Ability Maine is a nonprofit organization which advocates for the rights and inclusion of people with disabilities. They also produce a blogzine called Breath & Shadow, which spotlights writing by many of the people they support. Each issue brings some excellent poetry, nonfiction, flash fiction, short stories, essays and reviews. The Spring 2013 issue features hard-hitting piece of flash fiction by William Ward called "The Jungle." Check it out today. You won't be disappointed. You might even see things from a new perspective.
Showing posts with label noncrime 'zines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label noncrime 'zines. Show all posts
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Breath & Shadow
Ability Maine is a nonprofit organization which advocates for the rights and inclusion of people with disabilities. They also produce a blogzine called Breath & Shadow, which spotlights writing by many of the people they support. Each issue brings some excellent poetry, nonfiction, flash fiction, short stories, essays and reviews. The Spring 2013 issue features hard-hitting piece of flash fiction by William Ward called "The Jungle." Check it out today. You won't be disappointed. You might even see things from a new perspective.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Feero Goes Feral: THE FERAL PAGES is Now Live (Or, A Little BSP for PSB)
The debut issue of Lyman Feero's cross-genre e-zine The Feral Pages is now online and ready to kick you upside the head (in, y'know, a good way). This issue's features include:
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Call for Submissions: The Feral Pages
Lyman Feero is taking submissions for his new cross-genre e-zine, The Feral Pages. The October/November issue goes live on 10/15. Featured stories include Chris F. Holm's wonderfully disturbing "A Better Life" and my own "The Cove." Submission guidelines can be found here. I hope all of you writers and readers will help support what promises to be a unique new venue for short fiction.
Friday, September 25, 2009
What I've Been Doin' Lately
I just submitted a short story called "The Cove" to Lyman Feero for his forthcoming e-zine The Feral Pages. I don't know if my story will make the grade, but I'm interested to see the debut issue of this new cross-genre 'zine. "The Cove" is, of course, just the sort of heart-warming tale you've come to expect from me. Just messin'. Don't panic. It's another down-and-dirty Wesserunsett story.
Jed Ayres is posting a series of narratives about crime songs on the Hardboiled Wonderland blog. He's going to run them over the next few weeks. I wrote a piece about Robert Earl Keen's song "The Road Goes on Forever." When I told my wife about it, she said, "Big surprise there." So maybe I do play that tune a bit too often.
On the novel front, there's bad news and good. The bad news is that Bitter Water Blues hasn't found a publisher. The good news is that Bitter Water Blues hasn't found a publisher.
Huh?
That's right, I'm happy with rejection because it made me take a serious, critical look at the manuscript. Right now, I'm working on a complete rewrite, including the removal of one of the major characters and his entire storyline. Hey, I've told you people before that revision doesn't scare me.
I'm also working on turning some previously-trimmed sections of BWB into a short story. We'll see how that goes...
Jed Ayres is posting a series of narratives about crime songs on the Hardboiled Wonderland blog. He's going to run them over the next few weeks. I wrote a piece about Robert Earl Keen's song "The Road Goes on Forever." When I told my wife about it, she said, "Big surprise there." So maybe I do play that tune a bit too often.
On the novel front, there's bad news and good. The bad news is that Bitter Water Blues hasn't found a publisher. The good news is that Bitter Water Blues hasn't found a publisher.
Huh?
That's right, I'm happy with rejection because it made me take a serious, critical look at the manuscript. Right now, I'm working on a complete rewrite, including the removal of one of the major characters and his entire storyline. Hey, I've told you people before that revision doesn't scare me.
I'm also working on turning some previously-trimmed sections of BWB into a short story. We'll see how that goes...
Monday, July 13, 2009
August Hanrahan is Dead. Long Live August Hanrahan
Not long after my short story “Pandora” appeared in Thrilling Detective, I began taking a fresh look at it and wondering if it could be expanded upon. I was mostly pleased with the story as written, but felt there might be more to it. So I sat down and started diddling with the thing. After a couple of days, the realization crept up and kicked me in the nards: I’d begun turning “Pandora” into a novel.
For those of you who haven’t read the original story (you bastards!), August Hanrahan was a private investigator until he lost his license for interfering with a police investigation (and inadvertently causing the deaths of two people). His left hand was also maimed during that final case and can no longer play guitar. He’s embittered, angry and prone to violence. A couple of old hippies convince August to search for a missing child, goading him into it by mentioning his murdered nephew. Wind him up and off he goes…
Now. Here’s the problem.
I hate August’s name.
Sure, I came up with it, but I’ve come to hate that fucking name. It sounds like I tried too hard to give him a unique moniker, something along the lines of Elvis Cole, Derek Strange, Harry Bosch, Easy Rawlins, etc. I like those characters, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that August sounds gimmicky.
Before he was called August, the character’s name was Gideon “Giddy” Cross. Yeah, I know that’s even worse. I was going to keep it though, until I discovered it had been the name of an obscure comic book character from the ‘70s. But Gideon Cross wasn’t the character’s original name, either.
The character who later became Gideon Cross and then August Hanrahan began life in a story called “The Western Gate,” which was published in issue #53 of The Iconoclast (1998). He wasn’t a detective then, but crime was a central element. The character’s name at the time?
Harris Tilton.
The idea was that he hated the name Harris (and hated being called Harry almost as much), so he always insisted that people call him Tilt. I’ve mulled it over for a while now, and I’ve decided to reinstate the character’s original name. Does it matter to anyone but me? Probably not. But writing Pandora-the-novel feels much more natural in Tilt’s voice than it did in August’s…even though the voice is essentially the same. “It’s all in your head…it’s all in your head…”
So I’ll leave you with a treat (depending on your idea of a “treat”). What follows is the opening page of “The Western Gate,” the very first Tilt story, as published in The Iconoclast eleven years ago. Warts and all. The title, by the way, is taken from Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem “Luke Havergal.”
From THE WESTERN GATE:
My father sits there smoking a Lucky Strike, watching Rollo State Penitentiary and the eight grid-patterned streets of Rollo, Wyoming getting smaller in the passenger’s-side mirror. When finally there is nothing behind us but mountaintops and nothing ahead but rolling pasture and the arrow-straight macadam, he looks at me and says, “Thanks.” His first word to me since I picked him up outside the gate. Hell, his first word to me in my whole life as far as I can remember. I’d never even gotten a letter from him until about three months ago.
He’s clean-shaven with a fresh haircut to match. His hair’s mostly gray and his skin’s surprisingly tan for a guy who’s spent twenty-three of the last thirty years in prison. Other than the hair, a few wrinkles and a small fish hook-shaped scar below his left earlobe, he looks just like me. No wonder my mother couldn’t stand the sight of me. She saw in me the man who’d left her, seventeen years old and eight months pregnant, in the middle of the night; the man who’d run off to the west for God knows what reason, only to end up killing some stranger in Wyoming. She saw in me the man who drove her to the bottle, to Jesus, and back to the bottle. Walter Tilton. What could she do with a baby who was the spitting image of Walter Tilton but dump him on her older sister and crawl deeper into booze and religion.
“Harris,” Dad says. We’ve been traveling about two hours now. “Harris, I got to make a piss stop.”
“Nobody calls me Harris.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I hate it.”
“It’s your name, the one your mother liked best for a boy.”
“It’s a faggoty name. Sounds like a character off Mawsterpiece Theater.”
“So what do people call you? Harry?”
“Tilt. Just Tilt.”
“Izzat what your Aunt Polly and Uncle Ray call you?”
Ray’s still snoring in the backseat, too overwhelmed by the idea of being out from under Aunt Polly’s thumb to take in any of the sights.
“Uncle Ray calls me Tilt,” I say, pulling onto the shoulder. “Polly usually just refers to me as You or That Boy.”
Dad snorts, gets out of the car to do his business by the trunk.
For those of you who haven’t read the original story (you bastards!), August Hanrahan was a private investigator until he lost his license for interfering with a police investigation (and inadvertently causing the deaths of two people). His left hand was also maimed during that final case and can no longer play guitar. He’s embittered, angry and prone to violence. A couple of old hippies convince August to search for a missing child, goading him into it by mentioning his murdered nephew. Wind him up and off he goes…
Now. Here’s the problem.
I hate August’s name.
Sure, I came up with it, but I’ve come to hate that fucking name. It sounds like I tried too hard to give him a unique moniker, something along the lines of Elvis Cole, Derek Strange, Harry Bosch, Easy Rawlins, etc. I like those characters, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that August sounds gimmicky.
Before he was called August, the character’s name was Gideon “Giddy” Cross. Yeah, I know that’s even worse. I was going to keep it though, until I discovered it had been the name of an obscure comic book character from the ‘70s. But Gideon Cross wasn’t the character’s original name, either.
The character who later became Gideon Cross and then August Hanrahan began life in a story called “The Western Gate,” which was published in issue #53 of The Iconoclast (1998). He wasn’t a detective then, but crime was a central element. The character’s name at the time?
Harris Tilton.
The idea was that he hated the name Harris (and hated being called Harry almost as much), so he always insisted that people call him Tilt. I’ve mulled it over for a while now, and I’ve decided to reinstate the character’s original name. Does it matter to anyone but me? Probably not. But writing Pandora-the-novel feels much more natural in Tilt’s voice than it did in August’s…even though the voice is essentially the same. “It’s all in your head…it’s all in your head…”
So I’ll leave you with a treat (depending on your idea of a “treat”). What follows is the opening page of “The Western Gate,” the very first Tilt story, as published in The Iconoclast eleven years ago. Warts and all. The title, by the way, is taken from Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem “Luke Havergal.”
From THE WESTERN GATE:
My father sits there smoking a Lucky Strike, watching Rollo State Penitentiary and the eight grid-patterned streets of Rollo, Wyoming getting smaller in the passenger’s-side mirror. When finally there is nothing behind us but mountaintops and nothing ahead but rolling pasture and the arrow-straight macadam, he looks at me and says, “Thanks.” His first word to me since I picked him up outside the gate. Hell, his first word to me in my whole life as far as I can remember. I’d never even gotten a letter from him until about three months ago.
He’s clean-shaven with a fresh haircut to match. His hair’s mostly gray and his skin’s surprisingly tan for a guy who’s spent twenty-three of the last thirty years in prison. Other than the hair, a few wrinkles and a small fish hook-shaped scar below his left earlobe, he looks just like me. No wonder my mother couldn’t stand the sight of me. She saw in me the man who’d left her, seventeen years old and eight months pregnant, in the middle of the night; the man who’d run off to the west for God knows what reason, only to end up killing some stranger in Wyoming. She saw in me the man who drove her to the bottle, to Jesus, and back to the bottle. Walter Tilton. What could she do with a baby who was the spitting image of Walter Tilton but dump him on her older sister and crawl deeper into booze and religion.
“Harris,” Dad says. We’ve been traveling about two hours now. “Harris, I got to make a piss stop.”
“Nobody calls me Harris.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I hate it.”
“It’s your name, the one your mother liked best for a boy.”
“It’s a faggoty name. Sounds like a character off Mawsterpiece Theater.”
“So what do people call you? Harry?”
“Tilt. Just Tilt.”
“Izzat what your Aunt Polly and Uncle Ray call you?”
Ray’s still snoring in the backseat, too overwhelmed by the idea of being out from under Aunt Polly’s thumb to take in any of the sights.
“Uncle Ray calls me Tilt,” I say, pulling onto the shoulder. “Polly usually just refers to me as You or That Boy.”
Dad snorts, gets out of the car to do his business by the trunk.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Short Houses with Wide Porches
There is an excellent review of Christopher Watkins' debut poetry collection, Short Houses with Wide Porches, at the Hayden's Ferry Review blog. Reviewer Meghan Brinson writes, "the relish with which the language of these poems captures and caresses the seen world is a reminder that though there may never be enough time to experience every detail of the ever-changing world, there is, however, enough time to enjoy it."
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Required Reading
I’m teaching fiction writing for the local adult education program again this semester. Nine students signed up this time around. That’s a good number. Over the last three years, I’ve taught classes with as few as four and as many as fourteen students.
Besides reading and critiquing each other’s work, they’ll also be reading and discussing these stories:
“Uncle Sidney and the Mexicans” by James Lee Burke (from The Convict and Other Stories)
“Alabama Jones” by Howard Frank Mosher (from Where the Rivers Flow North)
“Ernie’s Ark” by Monica Wood (from Ernie’s Ark and Other Stories)
“Snake” by Brady Udall (from Letting Loose the Hounds)
“The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson (from Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories of Shirley Jackson)
“Two Kinds” by Amy Tan (from The Joy Luck Club)
“The Lions are Asleep This Night” by Howard Waldrop (from Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology)
“Geraldine Loves” by Keith Lee Morris (from New England Review, Fall 2002)
“The Token Booth Clerk” by Sara Gran (from A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir)
It's tough to choose from among all the stories I've read and liked, I think it's a pretty good mix of styles and voices. We workshop two student-written stories or novel chapters a week during the final third of the semester, so I end the reading assignments at week 9.
Besides reading and critiquing each other’s work, they’ll also be reading and discussing these stories:
“Uncle Sidney and the Mexicans” by James Lee Burke (from The Convict and Other Stories)
“Alabama Jones” by Howard Frank Mosher (from Where the Rivers Flow North)
“Ernie’s Ark” by Monica Wood (from Ernie’s Ark and Other Stories)
“Snake” by Brady Udall (from Letting Loose the Hounds)
“The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson (from Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories of Shirley Jackson)
“Two Kinds” by Amy Tan (from The Joy Luck Club)
“The Lions are Asleep This Night” by Howard Waldrop (from Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology)
“Geraldine Loves” by Keith Lee Morris (from New England Review, Fall 2002)
“The Token Booth Clerk” by Sara Gran (from A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir)
It's tough to choose from among all the stories I've read and liked, I think it's a pretty good mix of styles and voices. We workshop two student-written stories or novel chapters a week during the final third of the semester, so I end the reading assignments at week 9.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
It’s a good day for an old poem about Richard Brautigan.
It is Tuesday
And I’ve bought a used copy
of In Watermelon Sugar
and underlined on page 2 is
“It is Tuesday
and the sun is golden,”
and it makes sense
in a way I could never
explain.
©1995 Patrick Shawn Bagley
from Kumquat Meringue #6 ©2001 Kumquat Press
Kumquat Meringue was (is?) a great little ‘zine “dedicated to the memory of Richard Brautigan.”
And I’ve bought a used copy
of In Watermelon Sugar
and underlined on page 2 is
“It is Tuesday
and the sun is golden,”
and it makes sense
in a way I could never
explain.
©1995 Patrick Shawn Bagley
from Kumquat Meringue #6 ©2001 Kumquat Press
Kumquat Meringue was (is?) a great little ‘zine “dedicated to the memory of Richard Brautigan.”
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