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.

Mass Graves – A Story for Haiti

250 words written: January 21 & 26, 2010
by Brandon L. Rucker

The sound-bites linger in my mind as images of people suffering flickers across my flat-screen TV, or my flat-panel monitor, or the smaller screen of my smart phone. The horror is clear and repulsive no matter the visual resolution of the display. And the headlines tick on like minutes evaporating from the hour.

Haiti rocked by a 7.0 earthquake.

Survivors seek solace in their faith.

Roughly two million are now homeless.

Aftershocks register at 5.9 and 6.1 in magnitude.
Wounded children are calling for their missing parents.
100,000 dead as rescue efforts get underway in Port-au-Prince.
With no safer alternative a desperate mother feeds urine to her infant child.
Makeshift camps set up by survivors will only fester disease as the countless injured remain untreated.

Pat Robertson says, in so many unintelligent words, that the people of Haiti deserve this because they had made a pact with the Devil.
This situation gets more insane, more inhumane and more nightmarish with every passing moment.

They call it Ground Zero, the heart of a disaster area. That’s where I want to be. As the mass graves fill at an alarming rate, doctors fear even more death. Will there be enough time?

I get my fill of sitting idle, watching, listening, weeping, cursing, praying and dying inside. It’s time to take action, there’s much work to be done.

Today the American Red Cross accepted my application to volunteer. It won’t be long before Haiti’s soil is underfoot while I lend a helping hand.
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Copyright © 2010 by Brandon L. Rucker
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Publishing 2-for-2 so far in 2010

In addition to the story I have being published on blink-ink.com next month, I also have a new poem being published in Dreams and Screams, an upcoming anthology of fantasy, science fiction and horror stories. My poem “Dream a Little Scream of Me” will be the openining poem in the book and is the only poem to be featured in its pages.

Dreams and Screams is a partnership project put together by six different webzine and book publishers: Aurora Wolf, House of Horror, Lame Goat Press, Liquid Imagination, Silver Blade and Static Movement. The book will be published in a few months by Liquid Imagination Publishing, which is a small press I’ve recently become associated with (more on that in a future posting).

Check out this spankin’ cover by the talented Jack S. Rogers, whose name you will be seeing a lot of (trust me):

Clicky to enlarge

Update: This is the original cover conecpt that was not used. Also, Lame Goat Press was not represented in the actual release.

Blink|Ink to publish my micro fiction

Just got word back from blink-ink.com editor Lynn Alexander that my 50 word micro fiction story “The End” will be published on their website on or around Feb. 8, 2010.

Blink|ink publishes micro fiction 50 words or less. I worked two old pieces from 150 words down to 50-word snapshot. Unlike what I’ve seen in their archives, “The End” is almost all dialogue. I submitted two stories to them, but I haven’t heard back about the other one. Yet…