New Things and Other Things

WHAT A WEEK!

Great times at the Poetry Made of Diamonds Reading, and many thanks to Russ Woods for having me read! That was Sunday night.

Then on Friday, Corium's winter issue was published. I had a short piece entitled "Spare Change" featured in it. Congrats to Lauren Becker for a job well done and on her story collection forthcoming from Curbside Splendor.

Before that, Thursday, I had some poems go up on Alice Blue Review, along with other great peoples. I love Alice Blue Review. AWESOME!

And on Wednesday, I had a bunch of stories that'll be in Why God Why -- my collection soon to exist because of Love Symbol Press -- in the very last and very awesome issue of Red Lightbulbs. See it here.

Oh! And Requited came out today, to top everything off! Requited 8! And I have two short pieces in it. And one of them I made an illustration for. And that illustration is this; it's from "The Pushing." It's a tale of pushing and other things. 

Oh, and I have a story on the recommended page on Fictionaut. You can check that out here.

Red Lightbulbs 9.5 -- Secret Santa Issue

Well, the 9 and a half issue of Red Lightbulbs is out (The Secret Santa issue). The penultimate issue. I'll be sad to see Red Lightbulbs go the way of the dinosaur and the Zima, although more notably as the former than the latter. It's a sad thing! But I know Russ is moving on to bigger and better things. I know the same is true of Meghan. I know that this is how these things go.

Issue 10 is shaping up to be amazing. This makes me glad.

Credit Theron Jacobs for the cover art:

Will Break Barry Graham [Stop] Must [Stop]

AWP is rolling into Chicago come the end of February. At its commencement we'll be having a big arm wrestling tournament among writers and whatnot. What precipitated this? I challenged Barry Graham, DOGZPLOT Emperor-in-Chief, to an arm wrestling match. He then decided the tournament was a good idea (it is) and the thing has taken something of a life of its own. Worst case scenario? I lose and have to buy Barry Graham pizza and beer and kiss his ass literally and publicly. As you might imagine, I have no intention of losing. We'll see if strength and endurance on my side February 29th, though. I've been hitting the gym hard in the meantime. I expect this will pay dividends come arm wrastlin' time.

Also, Ben Tanzer is a traitorous ratfink who made one mistake when he double crossed me: he left me alive!

TEAM POWERBEEF!!! (That's my arm wrestling team. There's me, the wrestler, and there's the people I've conscripted to shout invective at my opponents / cheer me on (mostly the former, though).)

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In other news, Jon Mau and I have concocted a template for further plans should Plan A and Plan B run afoul. You're free to use said template in your day-to-day lives as well, whenever the same happens to you.

Plan U - Try yelling at it from a seated position. Moving as little as possible. Saying something like, "I'm feeling too lethargic to respond to this physically."

Plan V - Sobbing quietly, hands resting on your face, cradling it as you're bent over yourself. Probably, you've moved little since Plan U, most likely not at all.

Plan W - Take a hostage. Then you release said hostage immediately, asking or pleading (most likely pleading) with them for assistance. You've been under a lot of pressure lately, is one big thing you might say to your erstwhile hostage.

Plan X - MELEE!!! (pronounced Mel-E)

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New Untoward and Red Lightbulbs things in the world. Mark Jordan Manner, a really talented young writer, being a common thread between our two publications, as coincidence would have it. 

I too have a publication on elimae that's up and at them now on elimae!