Category Archives: Journals

My Backyard

You won’t believe me, but beyond the weeds there is a lake. You know, a body of water. Wet stuff that normally moves and is habitable to different water dwelling creatures such as fish, frogs and turtles. 

Yeah.

Well, not anymore.

Those plans were apparently cancelled by that salty, surly bastard known as Old Man Winter of Indiana.

However, tomorrow is The Great Thaw (if only temporary). A balmy, sweaty 47 degrees on Sunday!

Break out your tank tops and shorts, fellow Hoosiers.

It’s going to be a hot one.

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Back from the Dead?

Sickness. That’s the gift of your children, sickness. And it’s a gift that keeps on giving. I contracted some deathly bug from my youngest daughter. Turns out an innocent kiss goodnight can stealthily be the kiss of death.

I kid. Mostly. But those of you with little ones of your own, you’re no stranger to this. You know very well by now how potent those little, um, lovely offspring can be with their communicable diseases…them and their legion at school.

Finally, after a week of dancing with the Reaper, I went to the Rx today to procure myself some much needed medicinal relief (although I thought the NyQuil was doing just fine, at least at night. Alieve is a great fever reducer as well.)

Ah, medicinal relief to clear that dark mucus in my chest!

Seems the Internet did not miss my presence, so that means I’m free to remain underground where there’s plenty work left to be done, even more so with the illness setback. Shoot, I’m a slow and distracted enough writer without the interruption.

Hmph.

THE JUNKIE MUSE – by Isabelle Carruthers

Wanna read one of the first stories I ever edited? Way back in 2000 I became well acquainted with an exceptional young writer going by the pseudonym of Isabelle Carruthers. She wrote dramitic, psyhologically dark stories that had me and others in our little community at Zoetrope gushing. I selected my fave or hers, “The Junkie Muse” for publication in Zoetrope: All-Story Extra’s 23rd issue in May 2000. All these years later I’m still in love with the story and reflect on it with pride.

Excerpt:

She tried to examine her reflection in the grimy side mirror. Too much mascara, and lipstick too dark, but this was what they liked. Her black dress was damp from the oppressive humidity and clung to her skin like a fungus. She pulled at the fabric awkwardly as she crossed the street to the bar.

The Terpsichore Inn. The lettering on the sign was a dirty smear, barely legible in the glow of a dysfunctional street lamp salvaged from another century. She recognized the name of the Greek muse Terpsichore, the whirler. Classical mythology had once been a great passion, but now this was just a leftover scrap of knowledge from a past life.

Laura shifted the worn denim bag on her shoulder. It contained everything she owned, which wasn’t much. Everything but money, because today they had spent the last of it for nothing, for a high she barely felt. “The Fatal Underdose,” Hayden called it. It was a condition she knew well.
Copyright © 2000 by Isabelle Carruthers
For more, read: The Junkie Muse

Liquid Imagination issue #5 + My debut

Kept under wraps for about two months now was my involvement with speculative fiction literay webzine Liquid Imagination, published by John “JAM” Arthur Miller, whom I’ve been entangled with creatively in a couple of different ways lately (see blog talk radio interviews below with him).  His Liquid Imagination Publishing (LIP) will be publishing Dreams and Sreams (which last week I announced that my horror poem “Dream a Little Scream of Me” will be the opener to this fantasy, science fiction and horror anthology).  LIP also published the Static Movement Print Special No. 2 that features my dark-fantastic poems “Succubus” and “Mare of the Night”.

Well, before any of the above happened, I had begun working behind the scenes as the Music Composer/Coordinator for Liquid Imagination webzine’s poetry page.  I have scored, performed and recorded nine individual pieces of music for each featured poetry page for our fifth issue which went live late on Sunday, January 31st.  What I’d been tasked to do when I was invited to join the staff in the middle of December, is interpret the poetry pages with my musical faculties so that we can create an art form all its own out of the synergy of poems and images combined with a third artistic element, music.

Were we successful?  You be the judge.

LI #5 Poetry Page

LI #5 Article: The Suspended Origin of Music on LI (by me)

LI #5 Article: The Synergy of Poetry and Music (by me) 

This issue features poetry by Paula Ray, Bradley Nelson, Deborah Walker, Theresa C. Newbill, Lee Sloca, Paul Handley, Heather Niciase, Aaron J. French, and Kyle Owens.

We also have short stories by: Steve Lowe, Michael C. Pennington, Linda Manning, Christopher Jacbosmeyer and Damien Walters.

And three winning contest stories by: Mark Wolf (1st Place), Trevor Tomko (2nd place), and Pushcar-Nominated Poet John C. Mannone (3rd place), who also contributes his poetry and philosophy about such on the poetry page.

If you’re too busy to read the stories, news radio voice extraordinaire Robert C. Eccles reads them for you via our new voice narration feature.

Plus articles by: AJ Brown, Dare Kent, Steven Marshall, yours truly and an interview of Neurotic Tissue editor Richard Scott McCoy by Sue Babcock.

We’ve been told by many that our fifth issue rocks.  Putting all bias aside, I have to agree with that assement.

If you are a creative writer, you can submit to Liquid Imagination.

Submission Guidelines.