Pocket Finger

Ryan Call and his sister, Christy Call, have collaborated on a PDF chapbook, Pocket Finger, for Publishing Genius.  The first two pages alone are simply incredible and it just gets better.

My sister and I once collaborated on a short story.  She did something embarrassing and then I wrote a story about it.  It was an uneasy collaboration, resulting in much unpleasantness.

Hills Like White Elephants: Emily Frey

"Someone mistook the strawberries for weeds and they're lying on the lawn like gasping fish hearts."

from "Labor" by Emily Frey

"Do not let Wilson write..."

In response to the publication of my story in Waccamaw, my former professor, Colonel Padgett Powell, sent me an email that read, "For God's sake do not let Wilson write, in public, 'The murders made my wife and I irritable...'  Please.  I weep and tear my hair."

I attempted to make up for this lapse in grammar by telling the colonel that I had dedicated an upcoming story to him and then told him the title.  He wrote back five minutes later to inform me that the title was grammatically incorrect.  At this rate, Powell will not have any hair left.

Padgett came to our cabin a few years ago to fish and camp out and we went to Hammer's, a variety general store in Winchester that has Carhartt double knee work pants next to a pyramid of Duke's mayonnaise.  There was a random shopping cart in the middle of the store filled with Flecktarn camouflage German field caps.  If I have made a better purchase in my life, I would like to know what it is.  It was apparently designed to not fit any known human head shape.  If Padgett doesn't wear his cap for his next author photo, I'll be very, very surprised.

Hills Like White Elephants: Raymond Chandler

"From thirty feet away, she looked like a lot of class.  From ten feet away, she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away."

from The High Window by Raymond Chandler

Wigleaf

Another one of my attempts to inform people as to what the hell is going on in the rock opera Tommy is now online at Wigleaf.  I also sent them a postcard about my life in the woods and the constant interruption of animals wishing to do me harm.

The previous featured short was by Frances Gapper and it's got this incredible line: "Meanwhile Susie is murdering herself with hand gel, she'll be wanting my other kidney soon."

If you want a thousand words of something good, you can't go wrong with Wigleaf.

Hills Like White Elephants: Ben Debus

"...pops his finger-joints, his hands like two bouquets of clacking knives."

from "Fifth Study of F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu: A Bedroom Scene" by Ben Debus

Waccamaw

The second issue of Waccamaw has arrived online.  I got real lucky and ended up in the issue with a story, "Hammer", about The Claw-End-of-the-Hammer Killer.  It's about infidelity and people getting killed with hammers.  I'm sharing space with Michael Czyzniejewski (hand transplants), Darrin Doyle (foot amputations), Laura Valeri (withcraft), Steve Cushman (Inter-Cranial Artery Anuerysm), and Sonny Brewer (Ghosthead Oak).  It's a good crowd.