Issue Eleven, August 2010
Howdy. Welcome to Issue Eleven, sandwiched squarely between the launch of the 2010 Jersey Devil Press Anthology and the book release picnic. I think it’s fair to assume you’ve partaken/will partake in at least one, so we’ll skip over that portion of the intro. *cough* buy it *cough*
Anyway, hi. This month we’ve got some truly spectacular fiction, starting with the cover story, “Crawfish Noon,” by Micah Dean Hicks. It’s a Western involving crustaceans. You need to read it.
You need to read the other five stories, too, starting with Shea Newton’s trippy “The Tools of Amputation.” Then it’s on to Isaac James Baker’s punk-rock “Too Much Blood” and Leah Petersen’s petty, hysterical “Theo.” We switch it up a bit for the comically absurd “The World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle is a Bitch to Solve” by the returning Brian Long, and then we close on “Thinking of Ewe,” by Tarl Roger Kudrick, a story about a guy who is not Batman.
So there you go. Six stories, some serious, some not so serious, and some about sheep. Pull up a desk chair and dig in.
Links to the individual stories are below, and the .pdf can be found here.
– Eirik Gumeny
Crawfish Noon, Micah Dean Hicks
“That day the dirt flushed with blue blood,
scraps of shell and leg segments strewn like cards.”
The Tools of Amputation, Shea Newton
“We’ve been given a weapon. They are by prescription only.”
Too Much Blood, Isaac James Baker
“The air was warm and thick the night we became teenage killers,
one of those sweaty, steamy ones when humidity covers Chicago like a wet blanket.”
Theo, Leah Petersen
“Why people want to spend a beautiful day like this inside the penis building
I can’t figure out.”
The World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle is a Bitch to Solve, Brian Long
“‘Honestly? Who reads the fucking newspaper anymore, for Christ’s sake?’”
Thinking of Ewe, Tarl Roger Kudrick
“If Gary had learned anything in college, he’d learned he wasn’t the smartest person in the world. But he knew mixed-up crazy when he saw it, and this was it.”
