fiction

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

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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.

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“Pussy Pulls the Trigger” published in Danse Macabre

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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.

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Short story “Pussy on the Mark” published at Scum Gentry

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One of my short stories featuring the Doom Pussy appeared yesterday in online in outlaw literary journal The Scum Gentry. Upon accepting it, the editor remarked on its “strong Burroughsean flavor and blatantly trangressive and demented tone,” which I thought nailed it pretty well. He summarized it this way: “Pussy, Doom and Smash lay waste to their world in this experimental psychosexual sci-fi riff.” Needless to say, this involves strong language that is NSFW and for mature audiences only. Read at your own risk here.

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Amazon sale on Savage Night and Other Stories

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Goofing around on Amazon today, I noticed they are offering copies of my book Savage Night and Other Stories for only $4.41. That’s a huge discount on the $19.99 list price! What a great opportunity to grab a copy if you’re interested. Check it out here.

This book collects a bunch of my early experimental science fiction stories alongside my early science fiction novel Savage Night, which uses the Ancient Egyptian myth of crossing the Land of the Dead to describe a journey into the self. Thematically, everything here seems to follow the classic sex or death duality, often at the same time.

Not sure how many they have at this price. I would buy them all, but I still have a couple big boxes of them from the last time I saw the price drop. After my royalty payment, I got copies for a buck each.

Although the back cover synopsis is available on the listing, here it is anyway:

Two books in one this collection includes a short novel Savage Night and a group of stories exploring similar themes of death control self actualization and the conflict between the socialized self and the True or inner self. In Savage Night, Jean Savage is a crew member on an industrial ship forced to land on a desolate planet so its parent corporation can form an alliance with the ultimate enforcers of control the serpent headed demons of the Duat, a nocturnal underworld the Ancient Egyptians visualized in their funereal text The Book of Coming into Day. Not content to own the bodies of its employees, the RA corporation wants to exploit their souls as well In the Duat there are no enemies of RA. Not anymore. Fighting a guerilla war using sex magic rituals and protective spells, Jean struggles against the corporation and its demon allies to keep her true self alive until the dawn that brings escape. But her biggest challenge is finding her own soul her True Self ,which has been lost in layers of social psychological and corporate control.

“Other Stories” features two early Jean Savage texts exploring similar themes in different contexts where she is a juvenile delinquent struggling against the hostile influences of family and society. There are also stories involving killer clowns spreading a bizarre sex virus, pirates seeking immortality in deep space, a trio of eco terrorist mermaids, and the gingerbread man as a computer hacker. Using black humor, social satire, violent eroticism, science fiction motifs, and experimental narrative structures, these compelling yarns perform themselves in the cinema of the mind s eye.

Short story “Pussy War Theory” published in Gobbet magazine

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An online literary magazine for “experimental word stuffs,” Gobbet released my short story “Pussy War Theory” today. Part of a series of texts featuring the character Doom Pussy, it describes a Kali-like Earth goddess figure engaged in a constant war against the minions of a material death culture. This is the first of those pieces to be published since the 1990s.

Important note: There should probably be some kind of hazard warning on this story, due to extreme language, sexual situations, and the misuse of avant garde techniques. Needless to say, it is intended for mature audiences only.

If all this nonsense hasn’t scared you off, you can read “Pussy War Theory” here.

Supplementary note: Gobbet editor Gary J. Shipley wrote that the piece was “abject, lean and oddly precise: a winning combination.” I’m not sure what that means exactly, but the Doom Pussy stories reflect my long study of Artaud, Bataille, and Burroughs. Possibly as a reflection of the tale’s over-the-top intensity, harsh noise band Macronympha “borrowed” segments of one previously published story for titles and liner notes on a 7″ release. You can read my article about that record here.