circus calls me.


"A Wing, A Prayer and A Tall Man" 
 Word Riot

"People Find Comfort in Repetition" 
Poem Hunter 

"Falling For an Attached Woman"  
Referential Magazine

"Every Day There is So Much About Elephants" 
Smokelong Quarterly

"The Soul Must Go On" 
Metazen

"A Circus Memory"
Curbside Splendor

"The Best Interest of the Child"
 Thieves Jargon



From my unpublished novel An Angry Therapist’s Thursday Appointments

A clown cloud is juggling balls. There’s one for work, one for school, one for family. The 
clown drops a ball. Distention happens on its own. The clouds house more of the circus. I 
see Siegfriend and Roy with some white tigers. Is it a mirage because Roy is still whole. 
He was attacked, lived and spoke. “Don’t shoot the cat,” the cloud said. I find myself 
saying that to myself. Don’t shoot the messenger. No one listened to Roy. I’m listening to 
the clouds.

New Blue Lake Review story and A Pushcart Nomination

The Blue Lake Review published for your enjoyment, Things About Callie, one of those ditties that if I have to explain, it's just not funny.

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Across the continent "Back in Boston" was nominated by U.M.Ph.! for a Pushcart Prize.

 I totally appreciate the nomination from the hard working and talented, Mignon Ariel King. It tells the story of traveling to places and seeing people whom now seem to be as far away as one can possible be.

Back in Boston

 It’s been raining every day:
smacks down onto sidewalks,
roads that seem more curved
than before, falling loud
the run off has been brutal,
you’ve soaked me once more.

I hear bits of conversation
from the homeless
huddled in doorways
one turns to another,
“A standing poodle is a substantial dog.”

and the force of this storm
hits a woman’s plastic bag,
which covers a wedding dress,
like a snare drum,

and a man turns to his wife,
says, “I hope it stops soon,”
but she can’t hear him
say, I need you
in my life, I love you.
as a door is held open
for her,

and it falls even harder, for me,
the world washes away,
the weather, fine
over where you are--

the sun brightly shines.

------------------------

I actually do know who you are, and where you are from.

My flash piece, I Don't Know Who You Are, appears today in In Between Altered States-19, (the theme of which was denial).

Aleathia Drehmer runs the show both there and at Durable Goods,a printed micro-zine. My story is an excerpt of my unsigned novel, An Angry Therapist's Thursday Appointments. Ethan is one of the characters found within, whose struggles are met often with denial. All I can say about Ethan is this: The kid is going to be a real heartbreaker.

If you are interested in the background of The Who in Cincinnati tragedy, check the link out HERE. Check out the other fine and dark work of Len Kuntz, Shawn Misener, Kevin Ridgeway, Michael Goscinski, Cheryl Ann Gardner, Josh Olsen and Calvin Fantone in this issue.

At Rumored.com, A Holiday Book List with some great unsung authors

Jon Konrath, author of A Fistful of Pizza, and editor/publisher at Air in the Paragraph Line, offers up a list of books for the Holidays, which includes Treating a Sick Animal: Flash and Micro Fictions.  So, ho, ho, ho....






I've copied and pasted his text below but if you care for his posting, it is found HERE
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Your Holiday Shopping List, Should You Choose To Accept It

Posted on November 18, 2011 by jkonrath

It’s almost Christmas!  Or it’s almost Hanukkah, and maybe it’s almost Kwanzaa (not sure), and it’s definitely almost the Firestorm, if you worship Satan.  But it’s definitely that time of year where you spend your hard earned money on carefully thought-out presents for all of your family, and maybe get a fruit basket in return.  And a week from today, the criminally insane will converge on local big box stores to beat the shit out of each other to get a crappy DVD player made by slave labor in China out of toxic plastic, that will work for roughly 37 minutes before exploding.

So, you looking for some gifts that aren’t made by children in sweatshops that might actually promote an artist and maybe make a person think?  How about some books?  Here’s my list of books I’ve read lately that aren’t big-6 published, written by people without a massive marketing budget:

• Small Town Punk by John Sheppard – This is probably one of the best self-published books I’ve ever read.  All of John’s stuff is awesome, and maybe I’m biased because I published Tales of the Peacetime Army.  Make sure to get the original 2002 edition, and not the 1997 abortion. (It’s not in print, but there are many copies floating around for $5, which is the best five bucks you could possibly spend.)

• Mostly Redneck by Rusty Barnes – I only know him as a friend-of-friend through Timothy Gager, which was enough for me to put down the cash.  This is 18 short stories of hard living in rural Appalachia, and each one is so precisely crafted, with absolutely no waste.  He’s got a way of really haunting you, getting something wedged very deep in your head in a thousand words.  Great stuff.

• Treating a Sick Animal by Timothy Gager – Speaking of, check out Gager’s latest collection of flash fiction.  It contains 40-some shorter pieces, each just as lethal as the last.  What’s even more amazing than the quality of his writing is the tremendous speed at which he turns out this precision work.  He’s probably written four stories better than anything I’ve ever done in the time it takes me to finish this post.

• How Some People Like Their Eggs by Sean Lovelace – Lovelace is a writer in Indiana (he teaches at my sister’s alma mater of Ball State) and he has a blog that almost entirely talks about nachos.  There’s two things I like about this chapbook, aside from the quality of the prose.  One is that Lovelace has a way of coming up with very unique forms, twisting and clever structures that make me think, “god DAMN why didn’t I do that?”  (Example: the titular piece is a list of how famous people like their eggs.)  The other thing I like is that this is a real damn chapbook: a carefully designed, really printed on quality paper chapbook.  It’s not just a POD 6×9 trade paperback, which is awesome.

• Johnny Astronaut by Rory Carmichael and I, An Actress: The Autobiography of Karen Jamey by Jeffrey Dinsmore – These are both kindle reissues of the Awkward Press editor’s earlier novels.  He’s added bonus materials to both, and priced them at 99 cents each, so they’re well worth the look.

• Between Panic and Desire by Dinty W. Moore – This is truly awesome creative nonfiction, the telling of a person’s life in hilarious autobiographical sketches, knitted together in a way that tells more than the whole story, and then breaks to throw in some quiz questions or go off on a different tangent.  It’s like a mix of Vonnegut at his best, but replace the aliens with tripping acid at the top of the World Trade Center.

• Powering the Devil’s Circus, Redux by Jason Jordan – A collection from the editor of decomP, this is a dozen stories and a novella of experimental work, with plenty of mention of metal, which I of course like.

• Tomorrowland by Grant Bailie – The UPS guy literally showed up with this one as I was typing this post.  It’s a collection of interwoven stories, and looks promising.  I loved his books Cloud 8 and Mortarville, so this looks awesome.

• Fistful of Pizza by Jon Konrath – Most importantly, buy my damn book!  Nine twisted stories, and it’s only 99 cents on the kindle.  Break in that new Kindle Fire by reading about a parody of the Ben Hur chariot race, filmed with small breed dogs around a set designed like a 1970s Times Square filled with heroin addicts and pornographers.  Also available in print for you luddites.

Certainly not dead....three poems at Dead Mule School of Southern Literature

I'm pleased to find three poems of mine today in the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.

Dead Mule School of Southern Literature has been around for fifteen years. It started in 1996 and if you observe the comings and goings of literary journals, both in print and on-line, you'll know that they are one of the longest running shows out there. In Dead Mule, each poet and writer writes a southern legacy statement which I fine much more interesting than writing a bio and in some cases more interesting than the actual work. I hope this was not the case for me, as I anticipated this and made my legacy statement very thin in content.

In their 15th Anniversary Issue, Dead Mule features three of my poems: often they fall from the sky, Exposed and Salmon Fishing in Alaska. The first one is about the angels on this earth. The second is about having feelings and emotions, that leave your inner-most self exposed and the last is a really old poem that has finally seen the light of day which I will dedicate to my friends that fished one summer from the University of Delaware.