Updates and Downtime

In the past two months, I've done 53 submissions, mostly flash fiction. Of the responses I've gotten so far, I've gotten 22 rejections, 6 acceptances, and 1 acceptance that had some conditions I didn't agree to, leading me to politely decline publication. Also, I had to make three retractions due to the rules of simultaneous submissions: if something get picked up, let the other journals know immediately so they don't waste time reading bullshit they can't have.

From work on this project, in addition to other writing I've been able to squeeze in when I can, I've amassed quite the backlog of work: 70+ pieces of flash fiction (of varying levels of quality, of course). I'm glad I'm finally getting an opportunity to spread it all around. With this deluge of good fortune, I'm anticipating the inevitable drought when all my quality work is (hopefully) snatched up and I'm back to square one.

For now, another week with no new story. I'll be back next week with something new. For now, check out the harvest . . .

And don't forget to submit your own story to Our Band Could Be Your Lit! Click here for details.

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"Always Say the Person's Name" is based on "Ode to Billie Joe" by Bobbie Gentry and was suggested by writer Jenny Diski, originally for OBCBYL story 013. It's up now in issue #31 of The Legendary. This is my big Amy Hempel rip off. Or at least as close as I'm going to get to one.

READ "ALWAYS SAY THE PERSON'S NAME" HERE!

The Legendary

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"Look At How Fast I Can Go Nowhere At All" is based on "Life Passed Me By" by Super Stereo and was suggested by Jersey Devil Press Assistant Editor Monica Rodriguez for OBCBYL story 027. It's up now on amphibi.us. I was totally lost on this story--the original draft was more of a shitty extended scene that didn't make much sense--until some veteran at work randomly told me the story of the USS Indianapolis. I went right home after work and came up with what is now the actual story.

READ "LOOK AT HOW FAST I CAN GO NOWHERE AT ALL" HERE!
amphibi.us

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A first sentence I wrote for 50-to-1--they only publish stories under fifty words or the first sentences of stories that don't exist--is up right here. I wrote the line a year or two ago as an exercise in a workshop and never really planned on writing the whole story. At least some good came from it.

READ THE FIRST LINE I WROTE AND SOMEONE PUBLISHED (REALLY?) HERE!

50-to-1

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"When There Is No Road" is based on "Rock N Roll" by Paleface and was suggested by Monica "Mo" Samalot of Paleface for OBCBYL story 019. It will be appearing in the next issue of Literary Fever, under the theme of "Fortune Favors the Bold." I love boxing stories, and they always turn out pretty well for me. Kristie at Literary Fever said they were missing "the fight" for this issue, and "When There Is No Road" totally did it for them.

Literary Fever

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"Layers" is based on "Undone (The Sweater Song)" by Weezer and was suggested by two girls in a young adult writing workshop I was moderating. It will be up as of December 5th on the short short section of the Fiction At Work website. I had the kids write to music they had never heard before, and in trying to get me back they picked out "the weirdest song" on one of their iPods. I've played this song in front of crowds more than they've heard it. I think I wrote the story in about fifteen minutes.

Fiction At Work

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"This Illusion" is based on "Feel" by Big Star. It will be appearing in the next update on issue 13 of Prime Number Magazine (Prime Decimal 13.2). This is the publication I'm most excited about, as I really dig a lot of the work PNM puts out, including this killer story by OBCBYL contributor Kevin Wilson.

READ "THIS ILLUSION" HERE!

Prime Number Magazine

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"Magic In Reverse": A story based on "If You Love Someone, Set Them On Fire" by Dead Milkmen, as suggested by writer Danger_Slater (43/100)

Magic In Reverse

Life had felt backwards for so long that when the police asked me to start at the beginning, I told them, “I set her dad on fire,” which was actually what I had just gotten done doing. The real first thing was sitting in Leah’s room, me naked and her in knee-length socks. She’d light my leg hair on fire and we’d watch it curl up from its ends in long strips all along the meat of my calf and shin. She liked the smell of atmosphere tangling with actuality, like old body wrestling new air. We’d try to save some of my leg for the next time, but after I’d go through and light up the static and fuzz of her socks, we’d move on, all the way up past my thigh. The knobs of my ankle and knee were ruby colored and pulsing with warm irritation. We stopped and looked down, one leg normal, the other smooth and dappled with black hairs pinpricking out of splotches of white and red skin. She begged me to do the light blonde hairs on her arms and then, after that, the almost invisible swatch of white hair on the small of her back. It all went up like magic in reverse: the poof, the sprinkle of dust. She laid me on my stomach and went down my shoulders and back where there was hardly anything to burn. She flipped me over, did my chest and armpits slowly so I felt the flush of heat go through me and then back again. She took off her socks and then spread her legs. The hair was trimmed but still feral and mostly untamed. As if painting with light breaths in winter, I took the flame and lapped away at it. We were hot to the touch and her bed was covered with tiny balls of ash. We went to the garage and found some oil rags and a tank of kerosene. We lit them on fire and let them slide down our chests quickly, the warmth like opening an oven and then closing it immediately. I tore a strip off one of the rags and tied it to her finger. Nobody did anything for a moment and then she tied a rag around each of her ankles and wrists. I lit the rag on her left wrist and then she touched it to the rag on her left ankle before bringing her feet and wrists together like closing a book. She ran out of the garage and into the front lawn. We still didn’t have clothes on. She did naked cartwheels and the flames made her look like a circle rolling around the yard. I stood on the front porch and sprayed kerosene onto the legs of the wicker furniture. It was then that her dad came out. He was the doctor who delivered me when I was born, and when he came at me with open arms, I could only remember the thing I surely couldn’t remember from my first seconds of life, his covered face and hands-on greeting that pulled me into the world. That was the real first thing. I loved him, and I flicked the lighter once, twice.

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Lyrics

The Dead Milkmen are a punk rock band from Philly. The are probably the silliest band to ever be named after something from a Toni Morrison book. I'm meeting Joe Jack Talcum next week, so that's pretty cool.

Danger_Slater is the world's most dangerous writer. Much like The Ultimate Warrior, he is from Parts Unknown. Much like Queen Latifah, he resides in New Jersey. Danger_Slater is an agent of the theater of the absurd. As a dude who really gets his rocks off writing and reading work in the style of traditional literary fiction from the 1970s and 1980s, I'm often completely lost when reading a Danger_Slater story. Sometimes there's a guy with a banana for a head and sometimes someone takes a shit that isn't actually their shit. (I'm proposing that last sentence for the official Danger_Slater biography to be released in fifty years or so.) You can buy his debut novel Love Me from Amazon and then head on over to Jersey Devil Press and tell them they did a wonderful job putting it out.

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Next week: Uhh, something.

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"Is That You John Wayne? Is This Me?": A story based on "It's a Long Road" by Dan Hill, as suggested by musician Topon Das of Fuck the Facts (42/100)

Is That You John Wayne? Is This Me?

The tall girl with roses on her dress rubs a hand up the inside of Deacon’s thigh and grabs him firm in the crotch. She’s spilled peach schnapps down her chin and neck and breasts, where it’s dried in a narrow stream and soaked into the top hem of the mostly white dress. Instead of that, Deacon thinks about Vietnam and how he got drafted, how he didn’t pass the physical and isn’t actually going.

“The way having no arches works is that there’s a minor-but-ignorable discomfort when spending long stretches of time standing or walking,” the doctor told Deacon, “and the arrival of the overall pain is not unlike a hand grenade with a two decade waiting period.”

He’ll need a cane within five years, a wheelchair within ten. So, Deacon’s not going to Nam. The girl with roses on her dress has two friends, one tall and one short, who are drinking whiskey out of champagne flutes and trying to get Deacon to go take pictures of them playing dress-up back at the short one’s house. He’s going there.

The girls are college freshmen with undeclared majors. Deacon follows them outside and hails a cab. The women pile in first, followed by Deacon crunching in next to the tall one with the lilies on her dress. He wants to change out of his tux first but the girls tell him not to. When he goes to loosen his tie, Lilies takes his hand and puts his middle finger in her mouth, removing it slowly around the circle of her lips.

The girls are talking amongst themselves. Roses pulls out a joint and passes it to Shorty, who lights it up and drags deeply. Lilies is waiting for the joint, and in the meantime she massages the sides of her thighs with her thumbs and palms and manages to wiggle out of her panties. The other girls laugh and do the same.

The cab pulls up in front of Shorty’s house, a mile outside of downtown, a place where the protests have tapered to one woman with an acoustic guitar sitting on the curb and strumming the chords to “One Tin Soldier” and “Waist Deep In the Big Muddy.” Deacon pays the cab driver while the girls stumble to the house, lifting up each other’s skirts and laughing obnoxiously. As soon as they get in the door, Lilies kisses Roses on the cheek clumsily and then licks the side of her face. Roses takes two steps forward and shoves her hand up Shorty’s dress in slow motion and then shoves her entire hand in her mouth.

They throw Deacon a camera and take turns running in and out of Shorty’s room with different outfits on, none of which fit the two taller girls. Deacon snaps picture after picture and the girls mostly ignore him except for the few seconds they stop to strike a pose in front of him. They’ve given up on undergarments and come out of the room with a breast hanging out or their pubic hair puffing up from the top of unfastened polyester pants. After about twenty minutes of the girls rotating outfits and revolving around the camera like a cyclone, Deacon doesn’t even bother aiming his shots anymore. He holds the camera to his side with both hands and clicks the button as if he’s in the war.

“Let’s go kill someone,” Deacon says.

The girls have started drinking again, relentlessly and without purpose. Shorty is the first to say something, which is “Let’s fucking do it.” Everyone’s quiet for a second until Lilies pushes Roses and then laughs. They all start laughing and shoving one another, throwing fake punches and then real ones. Shorty takes a right hook to the eye and throws haymakers out like hummingbird wings until, within seconds, everyone but Deacon has a bloody nose. They won’t stop laughing.

They don’t call a cab this time, they just take off toward downtown, blood and booze staining their faces and clothes. Deacon’s left his cummerbund and tie and jacket back at the place, but he’s still wearing everything else, the long shirt with cufflinks and the suspenders. The cheap plastic shoes begin to hurt his feet halfway to the protests. The girls have formed a messy v-shape, Shorty flanked by Lilies and Roses, and they’re following Deacon toward the noise and light.

The first guy they see is a wannabe hippy whose aggression is real and far less rheumy than the actual passive hippies. The girls call him over and he walks right by Deacon. They walk fifty feet to get to a parking ramp and then start walking to the top level. Deacon’s far behind the girls and the fake hippy. Lilies is in front now, turning it into a game, telling the fake hippy to come get them if he thinks he can catch them. Deacon stops for a second to take off his shoes. He starts to rub his feet and by the time he meets back up with the group at the top of the parking ramp, Roses is already down on her knees in front of the fake hippy, unbuttoning his pants.

“Get the fuck out of here,” the fake hippy says to Deacon, loud enough to travel across the top level of the ramp and not much further. Lilies punches the fake hippy in the back of the head, which doesn’t do much of anything. When he turns around, Roses stands up and shoves the pointed heel of her shoe into the side of the man’s neck. The three women begin to pummel him. The shoe won’t fall out, but as the seal of skin around the leather begins to loosen, spurts of blood shoot out in two-foot arcs every second, keeping time.

Deacon turns and runs. The girls have forgotten about Deacon and would have forgotten about the war if they had ever considered it. Deacon runs and doesn’t stop, not when he begins to cry and not when he begins to vomit, letting loose with hot bile and wedding food all over his stomach and legs. He runs until his steps begin to falter, his non-existent arches burning up his heels and shins. He runs with no destination, with no possible end of the road.

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Lyrics

Dan Hill is a Canadian musician who has a bunch of albums, but who gives a shit because he wrote the theme song for the first Rambo movie, so nothing's going to be as badass as that. Also, he's not the Dan Hill who married Faith Hill before she got famous--that was some Nashville guy who people somehow manage to give less of a fuck about than the Rambo Dan Hill.

Topon Das is a Canadian musician who has a bunch of albums, and you should give a shit because grind is awesome. He plays guitar in the band Fuck the Facts, my personal favorite album of theirs being Disgorge Mexico, in which they keep a lot of the same baby-punching elements of grind/death and add some space to breathe. Then you get hammered in the balls again. Everyone wins. Also, he likes Secret Chiefs, so he's cool as hell in my book.

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Next week: a story based on "If You Love Someone, Set Them On Fire" by Dead Milkmen, as suggested by writer Danger_Slater.

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