Updates Jan-Feb 2024
Some housekeeping re me and my stories
Thought id drop one last bit of self-promo via Substack and recommend a couple other short stories while im at it.
1. My flash piece "The Ice Pick That is Made of Ice" was selected by guest editor and write par excellence Elena Sichrovsky to appear in the online literary magazine JAKE. back in December. Kind of humorous, kind of depressing, very short!
2. "Some Reflections on the Abstruse Campaign" came out in issue 4 of Propagule in January. I've mentioned a couple Propagule stories here before ("Mountain" by Trevor Bonas and “The Invisible Magnetus Sphere Shields Us from The Dangerous Ionising Radiation of Space” by Max Barker) but I could also mention a couple of others I loved like:
Dolan Morgan’s "Future Lawn Ornaments" by (about yes, future lawn ornaments)
"The Purple Line" by Atsushi Ikeda (only tangetially about a purple line from what I am able to gather)1
“The Darkness Retreat” by James Tadd Alcox (an oppressive, unmarked dialogue about the darkness retreat and about the children, “Yes, the children again. We must start over.”)
Love the experimental edge of this publication and love that they published this story of mine. Recommended if you like first-person plural POV and bullet points. It's uh...political?
3. "Dorcas" was published in the online journal Short Fiction. Its been described as "lovely and bizarre" and "heart-shredding" so step on up and get your heart shredded. Its a story about death and friendship and could probably use some content warnings (see footnote below). Hope you can dig it!2
4. I have another story, "Hank Eltz, the Singer" coming out in the mag God's Cruel Joke #4 uh, tomorrow if memory serves? I will drop a link to it when the time is right
5. Yesterday I signed a contract for something I'm still not supposed to talk about but which is quite exciting!
Earlier I said "one last bit of self-promo here" and by here, I meant Substack. I'm hereby committing to finally taking care of business and getting everything set up on an alternative newsletter platform between now and the end of this month, so that the official February installment of Short Story Rex can go out to the public via its new home. I hope you all dont mind getting emails via a service other than this one. See you then! Or not! We’ll see.
not to make things about me, but I also have a story called “The Purple Line” though in my defense I must point out it was written well before I read this story
in case you haven’t seen me plug this interview before, Ivy Grimes asked me about these three stories on her Substack