(Thanks in part to a blog post by Cal P. Logan, which inspired me to get this written down while it’s still stewing. You can find the post in question here:https://calplogan.com/blog/2018/12/27/why-i-turned-down-the-only-publishing-contract-ive-been-offered ). Not that his and my situations are similar, other than we both broke ties with a publisher.) As some of you might know, […]
Principality of Two Forts
The Catalogue
(This is the first story I ever published: 3rd place winner of the 2009 Vancouver Currier Literary Contest, which was to write a story that included the line, “The ‘gift’ came in a small, brown box.”) Millard Bottomwell found the magazine a few steps from the trail, half-buried under a flat stone and spattered with […]
Within a Name-Chapter 1
(Way back in 2011 I took part in the 3 Day Novel competition, and won… well, nothing, but it was a great experience anyway. Just for the hell of it, I decided I should post it here, chapter by chapter. I’m going through it to clean it up a bit, but it’s otherwise as written […]
Within a Name – Chapter 2
CHis pounding head woke him. He tried to open his eyes, found them too crusted with sleep, rubbed them, and tried again. They peeled back to reveal cracked, screaming light bleeding in from around the camel hair curtains. Even in the twilight of the basement, fire burned through his eyes to the back of his […]
Books
Of all my mostly petty complaints about living in Japan, one thing I do love is all the books. For a writer, the words “People don’t read anymore” are probably four of the most terrifying words in English, and yet here we are. Magazines? Sometimes. News online? Maybe. Facebook (fucking Facebook)? Certainly. But books? Novels? […]
Within a Name – Chapter 3
A week later and Ranat’s tin was nearly spent. He’d given Gessa twenty Three-Sides—a lot more than he owed her, but he’d felt some undefinable, probably misplaced guilt, and giving her less hadn’t seemed right. He’d more or less moved into the nameless bar where he’d met Gessa. What had followed was a blur […]