Flash Fiction: The Social Condition
Janine was in the bathroom when a guy sat down at the next table. The waitress took his order right away, but he was particular about his omelet and gave confusing instructions. It took a couple tries before the waitress got it right. When she left for the kitchen, the guy winked at me. He [...]
Continue reading...Cream & Sugar – Science Fiction
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Read installment #8 of the serialized novel, Cream & Sugar: a story of advertising, race, and one man’s midlife quest to rein in his unruly testicles. In Chapter 8, Elton Pierce discovers that today is the first day of the rest of his sorry-assed life–which is another way of saying it’s the first time after [...]
Continue reading...Flash Fiction: Alien Landscapes
Friday, May 11, 2012
Richard woke from a flying dream. It wasn’t the flying that bothered him. It was the landscapes whizzing by beneath his wings. Instead of green forests and golden wheat fields, he zoomed over alien mountains that glistened pink and purple. With all the zooming, Richard gasped and it woke Ellie beside him. Dreaming again? she [...]
Continue reading...Everyone’s A Synesthete
Thursday, May 10, 2012
1. My wife sings in a community chorus. As a dutiful husband, I went to her concert last Saturday and listened. Typical of me, my mind wandered. I like to say I have a nimble mind, but when I’m being honest, I confess that “nimble” is a euphemism for “easily distracted”. While I listened to [...]
Continue reading...Suddenly, Etgar Keret Knocks on the Door
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Etgar Keret has a new collection of short stories out and it’s called Suddenly, A Knock At The Door. They are great stories. You can read all about them on other web sites. You can learn about how they combine the ordinary and the bizarre in the same sentence. You can read about how short [...]
Continue reading...Cream & Sugar – Planet of the Apes
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Read installment #7 of the serialized novel, Cream & Sugar: a story of advertising, race, and one man’s midlife quest to rein in his unruly testicles. In Chapter Seven, Elton Pierce joins the environmental group that meets in the basement of St. George’s Anglican Church. He never makes it. At the construction site of a [...]
Continue reading...A Practical Reason to Love Ebooks
Monday, May 7, 2012
I could well belong to the last generation that does this. I’m putting real books into storage. There I am, sitting in front of nineteen Rubbermaid containers with a thousand books I’ll be shipping off to a storage unit until such time as I have a place to live with room enough to set them [...]
Continue reading...Story: The Cheetos Ten
Friday, May 4, 2012
Ralph Meriwether led the tactical team that stormed the Cheetos factory. He had vowed never to move without proper intelligence, but after a hundred days, he knew little more than he did when the terrorists first seized the plant. There were ten of them. That much he did know. And they were well-armed and heavily [...]
Continue reading...Can Alcohol Make You a Better Writer?
Thursday, May 3, 2012
More than a decade ago, it came as a great blow to me when my doctor phoned with the results of a biopsy. I had celiac disease. No more gluten. So what foods have gluten in them? I asked. Well, the doctor said, bread for one. Anything with wheat in it. No pasta. No pizza. [...]
Continue reading...Review: Shopping for A Better Country, by Josip Novakovich
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
When I first learned that Josip Novakovich was a Croat American writer living in Montreal, I assumed he was an exile who had fled the violence of the war for Croatian independence, or had escaped before that when the former Yugoslav Republic was just another Soviet satellite. He had escaped to the West where he [...]
Continue reading...Cream & Sugar – Midnight Blood
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Read installment #6 of the serialized novel, Cream & Sugar: a story of advertising, race, and one man’s midlife quest to rein in his unruly testicles. In Chapter Six, Elton Pierce arrives home to an angry wife. He’s forgotten their invitation to a niece’s birthday party. The family drives to a suburban enclave near the [...]
Continue reading...Story: The Baby Tree
Friday, April 27, 2012
He ran over the baby in his driveway. It was dark and he had been on his way to the grocery store for some potato chips. He liked having something to munch on while he watched movies late at night. The grocery store closed at eleven and he got into his car at ten forty-five. [...]
Continue reading...Disaster Capitalism as a Publishing Business Model
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Since the rise of Amazon, the Kindle, ibooks, the iPad, etc., it’s hardly news that the publishing industry is struggling to cope with radical change. The latest, and perhaps most ludicrous, is an antitrust suit brought by the U.S. Justice Department against Apple & the Big 6 U.S. publishers alleging that their agency model is, [...]
Continue reading...Doing Violence to Denis Johnson
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Denis Johnson is a dirty realist. I imagine a homeless guy pushing a grocery cart full of empties and muttering it to himself—dirty realist, dirty realist, dirty realist—as if Denis Johnson had done him wrong. A dirty realist writes about mid-western white trash junkies who flirt with violence and describe it in first person narratives. [...]
Continue reading...Cream & Sugar: The Seeds of Charity
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Read installment #5 of the serialized novel, Cream & Sugar: a story of advertising, race, and one man’s midlife quest to rein in his unruly testicles. In Chapter Five, Elton Pierce quits his job. Outwardly, it looks like a selfless decision–his boss likes to grope the women on staff and Elton wants to distance himself [...]
Continue reading...New eFiction from David Allan Barker
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Friday, May 18, 2012
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