Shrayan - Abha Iyengar

Abha Iyengar's novel Shrayan - an adult fantasy tale - explores an individual’s quest for acceptance in an unfamiliar and unforgiving world: Shrayan emerges from the underground, a fully formed creature, not quite human in appearance. In the dark forest where he finds himself, he is surrounded by snakes. Brought to the city and made to dance as an ajooba, he breaks free and learns dancing and martial arts. He falls in love to discover that beauty has its own price tag. The night he achieves stardom, he leaves his clamouring fans and takes to the streets, hoping to find his lost son.

In his quest for his self, Shrayan discovers aspects of his personality that he did not know existed, and also learns to come to terms with what he is and deal with the challenges that life throws up for him as he knows best. Love is difficult to find and hold, friendship has different meanings, and trying to fit into a world concept is neither possible not required, these are some of the things he learns.

Abha Iyengar is an internationally published freelance writer and poet who lives in New Delhi, India. She is a Kota Press Poetry Anthology contest winner, conducts creative writing and poetry workshops and has written several screenplays. Her poem film “Parwaaz” has won a special jury prize at the film festival at Patras, Greece and has been screened to acclaim at various international film festivals. Abhha blogs at Encounters of an Everyday Kind, where she currently hosts the new edition of the language place blog carnival: "The Other".

Abha Iyengar: Shrayan
e-book

The Language of Dragons - Yay Words

The Language of Dragons is a collection of dragon haiku and art, edited by Aubrie Cox in anticipation of the year of the dragon, which starts with the Chinese New Year on the 23rd January 2012.
The collection is available as PDF at Yay Words: The Language of Dragons - PDF

Aubrie Cox explains: "Back in October on Yay Words!, I asked my poet friends to write poems about trolls and/or tea and posted the results of it on Halloween as "Tea with Trolls." After a poll on Facebook and Twitter—it was whether folks wanted to write about sasquatch or dragons—and discovering 2012 was the Year of the Water dragon, I decided to plan another post for January first as a way to commemorate the New Year. Poets and artists were invited to contribute short form poetry and art featuring dragons and/or water and/or fire; anyone would submitted was guaranteed one piece for inclusion."

Contributors come from all over the world and include both well established and newer haiku poets. Cover art by Kris Kondo. A contributor list with website and twitter links is included at the end of the collection.

Aubrie Cox graduated from Millikin University with a B.A. in English literature and creative writing with a philosophy minor. At Millikin, she served as the senior editor for the student owned and operated publishing company Bronze Man Books, and editor-in-chief for the literary and fine arts magazine Collage. As of Fall 2011, she is attending Ball State University in pursuit of an M.A. in English creative writing. She regularly blogs poetry on Yay Words!, where she also does collaborative e-collections.

The Language of Dragons - website
The Language of Dragons - PDF
44 pages

The Peppermint Bottle - Sherry O'Keefe

Sherry O'Keefe's The Peppermint Bottle crosses boundaries, borders and genres. Originally blog posts, the pieces in this collection are finely crafted vignettes and illustrated prose poems full of wry and touching observations, and are now gathered in a format that emphasizes how brilliantly these pieces stand alone but also interconnect.

"Lost and found objects and snippets of strangers' conversations point to both our isolation and connectedness. The thoroughly charming narratorial voice is equal part dreamer and quirky practical, but always astute, and interested in exploring the surreal disjunctions in everyday life that most people don't notice - or don't write about." - Rose Hunter

An excerpt is online at BluePrintReview: The Peppermint Bottle.

Sherry O'Keefe is a direct descendent of several Montana pioneers and was raised in a remote power camp along the Missouri River in Montana, learning early on there are no rowboats waiting in the dawn. Mother to two, sister to four, cousin to dozens, in many ways she is the least of the story-tellers in her Irish family. She attended MSU-Billings on a music scholarship where years of playing viola taught her to count to four repeatedly and how to appreciate the off-beat on and off the concert stage.

She is the author of Making Good Use of August (Finishing Line Press). Her most current poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Escape into Life, Camas, Switched-on Gutenberg, THEMA, Terrain. Org., PANK, Avatar Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Prick of the Spindle, Inkwell, Pirene’s Fountain, The High Desert Journal and Main Street Rag. Currently working on a full collection, Cracking Geodes Open, she is a poetry editor for both IthacaLit and YB Journal.

Sherry O'Keefe: The Peppermint Bottle
98 pages, full color
also available as kindle e-book

I’m Here Right? - Josh Rank (Deckfight)

Josh Rank moved to Atlanta from Wisconsin after college. He didn’t have a job, he didn’t know much about the South. What he found is included in this chapbook of first-person essays: I'm Here Right? Stuff on selling meat from the back of a truck, witnessing a takedown at the jail, getting hit by a car and more. All in Josh’s deadpan, but forthright style.

The chapbook is available in various free pdf and e-book formats.

Josh Rank blogs at These Things I Know and occasionally writes music reviews for the indie music webpage Deckfight. An interview with him is up at LCB: Interview with writer Josh Rank.

Deckfight Press
Deckfight Press is part of Deckfight and is into chapbooks of the pdf and epub kind. Recent chapbooks include: "A Patchwork of Rooms Furnished by Mistakes" by J. Bradley, "Firehouse Neckbrace" by Josh Spiler and others - here's a Deckfight book list.

Josh Rank: I’m Here Right?
chapbook, 37 pages

A quick guide to Book Publishing Services (Lulu, Smashwords, Createspace, Issuu...)

This isn't news: the digital revolution changed the way books are produced, and also the way they are read.

Print on Demand (POD) makes it possible to create single copies of books, which allows to publish books for smaller and special audiences. Parallel, e-readers make it possible to read e-books in a new, leisure way.

Together, this leads to a growing range of publishing formats, and publishing services, which are especially interesting for small presses and for authors.

Below is a list of service providers, with examples of printed books and e-books that are featured in the blueprint book blog.



Lulu
Lulu is a company offering publishing, printing in various sizes, and distribution (including e-books).
Since their founding in 2002, Lulu has published over 1.1 million titles by creators in over 200 countries and territories and adds 20,000 new titles to their catalogue a month.
links: Lulu webpage, wiki-page
examples: "lulu"-books in this blog (print books + e-books)
cover: if you want to publish a book at CreateSpace, here some advice for creating the book cover

CreateSpace
A publishing/printing/distribution service that provides free tools to help self-publish and distribute books, DVDs, CDs etc. on-demand at CreateSpace and via Amazon.com. (CreateSpace belongs to Amazon, thus the listing, which only works for Amazon.com, no other countries)
link: CreateSpace
examples: CreateSpace-books in this blog
cover: if you want to publish a book at CreateSpace, here some advice for creating the book cover

Smashwords
An ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers, agents and readers that offers multi-format ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device.
link: Smashwords
examples: Smashword-books in this blog
how-to-guide: Smashword Style Guide + Marketing Guide

Issuu
Issuu is a digital publishing platform that delivers full-color reading experiences of magazines, catalogs, and newspapers.
link: Issuu
examples: Issuu-books in this blog

Related links: Red Lemonade, exPress tutorial, Wiki-Pages 

• Advice+Example: How to prepare a book cover for print-on-demand services like CreateSpace
• Red Lemonade: new experimental service: full texts online + print books (example)
• exPress: print to e-book workflow tutorial advice from Folded Word
• General information: Wiki: Print on demand  / Wiki: E-book

---
Other blueprint How-to posts:

- How to create an own google map

- How to create an automatic paper.li newspaper

Never Never Stories - Jason Sanford (Spotlight)

Ranging from science fiction to fantasy, the 10 stories contained in Never Never Stories by Jason Sanford could also be named: "Best Of" - they have won the Interzone Readers’ Poll, been nominated for the BSFA Award, longlisted for the British Fantasy Award, and printed in numerous magazines and book anthologies including Year's Best SF.

The collection also contains an original essay on archeology and fantasy and a cover by award-winning artist Vincent Chong.

"Sanford expertly blends world building and storytelling. In fact, he makes it look easy."
- SF Signal

There also is an ebook edition of Never Never Stories - it contains all of the content from the print edition along with four additional stories (one of which has never been published) plus a different introduction. One of the storíes is online as excerpt: The Ships Like Clouds.

Jason Sanford's stories have received a number of awards and honors, including being a finalist for the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novella, winning both the 2008 and 2009 Interzone Readers' Polls, receiving a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, being nominated for the BSFA Award, and being longlisted for the British Fantasy Award. He also co-founded the literary journal storySouth, through which he runs the annual Million Writers Award.

About Spotlight Publishing
Spotlight Publishing is an independent press based in North Carolina, a press that is focused on producing collections of short stories (single-author collections and anthologies), as well as books by established authors that are either out of print with the original publisher, or different from the type of book the author is best known for.

Jason Sanford: Never Never Stories
story collection
240 pages

House of Worship - Marcus Speh

In "House of Worship", Marcus Speh gathers 15 of his flash fiction stories in an experimental approach: the stories are a first selection of a planned larger collection. House of Worship is available at Red Lemonade, a platform that takes a different approach to publishing, and offers the full texts of its print books as online reads.

Marcus explains: "I'd like to publish my 100+ best flash fiction pieces (with a handful of short stories) written 2009—2011. Unburdened by offers from publishers, I decided to try something else: with little effort, I've put up 15 of these stories, all previously published, at Red Lemonade, a new literary community plus publishing press, based on the Cursor platform of Richard Eoin Nash, award-winning former publisher of Berkeley-based Soft Skull Press.

Nash has created Cursor for "folks who run indie presses, or want to start one, or run a web community but would like that community to be able to publish books." [R Nash] Red Lemonade, a community of DRM-free original writing, is still in "beta" mode, but welcomes new members and has just opened its bookshop. Meanwhile, my collection titled "House of Worship", is still looking for a publisher who worships "Absurd, Germanic and Existentialist" flash fiction."

Marcus Speh is a writer, ex-particle physicist, professor, executive coach, project lead, web head, father, fictionaut, former fencer and paratrooper, current maitre d' of kaffe in katmandu, curator of the 1000 shipwrecked penguins project and participant of 100 Days 2011, who lives in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg.

Marcus Speh: House of Worship
a flash collection

Freight - Mel Bosworth (Folded Word)

Freight by Mel Bosworth is an unflinching, quirky novel that follows a flawed yet lovable everyman as he searches for Home. We never learn his name. Nor do we learn her name—the woman whose freight is still too much for him to carry. But we know he likes soft things. We know he works through pain. We know his childhood still clings to him, despite his graying hair. And through knowing him and all his freight, ours is easier to bear.

You can read an excerpt at Darksky: I Lost. And in Brooklyn: I Found. For an unwritten tune of Freight, try this Freight video.

Update: Freight will be released on the 9. September + received review praise by the Publishers Weekly: "...subtle and delightful... fantastically innovative..." (whole review)

Mel Bosworth lives and breathes in Western Massachusettes. He's never met a cup of tea he didn’t drink, a donut he didn’t eat, or a cat he didn’t try to pet. When Mel isn’t consuming things or making new feline friends, he’s usually busy writing. He is the author of the short fiction chapbook When the Cats Razzed the Chickens and Other Stories (Folded Word, 2009) and the novella Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom (Brown Paper Publishing, 2010). There's an author talk with him and Jessie Carty online at Daily s-Press: author talk: Mel Bosworth & Jessie Carty on breathing, writing, scares, yielding, greed and more

About Folded Word (+PicFic + unFold + Heron)
Folded Word is an independent press that continually seeks new ways of connecting readers to new literary voices. Though we do sell our books and chapbooks, we offer free poetry and fiction to the public in our Twitter-zines PicFic and unFold, as well as our print broadside, Heron. We also value craftsmanship, both of literary works and the medium in which they are rendered--as demonstrated by our handcrafted Signature Series chapbooks. Folded Word is managed by J.S. Graustein with the support of Rose Auslander, Casey Murphy, and the entire Folded family of contributors.

Mel Bosworth: Freight
release date: 9. September
209 pages
paperback: $14 + 1$ shippping worldwide
e-book: $3.50

Spiral Jetta - Erin Hogan (University of Chicago)

Erin Hogan hit the road in her Volkswagen Jetta and headed west from Chicago in search of the monuments of American land art: a salty coil of rocks, four hundred stainless steel poles, a gash in a mesa, four concrete tubes, and military sheds filled with cubes. Her journey took her through the states of Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. It also took her through the states of anxiety, drunkenness, disorientation, and heat exhaustion. Spiral Jetta is a chronicle of this journey.

Spiral Jetta is the current free e-book of the month at Chicago Press. There also is an interview with Hogan online.

"Hogan’s pilgrimage, sparsely illustrated, is part well-informed art historical travelogue and part light foray into self-discovery."—Publishers Weekly

Erin Hogan is director of public affairs at the Art Institute of Chicago.

About the University of Chicago Press
The Books Division of the University of Chicago Press has been publishing books for scholars, students, and general readers since 1892. The Books Division has published over eleven thousand books since the Press was founded. It has more than five thousand books in print at the present time.

Erin Hogan: Spiral Jetta
e-book: e-book-of-the-month page
190 pages, 2008
non-fiction, art, travel

editor's note: there is a related review on this book online in the editor's blog, including photo+video links to some of the featured land art, quotes, and a "Spiral Jetty" travel report of an art blogger: "Spiral Jetty & Arches - a road / art trip"

The Life Cycle of Software Objects - Ted Chiang (Subterranean)

Locus online, the Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field, announced the 2011 Locus Awards Winners. For the Category "Best Novella", the winner is "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" by Ted Chiang, pulished by Subterranean Press.

Ted Chiang is a science fiction short story writer. In his novella The Life Cycle of Software Objects, he takes a fresh approach to the development of artificial intelligence: "Chiang's novella--the second piece he's ever published that's long enough to stand on its own, following the 2007 Hugo- and Nebula-winning "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate"--is a welcome surprise: a triumphant combination of the rigorous extrapolation of artificial intelligence and artificial life, two of the high concepts of contemporary SF, with an exploration of its consequences for the ordinary people whose lives it derails." - Publisher's Weekly

The novella is available as book, and is also inlcuded in the Fall issue of Subterranen Magazine online: The Life Cycle of Software Objects.

You can read an unusual interview with Ted Chiang at BoingBoing, where he talks about science fiction, philosophy, religion, and technology - here's a taste: "Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know". Link: Ted Chiang on Writing

Locus Awards 2011
The winners of the other categories are listed on the Locus Awards Page 2011, here some of the winners:
- Best Science Fiction Novel: "Blackout/All Clear" by Connie Willis
- Best Fantasy Novel: "Kraken" by China Miéville
- Best first novel: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin

related links: time + space, novels + novellas, prize winners

Where the Dog Star Never Glows - Tara L. Masih (Untreed Reads)

In her debut collection, Tara Masih shows an intimate sense of understanding her characters' innermost feelings, creating a memorable map of diverse characters that span the globe and several eras. Ghosts dance, butterflies swarm, men crystallize, the sun disappears, and water plays a role in both destruction and repair of the soul.

With an unflinching eye, a mythical awareness of the natural world, and poetic, crafted prose, Masih examines the dark recesses of the mind and heart, which often leads to a small or great triumph or illumination that will resonate long after the last page is turned. Publishers Weekly says: “Striking and resonant.”

Update June 2011: Where the Dog Star Never Glows was a finalist in the National Best Book Awards and now is on sale at Amazon as an ebook with Untreed Reads publishing company and a new cover.

Tara L. Masih is a graduate of Emerson College’s Writing and Publishing Program. She has won awards for her fiction and received Pushcart Prize, Best New American Voices, and Best of the Web nominations. She is editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (featured earlier at s-Press, here: Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction).

About Untreed Reads
Untreed Reads is dedicated to bringing the best new fiction and nonfiction ebooks to readers throughout the world. In addition to their publishing, they also run The Untreed Reads Blog on their new e-books.

Tara L. Masih: Where the Dog Star Never Glows
story collection
e-book

Pooh in Meatspace - Mel Bosworth

"Scifi, humor, fantasy, humor and romance, adventure thrillers, humor and satire" - all this and more is Mel Bosworth's Pooh in Meatspace, a story once published in a place that doesn't exist any more, and now brought back to inner and outer space as an e-book.

The story in a moonshell: When Captain Sheera and Billy discover that a Santa Claus Machine has been built on the moon of Moop, they have no choice but to investigate. Soon, they learn that the machine's builder is none other than Billy's childhood friend Drake, thus spurring a cosmic reunion filled with love, hate, violence, chocolate pudding, Cannabis sativa, old cast members of Baywatch, and an electrical storm.

The e-book is available at Smashwords: Pooh in Meatspace.

For some thoughts on e-books, technology, and the world at large - for example:  "Technology is fascinating and fun, the internet, too, is fascinating and fun. Sometimes mind-numbing. Sometimes the quintessential time-suck. Both things. Technology and the internet." - visit Mel's blog entry "fun, fascinating, and probably completely unnecessary". Hint: you might also find a Pooh coupon code there.

Mel Bosworth is the author of the fiction chapbook When the Cats Razzed the Chickens (Folded Word Press, 2009) the novella Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom (Brown Paper Publishing, 2010) and the novel Freight (coming 2011 from Folded Word Press). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in elimae, PANK, Per Contra, Wigleaf, BLIP Magazine, Annalemma, decomP, Dark Sky Magazine, >kill author, Emprise Review, and Night Train, among others.

Mel Bosworth: Pooh in Meatspace
ebook, 20 pages
available as Kindle, Epub, Pdf, rtf, PDB etc. file

author talk: for more about Mel Bosworth, writing and technology, visit the author talk with him: "Mel Bosworth + Jessie Carty on breathing, writing, the internet, scares, yielding, boxes, greed, + red, black and white."

related links: e-books, time+space

The Book of It - Daniela Elza

The Book of It by Daniela Elza is about being and becoming in the inconclusive manuscript of life. It is about creativity and the alchemy of the imagination. It is about knowing, and perhaps how we know more than we know we know. It is about the contemplative mind that wants more. It is about that which cannot be named, but can be pervasive in our lives (if we let it).

"The Book of It is a tribute to 'none of the above' when it comes to the search for meaning and answers-both in life and in education. In this meditative book, Daniela Elza tries to find the It between 'cash and two pieces of ID' and 'a blue guitar with one string (forgotten)', between a tree trunk that 'needs more than one person to embrace it' and a measurement of '1000 words (can be more but not less).' Without doubt, The Book of It is a pleasant surprise even to itself." - Arlene Ang

Daniela Elza is currently finishing her doctorate in Philosophy of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her work (mostly poetry) appears in over 50 publications. The Book of It is Daniela’s first ebook. Her full length poetry book, The Weight of Dew, is forthcoming with Mother Tongue Publishing (Spring, 2012).

Daniela Elza: The Book of It
116 pages
available as paperback + download + kindle-version
- the book of It (paperback) $11.99
- the book of It (PDF file download) $2.99
- kindle version:  amazon.com / amazon.uk

related links: poetry, kindle-books

How to Write Your Way Home - Fiona Robyn

How to Write Your Way Home by Fiona Robyn is an inspiring ebook that combines writing advice with a story.

Lorrie, who has pea-green eyes and mousey hair, lives in a narrow grey house and works in a call-centre in a grey office building. If you asked her whether she was happy, she wouldn't know how to answer you. Until she is shown something that's right under her nose, and which changes everything...

Paired with Lorrie's story are simple instructions that help to feel more connected with oneself and the world. The book also contains information on hunting & polishing "small stones" (pieces of writing that precisely captures a fully-engaged moment, more here: pay attention: a river of stones), and advice on how to build a creative network & much more.

This is a free e-book, you can download your copy here: How to Write Your Way Home

Fiona Robyn is on a mission to help people connect with the world through writing. She is a novelist, a blogger, a creativity coach and a Buddhist. She writes a weekly inspirational newsletter & runs e-courses. She started writing small stones in '05, launched a handful of stones in '08, & started a river of stones with her fiancé Kaspa in '11. She is very fond of earl grey tea and homemade cake, her cats Fatty and Silver, & the lovely Malvern hills (which she can gaze at from her home office window). Her novel "Thaw" has been previsouly featured in Daily s-Press: Thaw by Fiona Robyn)

How to Write Your Way Home
free e-book
62 pages

related links: on writing, e-books

Life After Sleep - Mark Brand (CCLaP)

In his mini-novel Life after Sleep, Mark Brand takes a look at the world that might just await us around the corner -- a place where GPS, Facebook and cellphones mesh perfectly to tell us where even in a nightclub to stand, yet traditional enough for couples to still have fights over groceries, and for office politics to still have enormous repercussions.

It is the day after tomorrow, and a device has been invented that immediately induces REM sleep, otherwise known as "Sleep" with a capital S. Society has been transformed. The average person now only needs two hours of rest a night. The work day is officially sixteen hours long. Americans party at clubs until daybreak, then log into virtual worlds and party in a reunified Korea all morning too...

Mark R. Brand is a Chicago-based science-fiction veteran and former medical assistant. An interview with him regarding the process of writing this book is available online: CCLaP Podcast 68: Author Mark R. Brand

CCLaP / Pay what you want! Like the previous CCLaP-books featured in Daily s-Press ("99 Problems" by Ben Tanzer, "Too Young to Fall Asleep" by Sally Weigel), this book is published on a "pay what you want"-basis: "it means you pay only what you want for an electronic copy, even if you want to pay nothing, making this mini-novel (available in EPUB, PDF and MOBI/Kindle editions) easily worth taking a chance on."

About CCLaP
CCLaP Publishing is an imprint of the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, an organization dedicated to promoting the best of the underground and cutting-edge arts.

Mark Brand: Life After Sleep
mini-novel
electronic book
"Pay what you want" at website
kindle version: $5.87

related links: e-books, novels + novellas

Smoke Ghosts & Other Outré Tales - Anthony Wright (Moon Willow)

In Smoke Ghosts & Other Outré Tales - a collection of dark but humorous short stories - Anthony Wright weaves his past travels in Australia, South East Asia, Mexico, and Central America to create a lively pattern of outré tales, interlaced with the supernatural, in which the author’s outsider philosophy is central to the thread of existence. A sample story: Banano's Bar

“In an extremely imaginative and well-written collection of vignettes from travels to adventurous non-tourist destinations, Australian Anthony Wright has invoked Burroughs, Bowles, Dostoyevski, Kerouac, and even to some degree Joyce as he searches out the sacred and profane of conemporary society." - Tom Hibbard

Anthony Wright was born in Melbourne, Australia, graduated in film production at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and was employed in various occupations and traveled through 20 countries before settling in Mexico City in 1993. He lived and worked as a journalist before returning to Melbourne in 2001, where he completed an education diploma at the University of Melbourne and began work as a teacher. He returned to Mexico City in 2008. His fiction, journalism, poetry and photography have been published in Australia, China, England, Mexico and the United States. (Anthony Wright on Facebook)

About Moon Willow Press
Moon Willow Press is a small, independent publisher helping to sustain arboreal ecosystems while celebrating the written word. MWP publishes novels, poetry chapbooks, and non-fiction titles that explore science and nature. First-time authors are given consideration.

Anthony Wright: Smoke Ghosts & Other Outré Tales short story collection
e-book
ISBN: 978-0-9813924-4-8

Two Weeks (Linebreak)

Two Weeks is an ebook and audio book anthology that was compiled, edited, designed, coded, and recorded in only 14 days. The editors of Linebreak took public submissions for the first week (reviewing more than 1,000 poems), and spent the second week editing and producing the book. For the audio book, each poem was read and recorded by a contributor other than the author.

The final result includes 58 poems. One of the goals was to prove that you can preserve line breaks and other formatting in ebooks, which a lot of poetry ebooks to date have not done. The book is available at the Linebreak website, and will also be listed in the Kindle store. More infos: Two Weeks.

Two Weeks includes new poems from Bruce Bond, Geoffrey Brock, Dorianne Laux, Seth Abramson, T.R. Hummer, Oliver de la Paz, Joe Wilkins, Hannah Miet, Jazzy Danziger, Randall Mann, Jeffery Bahr, Matthew Henriksen, Mary Meriam, Amanda Auchter, Ernest Hilbert, Matthew Zapruder, Brian Spears, Rachel Richardson, Christina Stoddard, Kimberly Grey, David Roderick, Josh Kalscheur, Kerry Krouse, Benjamin Glass, Rose Hunter, Lauren Camp, Jon Tribble, Patricia Lockwood, and more.

About Linebreak
Linebreak is a weekly magazine with a bias for good poetry. "We look for poems that we wish we had written, poems that take us somewhere we didn’t even know we wanted to go." Submissions of both poetry and prose are welcome throughout the year. In addition to text, Linebreak publishes audio recordings of all poems. Each poet’s work is read and recorded by another working poet selected by the editors.

Two Weeks
anthology of contemporary poetry
58 pages, download: 4.99$

related links: poetry, e-books

The Equation of Constants - BL Pawelek (Artistically Declined)

and i see it
i am here now myself
with nothing behind
i am the one
who splits the night

BL Pawelek's collection of poems, The Equation of Constants, is running with history and place, all above the basic construct of mathematics. Everything is constant, build the equation.

"The poems in B. L. Pawelek’s The Equation of Constants are built of short wonderful phrases, like curtly reading each separate branch and leaf of a tree – and when we step back we see the magnificently whole structure, the beauty of big, the massive feel of shade in a yard where all else is sun." - J. A. Tyler, author of In Love With a Ghost

bl pawelek has been to a million places in life and has forgotten most of them. But he is here now and trying.

About Artistically Declined Press
Artistically Declined Press is devoted to the pairing of fantastic writing with great design, creating complete works of art. The press publishes books of fiction and poetry, the literary journal Sententia, and ADP.PDF's, a series of free ebooks, and is run by Ryan W. Bradley, who writes and lives in Oregon with his wife and two sons.

BL Pawelek: The Equation of Constants
poetry collection
15-pages, free e-book free for all

related links: poetry, e-books

Natural Habitat - Michelle Reale (Burning River)

Natural Habitat is a collection of previously published short stories that, according to Pank, is a “love letter to the idea of home, to natural habitats as those places where we can feel most like ourselves, where we can recognize all the people, memories and moments that have contributed to our present selves.”

This work features an introductory essay by the author on the title and collection, a deeply personal account of how, where and why this collection exists. "The whole of my life I have been interested in who we are as individuals and the world at large. Who belongs? Who doesn’t? How much of that is just a creation of our own minds? Where is our true home? ..."

Michelle Reale, while working as an academic librarian at a university in the suburbs of Philadelphia, has had her work featured in Word Riot, Gloom Cupboard, Pank, Rumble, Eyeshot, Monkeybicycle, Underground Voices and many others. This is her first collected volume.

About Burning River
Upcoming projects for Burning River include another collection slated for October, Crossing The Trestle by author Jim Meirose. Aside from publishing an annual literary journal, Burning River also accepts manuscripts for the two to three chapbooks they publish per year. They are also open for visual art for the site. Burning River is ran out of Cleveland, Ohio by author and administrator Chris Bowen.

Michelle Reale: Natural Habitat
story collection
48 pgs
paperback $6, April 2010
also available as PDF

related links:
- about a place
- short stories

#VSS Anthology Volume 01 (Made in DNA)

Everyday hundreds of 140-character (or less) stories are posted to Twitter. This is a collection of just a few. # is a hashtag—an identifying marker—allowing users on social networking services to separate out and/or convey certain messages to other users utilizing the same markers. 'VSS' stands for 'very short story'. The #VSS Anthology Volume 1 contains over 150 stories by 37 authors.

"More than anything else, these pieces demonstrate that obstruction can spur creativity. In this case, there's something liberating about being forced to stay under 140 characters." - Moxie Mezcal

The 37 authors featured in the ebook come from many parts of the world and different walks of life, but they all met on Twitter and shared fiction. Some of the authors included: Allan Revich, Toronto (Digitalsalon); Deepti Lamba, Bangalore (deeptilamba); CharlieClose, Grand Blanc (CharlieClose); hyperjapan, Japan (hyperjapan); blpawelek, California (blpawelek); Helene Kwong, SF (hkwong), and many others - for more #vvs reads, try the hashtag-link in twitter: #vss.

About Made in DNA
The editor Made in DNA is an American short story author who is living in Japan, and an author like the 37 authors featured in this ebook. As Twitter users are scattered across the globe, he wanted a small place where a little bit of a lot of folks' work could be enjoyed.

#VSS Anthology Volume 01
anthology, 36 pages
the VSS Anthology is available in a wide variety of formats including PDF, Kindle, LRF, epub and more, and an online version.