Contemporary American Voices features four of my poems and three better poets

Lisa Zaran has been featuring poets monthly on Contemporary American Voices, for nine years and the cool thing about this site is that she allows her features to feature other poets which they admire. This month I am the feature. Here are all the works, including the four of mine.

That's the good news!

With that I had the honor to pick three poets which I know to be amazing, each of them selecting three of their poems. They are Rusty Barnes, Teisha Dawn Twomey and Mary Benson.

Rusty Barnes

Mary Benson

Teisha Dawn Twomey

That's the bad news!
The bad news?

Well, it's really good news, but these poets poems are so good, that they should be featured on the site if readers feel that there is some sort of hierarchy. That's how I feel about it. It's sort of like a Brian Scalabrine basketball skills camp (see satirical 30 for 30 with Brian) with special guest, (in smaller print) Dr. J.

I'm very honored to have my work appear next to poems that blow me away. Check out their amazing work!

Coming Soon: The Thursday Appointments of Bill Sloan (a novel)...some blurbs and West Coast Schedule-SD, Sea, Portland, Oakland and LA

Some Reviews from 
a) The Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
b) Amazon 

  As the son of two psychoanalysts, I feel qualified in diagnosing Timothy Gager as a very sick human being and a fearless writer. His prose is odd, mordant, and disobedient. Read him at your peril.

Steve Almond, “God Bless America: Stories”
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Timothy Gager's “The Thursday Appointments of Bill Sloan” is a gangbusters novel, its characters sharply defined against a backdrop both tense and funny. Bill Sloan is the therapist no one wants, especially since you might say he needs therapy more than his patients. This is a great read.

Rusty Barnes, co-founder Night Train Magazine, author of “Reckoning”
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Timothy Gager blasts another beauty of twisted humanity at its best in “The Thursday Appointments of Bill Sloan”. Gager steers us “like a bird without wings” through this hilarious and strangely familiar brood of characters, accelerating and diving down into the intricacies and mania of our own inner pathos. Get a copy!

–Meg Tuite, “Bound By Blue”   

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September 2, 2014 Cambridge, Ma

Book Release Party

event listing Porter Square Books, 7 PM 

Tuesday Release Pary Appointment of The Thursday Appointments of Bill Sloan
Porter Square Shopping Center

with readings by Robin Stratton (Publisher of), 
Christopher Reilley (cover design) 
and Rusty Barnes (famous Blurber of)

...and then the tour

(to help fund the tour with half going to charity, while reading the reasons, go HERE)

 
 October 6, 2014 San Diego, California 
event listing The Ink Spot, 7 PM 

Monday Appointments with San Diego Writers 
2730 Historic Decatur Rd., Suite 203, San Diego, Ca

Featuring with Heather Fowler, Maggie May Ethridge and Bonnie Zobell

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October 9, 2014 Seattle, Washington

event listing

Bang and a Smoke Series, Time 8 PM

The Interrobang Appointments of Timothy Gager
The Pocket Theater
8312 Greenwood Ave. N., Seattle
 
Featuring with Dave Clapper's Interrobang Improv
The Pocket Theater, 
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October 10, 2014 Portland, Oregon

event listing

The Jade Lounge, 8 PM 

Friday Appointment with Portland Writers 
2342 SE Ankeny Portland, Oregon

Featuring with Parker Tettleton, Liz Prato, Dena Rash Guzman
Yuvi Zalkow, Sam Snoek-Brown,  and Julia ClareTillinghast  
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October 11, 2014  Oakland, California

event listing listed later 

E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore

The Saturday Appointment with Bay Area Writers
410 13th St.Oakland, California

Featuring with Alexandra Naughton and TBA
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October 12, 2014 Los Angeles, California 

event listing

Roar Shack Series, 4 PM 

The Sunday Appointment with LA Writers
826 in Echo Park 1714 West Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, Ca 
Los Angeles, California

Reading with: Tanya Ward Goodman, Kima Jones and Jeff Edwards 
Hosted by David Rocklin 
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 November 16, 2014 New York, New York

event listing listed later

Sunday Salon, 7 PM 

Jimmy's no. 43 
43 East Seventh Street, , New York, New York

Hosted by Nita Noveno and Sara Lippman

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Also in today's Bonanza, Three Flash Fictions in Fried Chicken and Coffee

Mmmmm, Crown's Fried Chicken Coffee Shop (pictured)...
It's tasty, Fried Chicken and Coffee
                                      

Crown's Fried Chicken Coffee Shop Brkly, NY

You can get both there, then,
maybe, cut your long hair next door.

Wonder through town and there's an editor, named Rusty. If editing is his fried chicken and writing is his coffee, then I reckon you should buy a cup of his novel, Reckoning.

Back to this make believe town where there are people struggling in their sandbox (Best Fiends), a gym teacher who takes his date to the strip club (Pole) and a daughter who is made to feel so small, she fits into her mother's apron pouch (The Beauty on the Inside)

So, park your truck and your cup right here to read them all. 

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.

What is being said at Goodreads.

Goodreads, the site which encourages grandma's, "If you can't say something nice don't say anything at all"*  has a lot of nice comments up regarding my "Treating A Sick Animal"   

Here's a few summaries, but to see who said what, click the previous link:

"One of his opening shorts “In and Out” sucked me into a vortex, and I couldn’t escape until I finished the book from cover to cover."

"One of my favorite things is the way the author takes an object and twists it into something else entirely. This concept can be found in many of the sories, but my favorite one was "Just Dessert." The focus of the story is on a belt buckle and then it morphs into a love story. "

"Tim Gager's book of flash and micro fiction reads like an old wooden roller coaster ride, where the carnie is on speed and you've just eaten a plate full of nachos, with extra ghost chilis. It's dangerous stuff, but in a good way."

"Gager does it again with raw, eclectic stories that sometimes make you sick and sometimes give you the warm and fuzzes."


"Tim's flash stories are little gems. He has a gift for revealing the exact moments in his characters' lives when everything changes."


"Sometimes surreal, sometimes all to real, always gritty, raw and original, Timothy Gager's flash fictions say so much with so little. These are literary delights you're going to want to savor."



 * unless it's a well known author whom you'll never interact with or someone you have a juvenile running internet war with.

Two published flash stories, Night Train and Suss: Another Literary Journal

A Little Slice Of is a story I'm proud of and Rusty Barnes who published it in Night Train e-mailed me the following:

"That piece you gave me to post is one of the best short-shorts I've ever read."

Well,  he's read a lot of great work so it's very generous praise, but my jaw certainly dropped.




Perhaps, the female protagonist, pictured to the left..

Then in Suss: Another Literary Journal, "Somewhere on the Edge", appeared. This was a flash that revolved around a woman, drug and alcohol rehab and a monkey named Pluto. (No the monkey wasn't in rehab)

The last line "I didn't want to leave."  had four meanings with her not wanting to leave  1) the rehab, 2) him 3) the restaurant 4) her relationship with drinking.

Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction

Read my review HERE

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to W

Review by Timothy Gager

· Paperback: 208 pages

· Publisher: Rose Metal Press; First edition (May 13, 2009)

· ISBN-10: 0978984862

· ISBN-13: 978-0978984861 




As a writer of flash fiction, I found this field guide extremely interesting, pertinent and useful. It is full of surprises and mind opening essays for those who only look at flash or very short fiction in a limited way.. The essays included in this book read like a who’s who in the form of very short fiction. These are authors that I’ve read and admired for either their economy of language, their punch of prose or their paint strokes of fast and deep emotion. Included are many personal favorites of mine such as Randall Brown, Rusty Barnes, Kim Chinquee and Pamela Painter whom are only a small piece of this literary all-star team ripe for the reading.



Inside the pages of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction you will receive twenty-five short written lectures; points of view of what comprises great flash fiction. There also are writing exercises intended to help writers of various skill levels create work from each point of focus. This is very helpful if you like to write from prompts. Each author also pick examples of flash fiction pieces they feel back up their points.



Fiction today, especially what you may read on-line tends to run shorter in length than ever before. Whether it is the short attention span of readers, the need for something quick and hard hitting and grabbing as a computer read. Whatever the reason, flash fiction has become increasingly popular to both writers and readers. The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction demonstrate this phenomena in great detail by the varying theories from each author, whom all have different focuses on the same point.



The book is aptly presented as a “field guide”, and I couldn’t agree more with that descriptor. It is user friendly, can be picked up and read at any chapter point break by any individual, writing group or classroom. The book also presents historic references of fiction, short fiction, micro-fiction and flash. Shouhua Qi points out the early origins from the Chinese short short or what is called a “Smoke-Long story”. (note: Randall Brown, the editor of Smoke Long Quarterly is also included in Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction) TRMPFGTWFF also distinguishes between narrative/prose poetry and flash fiction---often viewed as interchangeable. Robert Olen Butler says on the form, “it may not have a fully developed plot, but it must have the essence of a plot, a yearning.” Steve Almond instructs as on how to turn your bad poetry into fantastic flash, which was an essay I found to be extraordinarily useful and entertaining.



Jennifer Pieroni’s thoughts on the purpose of images “smart and surprising” was also useful, not only to those whom enjoy Jennifer’s writing but also whom read her and her well know magazine, Quick Fiction (TRMPFGTWFF indirectly shows you what certain editors like). Kim Chinquee presents us with examples of five distinctly different stories based on the same event. Rusty Barnes, author of Breaking It Down and Editor of Night Train, takes you on a journey in the revision process. Randall Brown points out ways to “make flash count’ for the aspiring author.



I highly recommend this book as a learning tool and prompt generator. It pulls from the insight of today’s very best writers of short shorts, many whom are the editors of some of very well known anthologies, magazines and journals of fiction.

For more information about Timothy Gager go to:

http://www.timothygager.com