What's Your Exit? (Word Riot)

What’s Your Exit?: A Literary Detour through New Jersey is an anthology of New Jersey writing.

The anthology, edited by Alicia A. Beale and Joe Vallese, features new and previously published work from over 40 writers. Among the book’s contributors are Joyce Carol Oates, Tom Perrotta, Robert Pinsky, Jason Biggs, J. Robert Lennon, Alicia Ostriker, Paul Lisicky, Louise de Salvo, Donna Steiner, Joe Weil, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Lee Klein, Susanne Antonetta, James Richardson, Susan Fox Rogers, Gerald Stern, JC Todd, BJ Ward, and Sung J. Woo.

What’s Your Exit? is comprised of contemporary literary fiction, memoir, and poetry about, inspired by, and representative of the Garden State. Themes of family, friendship, travel, culture, sexuality, love, fear, violence, nostalgia, and longing populate the anthology, which features writers and styles as eclectic and beautiful, and as unnerving and mysterious and bold as the place that unites them in this work.

An index in the back of the anthology lists the collected works by Parkway and Turnpike exits, an homage to the traditional way Jersey folk identify and relate to one another—the simple but loaded inquiry, “What exit?” - Parallel to the printed book, Word Riot features a What’s Your Exit? webite with news and web-exclusive stories.

About Word Riot Press
Word Riot Press is the print division of Word Riot, the online literary journal. Word Riot first opened shop in March 2002 as the literary section of a now defunct on-line music magazine, Communication Breakdown. Each month, Word Riot provides readers with book reviews, author interviews, and, most importantly, writing from some of the best and brightest making waves on the literary scene.

What's your next exit?
Paperback, 326 pages
Cover Price: $25

related links: about a place, mixed formats, anthologies

Masala Moments - Dorothee Lang (Cautionary)

Masala Moments is a travel novel that includes ancient tales, lessons of karma, and modern myths. Based on her own journeys through Asia, Dorothee Lang takes the reader on a journey that leads from the West to the East, and offers a glimpse into the sameness we share, Indian or German or Canadian or American. For those who are longing to go, it includes an extra chapter with practical travel advice.

"India in a teacup. Its flavour in pages. Its aroma in words. That is Masala Moments, the thoughts of an intrepid traveller through the maze of crowds, chaos and centrifugalness that is India." - Smitha Murthy

Dorothee Lang is founding editor of the literary online journal BluePrintReview. Her writing has appeared in numerous online and print magazines, among them: The Sunday Herald (India), The Mississippi Review (USA), Zeit Online (Germany), Dublin Quarterly (Ireland), Word Riot (USA) and others. She holds a degree in economics and advertising, and lives in the South of Germany.

Cautionary Tale Press
Cautionary Tale Press is the publishing venue of Cautionary Tale Magazine, edited by Eric Wrisley, and featuring short stories, and regular series ("The View from the West Hill", "The Dictionary of American Diction", "These Here United States").

Dorothee Lang: Masala Moments
a travel novel
164 pages, $15.00
amazon / luluISBN 978-1-4116-4293-5

Waking Accidentally in the Dark - Margot Miller

Waking Accidentally in the Dark by Margot Miller is a collection of flash fiction stories, recently published at Lulu. Nearly all the included stories have been published in various Zines and print publications in the last five years.

Margot Miller’s stories are honest, hard, and believable, sometimes dark, always enriching. Not all her characters are sympathetic but they will all remind you of someone you know. In “I Am Not a Back-Up Plan,” the character's struggle for her dignity is written with subtle grace and sneaks up on the reader again and again, long after putting the story down. Miller's stories identify for us how we feel. The conflict, complications, and resolution of each story are served up in a gratifying emotional package requiring less time for you to read than for you to drink your morning coffee.

Miller has earlier published at Lulu Blackbird Calling, a collection of her longer fiction, stories from 2000 to 6000 words, nearly all previously published. Her poetry collection, Telling, is also available at Lulu.

Asked why she published at Lulu, Miller responded: “I didn’t think I’d live long enough to get published by a so-called “real” small (or large) press unless I started my own, as many people have done, and I didn’t want to deal with the set-up logistics or the rest, including the inevitable IRS designation as a hobby if I didn’t’ make money after five years. Lulu's publications are gratifying as well as very reasonably priced for consumers; the downloadable version is also available at the same time as the print version. I am looking into an audible version, which will be marketed elsewhere, of course, and that might be available in a few months."

Margot Miller lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the United States. She writes fiction and recently took up painting, at which she has had some modest success. She holds a Ph. D in French literature and teaches French women writers (for the most part) in translation to members of the Academy of Lifelong Learning and the International Academy of Learning (Chesapeake College).

Margot Miller: Waking Accidentally in the Dark
paperback, 94 pages
ISBN 978-0-557-40896-2

related links: short stories

Snowing Fireflies - Eric Beeny (Folded Word)

Eric Beeny blurs the line between prose and poetry in this collection of 15 short stories. His seemingly-simple tales of the way we cope with love and loss are woven into a rhythmic cloth. Rich in detail, even the Twitter-sized stories leave an afterimage. Five of the 15 stories make their exclusive debut amidst the hand-sewn pages of this chapbook.

"A quaint and mysterious little collection that balances the unreal and real. Eric Beeny writes with a child-like wonder, resulting in powerful surreal images, and a yearning for human connection. It's a satisfying balancing act that I enjoyed immensely. I'm looking forward to the next thing Eric Beeny does." — Shane Jones, author of Light Boxes (PGP, 2009; Penguin, 2010)

An excerpt from the chapbook, combined with video snippets from the chapbook's construction process is up in the Folded Word youtube channel: Snowing Fireflies by Eric Beeny.

Eric Beeny is the author of The Dying Bloom (Pangur Ban Party, 2009), Of Creatures (Gold Wake Press, 2011) and Pseudo-Masochism (Medulla Publishing, 2011). His stories and poems have appeared both online and in print. He lives in Buffalo, NY.

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, Ben White, and the entire Folded family of contributors.

Eric Beeny: Snowing Fireflies
short story collection
hand-crafted copies $10 / $12 (signed)

related links: the human condition, modern fiction, short stories

mo(nu)ment (blueprint)

mo(nu)ment is an anthology that gathers reflections on moments and monuments in 70 unique pieces contributed by 30 authors from all over the world, capturing the fleeting and the solid, motion and matter, the present and the past.

"A versatile and varied collection of writing. The stories and poems flowed into one another with organic ease. The artwork complements the writing and the overall effect is of a mighty, living, breathing entity of modern literature. If you are interested in cutting edge writing and art then "mo(nu)ment" will serve well." - Carl Brunch

Contributors include: Lys Anzia, Marcia Arrieta, Michael Bergstein, Kelvin Bueckert, Sita Carboni, Jeff Crouch, Peter Dabbene, Kari Edwards, Helen Ellis, J. Fisher, Tasnim Jivaji, Dorothee Lang, Wes Lee, Smitha Murthy, Melanie Olson, Diane Payne, Sharon Rothenfluch Cooper, Ania Szado, Davide Trame, Michael K. White, Steve Wing, Eric Wrisley, Diana J. Wynne

editor and press
This anthology is edited by Dorothee Lang, and published by blueprintpress, the print side wing of BluePrintReview.

mo(nu)ment
anthology
168 pages, $11.81

Daily s-Press quick guide + note

Daily s-Press will go every-second-day for a bit while the editor is preparing for / away on a road trip through neighbour countries. there still will be new features coming up - for more:

• browse the featured novels and novellas, or the short story + poetry collections
• for some instant reading, visit the e-books (pdf/online)
• if you feel like writing, check out the current writing initiatives
• and for some reflections on writing, try the author talks

enjoy~

Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex - Alice Turing

“We easily believe what we ardently desire to be true.”

Psychic Dancing is a New Age sensation, but is it a trick of the mind? A harmless self-help technique? Or a breakthrough in human consciousness, which will end all pain and disease?

Henrietta thinks people should stay the hell out of each other’s heads, keep their hands to themselves, and dance with people they know. Not with strangers. Not in public. And especially not psychically. That’s just ridiculous.

Leo makes money from reading minds, but detests all things psychic. Henrietta is falling in love with Leo’s girlfriend Belle, who loves Leo, who loves Denzel, who will only love him back if Leo says he’s gay. And all four of them are heading for a momentous Event which will turn their lives inside out.

Alice Turing is a published novelist whose first publisher ceased trading and whose second novel was published by Random House, but only in Germany. Several UK editors liked the book, but were worried that it would not be commercial enough. In the end she decided to self-publish and take some control back. She is not seeking fame, fortune or thousands of readers. She just wants to create a beautiful thing.

Alice will be printing a high quality hardback in limited print runs of 100 at a time. She is asking for payment in advance, and will not be holding copies in stock: Each print run will not be printed until enough people have ordered the book.

Alice Turing: Dance Your Way to Psychic Sex
novel
hardback, £10.00
ISBN: 978-0-9566566-0-5

relates links: novels

author talk: Jessie Carty + Mel Bosworth

ABOUT THE AUTHORS + THE TALK
Jessie Carty is the author of the full length poetry collection Paper House (Folded Word, 2010) and two chapbooks The Wait of Atom (Folded Word, 2009) and At the A & P Meridiem (Pudding House, 2009). She is often beset by cats from her home in North Carolina where she continues to write, edit and teach. Recent online publications: Scythe, Drunken Boat, Girls with Insurance and others: link list.

Mel Bosworth is the author Freight (Folded Word, 2011), Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom (Aqueous Books, 2010), and When the Cats Razzed the Chickens (Folded Word, 2009). He lives, breathes, and laughs in western Massachusetts. Recent online publications: Necessary Fiction, The Northville Review, Dark Sky Magazine and others: link list.

This author talk took place in the virtual daily café in August.


Jessie: You have quite a prolific publication schedule recently! I'm saying this to you as I've heard the same thing. I wonder if your experience was similar to mine in that you sent stuff out for years and then all of a sudden things just started to fall into place. I'd like to hear a bit about your recent books (or other notable publications in journals) and how they came to finally show up on the screen or the page?

Mel: Yeah, Jessie, things have been busy lately, for the both of us. I've got a book coming out and your poetry collection Paper House just dropped in March of this year. And hey- it just occurred to me that this conversation is between a poet and a fiction writer, for the most part. That's kind of cool. But anyway, yes, my novella Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom is slated to drop sometime in August. Aqueous Books has been very good to me. I'm excited to hold a copy in my hands. And to backtrack a bit to an earlier question, I'd have to say that things really started to pick up for me (publishing-wise) when I stopped being such a scaredy-cat of the internet.

Jessie: I am amazed that you were scared of the internet! I see you publishing online, blogging and even vlogging with the best of them! When I came back to writing after not submitting, or writing much of anything from 2001-2005, I was amazed at what a powerhouse the internet had become. It really does make researching where to send you work and the actual sending of work much easier. I even chose which publishers to submit my chapbook manuscripts to based on internet groups like CRWOPPS.

Mel: I was sending out work in hard copy form for a few years with no luck, but once that crazy internet got into my brain- boom. Whole new world. And now I shall backtrack yet again to the idea of holding a copy of your own book in your very own hands. Hot damn. What was that like, Jessie, when you received your first copy of Paper House? We've both had the experience of holding our own chapbooks, but what was it like to hold a true blue BOOK in your hands? And no disrespect to chapbooks, I love them and venerate them, but your standard paperback book is a different beast. What was that like? I'm looking forward to the sensation. Also, what were some of your personal favorites from the Paper House collection? Feel free to throw some quotes out there.

>> click to read the whole dialogue:
>> author talk: Jessie Carty & Mel Bosworth
>> on breathing, writing, scares, yielding, greed and more

Tracers - Uche Nduka (Wheelhouse)

as bait for transparency
break a token
break a token.
into a palimpsest isn't where we're sent.
dust comes bearing truth.

Nduka new chapbook Tracers is a carefully posed collision of extraordinarily contemporary linguistic forms with ancient myth, science, and alchemy elude both the languages of national border and lament: Tracers conjures "seizures of steam to contend with," engages the catastrophe of globalization with strange and destructive joy. This is a recuperation of that which we have yet to name.

Tracers is now available through Wheelhouse Press as a freely downloadable-ebook that also can be browsed online, direct link: Tracers

Uche Nduka was born and brought up in Nigeria. His books include Flower Child (1988), Second Act (1994), The Bremen Poems (1995), Chiaroscuro (which won the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize for 1997), If Only TheNight (2003), Heart’s Field (2005) and eel on reef (2007). Nduka has lived in Holland and Germany. He presently lives and works in New York City.

About Wheelhouse Press
Wheelhouse Press is the print devision of Wheelhouse magazine. Recent Wheelhouse publications include chapbooks by Matina Stamatakis / John Moore Williams, Lars Palm, Juliet Cook, and Thom Donovan, all available for free download: Wheelhouse chapbooks.

Uche Nduka: Tracers
poetry collection
available as free download, 63 pages

related links: the world these days, poetry, e-books

100 Thousand Poets for Change: 24.9.

100 Thousand Poets for Change is an event that is happening in over 350 cities around the world on September 24th. This event seeks to connect poets around the USA and across the planet in a demonstration/ celebration of poetry to promote serious social and political change.

"The first order of change is for poets, writers, artists, anybody, to actually get together to create and perform, educate and demonstrate, simultaneously, with other communities around the world. This will change how we see our local community and the global community. And of course there is the political/social change that many of us are talking about these days. There is trouble in the world. Wars, ecocide, the lack of affordable medical care, racism, the list goes on..."

Invite to join
100 Thousand Poets for Change is inviting participants by local region, city, or state, and looking for individuals in each area who would like to organize their local event.

There is a facebook-page: 100 Thousand Poets for Change/facebook + a twitter-account. There also is a web site with registered locations and further information: 100 Thousand Poets for Change/website.

About the event
100 Thousand Poets for Change is the idea of Michael Rothenberg, poet and editor of Big Bridge Press and zine (website) and Terri Carrion, associate editor and visual designer of Big Bridge Press and zine (website).

Moon Willow Press / Ecologue
Thanks to Mary Woodbury at Moon Willow Press for spreading the news! 2 connected links: the new science+nature blog from Moon Willow: Ecologue, and their new eco-poetry collection: The Sacred River of Consciousness by Tom Hibbard.

Flowing in the Gossamer Fold - Ben Spivey (Blue Square)

She folded her arms holding an invisible baby, combing its invisible hair, picturing it a blond; she would do that, and I would watch from around corners, holding the wallpaper and shutting my eyes in the dark, I’d only listen, but I knew what I’d have seen: her long legs and that invisible child.

Like the tagline to David Lynch's film Inland Empire, “a woman in trouble,” Flowing in the Gossamer Fold is a surreal, emotional, and trenchant novel of man in trouble.

“Part Jungian allegory, part surreal dreamscape, part Odyssean tramp, Ben Spivey’s Flowing in the Gossamer Fold is a romp through distorted time in a landscape carved by sudden oceans built from perpetual rain, where a cityscape has sidewalks littered with disappearing sages, and an edenic forest is graffitied with the father’s word. The sentences of Malcolm Blackburn’s midlife crisis are charged with the energy of a young man—the young man who penned this fucked up vision of pain and forgiveness, of what is ultimately the lesson of life: it’s beautiful, and it sucks.” –Jamie Iredell, author of Prose. Poems. a Novel., and The Book of Freaks

Ben Spivey has words at Abjective, Everyday Genius, The Corduroy Mtn., and others. An excerpt from Flowing in the Gossamer Fold was a StorySouth Million Writers Award notable story of 2009. He lives in Atlanta where he frequents the Solar Anus reading series (for whom he's read) as often as possible. He has two cats.

About Blue Square Press
Blue Square Press is located in New York and Atlanta. Forthcoming books are Theater-State by Jack Boettcher (2011) and Fuckscapes by Sean Kilpatrick (2012). An interview with Co-Editor David Peak about the formation of the press can be read in the most recent issue of Knee-Jerk Magazine.

Ben Spivey: Flowing in the Gossamer Fold
novel
164 pages, paperback, $14

related links: magic realism, novels

Naughty, Naughty - Meg Pokrass & Jack Swenson

Scaring away people as if they were predatory—his eyes like packed snow, he would kiss me, sucking a bottle of wine between breaths.

Naughty, Naughty is a collection of gently erotic flash fiction pieces, by Meg Pokrass & Jack Swenson. It is the first collection by Pokrass and Swenson work combined.

From the forward by Sam Rasnake:
"This collection blends Swenson's striking, straight-forward story-telling with Pokrass' unsettling, exciting approach to flash and poetry - a style she must surely bask in. Swenson's voice - sometimes comic, sometimes demanding - is at ease with the landscape it creates - and he accomplishes this with invisible seams. Nothing out of place, and no way to imagine the works unfolding in a different manner. Pokrass always wows, always makes the reader feel uneasy - in a brilliant, almost cinematic way - story after story. Surprise and wit are her weapons."

Author Bios:
Meg Pokrass is an editor for Smokelong Quarterly and her writing appears in Gigantic, Gargoyle, Wigleaf, Annalemma, among others. One of Meg’s stories was selected for Wigleaf’s Top 50 Flash Fiction 2009, and recently again, two stories in Wigleaf’s short longlist 2010. Meg has been nominated for Best of the Web and the Pushcart Prize. Her new collection of flash fiction, Damn Sure Right by Press 53 comes out in 2011. Meg loves lobsters and lives with her creative family and seven animals in San Francisco.

Jack Swenson was born with a pencil in his hand. He has been scribbling one thing or another for many years. He lives in Fremont, CA, where he also teaches a writing class at the local Senior Center. His age is a secret, but he is no spring chicken. His stories have appeared in Pindeldyboz, Ghoti, Wigleaf, Metazen, Staccato, and many other online and print journals.

Meg Pokrass and Jack Swenson: Naughty, Naughty
paperback, 120 pages, 12.95

related links: short stories

The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution?
In The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi explores the effects of bioengineering and a world in which fossil fuels are no longer viable. Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko, the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing has appeared in High Country News, Salon.com, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. His short fiction been anthologized in various “Year’s Best” collections of short science fiction and fantasy, nominated for two Nebula and four Hugo Awards, and won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best sf short story of the year.

His debut novel The Windup Girl was named by Time Magazine as one of the ten best novels of 2009, won the Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards, and is a finalist for the Hugo Award. His most recent novel, Ship Breaker, has just been released from Little, Brown (more). He currently lives in Western Colorado with his wife and son, where he is working on a new novel.

About Night Shade Books
Night Shade Books is an independent publisher of quality science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Founded by Jason Williams in 1997, Night Shade Books has been publishing science fiction, fantasy and horror for over a decade and currently publishes about 30-35 titles a year, and appears regularly at genre conventions.

Paolo Bacigalupi: The Windup Girl
novel
hardcover, 376 pages, $24.95
ISBN 978-1-59780-157-7

related links: time+space, prize winners, novels

Daily s-Press this week: #fridayflash, short stories, a micro novel + life lessons

++ #fridayflash: sharing+spreading stories in twitter

++ MicroNovel: "My Apartment" by Michael K. White
++ Short Stories: Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology

++ Poetry: "Lessons in Morphology" by Sam Rasnake
++ Real life: "Life in the Slow Lane" by Thomas Sullivan

#fridayflash

#fridayflash is a twitter-based flash story share+spread, organized by Jon M. Strother, who put the story + guidelines together for Daily s-Press

the story of #fridayflash:
#fridayflash, simply put, is an experiment in crowdsourcing word-of-mouth marketing for flash fiction on the web. Writers are constantly told they have to build an online presence, develop a following if they expect to succeed in the current environment. Who is to say whether that advice is right or wrong, nevertheless it is fairly constant. So, like many writers I started a blog and watched week after week as posts went without comment, and often times were unread. It got quite discouraging.

So I decided to try a little experiment in crowdsourcing. Twitter was already well established for calling attention to blog posts on everything form writing advice, to funny videos, to bad hair day rants – so why not fiction? I knew in order to succeed, the draw would have to be bigger than one writer shouting into the Twitterverse, so a meme seemed in order. The #followfriday meme was quite successful, so staying with that alliteration, I launched a flash fiction meme, initially called #fictionfriday, and announced it on the writer forums at Editor Unleashed, Writer's Digest, and The Writer's Chatroom. A handful of writer's on these venues joined me that first week.

Within a week or two of start up I discovered there was already a web-based writing site going by FictionFriday. Not wanting to encroach on the name, I asked for suggestions on a name change. I believe Keven J. Mackey suggested #fridayflash, or #fridayflashfiction. Character count being at a premium on Twitter, I decided to go for the short form. I also started putting out a list the next day with links to the participating author's posts. Thus was born The #fridayflash Report.

If there was a breakthrough moment it was when Maria Schneider allowed me to guest post on her blog, also called Editor Unleashed. We suddenly went form a handful of new participants per week to a dozen or more. I owe Maria a huge debt of gratitude for that, and miss EU immensely.

Links to the #fridayflash-stories
- If you have a twitter account, you can simply follow the hashtag link: #fridayflash
- Webpage: www.fridayflash.org

The rules of #fridayflash...
The rules of #fridayflash are few and simple. Write a story of 1000 words or less, post it to your blog or some other venue readers can access, then tweet about it on Friday with story link + #fridayflash hashtag. It is also strongly recommend that the author polish the piece before posting, as the intention is to showcase their abilities as a writer.

The rules are intentionally loose in keeping with the free and easy spirit of the thing. No one sweats it if you go slightly over 1000 words (though really long pieces are not much appreciated). Friday is defined as anytime it is Friday anywhere in the world. In fact, not everyone uses Twitter. We have the Collector, which ensures your story will be in The #fridayflash Report, and a Facebook group where an author who is not on Twitter can announce their story. Plus we have a wonderful group of very sharing participants who will tweet and retweet stories once they are aware of them. It's a very open and supportive group.

#fridayflash is open to all writers at all skill levels. There is no prompt. There is no theme. It is completely open ended, which always makes for a great diversity of stories every week. The only proviso is that graphic, gratuitous sex and violence are not appreciated. I reserve the right to not list such pieces in The #fridayflash Report, and will not retweet them.#fridayflash anthology
There is an anthology of #fridayflash due out very shortly – The Best of #fridayflash, Volume One. It contains more than sixty stories from both current and past #fridayflash authors. Like #fridayflash, there is no set theme or genre. It is a real mix of the types of stories one encounters on a weekly basis. It will be available both in ebook and print-on-demand format later this month (August 2010).

About Jon M. Strother
Jon M. Strother is a writer of fact and fiction. He lives in an inner suburb of St. Louis and enjoys cycling, gardening, and wasting far too much time playing Civilization III. For more about him, and excerpts of his writing, visit his website Mad Utopia.

related links: writing events, friday specials

My Apartment - Michael K. White (blueprint)

"At one time, all of this was prairie as far as the eye could see. Imagine those tall musky weeds you yank every summer growing to their full height; an ocean of them. As far as you could see. It was here, right on this spot that the Building was erected, a breezy late 1940's brick apartment house.
The twenty apartments in the Building are spacious, high ceiling and bright, with skylights and big windows. We could go into number 3 or number 7. But no, let's go into Apartment Number 9."

My Apartment is the epic history of a certain apartment (#9) and a selection of episodes from the wide spectrum of tenants there - presented in micro novel format. Told in a surreal, non linear series of short chapters, My Apartment is a ghost book; a phantom memoir.

Michael K. White is one half of the semi-legendary playwriting team Broken Gopher Ink. His low cholesterol mega monologue play, My Heart And the Real World ran for almost two years in New York City , enabling the authors to eat at John's Pizzeria. In 2007 his story 13 Halloweens was chosen as one of the ten best stories published in 2006 by the super cool folks at Story South. Currently, a staged reading of his play I Know That You Love Me is on at The Trench, Denver.

About blueprintpress
Founded in 2006, blueprintpress is the print side wing of BluePrintReview. The current focus is on new and experimental formats, like micro novels: hand-made books that fit in an airmail envelope. There is a second micro novel that is open to pre-orders now: The Republic of Love by Nora Nadjarian. Both micro novels are offered as signed author copies, hand-made limited editions. They will be delivered with international air mail, and are available as single volumes, or as bundle (more here: blueprint micro novels).

Michael K. White: My Apartment
micro novel
24 pages, hand-made + signed copy 7$

related links: about a place, novels+novellas

Lessons in Morphology - Sam Rasnake (GOSS183)

Lessons in Morphology, by Sam Rasnake, is a collection of metaphysical and lyric poems, unified in voice, that explore the many connections, both universal as well as personal, between “I” and “Other”.

“Intelligent, aimed, and gorgeously rendered, this collection of twelve poems by Sam Rasnake manages to quietly undo the heart, line by line. It is truly ‘a reminder of the beautiful’.”
– Kathy Fish, Editor of Best of the Web 2010 anthology

Sam Rasnake’s poetry has appeared in RICK MAGAZINE, OCHO, Shampoo, FRiGG, Poets/Artists, Naugatuck River Review, Press 1, Istanbul Literary Review, Otoliths, MiPOesias, Metazen, The Smoking Poet, and BluePrintReview, as well as the anthologies Best of the Web 2009 (Dzanc Books), Deep River Apartments (The Private Press), and BOXCAR Poetry Review Anthology 2. He is the author of two collections, Necessary Motions (Sow’s Ear Press) and Religions of the Blood (Pudding House). A chapbook of poems, Inside a Broken Clock, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

About GOSS183
Goss 183 is a street address in Havana, Cuba. There resides the home the Menendez family left behind in 1961. GOSS183 now is the name of the small press run by Didi Menendez and I.M. Bess which publishes MiPOesias Magazine, chapbooks, full length books, OCHO and Poets/Artists. Please visit them online at mipoesias.

Sam Rasnake: Lessons in Morphology
available in print form, perfect-bound, 20 pgs, and on iPad
Volume 4 in the MiPOesias Chapbook Series

related links: human condition, poetry

Life In The Slow Lane - Thomas Sullivan (Unical)

Life In The Slow Lane recounts a year the author spent teaching driver education for a cut-rate company in Portland, Oregon. The business playbook for this family-run operation was similar to that of BP -- use something until it breaks, apologize effusively, and then don't change. However, the company became the largest operator in the state primarily because the other companies were worse. Yet, while the cars kept dying, the kids always persevered. Set in a boomtown suburb being overrun by subdivisions and new Starbucks stores, this story portrays the mid-decade shift in America from business integrity to growth and profit by any means possible.

Thomas Sullivan is a former teacher now living in Seattle. His writing has appeared in Word Riot, Dogmatika, and 3AM Magazine, among others. To view samples of Thomas’ published writing, please visit his author website.

About Unical Press
Founded in 2006, Uncial Press publishes finely crafted and well-written eBooks. Uncial believes readers prefer logically consistent stories with believable characters, leading to the magical willing suspension of disbelief that is the hallmark of fine writing. They publish in the categories of Humor, Romance, Mystery, Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction.

Thomas Sullivan - Life in the Slow Lane
nonfiction / memoir
190 pages, e-book format $4.99
ISBN 13: 978-1-60174-085-4
ISBN 10: 1-60174-085-9

related links: the world these days, non-fiction

Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 3

The latest anthology of the Bristol Short Story Prize contains the top 3 prizewinning stories from the 2010 Prize and the other 17 stories selected for the shortlist.

The writers featured in the anthology are: Valerie O'Riordan, Mike Bonsall, Kate Brown, Darci Bysouth, Joanna Campbell, Tara Conklin, Rik Gammack, Rachel Howard, Ashley Jacob, Claire King, Ian Madden, Nastasya Parker, Jonathan Pinnock, Marli Roode, Rachel Sargeant, Yana Stajno, Natasha Tripney, Sherri Turner, Ben Walker and Clare Wallace.

The Bristol Short Story Prize page features an interview with the winner for this year's Bristol Short Story Prize, Valerie O'Riordan. The Bristol page also includes an interesting link section, themes: "writing", "writer's blogs", "short stories" to "magazines and journals", and more.

About The Bristol Short Story Prize
The Bristol Short Story Prize was founded by the editors of the quarterly cultural magazine Bristol Review of Books in 2007 with the aim of publishing great short stories and raising funds for the magazine, enabling it to remain a free publication. The magazine specialises not only in book reviews but also comments on a wide range of cultural events, history and arts.

Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 3
180 pages, paperback, £7.67
ISBN-13: 978-0955955549

related links: short stories, prize winners / best of

author talk: Rose Hunter + D. Lang Part II

ABOUT THE AUTHORS + THE TALK
Dorothee Lang is a writer, editor, web freelancer and traveller. She lives in Germany, and is the author of the story collection in transit.
Rose Hunter is originally from Australia, she lived in Canada for many years, and now is living in Mexico. She is the author of the story collection Another Night at the Circus, and of the poetry collection to the river (forthcoming in November).

In June, the two authors started an e-mail dialogue about their books, and themes connected to the stories included - PART 1 is up here, it's about linked short story collections; the gap between anticipation and reality and the stories coming from there.
In Part II, the dialogue continues with the theme of travelling, and then moves to Dorothee’s collection in transit and Rose’s forthcoming poetry collection to the river:

AUTHOR TALK - Part II

Rose (6.7.): Recently I took a trip with someone, and I notice that the stories I came away with are very different as a result. In one way I felt like I paid less attention - but then again, I saw things I wouldn't necessarily have seen had I been on my own.

Travelling alone, it seems your expectations become almost like another character. There's this internal dialogue which is increased, during solo travel. “Look at that? What do you think about that, then??” Etc.

Dorothee (8.7.): Usually, I travel with my partner or with a friend, or travel to meet friends, and usually then already have a place to stay booked – but my journeys to Asia were solo journeys, and with that, very different for me, both from region and from the approach: just a backpack, the plane ticket, and a rough plan. In the in transit story “These Laws of Space and Time”, there is a note on this way of travelling included:

"I am the nomad from Madrid," he explains. "I just travel with myself."
"To go alone, it is a good way to travel," she answers.
He is surprised when she tells him how she longs to be there, in Asia. Under the Eastern sun, with the freedom to go where she wants to go, stay where she wants to stay. No compromises, for a while. No one else responsible for things going wrong, for things going right.
Reading this now again, it also might describe the way I worked on this collection.

Rose (30.6.) I like that parallel - and I meant to ask you about this. I think I remember reading something on your blog about the selection process for the stories in in transit, and it sounded interesting.

>> click to read the whole dialogue:
>> author talk: Rose Hunter + Dorothee Lang Part II
>> on solo travels, poetry, photography, spaces, and ?

The White Road - Tania Hershman (Salt)

Born in London, Tania Hershman lived in Israel for 15 years working as a science journalist. The White Road and Other Stories, her first book, is published by Salt Modern Fiction and was commended, 2009 Orange Award for New Writers.

The collection contains 27 stories, half of which are inspired by articles from New Scientist magazine; Tania studied Maths and Physics at university and when she began writing fiction she wanted to find a way to combine both. The stories are not necessarily science fiction but "science-inspired" fiction. The rest of the book is flash fiction, very short stories. A week of 16 of Tania's flash stories - some of which was from the collection - was broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Afternoon Reading in June.

Tania Hershman is the 2008 European winner of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association short story competition, and Grand Prize Winner of the Binnacle Ultra Short Contest, and her stories have been published and are forthcoming in literary magazines including the London Magazine, Smokelong Quarterly, Contrary magazine, Elimae, Litro, Electric Velocipede, Nature Futures and others. She is currently writer-in-residence in Bristol University's Science Faculty, writing short stories inspired by being in the labs.

About Salt
Salt is an independent publisher whose origins date back to 1990 when poet John Kinsella launched Salt Magazine in Western Australia. Now, Salt publishes over 80 books a year, focussing on poetry, biography, critical companions, essays, literary criticism and text books by authors from the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Caribbean and mainland Europe.

Discount offer: Salt offers Daily s-Press readers a 10% discount for this book: visit the Salt website here and enter the coupon code GM18py7n when checking out.

Tania Hershman: The White Road and Other Stories
paperback, 144 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1844714759

related links: time + space, short stories

The Republic of Love - Nora Nadjarian (blueprint)

I fell over, almost, I lost balance, I saw him. He was carrying the globe in his hands and I could see myself in many years' time, walking with him hand in hand, in Buenos Aires, in Rio de Janeiro, in Auckland, in Vienna, or whichever city his fingers happened to be on right now. My heart was beating so fast it was impossible to think.
In The Republic of Love a woman tries to come to terms with her past. In flashbacks and dream-like sequences, parts of her life unravel before us, but we are never certain what is real and what is not, what really took place and what didn't. A chance meeting with a homeless man is a turning point in her life.

The Republic of Love is a micro novel and available as signed + hand made copy in limited edition. An excerpt is up in the current issue of BluePrintReview: "Cold, Warm, Lukewarm".

Nora Nadjarian is a Cypriot poet and short story writer. She has published three collections of poetry and her work has won prizes or been commended in various international competitions. Her first collection of short stories, Ledra Street, was published in 2006. Her second poetry collection Cleft in Twain was one of the books from Cyprus recommended in an article in The Guardian on the literature of the new member states of the European Union (May 2004). Her poems and short stories have been included in various anthologies and journals internationally and a new book of her short stories is forthcoming from Folded Word (USA) in 2011.

About blueprintpressFounded in 2006, blueprintpress is the print side wing of BluePrintReview. The current focus is on new and experimental formats, like micro novels: hand-made books that fit in an airmail envelope. There is a second micro novel that is open to pre-orders now: My Apartment by Michael K. White. Both micro novels are offered as signed author copies, hand-made limited editions. They will be delivered with international air mail, and are available as single volumes, or as bundle (more here: blueprint micro novels).

Nora Nadjarian: The Republic of Love
micro novel
24 pages, hand-made + signed copy 7$

related links: identity, bilingual authors, novels+novellas

Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom - Mel Bosworth (Aqueous)

Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom is the whimsical, emotional, often reckless love story that we’ve all had or wish we’ve had. The tale follows David and Samantha, two virtual strangers from opposite coasts united for a week in autumn-cloaked Massachusetts, as they experience each other as only they know how. Sometimes shy, nervous strangers, other times merged as a single, physical being, the two dance for us the clock winds down and their reality bends but never breaks, sometimes odd, sometimes beautiful things bursting from the creases.

Mel Bosworth is the author of When the Cats Razzed the Chickens (Folded Word Press, 2009), and Freight (2011). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pank, Annalemma, Per Contra, Wigleaf, and elimae, among others. He lives, breathes, runs, writes, and works in western Massachusetts.

About Aqueous Books
Aqueous Books is the print arm of Prick of the Spindle, an online literary quarterly journal also available as a Kindle magazine. Staff include Prick of the Spindle Editor-in-Chief Cynthia Reeser as Publisher, and Prick of the Spindle Managing Editor Erin McKnight as Editor. Upcoming books include novels and novellas published serially on Prick of the Spindle, as well as works of literary merit, memoirs, magical realism, and speculative fiction. Look for forthcoming publications by Heather Fowler, Alec Bryan, and others.

Mel Bosworth: Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom
novella
paperback, est. 180 pages, $7.00
ISBN: 978-0-9826734-1-6

review
a quirky review of "Grease Stains" is up in Rose Hunter's blog: Quirkiness

Traveling with Virginia Woolf - Kristina Marie Darling (Ungovernable)

Traveling with Virignia Woolf is a nonfiction e-book that explores the role of artist colonies in the careers of women writers. By blending personal narrative with journalistic techniques, the author situates her visit to the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts within a broader literary and historical context. As the book unfolds, autobiography becomes a point of entry to questions about the role of solitude in one's writing life, the extent to which this has been available to women historically, and the rapidly changing literary landscape that contemporary female writers inhabit.

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of Night Songs (Gold Wake Press, 2010) and the editor of narrative (dis)continuities: prose experiments by younger american writers (VOX Press, 2011). She has been awarded fellowships and grants from the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. A graduate of Washington University, she currently studies philosophy at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.

About Ungovernable Press
Ungovernable Press is edited by translator and experimental poet Lars Palm. The press specializes in short e-books of poetry, essays, crime stories, and translations. Recent releases include David Wolach's book alter (ed), Adam Fieled's The White Album, Nate Pritts' Uniquely Constructed Self, and Brooklyn Copeland's Northernmost. Ungovernable Press was founded in 2008 and continues to seek and publish innovative writing.

Kristina Marie Darling: Traveling with Virginia Woolf
nonfiction e-book, 10 pages
online-pdf, free download

related links: on writing, about a place, e-books