This month I’m grateful to have two new publications. The first is my prose poem “Recall, Recall, Recall” which appeared in Made from Midnight: a requiem, an anthology published by Poets in the Pines. I haven’t had many poems published, possibly because I did not start to submit much poetry until recently, so an acceptance already during this first serious season of poetry submissions has given me hope for my return to composing poetry after long absence. The anthology can be bought online on Amazon or Barnes & Noble; both physical and ebooks are available.
My second publication this month is a flash fiction piece titled “The Well,” published in Nigh Shades Magazine. It’s a speculative fiction piece, narrated by a troll, themed around stewardship. If you like short speculative fiction, then Night Shades is a great online magazine to peruse.
Unfortunately, I’m having problems with the publisher of Blabber, Chat, Shouting Match. Corona\Samizdat Books is one of my favorite small presses, and I’ve had a great experience releasing a book with them. But there are problems. And none of it is their fault. The first of the recent issues is that the government of Slovenia—where C\S is located—isn’t allowing parcels to be shipped to the U.S. because of the tariffs. While the audience for C\S is global, this really cuts off the press’s cash flow and makes it impossible for anyone in my own country to get a timely copy of my book.
The second problem came more recently when the C\S masthead Rick Harsch had a stroke. While the press isn’t a one man show, the website and payment processing and shipping is all handled by him. He did awake from a coma, but he cannot write or speak as of yet. We’re awaiting more information about his health and the future of the press.
Corona\Samizdat is a nonprofit press. Any money made goes back into the press and to pay the authors. For this reason, people often donate to the press to ensure new work keeps being released. Nick Voro, author of the C\S title Conversational Therapy, had started a GoFundMe page for the press before Rick’s medical emergency. Now the money will go to help him with whatever he needs while he recovers. I ask that if you want and if it’s within your mean, please donate to help Rick in this extremely trying time for him and his family.
I’ll make another post when and if the press gets back up and running. Until then, it’s back to working on my other books. Thanks for all the support and kindness.
It’s my pleasure to announce that my new collection Blabber, Chat, Shouting Match: 50 Dialogue-Only Fictions is available to order from corona\samizdat.
A book of 50 short stories by a unique, witty, and, if necessary, brutal author.
Blabber, Chat, Shouting Match: 50 Dialogue-Only Fictions takes the traditional genre of literary dialogue and interrogates the form through a fictional lens in our era of hyper-communication and viral misinformation. A product of a self-imposed, yearlong writing challenge, Greene’s book delivers a diverse collection of conversations. Bigfoot, gods, AI dating apps, serial killers, and men debating whose turn it is to cross a busy and blood-spattered road are just some of the characters you’ll meet in these philosophically charged and emotionally raw short stories.
I’d like to acknowledge all of the wonderful zines, reviews, journals, anthologies, and magazines which published stories from this collection. The Creative Café, Lit Up, Train Lit Magazine, The Green Light Literary Journal, Z Publishing, Public House Magazine, Midnight Mosaic, Defenestration Magazine, Gypsum Sound Tales, Raw Art Review, and The Metaphysical Review all have my heartfelt thanks for believing in my work. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Many thanks too goes to any and everyone who read my work in these publications or who gave valuable feedback on some or all of these stories. This includes the writing critique group I run, Tri-State Writers, and my beta readers, Laura Howell and Edi Salihu, as well as others who I’ve forgotten who helped shape a couple of the pieces I wrote many, many years ago and brought forward into this collection. And, of course, a zillion thanks goes to my wife, Libby, who helped polish my manuscript with her keen eye.
Thank you to everyone who buys a copy of Blabber, Chat, Shouting Match. I couldn’t do this without readers like you.
The cover is done! My new book Blabber, Chat, Shouting Match will be coming out in the near future from corona\samizdat. We don’t have a publication date set yet, but isn’t this cover just fantastic! A little blurb on the book can be found below as well as links to some of the stories which have been published, a number of which can read online.
Blurb.
Blabber, Chat, Shouting Match: 50 Dialogue-Only Fictions (corona\samizdat) takes the traditional genre of literary dialogue and interrogates the form through a fictional lens in our era of hyper-communication and viral misinformation. A product of a self-imposed, yearlong writing challenge, Greene has delivered a diverse collection of conversations. Bigfoot, gods, AI dating apps, serial killers, and men debating whose turn it is to cross a busy and blood-spattered road are just some of the characters you’ll meet in these philosophically charged and emotionally raw short stories.
Published dialogues.
Graffiti Field Research: The Metaphysical Review ; June 06 (2023). Read online.
My very first horror story, “A Set of Clown Car Keys,” is in print within the pages of the latest edition of Sometimes Hilarious Horror. And, yes, my tale hits both the humor and the horrific. Content warning: clowns
Bonus interviews with the authors included in this edition of SHH.
Dark Horses is the magazine of weird fiction, and they’ve published my short story “Starry-Eyed Miniature Catalpas” in issue 35 of their oddball publication. You can snag a Kindle or paperback copy here.
This weird little tale, which they’ve placed as the final piece in their magazine (always an honor) is strange, falling into the Bizarro genre. “Starry-Eyed Miniature Catalpas” is the story a man who likes to jog, hunt, and tend to his prize catalpas plant. It’d sit well alongside my first publication, a short story titled “There’s War,” found in a once absurdly glorious magazine known as Bust Down the Doors and Eat All the Chickens. A Kindle copy of this magazine can be found Amazon as well.
In the larger context of my body of work, I’d categorize both of these pieces alongside my Speculative Fiction. “There’s War” is more recognizably speculative, being a story about the day the president comes to town in future version of the United States.
The President comes to town dressed in his war garb, with bicycle reflectors adorning his leather jacket and golden pendants hanging from his neck. Each wrist is shackled to a thick chain that trails behind him. The two chains are held by thirty slaves each. They try to hold back his fury at the enemy, but cannot.
The more recognizably speculative elements come in descriptions of the organization of society, which is described as full of bureaucracy. The forever war mentality is satirized by descriptions of speakers hidden within the walls of everyday households that continually pipe in the awful sounds of war. The idea is absurdly satirical, yes, but also speculative.
“Starry-Eyed Miniature Catalpas” is even more absurdly unbelievable. Though it lacks the futuristic, pseudo-science fiction world of “There’s War,” it leans without reservations into the fantastically weird.
Mr. Jacobelder went back to his living room and looked at his Starry-Eyed Miniature Catalpas. Its eye was open, which was usually a good sign that it was sunny outside or simply feeling well. However, he thought its eye might be a bit red. In the bathroom he searched for pink-eye medication. He couldn’t find any. So he went outside and pushed over the freestanding Doric pillars in his yard until he found some Canthusfirmus—a little glaucous-stemmed plant with purple flowers, which tends to grow under large rocks or fallen trees. Mr. Jacobelder went back into his house with the medicinal weed. The radio man said, “Welcome back, Mr. Jacobelder. Continued prosaic works by Loden . . .”
While fewer than ten of my published works are definitively Speculative Fiction at this point, I’m happy that my imagination isn’t constrained by genre. Some authors write only Science Fiction or only Fantasy . . . or perhaps they broaden into penning only Speculative Fiction stories. This is completely fine, especially if these are the routes your imaginative paths lead you. Other writers explore only realistic words, authoring Literary Fiction. Again, this is fine. I write and have published mostly Literary Fiction myself. It is where the routes of my imaginative paths usually lead me. In fact, on Facebook I am the administrator of one of the largest—if not the largest—group of Literary Fiction writers in the world! But I must ask my fellow Lit Fic lovers, does the flash of a knight’s sword never glint in your mind’s eye? Do the denizens of apocalyptic potentialities never pique your interest? Has the ancient customs of aliens residing on a distant planet never needed your exploring? When’s the last time you let your writing be weird?
Randal Eldon Greene is the author of Descriptions of Heaven: a novella revolving around a linguist, a lake monster, and the looming shadow of death, published by Harvard Square Editions. His short story collection, Blabber, Chat, Shouting Match: 50 Dialogue-Only Fictions is forthcoming from corona\samizdat. Please support small presses by buying and reading their publications. By using the affiliate links in this post, you’ll also be supporting Randal with some spare change for the coffee habit which fuels his writing.
I was invited back onto the LostBoys Cypher Circle podcast last Saturday. I read two of my published pieces, “Irony” and “Bright Moon Over Lover’s Bridge, on page 38” (both linked here for you if you wish to read them because the publishers have generously made them publicly available). Both are seasonally themed, especially the first one. If you want some autumnal vibes, then check out my reading or spare a few minutes to read the published stories.
You can watch the video version of the podcast on YouTube at this link. Or view the embedded video below.
“Conclave at the Tea Table” is story is told from the perspective of a little girl’s teddy bear. And it’s been published in Carte Blanche for issue #49, a play themed issue.
The magazine launch included a livestream showcase of the published works. I read an excerpt from the story. The reading wasn’t recorded, but you can hear me read “Conclave at the Tea Table” in full on a YouTube livestream of the LostBoys Cypher Circle podcast. Click here to watch the reading directly on YouTube or watch the video below.
Thanks for reading and/or listening to my fiction. I also read a poem earlier in the same episode of the LostBoys Cypher Circle podcast, which I’ll link right here and embed below for those interested in hearing “Wine and Cheese and Crackers.”
Some things in life are luck and some things are perseverance and putting yourself out there. Some things are both, though not probably a 50/50 split. In fact, I don’t even like to think of the good things in life as being a ratio split between luck and effort, rather I like to believe that effort can lead you to lucky breaks that wouldn’t have otherwise been on your path had you not worked hard and been brave in the first place.
Right now I feel overwhelmed with luck. The masthead of Corona\Samizdat, Rick Harsch, reached out to me to ask if I had a book I’d like to publish with them. I told him YES and then promptly described my dialogue-only short story collection and emailed off links to some pieces from it published in zines. The thing is, I wasn’t actively even looking for a publisher. Only occasionally would I find myself working on one my dialogues, usually after I had heard about a themed anthology or magazine which one of my stories might go well with. I planned to wait until after I was finished editing my novel before working seriously on my dialogues. But then, the perfect publisher for this weird, little collection came knocking on my social media door.
How did I end up so lucky? I own . . . let me count them . . . eleven books published by this press (if I wasn’t on a book-buying ban without a gift card in hand, I’d own more). I adore Corona\Samizdat’s releases. Their covers are often enviable and trippy. They’re releasing some of the best experiments in literature bound in some of the most amazing cover art I’ve ever seen. So what in the world possessed Rick to reach out to me on the off chance I had a book just sitting around, unpublished or out of print? In short, how did I end up so lucky?
I’ve been on Instagram for over a year, but only this year have I really been figuring out how to properly use it (I don’t think I even owned a smart phone when I first signed up using a web browser; I intended to toy with advertising my Hello, Author interviews on the platform). It was on Instagram that I discovered Corona\Samizdat and began—as frugally as possible—buying their books. I followed them. They followed me back. I followed Rick. He followed me in turn. All the while, I began posting more bookish content.
It was on April 27th that I posted several photos of my office, the first one being a photo I took directly in front of the dusty TV screen I use as for my computer monitor when I’m editing. The accompanying text was this:
Me contemplating actually cleaning up the messy office which I haven’t really used for writing since December, as the Kanban board shows. Piles of paper litter the place, the desk is a wreck, and the book I’m writing increasingly wants the weight of the room lifted. It is an ideal writing space to boot. … We have finally found a new crew member at work, meaning that soon things should be normal. Normal for me means working only weekends and one evening a week. Normal also means I can try out a new writing routine. Since the baby was born less than 5 months ago, in December, I have been attempting to write while taking on the roll of full time dad. These past couple of weeks the baby has changed, is demanding more attention and thus more time. So I’m thinking now that I need to try writing later at night, after baby and wife are in bed. I think this may be my new way forward for writing.
It was the next day that Rick reached out to me asking if I had a book. It was pure luck . . . except for the parts that led up to the lucky break. Everything coalesced to put me on this path, from brute-force learning an app I find unintuitive and putting myself out there (shitty pictures and all) to denying myself small indulgences so I could comfortably buy a few extra books—it all led to Rick taking the time to read the words I wrote to accompany a weird selfie I snapped. It all led to my lucky break. I couldn’t have had this kind of luck without participating in the book and writing world of today’s social media. And I really couldn’t have have done it without Rick seeing my post and deciding to take a chance on me. So thank you, Rick.
I’m happy to announce that Dialogues: A Collection of Creative Conversations will be published at some unspecified time in the future by Corona\Samizdat. I’m working on edits. A couple of stories were inexplicably lost in the move from a rental to our house. I may also find that not all of the dialogues are actually salvageable in their current forms (and maybe even in their concepts). I know I’ll have at least 52 completed, but can’t say that all 52 will come from the 2018 self-imposed challenge of writing one story a week for a year using only dialogue. I feel incredibly lucky that I’ll be joining the Corona Crew—a group which includes Rick and all of the authors and illustrators he’s published through Corona\Samizdat. And hopefully the luck will keep coming as I get hard at work on this collection.
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve felt like myself. I pinpoint this disassociation with my identity to when I got sick about three weeks ago. I’ve no idea why I didn’t just feel ill but also seemed to be standing beside myself, not quite able to make my actions align with the me I usually am. Writing suffered, reading became sluggish days on end, and my free time wasn’t always spent the way I would like. It seemed it wasn’t just my nose that was plugged, but my entire identity was suffering a sinus infection.
Last night my mind began to spark back to life. As I drove home from work shortly before midnight, glimmers of myself flashed in the dark. I am not fully aflame by any means, but the sparks have hit the kindling of my prefered mode of being — a mode I would love to say is my default self, but alas, I’ve cultivated the preferedme through hard work and must work harder still to continue with the endless journey away from stagnation. Nonetheless, while not burning yet bright, I can say sickness and disassociation recede by the minute.
WRITINGUPDATE
The writer’s group I helped start and run has now had ahold of The Brick twice, so far scrutinizing parts of the first chapter. I’ve been asking for structural edits and have enjoyed the feedback. My special pleasure is in seeing the reactions of readers who haven’t read anything like my writing in this book. My expected pleasure is in hearing what my bestie, Mike, has to say about this book I’ve been writing with him in mind as my ideal audience.
Two unfortunate things have impacted the group: 1) Mike has been having to work Thursday nights when our group meets. He and I work at the same hotel, and we are in desperate need of another desk clerk. Right now it’s affecting us both, creating a situation where neither of us can have the same night off, and since I run the writing club, it’s I who gets Thursday evenings off. 2) The writer’s group has lost at least two people who found the group intimidating, as if we’re too professional for amateurs. This seems odd to me, as while three of us have put our work out there, we’re by no means acclaimed authors or even making a living at stacking words into book-shaped products. It is perhaps the very advice we dispense in our critique group that intimidates. That would be more understandable; I can see an unpublished writer feeling they have nothing of value to offer to the group . . . though I’d think having insightful readers would be a plus for amateur writers attending a critique group, not a negative. Whatever it is that’s made a couple of intimidated writers jump ship, in the future I hope to convey the need for input from all levels of readers and writers. After the first meeting, I purposefully left off mentioning my credentials as a writer and influencer in the writing community and did not notice any casual flaunting of C.V.s, so I am left guessing what it is about us regulars that feels intimidating to some of our newbies.
Writing with baby is sometimes tough, sometimes not. She doesn’t seem to have a consistent napping schedule, but doctors and baby books are suggesting that she should. If she did, it’d make writing a whole heck of a lot easier during the day. Her grumpy bouts haven’t helped matters; Cora really would rather be held facing out while I walk her around. That’s her favorite. The girl really needs to learn to crawl so she can explore the world herself — not that a baby on the go would make writing any easier!
Cora helping Daddy with laundry.
My goal is to write weekday evenings for a couple of hours no matter how well or poorly writing went during the day. However, because of our need for another desk clerk at work and scheduling oddities with a part-timer, I’ve been working at least two weekday evenings. Before this, I was working only weekends and often (but not always) one weekday evening. So my intentions aren’t matching up with my reality, though it’s no fault of my own.
READERS AND WRITERS NOVELTY HUB
I’ve been selling awesome, bookish merch on Amazon for a while, but I’ve decided to move my focus to a standalone store. To mitigate costs, I’ve kept it simple and without branding and logos. So head on over to Readers and Writers Novelty Hub to find something for yourself or the bookish caffeine addict in your life.
PROJECTS AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT
I alluded above and in my blog post The Paternal To-do of 2022 to what basically amounts to self-improvement. I’ve made some nice jabs at cultivating a lifestyle, but I’ve yet to make any strong stabs at escaping stagnation. To do this, I need to do more than cultivate my environment for the preferred me, but I need to push myself.
I grant, I’ve been learning to parent as a stay-at-home dad these past several months. And Cora herself is in continual flux, meaning I’m continually adjusting to her. So what I have been doing is laying the groundwork for pushing myself. This involves picking up some projects I’ve laid aside and heaving a few hefty self-improvement goals at myself. In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be going in 100%. For me, this is an all or nothing kind of deal. I want this life to be the best for me and my family, and this means not letting myself get stuck wanting and waiting to do certain things but actually setting the groundwork and then doing it. I’m quite happy with both the inner work and external work it’s taken to get me here, nearly ready to journey even further away from stagnation on that endless blooming path of potential.
My friend Kristin asked me to volunteer as a leader for a new writer’s group through the local public library she works at. I readily agreed, and we developed a plan for a workshop-style critique group. I would really like to find a bunch of writers in the area with whom I can talk to about books and the craft of stringing words into tales, poetry, and other forms of creative meaning. This groups seems like a perfect way to both find writer friends and to improve my own writing along the way. What I didn’t expect was to be sharing my work with the group so soon.
At the end of the first meeting no one had anything to volunteer. I imagined that a few months down the line I’d have my own unpublished novel manuscript in decent enough shape to feel comfortable sharing it. However, everyone seemed like they would be a lot more comfortable if they first critiqued one of the group leaders pieces. And so, I let myself be the sacrificial writer whose manuscript these readers will have their first stab (sharp and pointy stabs I’m sure) at.
ACTUAL IMAGE OF ALPHA READER CRITIQUING MY NOVEL
Yes, I could have submitted any number of unpublished short stories I have moldering away in some inexplicably dusty digital folder. However, I want this group to give me feedback on my novel. I need feedback on my novel. So I sent them the first part of my WIP, and now I’m kind of thinking Oh god, what have I done?
While the piece certainly isn’t as polished as I’d like, that’s only because for most parts of my novel I am making structural edits. I’d really like to be at a line-editing phase right now, but there’s just too much story craft to attend to still. The varnishing stage of word working will have to come later. And these early Alpha Readers will help me test the strength of my structural edits.
I turned on my laptop, loaded up the prologue and first chapter of my novel, selecting a total of fifteen pages. And then I read that oh-so-familiar story. I read it with the intention of sharing it. In doing so, I realized just how fucking different it is than anything most of my Alpha Readers have probably ever read. I think what I’ve written is good. But I do some ballsy shit in those first fifteen pages. So I’m a little nervous because I have no idea how an unprepared reader will take this kind of prose. Of course, I’m not trying to say that I’ve done something so unique that no reader will have ever had an analogous experience to what these, my Alpha Readers, are about to experience. What I’m saying is, not all of my Alpha Readers will be expecting a book like this.
My bestie, Mike, is the one and only person in this group who I know for a fact is at all prepared for my WIP. Though I’m hoping even he’ll be a bit surprised. And maybe the other group members are equally versed in similar modern Literary Fiction. But after meeting the handful of local authors who attended, I strongly doubt that (and make no judgements about it either).
I simply don’t know how readers unfamiliar with books of the sort I’ve written are going to react. So it’s both a bit scary and a bit exciting to see varying levels of blindness when it comes to my Alpha Readers. My bestie is well-versed in the kind of tough books that you must learn how to read while you read it. My co-leader, Kristin, is aware of the potential difficult reading level I write at since she did read my last book (though that book’s difficulty was in its language rather than structure). My other readers, like I already mentioned, I can’t be sure what they’ve read. Though if what they said they write is indicative of their past reading experience, then they haven’t read anything like what I’ve written.
There is an upside and a downside to having Alpha Readers reading blind to the very genre of my book (categorized best, I think, as genre Literary Fiction, subgenre Systems Novel).
We’ll start with the negative. My Alpha Readers may not give good feedback because the structure is too unfamiliar to their expectation. They may find my narrative approach so jarring that they can’t offer feedback (will my readers be too busy asking “What is it?” to suggest “This part here would be stronger if . . .”?).
There are plenty of potential positives. My Alpha Readers may find the novel fresh and original. Being they may not have expectations about my genre, they might be more accepting of how it is different from other Lit Fic Systems Novels. No matter their reaction, I’ll come away with a small sample of ways that the regular reading public will react to my book. By the time I’ve shared my whole novel, I might have expanded the reading world for someone.
Our next meeting is on Thursday night, so I’ll have some initial reactions to report back on the day after this post goes live. Hopefully everyone who came to the first meeting also attends the second. And I hope we get more people in attendance even if they won’t be reading the first pages of my book.
All images in this post hold a Creative Common license and were sourced from Pixabay. The image of the husky tearing apart a ball was sourced from JockeEkroth on Pixabay.
Randal Eldon Greene 