So far they’ve all been pretty great, but I’m particularly partial to last week’s “After I Threw the Ball At Thomas Hernandez and Before It Killed Him.” Check it out.

Ryan Werner‘s started up “Our Band Could Be Your Lit,” wherein he’ll write 100 stories under 700 words based on songs suggested by readers.  You can follow him on Twitter, too.  I’ve sent in mine.  Have you sent in yours?

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “That sounds kinda, sorta similar to yt sumner‘s ‘You and Me’ project.”  Well, Ryan thought so, too.  He freely admits she inspired his site.  More to the point, have you sent yt your damn postcard yet?  She’s still not at 100.  Check the details and then fucking do it.

Speaking of authors who want you to send them stuff, Victor David Giron‘s Curbside Splendor wants your submissions!  He’s looking for literary fiction and poetry based in contemporary urban settings.  You can find updates on Facebook, too.  They’re only a few pieces in, but so far so good.

And then there’s Stephen Schwegler. He and I got bored and wrote a ridiculous story entitled “Screw the Universe” over e-mail. Now we’re shamelessly sharing it with the world. Thanks, internet!

So what’s everyone else doing?  Got a website or a project you need a hand with?  Feel free to leave a link in the comments or e-mail info@jerseydevilpress.com with whatever you’ve got.

Sharing is caring, friends, and we care.  We care so hard.

*cover art subject to being less blurry

After a couple of weeks of dicking around behind the scenes, it’s our pleasure to formally announce the 2010 Jersey Devil Press Anthology!

The 2010 Anthology showcases the best of what we’ve published so far, as well as six — count ‘em, six! — new stories, all of which epitomize what we here at Jersey Devil Press are about. Stories rife with Jersey attitude, dark humor, and zombies, and werebears, and unicorns, oh my! It’s a veritable bacchanal of genre-straddling, clown-fearing, taco-hunting, world-ending prose!

The 2010 Anthology is set for release on Tuesday, July 27th, and will be available in paperback and a variety of digital editions.

Featuring work by:

Andrew Frankel
Ansley Moon
Bruce J. Berger
Christina Murphy
Danger_Slater
Daniel McDermott
Gavin Broom
Jenny Ortiz
Jonathan Plombon
Jonathan H. Roberts
Kate Delany
Kevin Brown
Louis Wittig
M. R. Lang
Mike Sweeney
Ryan Werner
Stephen Schwegler
yt sumner
Z. Z. Boone

Pre-orders begin next week!

Were we successful in our Abouting?  If e-mails from complete strangers in California are any indication, then hell yes.

[Editor's Note: As per Mr. Holt's request, editor's commentary is in red.  Links are also in red.  There is going to be a lot of red.]

Dear Jersey Devil Press People,

As is the want of every as-yet-undiscovered-whatever (which with my being in California instantly makes me an aspiring actor [In Pennyslvania, they're apparently puppeteers.], which is inaccurate as I do not nor have ever waited tables wearing a white button up shirt and black slacks), I was perusing the lists of online magazines and journals who will publish nearly everything that is incomprehensible and poetic and yet will turn down my incomprehensible and poetic because it does not meet their “current needs at this time.” [I promise to never use the phrase "current needs" when we reject you.]

Somehow I accidentally stumbled onto your website [Destiny?] and accidentally discovered that there existed within Jersey Devil Press a commodity significantly lacking in nearly every other magazine/journal/press in the current publishing landscape [Latina editors?], that being an actual sense-of-humor and an acute sense of mortality [Oh.].

I regretted that I failed to read up on what a Jersey Devil was.  [That's a shame.]  I assume it’s some kind of “thing” that exists in Jersey [We also have Werebears.] (Or do you prefer non-Jersians to call it New Jersey?  I’m not sure of the local custom.  I don’t want to offend.  I mean I know Anthony Bourdain is from New Jersey but you may hate both him and his show on the Travel Channel… which I can respect.  [Kind of.  From the little I've seen he comes across as an arrogant tool.]  Forget I mentioned it.  [OK.]).  But whatever it is, I’m sure it’s good/bad and easy/difficult to deal with.  [Yes.]  For that matter I really didn’t read much more after that but I swear to God I’m looking at the pdf of the October issue right after this email.  [Man, you better have.  You too, current reader.  And read the November issue while you're at it.]

Anyway, good job and stuff.  [Thanks!]  Hope you guys don’t succumb to being serious artists and writing poems about red wheelbarrows… beside white chickens.  [We don't have any stories about chickens, but this one is about cows.]

Abstractly,

Caleb Holt

[Incidentally, as Caleb was so kind to point out, Kate Delany's Jersey Fresh was about the interaction between a Jerseyan and a Californian.  Much like this.  Crazy.]

[Side note:  To the authors of stories not linked to, we apologize.  We tried, but there're only so many ridiculous tangents we can string into a cohesive post.]

We’ve got seven stellar short stories from the likes of Meg Tuite, Julie Brown, Sonny James Traylor, Ryan Werner, Tom Mahony, Richard Radford and Milan Smith, all guaranteed to cure your impending sugar crash.

You can find the issue online here, or download a .pdf of it here. So get to it.

The clientele were nice. Not in the same ways that a glass of water or a nap are nice, but in the sorts of ways that make them socially upstanding within the context of a store that sells dildos. Virtuous people were everywhere, and I’d take notes on the inside of cigarette cartons as Ms. Asian-Woman-Buying-Imitation-Astro-Glide-In-Bulk told me what makes her feel sexy. She’d leave knowing that it’s all for her when the typically demure Ishokino turns to the strong American Buck in Cumzilla and says, “Bring your white to my face.” My parents told everyone I was in the self-esteem business.

I eventually quit and moved to L.A. Lots of people do it, I realize that, but most of them end up involved with sex on tape only after trying to be in the real movies or on television. I just wanted to see how many different ways I could sneak twenty minutes of story between two hours of fucking. I did the parody circuit at first: Men In Black Men, Fellatio Gump, Schindler’s Lust. I did Gummed With the Wind and Jurassic Pork for the nursing home crowd. The studios kept buying. I was doubling up on my student loan payments. I bet they don’t teach how to write a cumshot in MFA workshops. Not on purpose, anyways.

Fucktasia moved me away from just writing. I wasn’t producing with names or anything—just amateurs who wanted to take a chance—but I was producing. I got calls from studios wanting me to come in and tell them how to shoot the reverse-cowgirl position. I even kept getting calls from home, mainly curious ones that stopped more than they ended.

“Are you eating well?”

“Yeah, Mom. One of the girls made me chili the other day.”

My parents have an old phone, and I could hear Mom twist the cord around her finger.

“Is she clean?”

“Well, she didn’t make it with her cunt, if that’s what you mean.”

She handed the phone off to Dad, and only when she was out of the room did I say, “Hey Dad, did you see Fucktasia?” But I know they don’t care about that sort of thing. The sex, maybe, but not the craft. Most people are like that. Consciously, at least. If someone happened to look, he could see the wrench as Chekhov’s gun in Ballcock or hear Carver’s dialogue in the Vixen Vampire series. When the storm hit the dejected leading man right before the three-way in Mother Nature’s Muddy Fields, he could see King Lear’s pathetic fallacy, and know.






RYAN WERNER has got a body built for sin and an appetite for passion.