Opposite ends of the spectrum: new story, new poetry sale

/ Wednesday, March 12th, 2014 / No Comments »

ArtemisA couple of bits of news from opposite ends of the literary spectrum this week.
 
My poem “A Curtain of Stars” is being reprinted in Artemis Journal, a beautiful Southwest Virginia literary magazine that’s being revived after more than a decade of dormancy. Like many of my poems, “Curtain of Stars” is actually quite literal — it was inspired by the starchart-covered curtains Anita sewed for my office.
 
It’s one of the most wholesome poems I’ve written, and it’s one of those pieces that’s become something akin to an old friend. The only mainstream poetry review I’ve ever gotten reflected on it kindly, I’ve performed a version of it for The Best of No Shame Theatre here in Roanoke, and I included it in two of my poetry collections, Strange Wisdoms of the Dead and The Journey to Kailash (though it won’t be in the forthcoming Hungry Constellations.)
 
nameless 3I’m tickled that this poem will reach a new audience inside a book of coffee table quality, and I’m especially thrilled to be sharing space with Nikki Giovanni — the issue’s featured poet.
 
On the dark side of the world, the third issue of weird horror zine [Nameless] has just been released, and it contains my short, extremely strange horror monologue “Monster,” perhaps one of the least wholesome things I’ve ever written. The story’s title refers to the phenomenon once known as mathematical “monsters”: curves of infinite length that exist within a finite space. We know them now as fractals, and they come into play in the course of a police interrogation gone horribly wrong. I’m grateful (and I confess somewhat astonished) that I actually found a pro-rate paying home for this hybrid monstrosity.
 
This monster isn’t done — at present Anita and I have planned for this piece to be the closer in my forthcoming short story collection Unseaming, which I’ll be hawking at World Fantasy in November. Brace yourself, as you’ll be hearing a lot more about that down the road. But I’m not quite ready to go into detail yet….
 
#SFWApro

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