Me on MicroHorror

So my flash fiction "I Love Medusa!" is up on MicroHorror. Because Heather thought "Giant Panda Monster" was about her, I accidentally didn't share this one with her, but she ended up reading it on MicroHorror. And it turns out it's about her too, which I deny. Sure she claims she won a costume contest by dressing up as Medusa, and sure she claims she told me about this, and sure she claims she showed me pictures. But I don't remember that. And I certainly can't be held responsible for what my subconscious does.

Me on Hobart

My story "Giant Panda Monster" is in the August Issue of the online Hobart. It's a story straight out of my fascination with giant pandas, big monster movies, and love. And according to my wife, it's an allegory for my marriage. Many thanks to Andrea Kneeland for including it in such an excellent issue.

Here are my favorite lines from fellow contributors:

Lauren Becker, "Do You Know Jesus Christ?": "Jed and Lark started to make out by the refrigerator and I talked to a cute guy and watched the lonely hot dogs move slowly around the cooker."

Rachel Lyon, "The Whale and the Waterslide": "'Whales don’t like the same things people do, Dale.'"

Matt Mullins, "Arion Resigns": "typing my own ransom memo for the corporate pirates who pay me in somnambulistic days."

Kristine Ong Muslim, "We Figure the Leaves": "In time, the leaves learn to take our postures, to talk, to make themselves look beautiful in the eyes of other leaves."

Justin Taylor, interviewed by Matthew Simmons: "And what about Michelle Trachtenberg?"

Check it out.

The Indomitable Jason Jordan

So my title just came to me, and I fear it's because of the Robert Jordan book The Indomitable Conan. Okay, a quick Google check and it turns out that actually Steve Perry wrote Conan the Indomitable. Stay with me a second, I'm still going to say it makes some sense since Jason is clearly a Conan of the literary world (for god's sake, look at that picture...that's clearly a literate badass), slaying his enemies and whatnot, not with violence but with his scimitar sharp writing...okay, I'm pushing this, but here's why:


Now out for your reading pleasure, Jordan's new story collection Cloud and Other Stories and a new version of his earlier collection Powering the Devil's Circus: Redux. Jason Jordan is a widely published writer of powerful stories and the editor of the literary magazine decomP. These books contain his stories, stories full of dark absurdism and compassionate realism. These are stories that make you feel the primal essence of life, like Conan screaming over a battlefield.

All right, forget Conan. But read Jason Jordan's new collections.

Me in Thumb Smudge Java

I brag a lot--mainly because I'm a braggart. But in this instance, though I am bragging, it is for others.

Two of my students (former?) Joel Ferdon and Josiah McGinnis have started their own literary magazine called Thumb Smudge Java. My piece "Coming This Fall: Stuff Posted on Facebook!" is in the premiere issue with some other great (probably better) stuff, stuff that has not been posted on Facebook and in fact has to be read in print (unless they put it on their Web site, in which case check it out there).

So please support them by submitting your work (they're reading for Issue 2 now) and by getting the first issue (give them your money).

Me on Dogzplot 2

You remember last time I had a flash fiction piece on Dogzplot. Ants...Sermon on the Mount...well, you get it. Anyway, this time I have another "religious" (that's right I used quotation marks) piece called "Pre-Revelation Coffee with Ex-Girlfriend."

P.S. Dear ex-girlfriend(s), this is not about you.

Me in Knee-Jerk

So my story "We Sin Like Wolves" is in lucky Issue 13 of Knee-Jerk magazine. It was a great experience working with Jonathan Fullmer, who made me see the story in a whole new way. So you should probably see it now.

This issue also includes a cool interview with Print Ball organizers Fred Sasaki (associate editor at Poetry), Nell Taylor (founder and executive director of the Chicago Underground Library), and Sarah Dodson (director and managing editor of MAKE: A Literary Magazine). Plus there's exceptional work from Alba Machado, Amanda Marbais, and Robert Repino.

What's in an Epigraph?

So as you will recall, totally, I am reading The Red and the Black. You know what's great? No? According to the translator Raffel, Stendhal either misquoted or made up most of the epigraphs at the beginning of the chapters: "Professor Jean-Jacques Hamm has concluded that only fifteen of the seventy-five epigraphs in The Red and the Black are correctly and verifiably attributed." I like to think he made them up, especially this one:

And am I to blame
If that's how things are?
--Machiavelli