New joint. Is Anybody Out There. At the Metazen.

It's true. And it's much appreciated. So thank you to whole Metazen crew for that. Excerpt? Cool.

"Arguably, it’s easier to picture killing your wife, your children and yourself, than actually leaving them, which somehow seems much more destructive and impossible on the face of it.

You recognize that this is how things go wrong in those dark indie movies that Sundance loves. Someone makes a decision just like that. They choose murder over merely opening a door and walking away forever because in getting caught up in the throes of something they can’t figure out, all of that just seems easier.

But this isn’t Sundance and you know that you definitely aren’t killing anyone or going anywhere, that you and your wife are in this together until the end, bloody or otherwise."

A quite lovely and dare we say touching literary homage by the Ryan W. Bradley rife with running, suburbs, tattoos, pregnancy, thongs and slightly more than borderline sordidness. Please file under things we quite dig and appreciate.

At the Metazen. Word.

Big thanks to the quite stellar, and lovely,  fiction crew at The Nervous Breakdown, and we do hope the descriptor "lovely" is not pejorative, much less a diminutive, or what have you, is it fiction crew, for running a new piece of ours titled The Angel of Death, which is one of a series of Chicago stories we have been working on that have been popping-up in a variety of stellar literary locations near you, including the Metazen, Fix It Broken and Smalldoggies. Please do take a look and if it works for you, maybe have yourself some excerpt as well.

“Hey!” someone behind me screams.

“Jesus Walks, God show me the way…”

I am lost in the newspaper, headphones in place and walking along the platform at the Damen Blue line stop in Wicker Park.

“Jesus Walks with me, with me, with me…”

“Hey!” they scream again, followed by a playful shove to the back.

I remove my headphones. It’s her and she’s all smiles. I’m still conflicted about whether I think she’s attractive, with her buzz cut, crazy angular features and harsh cheekbones. She could almost pass for a dude, a boy really, but for her breasts which are swelling under an ancient Smoking Popes T-shirt, those hips, just climbing above her baggy jeans, and that ass, that golden ass.

“Where’s your head at, man?” she says smiling, but intense, hungry.

She adjusts her T-shirt. Was I staring at her chest? I need to watch that, but can it really be avoided? I don’t know. I don’t even really know her. I once knew her, sort of, before I was married, though you wouldn’t call it a friendship exactly.

We worked at the same agency and she had been hired to oversee this huge grant, AIDS stuff, before protease inhibitors and before anyone could manage the disease. People died then. That’s all. I don’t even remember what kind of program she was running, what anyone ran back then, hospice and support groups mostly. It was horrible. They called her the Angel of Death. It was mean to be funny, escapist, black humor. But she couldn’t deal.

James Greer. Metazen. Book excerpt. Wonderbar.

New BFF and renowned author and musician James Greer has an excerpt of his new novel The Ordinary Rendition of Caeli Fax up at the always fine Metazen and we think this is most kind indeed. We also think some excerpt of said excerpt is in order. Cool? Agreed.

"It’s odd, thought Caeli Fax, that at this time and in this place “hearing voices” should be a sign of mental illness. Most of history would have made of you a prophet or a poet. Most of history would have genuflected before you. Which, frankly, can become tiresome. The life of an oracle is not for me. You can’t go anywhere. You have no privacy. Everyone is always asking questions. The wrong questions, or worse, questions without an answer, or with so many answers you have to just pick one at random."

New piece. "We Were All Here." In the Fix it Broken.

Very excited to have a new piece "We Were All Here" in the Fix it Broken. The line-up is most kind including the xTx and Heather Fowler among others. And the Fashionable Fiction T-shirt designer is none other than the Ryan W. Bradley. The story is also one of a series of loosely connected Chicago stories we've been working on including "The Guy" in Smalldoggies, "Arousal" in decomP and "Taking Flight" in Metazen. Big happiness and some excerpt. Enjoy.

"We were all here, in Chicago at the dawn of a new decade, with a new president from our city. A president we had all watched march triumphantly into Grant Park after his victory was assured and briefly turn our second city into the center of the universe.

Obama was gone now though. Off to Washington to change the world. He hadn’t really ended any wars yet, however, and the economy was better, but what of the lack of real jobs, not to mention gay rights?

We didn’t talk about these things, he was gone, and we were all here, standing around the island in Frank and Bonnie’s kitchen."

"The Guy." At the Smalldoggies.

We are loving the Matty Byloos and his all his Smalldoggies action. Today we are especially appreciative that he has run our new joint "The Guy" on the Smalldoggies site. This piece is part of a string of quasi-interconnected Chicago stories we've been working on including pieces at Atticus Books, Thunderclap and Metazen, with hopefully more to come. Again, big thanks brother and drinks on us for sure when next we meet.

"Here’s the thing. You were the guy.

That guy. The cool one. The good-looking one.

You were the guy.

There’s always a guy, the one that the women and the older married guys at the office gravitate to. The guy is inevitably new and probably young, though the guy doesn’t have to be young if he’s attractive and dynamic. The guy doesn’t even have to be friendly. In fact, it never hurts the guy to be somewhat removed, distant and moody.

It’s about freshness. And it’s about office life and the lack of exposure to the new and different. Sameness breeds need and desire.

Of course, it’s also about safety, people at work are supposed to be safe, like your family is supposed to be safe. You can take chances at work, not real chances mind you, but you can not quite be yourself at work and yet be yourself all at once. You want to flirt, you flirt. It’s work. You want to be more like the geek you wish you could be, you geek. It’s work. And having the guy there makes this possible. The guy strives to be non-judgmental, because unlike you the guy knows that work is just work and so he just wants to enjoy the attention.

The fact is, for most of us work is everything and the guy makes that palatable.

And you were the guy."

We are The storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2010.

We are pleasantly surprised, and thrilled, that our story "Taking Flight" in Metazen has been selected as one of the best online short stories published in 2010 as part of the storySouth Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2010. We are in insanely fine company, and so we should mention that we are thrilled, surprised, and thrilled, did we already mention that? Good, and thanks to the judges and the quite fine Metazen, which was also picked as one of the runners-up for best new online magazine, something we think is terribly sweet indeed.

Thunderclap. Issue Cinco. Chicago joint.

Digging this. We have a new joint, "He's Gone," in the new issue of Thunderclap, which is most filled with killer writers, and we are most appreciative. "He's Gone" is part of a group of Chicago stories we've been working on, some of which have already been picked-up including "Taking Flight" in Metazen, "Smiling to Himself" at Atticus Books, and "Apply Some Pressure" in the debut issue of Curbside Splendor, and some of which are still to come, we think, hope, all of it, we'll see.

There is new piece, "Smiling to Himself," at the Atticus Books. And there is celebration.

Yo, quite happy to have a new piece, "Smiling to Himself," up at Atticus Books. It is part of group of pieces we've been working on set in contemporary Chicago, the first of which was "Taking Flight" which ran at Metazen. We hope you dig it, big thanks to Atticus, and for you viewing and preview pleasure some excerpt.


"When exactly did doctors become younger than me thought Pete? Pete could accept that almost every professional associated with his children’s lives was younger than him, the teachers, the speech therapists, the nurses at the pediatrician’s office, not to mention the pediatrician herself. But his doctor too, when had he become his dad?

It wasn’t that the new guy wasn’t good or thorough or professional, but he looked like a high school student or maybe a cast member from Glee. He certainly didn’t shave. Was he even old enough to drink?

“Hey doc,” Pete asked, “are you old enough to drink yet?”

The doctor smiled. Jesus, was he wearing braces? No, thank God.

“I am not old enough to drink,” the doctor replied, “but I will be old enough to vote when Obama is up for re-election, so that’s cool.”

Cool. Pete said cool all the time, but were doctors supposed to say it?

“Okay, Pete,” the doctor said, pulling on a rubber glove, “you’re forty now, buddy, and I need to check that prostate.”

“Really, you couldn’t have given me warning before I got here?” Pete asked. “A post card maybe, or a text, how about a comment on my Facebook page, isn’t that how you guys communicate with each other?”

We are The Watch List. Hear us roar.

More accurately, "Taking Flight" is The Watch List, and we are most geeked, big thanks Orange Alert.

We are so Metazen. And Taking Flight. Wonderbar.

Quite geeked we are to have our new joint "Taking Flight" up at the Metazen. "Taking Flight" is the first of a series of pieces we have been working on that are set in Chicago and were referenced to and dissected in 99 Problems. We hope you dig it. We also hope, no think, it could change your life, so for a literary appetizer of sorts please do enjoy the brief excerpt below.

"It starts on Facebook, and why does everything start there now? You suppose you’re too old to understand it, just as you have no idea why you signed-up in the first place. You’re not actually interested in what anyone from high school is doing, how many kids they have or how much they love Jesus. You don’t want their gifts or care about the farm they’re building. There is a reason why you live nowhere near home and haven’t, there was a bigger world out there, a world where new memories could be made and the old ones could be left behind and packed away."

Ryan Bradley. Metazen. Bountiful.

It has been like two whole days since we drew your attention to an interview being held by or with someone we dig and frankly we couldn't take it anymore. Luckily, for us certainly, we ran into to this quite fine interview at the Metazen with one of our newest BFFs Ryan Bradley of Artistically Declined fame and we think it just might change your life. Of course, it might not, but that then would be on you, right? Maybe that's harsh, how about you just go enjoy it, starting with the excerpt below.

Metazen: Talk a bit about yourself as a writer.

Ryan: This is a dangerous question to ask. What I know is this: more than anything I care about the exploration of how we, as people, manage to relate to one another. How we generate bonds and communicate, despite everything that works against such a possibility. To speak slightly less generally, I am really inspired by blue collar jobs and workers. Having pumped gas, painted houses, and worked on a construction crew, I am compelled to tell stories that show the struggle of maintaining human relationships amid the stresses of such jobs/economic positions. I firmly believe the best stories I’ve written to this point are those in the story collection I recently finished putting together. They are all stories that take place in Alaska, the state where I was born and raised, and one of my primary muses. And they all revolve around these sorts of situations and characters. I think you can see reflections of these concerns in "Clean Bay Girl" in that it’s not a situation you would find between two wealthy people, or even two middle-class WASP’s. I think it’s clear that these people are low-middle class economically, at the most, and that they feel the stress of their position every day. I don’t want to call them white trash, but I think it’s not far off.