Me on Wigleaf's Long Shortlist

So stuff apparently happens when you're gone. For example, The Wigleaf Top 50 came out, a list of great online [very] short fictions, this year judged by the amazing Brian Evenson. The list had the likes of Matt Bell, Aaron Burch, Dan Chaon, Dennis Cooper, William Gibson, Barry Graham, Brad Green, Stephen Graham Jones, and Kevin Wilson.

I'm just happy that my story "Death Babies" published in Flash Fiction Online made it to the Long Shortlist.

There and Back, Again

So summer travel is mostly done. I can sit in one place for a couple of weeks at least. And get bored. I'm getting stir crazy already. The good thing about travel is that you learn stuff. Often stuff you didn't know. Or didn't even know you didn't know.

Like I'd been to Christ Church oodles of times (well three at least) and had not taken note of the heart relic. See that picture, there's a mummified heart, a human heart, in there. Some saint or other. Religious people are strange.

Or say you find yourself in Scotland only to learn it is the only country (let's not quibble over whether or not it is actually a country--viva la devolution!) where another soda outsells Coke. That soda is neon orange, stains your clothes if you spill it, and tastes...wait for it...like bubblegum, like Dubble Bubble bubblegum. That atrocious sounding concoction is called Irn Bru and I loved it.

While there I also learned that not all whisky comes from Tennessee and has to be drunk with Coke Zero. I was introduced to and fell madly in love with single malt whisky (what we'd call Scotch).

Those are only some of my learnings. I probably gained a greater appreciation of the world and its diversity. But I thought it more important to dwell on the drinking and disembodied heart.

Volcano Blues

Here's a picture from the plane on our way to Ireland of the volcano spewing ash that made us have to fly to Iceland around the spewing volcano to finally get to Ireland. But we did. Get there. And hopefully it will allow us to leave one day.

The Evil Clown Interview

Submit Your Novella

You know what's cool. Novellas. They're like the flash fiction of novels. And we know flash fiction is hot right now. So where are the novellas?

Main Street Rag Publishing Company wants to do a novella series: 12 novellas, one a month for a year. And as I'm overseeing the series, I want to see the best. Better than crap like Of Mice and Men or Heart of Darkness or Animal Farm or Metamorphosis.

Here are details:

Reading Period: Right now! to August 1st. That's right, over the summer, so while all the sissy U lit mags are closed, dust off the novella and send it to us.

Length: 30,000-50,000 words

Content: Open. Your best. Better than that if possible.

Text: Regular manuscript format (double space, Times New Roman, tabs/no space between paragraphs).

Submit: In a first for Main Street Rag, we are accepting email submissions (only in this series): editor@mainstreetrag.com

Want more details, much like the ones above? Go here.

Let the Productivity Begin!

Ha. That's right. Ha! I'm finished. The grades are in, and I am free. Free to focus. To be truly productive. For example, I made this on an animation site:

Over in the Underground: For Sale



Time well spent. I'm going to be so accomplished by the end of this summer. I just feel it.

Almost Forgot

NatPoMo!