Stories

Five flash fictions published in Gargoyle

The latest issue of Washington, DC, based literary magazine Gargoyle, number 74, was recently released in print only format. A massive tome at over 450 pages, it includes nonfiction, poetry and fiction by: Kelli Allen, Roberta Allen, Robert R Angell, Cynthia Atkins, Naomi Ayala, Anne Becker, Nina Bennett, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Joanna Biggar, John Bradley, Nick Carbo, Joan Colby, Andy Darlington, Kiki Denis, Buck Downs, Barbara Drake, Patricia Eakins, Dyane Fancey, Richard Flynn, DJ Gaskin, Robert L. Giron, Gabriele Glang, Jesse Glass, Regan Good, Pamela Gordon, Susan Gubernat, Robert Head, Joyce L. Huff, Beth Baruch Joselow, Ken Kakareka, John Kinsella, Roz Kuehn, Patrick Lawler, Willard Manus, Dora E. McQuaid, Nancy Mercado, Gary Metras, Gloria Mindock, Mary B. Moore, Mary Morris, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Fred Muratori, Emile Nelligan, Kathleen Novak, Mary Overton, Che Parker, Meg Pokrass, Suzanne S. Rancourt, Suzanne Rhodenbaugh, Jonathan K. Rice, Jeff Richards, Julia Slavin, Todd Swift, Eleanor Ross Taylor, JC Todd, Pat Valdata, Michael Waters, Tom Whalen, Rosemary Winslow, and tons more.

I’m pleased to be included in this issue with five very short stories. Perhaps you could call them “flash fictions”: “Air,” “Good Sign,” “Guessing Games,” “Lingering,” and “Normal.” The images are integral to each work, although the texts may or may not be related.

Although there doesn’t seem to be an announcement for this issue on the magazine’s website, you could purchase a copy on Amazon.

Cover of Gargoyle 74

For some reason, the story “Normal” is entitled “Unknown” in print!

Science fiction story “Ol’ Rocking Chair’s Got You” published in The Chamber
Picture from The Chamber’s Facebook post for the story.

If you’re wondering what a grandmother sitting in a rocking chair has to do with science fiction, you’ll need to read my short story, “Ol’ Rocking Chair’s Got You,” which appeared yesterday in online dark fiction magazine The Chamber. The grandmother and her chair reside in the future on a distant exoplanet. The chair is a caregiving robot; and its care is not what it seems at the outset. You can read the full story here. The magazine releases a new issue every week, so if you are a fan of dark fiction, you may want to check it out.

My story “The Robot Shell” published in The Chamber magazine

The Chamber is an online magazine of contemporary dark fiction and poetry, with new issues release weekly. Yesterday’s issue included my story “The Robot Shell,” billed as “cyberpunk horror.” The story is set in a near future world where robot police control a population that lives mostly in vast slums. The heroine, Giga, ends up in jail after destroying one of the robots, where she meets her dissident hero and discovers the truth about the police. You can read it here.

Floral Float Flume excerpt published in Var(2x)

Var (2x) is an online literary journal by the makers of X-Peri reserved for the most extreme literary experiments. I’m pleased to have (finally) made the cut with an excerpt from Floral Float Flume: Flue Flit Flip, a novel about AI units engaged in a series of marketplace transactions. This selection comprises about 18 pages, or the first four episodes out of ten. The whole story runs 70 manuscript pages.

The vocabulary of the piece is severely limited to words beginning with “fl-“. What you see is not a random selection of words but a precise narrative with specific meaning and syntax. Four letter words are operations; five letter words are objects. To start with, “Floral Float Flume” is the name of one of the transactional AI units, and “flue flit flip” translates as “enter offer profit,” a kind of “vini vidi vici” for transactional AIs.

If you dare, you can read the selection here.

“A Kiss of Fog” flash fiction published in Autumn House Review

This one’s a bit complicated…Autumn House Journal opened and closed last year, and then reappeared this year with a new name: Autumn House Review. So the new/old November 2020 issue was published January 2021. It includes my prose poem/flash fiction piece “A Kiss of Fog.” I’m pleased it’s been returned to the online world. You can read it here.

Short story “Pussy Bomb/Earthquakes Bring Confusion” published in X-Peri

An online literary journal for extreme experimentalism, X-Peri publishes new work every Monday. Today, my science fiction story “Pussy Bomb/Earthquakes Bring Confusion” appeared on the site, with an accompanying still image from my video “Succubus Highway.” You can check it out here.

This text is part of a series of pieces featuring Doom Pussy, a kind of Kali-esque figure engaged in a war against war…as well as gender, environmental destruction, and other by products of human activity. An editor at another journal once described a Doom Pussy story as “a cross between William S. Burroughs and Andrea Dworkin.” This should come with an NSFW warning for extremely graphic language and situations. So I’m especially grateful to X-Peri for publishing it.

“The Spider That Laughed at the Sea” short story published in Danse Macabre du Jour

spider laughed danse macabre

Danse Macabre du Jour posts dark and atmospheric fiction and poetry on a daily basis as an adjunct to the periodical Danse Macabre. I’m very pleased that my short science fiction story “The Spider That Laughed at the Sea” appeared today. You can read it here.

In the story, a dysfunctional family lands on an unfamiliar planet, hoping to find a suitable place to set up a home. Their search for food leads them to a a cluster of giant spiders on the beach of a milk white sea. Lured by the temporary paradise they find there, the family becomes part of their new world.

DM du jour-spider

“Flip Operations II” and 5 asemic calligraphy works published in Otoliths

otoliths-53-front

The latest issue of Otoliths was released today, this one being Issue 53, the southern autumn, 2019. As usual, it’s an encyclopedic compendium of “plays, poems, paintings, reviews, stories, and collaborations galore” from across the international avant garde spectrum, including work from Lynn Strongin, Jeff Bagato, Pete Spence, Kyle Hemmings, Seth Howard, Andrew Topel,  Jim Leftwich, Steve Potter, Sanjeev Sethi, David Baptiste Chirot, Alison Ross, Mike Callaghan, John M. Bennett, Stephen Bett, Jim Meirose, Joel Chace, John Bradley, Dah, Ian Ganassi, Laura Bell, Emilio Morandi, Steve Dalachinsky, Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah, R. Keith, Cecelia Chapman, Keith Polette, Daniel de Culla, M. Liberto Gorgoni, Olivier Schopfer, Mary Cresswell, Jack Galmitz, Anton Yakovlev, B. J. Muirhead, Nina Živančević, Gregory Kimbrell, Cameron Lowe, Pat Nolan, Richard Kostelanetz, Daniel f. Bradley, Sheila E. Murphy, Adam Fieled, Bill Wolak, Márton Koppány, M.J. Iuppa, Gregory Stephenson, Elaine Woo, Karl Kempton, J. D. Nelson, Carol Stetser, Neil Leadbeater, Texas Fontanella, Tony Mancus & CL Bledsoe, gobscure, David Lohrey, Douglas Barbour, Keith Higginbotham, Guy R. Beining, Sarah Sarai, hiromi suzuki, Thomas Fink, Maya D. Mason, Carla Bertola, Tom Beckett, Randee Silv & Mumtazz, Mark DuCharme, Michael O’Brien, Elmedin Kadric, Keith Nunes, Bob Heman, John Kalliope, Rebecca Ruth Gould, Charles Borkhuis, Tony Beyer, Kenneth Rexroth, Maralena Howard, Stu Hatton, Michael Brandonisio, Brian Glaser, Penelope Weiss, Stephen Nelson, Tom Daley, Bernie Earley, Anna Cates, Jeff Harrison, John Levy, Vernon Frazer, Miro Sandev, Sabine Miller,  Christopher Barnes, Nick Nelson, Jimmy Rivoltella, Katrinka Moore, Joe Balaz, Marilyn Stablein, Paul Pfleuger, Jr., John Pursch, Joseph Buehler, Colleen Woods, Michael Philip Castro, Michael Prihoda, Henry Crawford, Wes Lee, & Gay Beste Reineck.

I’m very pleased to be in the bunch with one text work and five asemic calligraphy pieces.

“Flip Processor II” is actually a “short story” about two AI robots conducting business transactions in a proprietary language consisting of a limited vocabulary and specific syntax. You can check out this work here.

flip-2-otoliths

asemic-otoliths-53

“Pussy Pulls the Trigger” published in Danse Macabre

danse macabre 119

Online literary journal Danse Macabre, “a magazine of the imaginative, the magical, the ethereal, the supernatural, the dark, the absurd, and  the unknown,” released Issue 119 “Les Etrennes” today. The works of the authors you see above are joined by one of my Doom Pussy stories. A violent rant from a Kali-like figure at war with mankind, “Pussy Pulls the Trigger” should come with one of those NSFW warnings, as it is intended only for a mature audience with strong constitutions and a taste for extreme, transgressive literature. Anyway, you can read the full text here.

pussy-trigger-dm 119