Saturday, December 31, 2011

12/31/11: Kaleidotrope

Find my bizarro novella, "The End of Owln's Malt", in the winter issue of Kaleidotrope, free.

Kaleidotrope link

Sunday, December 25, 2011

12/25/11: Enter At Your Own Risk

Find my Gothic short story, "Riottaba", in Enter At Your Own Risk, an anthology of such stories. (It came out a couple months ago and I was, somehow, uninformed.)

Amazon link

And here is a sci-fi story that was, also without my being informed, published on the Aphelion webzine, nearly a year ago.

The Sad

Saturday, December 24, 2011

12/24/11: Mandorla

Yesterday, I read an unfamiliar word in a book I won't name: "mandorla". It stuck with me all day and then into the night, on my mind even as I went to bed. Mandorla, mandorla, my last thought before sleep.

This morning, I awoke and sat down to breakfast, one of my words-to-learn ledgers at wing. I opened to the page I had stopped at yesterday (which I had flipped to and bookmarked without reading), and one of the first words on it was "mandorla" -- undefined, as it were, it not being in the dictionary I had referenced after writing the word down (years ago, when I'd first started this particular ledger of new words).

I have not, to my recollection, heard this word except for when I first noted it and then yesterday, in the book I'm reading, approximately twelve hours before I would encounter it in my ledger.

And the clincher: I looked it up tonight, and was unsurprised to learn of it signifying the coincidence and interaction of opposing realities, of which I have recently been experiencing extensively.

Friday, December 23, 2011

12/23/11: Arcane

Find my bizarro short, "The Delivery", in Arcane, a new weird/macabre anthology.

Amazon link

Friday, December 16, 2011

12/16/11: WTF?

Find my bizarro short, "The Matador", in WTF?, a new anthology from Pink Narcissus.

Amazon link

Monday, December 5, 2011

12/5/11: Schlock Magazine

Find my short-short, "On Killing Yourself", and many others in the new, apocalyptic issue of Schlock Magazine, for free.

Link

Also, find another post-apocalyptic short-short of mine, "Body Builders Here To Stay", in this month's issue of Jake's Monthly anthologies, for only $0.99.

Link

Sunday, December 4, 2011

12/4/11: Nonlogic

Exhibit A:

Yesterday, I was stopped in traffic behind a '90s green Chevy truck with a matching camper top, and a distinctively rusted bumper. I noticed this truck -- Noticed it, For Some Reason (enough to cement it in my memory, in any case). The truck was nowhere near my house.

Exhibit B:

This afternoon, my father happened to give me a newspaper clipping from The Charlotte Observer, detailing how a man accidentally threw away a prized ring and then, miraculously, located it in the dump, and after 30 minutes, no less, when the dump workers had, understandably, given him "zero chance of finding it."

Exhibit C:

While eating lunch, I read the newspaper clipping, which got me thinking about such incredibly unlikely happenings, which got me thinking about my own incredibly unlikely happenings, which got me thinking about how chance, it seems, is an illusion, since reality seems to operate on some nonlogical structure that we have yet to decipher -- a structure that seems to be intelligent, and will make itself known to those open to its possibility.

Just as I thought this, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye: a truck, passing by my house, outside my dining-room window. I only caught a fleeting glimpse of it, but it was enough to make out a chartreuse green, and a matching camper top, and a bumper with an infection of rust. My house is very secluded, by the way.

It brought a sense of, "Did I hear my name?"

Saturday, December 3, 2011

12/3/11: Daily Flash 2012

Daily Flash 2012: 366 Days of Flash Fiction is a new anthology from Pill Hill Press, which includes my flash piece, "The Noise".

Link

Friday, December 2, 2011

12/1/11: Pants

Yesterday morning, before leaving home, I was struck with the distinct urge to change my pants. It was not a passing thought, but very pronounced, pressing, a do-or-die sensation. I would go so far as to call it a voice in my head, gentle and calm, but insistent. Yet, I had just changed my pants the day before.

So I didn't change my pants.

That afternoon, however, my attention was, by chance, drawn to the crotch of my blue jeans, which had, at some point between breakfast and lunch, become split up the crotch, awarding me a vagina of sorts. They were old pants, so their splitting didn't surprise me until later, when I remembered what had happened that morning.

Good thing I wasn't out of state, on business, alone, in my truck, and due to an appointment. (Notice my sarcasm.)