Every writer october 2013

Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, It has been nearly 15 years since EWR first started publishing on the web. We have gone through many changes and helped many writers find markets. We have also launched a successful publishing market of our own with EWR: Short Stories, and Every Day Poems. We have published close to 1000 authors.

Last year we reached 2.5 million readers, and we want to reach many more. Over the years EWR has expanded again and again.

We offer many features, but sometimes those features are lost in stack of information.

Now we are launching this venture, Every Writer the Magazine.

We hope to highlight each months new features and great writing.

Our magazine will bring every thing from interviews to new Richard Edwards is the editor markets, articles and historic writing. and owner of EWR. He has been We hope you enjoy the new Every Writer. It's for you. Please take writing and editing for over 20 years. Currently he writes, this as a thank you for all your support over the years. We love publishes, helps others publish, writers, and we love writing. We hope this helps to support the and teaches in Ohio. community and creativity of writers even more.

Thank you, Richard Edwards Managing Editor Richard Edwards Cover Art “Classic Crutch� by James Sholes Copyright all works in this issue are copyrighted. These works belong to Every Writer and it's editor or the writers and artists who have submitted them. Any reproduction of these works is strictly prohibited.

This is our first issues published October 2013.

If you would like to contact us, please email us at eds@everywritersresource.com You can find us on the web at www.everywritersresource.com

Welcome to our first issues

10 Reasons to Self-publish Your Book 'This article appeared on our site apparatus in place to help you sell 7. Collections and in July of 2013. Many readers books, if and when they decide it anthologies. have voiced interest in this is worth the trouble.

If you have a literary website, and article.”

3.Wanting complete control that website published stories Some writers don’t like the idea and poetry, you pretty much have Ok, so you’ve seen the selfof edits. They just don’t want to go the self-publishing route. A published books making the editors going through their work traditional publisher doesn’t bestsellers list, and you are and changing it. They don’t want usually look at these kinds of thinking hard about publishing to spend time in rewrites, and books, and besides you can earn your own book. Here are 10 they especially do not want your maximum from doing it reasons why people go with self- people telling them how or what yourself. publishing. These reasons are to write.

8. Republishing out of print ever changing, keep in mind. The 4. Poetry books whole of publishing is in Yes, Whitman self-published his People who already have a transition, so people are choosing book, and it is hard to say that he successful publishing career will self-publishing, for many should have gone with a many times self-publish a book reasons. These are the top 10 traditional publisher. Whitman when it goes out of print. People reason why over the years people had complete control over his already know the book, and have decided to go it alone. image and his book. He people are looking to buy it.

1. You have exhausted all presented himself as the Reprints are a usual selfyour other publishing quintessential American poet, published book. options. and it it stuck. Poetry is 9. Experts What this comes down to is that extremely popular but books of Much like the infomercial people, you have hit the street for a poetry generally do not sell very this group of writers already have couple years and you simply can’t well. Many poets simply say they an audience. If they self-publish find a publisher or an agent. You will never make a million dollars their book they can make more are out of options, but you will anyway and just go with selfmoney. They may have spent 15 not give up. There are many publishing. years building shelves, and even famous stories of writers finally 5. Obscure Genre though they are the expert, their getting fed up with the publishing Sometimes when you are writing expertise is unwanted or not industry and doing it themselves. in a very unique genre or when valued by the publishing It was rare in the past, but your subject matter is so obscure industry. becoming a little more frequent few are interested, people self10. Personal Family these days. publish. If you are writing a book Memoirs 2. Impatient about Ethiopian poets from 1981- People who write the history of Simply put these writers can’t 1992, you might be looking at their family, gemology, or even wait to see their work in print. self-publishing as an option. just stories about their family for They just finished their novel.

6. People who can do family members, many times will They look at the return times of infomercials self-publish. agents and publishers, and they If you already have a large don’t want to wait, so bing they audience to promote your book “These are the top 10 reason do it on their own. It’s not the to, or you have an infomercial best way, I don’t think. Or I empire, you can easily get away why over the years people should say it’s not the best with self-publishing a bestselling have decided to go it alone.” reason. Having publishers and book yourself. Infomercial agents at least look at your book megastars used to be the only is a pretty good idea. They do self-published authors on the have a whole promotions bestsellers list.

Our New Poetry unspun moon

Our Poetry...

We have been publishing poems for 2 years. Every month we bring our readers 8-15 new poems. These poems are published about 3 times per week.

by Linda M. Crate creaking beneath the floorboards i am a promise forgotten even the wind can’t whisper my name fearing i might break recollections are cold, i can’t even remember who i was supposed to be or the color of my skin; all i know is that i am limping in and out of consciousness, dancing on the rim of obscurity no one can tell me what my name is — just another girl buried beneath the floor, gasping for the breath of white flowers hung neatly ordered perfection in a world of chaos; thoughts are wounded as living is, my perspective is buried beneath the lining of some silver cloud yet to be birthed into existence — all i want to remember is the topography of a smile, for i fear i’ve cried rivers into being whilst searching for myself in the heart of stars maybe i’m a piece of moon silver unspun and walking, woken for some purpose that has yet to come.

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh, but she was raised in the rural town of Conneautville. She attended and graduated from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania with a degree in EnglishLiterature in 2009. Her poetry, articles, reviews, and short stories have appeared in several journals online and in print

Lady of the Evening

by Jack Peachum She’s in her beauty tonight– and how lovely– luminous, riding high, dressed in her best yellow gown, playing the part of doting girlfriend– peeking down shyly from behind a veil of cloud!

But, oh, the bitch– she’s betrayed us again – last night she was with the sun!

When we weren’t looking she crept into his room– this morning just after dawn– I caught her leaving his side!

Jack Peachum is a widely published American poet who has been much in the international literary scene in the last few years. He has published on internet & in the print media. His most recent publications are in Metric Conversions (Roumania) & Kritya (India). He resides in an isolated rural area in southside Virginia & he’s author of two chapbooks, Polyamory & Kerr Lake Poems, & one novel, Tempest, about a p.i. & a transvestite in D.C. during the Watergate era.

Why Don’t You Wish Alice a Happy Birthday?

by Kelly Creighton

You didn’t have a Facebook page until you died: your timeline says you were born after your death like some superhuman-saviour-reincarnation.

Facebook ask people to get in touch with you; Write on her wall. Recommend a friend for Alice, it says. But people pause; they don’t know whether you get broadband in heaven or not. It would have to be broadband or better…right? They post the odd message anyhow, about a really bright star on the drive to a concert – you would’ve danced like a maniac, Alice. Do you remember the time we couldn’t stop giggling in class? Only the good die young. Like you; who only made teensy mistakes: you were human.

Facebook send your administrators requests to play Candy Rush: your admins get pissed off ‘cos you died before Candy Rush became a thing. You probably would’ve liked it. A lot. Alice, you wouldn’t like half of the people who write on your wall now. They’re all on your friends list.

Now. You would block them if you knew the password.

KellyCreighton's work is currently and forthcoming in literary journals The Stinging Fly, Long Story Short, Wordlegs and Ink Sweat & Tears.

She is writing her second novel; was awarded second place in the Abroad Writers’ Conference Competition judged

by Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler, and long listed for The RTE Guide/Penguin Ireland short story contest.

Depth Of Perception

by A.R. Rodriguez You built a coffin of my thoughts To preserve their depth The delicacy of your glass hands Crafts the order of which they are stacked, carefully collecting each letter As you realize the beauty of my words Tears of definitions begin to run down your cheeks Spelling out the mistakes of my life But as each word overlaps they slowly come undone And so starts the unraveling of my mind

Every Day Poetry

A.R. Rodriguez is a small business owner in Cleveland, Ohio. She has four volumes of poetry and two memoirs. Her material, in it’s entirety comes from her life’s experience as an orphan who is self educated. In addition to her business she also hosts a monthly literature night at different local venues in Cleveland with an original casts of poets and musicians.

A. R. Rodriguez

Top Reasons for Doing a Poetry Reading!

In the internet world, sharing work with of the crowd, or the nerves of being are a big deal to a coffeehouse. You get your friends, family, even your exposed in front of people. You will get a free promotions. If they run ads or have a community is much easier than it was say charge from it. You know when you read website, it will help you get your name 10 years ago. Just like literary magazines, that great great poem someone else wrote out there. poetry readings (other than poetry slams) and you loved it so much you wanted to have become scarce. There are less write a poem, it’s that feeling times 10. reasons to do poetry readings, maybe, and we shouldn’t forget that the Goliath Sometimes you feel like the world really mega-coffee monster Starbucks doesn’t sucks. You feel like art is dying or really sponsor a lot of readings (at least corrupt or whatever, you know the not in my town). So lack of places, and feeling. People are only worried about less reason to share, have slowed the the bottom line and poetry is the lowest proliferation of poetry through oration. bottom line of them all. Readings will It’s a shame. Here are my top reasons you make you feel better, even if only a few should do a poetry reading, right now people show up. Reading in front of a (maybe at least tonight when you get off few people or even crowd (it does work…) happen) will renew your belief that maybe there are some people out there Yeah, it’s true you can sell more books who care, or at least want to read your from Facebook or with Twitter and never work. leave your home, but the face to face signing and promoting is something that On the same note as number 5, if you will get people to download your Kindle. are complaining that no one cares about It’s tried and true, and poets have been poetry, you really should try to bring doing it for many many years. value to it. Readings make poetry real in the world. Make it a night out for that couple who read poetry together. Make It stands to reason that some of the people at your poetry reading will write it the night that someone in the poetry. Poets also buy poetry, but that’s audience goes out and buys a copy of a poetry collection(you hope it will be number 1 not number 2. Number 2 is Baiting by James Sholes your poetry, any poetry would be good). about trying to put together a poet’s If you can assign meaning to what you group and not being able to find other do, more people will find value in it. poets. If you read it, they will come.

Affirmation

Sell Books

It’s worth something

Meet other poets

Feedback

Toughens you up

Inspiration

Free Promos

It’s fun

If you have never done a reading, you have no idea how much fun it really is.

Like no other place or activity, you’ll be After standing in front of a crowd and Try it one time. You’ll see that being the reading your work, sending out copies in able to see first hand the impact your center of attention, for doing something poetry has on people. You’ll see surprised a workshop is a piece of cake. Every time you love in front of people is a great faces, laughter, sadness, happiness and you get a little worried about someone feeling. reading your work you will remember all that. You will never find a more It’s much easier than you might think honest evaluation of your poetry than a standing in front of a bunch of people these days to do a poetry reading. If you live audience. The spotlight is directly on and think, I’m bullet proof! The sting will call a local coffeehouse, not Starbucks, be gone! It really works. Try it. you and your work. you’ll probably find that they have regular readings. If they don’t, ask them Something about doing a poetry reading It will get your name you there. If the if you can read there. Most of the time makes you want to write more poetry. I’mowner of the coffeehouse wants patrons the answer will be yes. Go do it. Have fun, not sure what it is. It might be the energy they will promote every event. Readings write more, read it out loud!

Interview with Doctor Frankenstein's Monster After a year of searching body. When we talk he does not EWR: Her account, taken from and many stories, I am able remove his glasses. I will ind later the forward of her book states (I to meet with the man who that he has 2 different colored read this to him) inspired Halloween in many eyes. He speaks in an accent that “Many and long were the ways. He is iconic. Starting is part Russia, part Swedish and conversations between Lord from the early 1800s until part Inuit. If you really really Byron and Shelley, to which I was now, his story has terrified listen to the tone you can hear a devout but nearly silent and thrilled 100s of millions some English in there, maybe listener. During one of these, of people. He has lived a from long ago. various philosophical doctrines long and amazing life. Much EWR: I want to clarify first that were discussed, and among more of our time together you no longer like to be referred others the nature of the principle will be published later this to as Dr. Frankenstein’s monster of life, and whether there was any year. For now, these are the or as Frankenstein. What name probability of its ever being notes from our first do you go by? (At the time of this discovered and communicated. interview. Please forgive the interview I was still skeptical of They talked of the experiments of the annotations. his identity).

Dr. Darwin, (I speak not of what DFM: My name now is Diderik the Doctor really did, or said that Last October I was able to meet in Dubuque, Idaho with the Falkvard Mansson. I have never he did, but, as more to my gone by Dr. Frankenstein’s purpose, of what was then spoken man who was once called Dr. of as having been done by him,) Frankenstein’s monster. He was monster or the monster and certainly not Frankenstein.

It is who preserved a piece of born, in the late 1700s, and later followed some of the story told by silly that the whole world would vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it Mary Shelley. He claims to have get hung up in such a way.

EWR: It is a fact that you are the began to move with voluntary talked with her on the subject. legendary person from Mary motion. Not thus, after all, would We meet in the Le Feve coffee Shelley’s well received and well life be given. Perhaps a corpse shop. Halloween is a couple would be re-animated; galvanism weeks away, and I am sitting at read book, correct? the table drinking a Cappuccino.

This is the first time I will meet with him. I am apprehensive. It is a busy place.

I will come to believe after a series of interviews that this man is who he claims to be. I believe others, credible people, who say that he is indeed, Frankenstein’s monster.

This is our first meeting. I sit facing the window, and a man so tall that I cannot see his head as he passes the window opens the door and comes in. He is well over 7 feet tall. He is wearing sunglasses and looks to be wearing a little light skin colored makeup and an expensive wig. I can see his neck and hands are scarred. He is a massive man. He has a large chest, hands, head,

A screen shot from the 1910 Thomas Edison film “Frankenstein.”

Diderik looks nothing like any of the movie monsters featured in films.

DFM: It is true that Ms. Shelley, had given token of such things: that lovely young lady, did in fact perhaps the component parts of a base her book upon accounts of creature might be manufactured, my origination, (pause) assembly. brought together, and endued

with vital warmth.” indeed went North shortly after the American’s call it. It is in the DFM: The only thing that is true speaking to Mrs. Shelley. I went Bering Strait. As I said I thought I about that introduction, and North away from people in search lived on a peninsula. As it turns indeed the whole book is that of isolation, but I ended up, after out one summer that peninsula of Byron and the Shelleys were almost 30 years, finding a family. ice became an island. I didn’t friends. Dr. Frankenstein was a EWR: A family? You found even know it at first. Then I could good friend of Byron. She might people who took you in? feel the movement of the waves have heard the story of Darwin’s DFM: Ja (he has a long pause). I under my feet. I went when I felt reanimation, but I certainly know spent sometime in the icy cold of that great shifting, I very quickly that she heard more about my the North. You must understand knew that I was drifting away story before she was finished I have very poor circulation, so from shore. I looked for a way writing her book. the cold is bitter to me, but it back, but by the time I reached gave me at the time the only the edge of what was a pretty EWR: What makes you know advantage, the ability to guise large island at that point, I that? myself behind layers of thick realized I was many miles away DFM: I visited her. It was at the clothing, hoods, scarves, even full from the mainland. I drifted for request of Byron himself. A face masks. These things made a weeks. At one point I tried to just young lady, fine lady, he told me life for me possible. go on with life I had all along, but was writing about the accounts of Eventually, I lived for a long large cracks formed in the ice.

Dr. Frankenstein, and that I while on what I perceived to be a You could see them everywhere should call on her. I do have peninsula of ice. I made a home under foot. They would like yellowish eyes. (He has a of ice and snow, and was able to lightening. somewhat charming grin). She live alone, working out an As they formed soon they would was not judgmental about my existence by catching fish and widen, and my island would scars or about my disposition. seal. I found that I could even decrees in size. After, maybe (he She was in fact fascinated by the handle the occasional Polar Bear. pauses thinking) a month maybe idea that I had been dead.

The strength Dr. Frankenstein even two I was down to an island EWR: Then it is true that people put in my arms is like iron. You the size of, I don’t know, a city have been afraid of you? wouldn’t believe it. I can still pick block, or something like that.

DFM: Oh very much so. They up about 700 kilos up over my One night a large storm came, I were terrified of me in fact, for head. (He raises his arms thought finally I would end my many years. You have to gesturing like he is holding simple and somewhat remember that anyone who something up over his head. He controversial second life. The looked like me in Europe at the grins). I’m not sure if I am storm capsized my small iceberg, time were put away so to speak. immortal or not, but I can tell youand I went into the water. It was They were locked in some away that I have not aged a day since I blackness. I had resided myself to place, moved into sanitariums or first awoke from (pause)…was death. It was like those movies outright killed. I am very reborn let’s say. you see, “end scene.” (He laughs). different. I am very large, of EWR: Are you saying that you Most men would have died of course, because Frankenstein had cannot die? exposure to that water within the issue of vascular connections DFM: I was dead. To do it again minutes. I woke up on Imaqliq and nerve fibers. I suppose. I was would be very repetitive. I have what I believe to be the next told this at least. been shot, beaten, hit by a train summer. I don’t know, but I EWR: How much of Shelley’s once, and even frozen just about believe I went into the water for a accounts are true. solid one time. That is when I about a year. It was the summer DFM: Not very much. I did hide met my family, I was speaking of. of 1890 when woke up. in a family’s barn for awhile. I did EWR: You met them above the EWR: Did someone find you? run away. I did want a bride, but article circle?

DFM: Ja, the Yupik found me. I none of it played out like it played DFM: I met them on Imaqliq. would say that I found them. At out in the novel. As I was saying EWR: I don’t think I’m familiar the time I ended up on the island. people were so terrified in the (he motions to me).

They were considered part of beginning I had to hide, and I DFM: Diomede Island, is what Russia, what would be the

Chukotsky district. When I woke after that. After some doing I now I am capable of having children. up I was in a wooden fenced area live on a small island by Vaasa in This might have been one of the next to a cabin. The temperature Sweden. Replot, is the island’s side effects of Dr. Frankenstein’s must have risen above freezing named. I moved there in 1960 or procedure, or it might have just for the first time in months. I was so. been something that happened to in such pain, agony in fact. It was EWR: How did you get there? me in a past life. (He smiles). awful. My fingers would not DFM: By airplane of course, how EWR: How long have you been move, my hands, my toes, one else besides way of iceberg does married? elbow and one shoulder. I someone make it from the Bering DFM: Ewa and I have been shivered and shivered. I was able Strait to Sweden (he laughs). together for 15 years. We have to get to my feet and make it to EWR: What did you think of the been married for 12, I think. Ewa the door of the cabin where I movie? (I say this because we is always upset when I forget. I do knocked. I remember the door have passed the time where the it often. I have always been opening, a young girl coming out, classic 1933 Frankenstein movie forgetful, another side effect. ( a and then nothing again. (He was made). pause) makes quotations with his DFM: Which one? (Sarcastically, EWR: What do you do for a fingers) End scene. (Laughs very but stops me before I can living? loud. Then quiets himself). answer). The original was so DFM: I work in internet security.

I woke up after that completely horrible and even full of fiction. As it turns out I am much better warm, maybe a couple days later, People would never mix me up with computers than I am with in a bed being taken care of by a with a monster like that. It was a people. Ewa is always telling me girl named Ahnah and her father horrible mess, but for some this. I started working with Aipaloovik. He was an old man, reason people find a likeness computers as early as 1970. I was and she was a young girl, and between me and the movie. When so intrigued by them. I felt almost after many years there they I first made it to Sweden, like them, at first. The first became my family (he pauses Stockholm, people pointed and computer I saw was nothing more again). even ran from me. Once I heard a than a big calculator, but I was EWR: What happened to them. young man remark that I looked very good with the coding. I think After WWII they were moved off much like Frankenstein. Really, I that whatever Dr. Frankenstein the island into Siberia by Russia. never saw any resembles, and the did to me, it kept my brain very I did not go with them. (He is only way I am anything like that young. overcome by emotion for a movie is because I was once dead EWR: What do you mean? minute. I will not describe this in and I now live, and I suppose in DFM: Like a child I am very any detail). I hid from them. I size, and name sake. Also, I do good with learning languages. I knew how the people were from have a grayish huge (he holds up can absorb them. I am told by the mainland. We had met many his hand to me). My head is not Ewa that I see the world like a of them, and more than a few flat, and I have no bolts. (He child, sometimes, and I have a times their disgust by the sight of laughs). failing memory. It’s very strange. me put me Ahnah and Aipaloovik EWR: Do you have family there? Computers came to me very in danger. I stayed clear of any DFM: I have Ewa, my wife. easily. I helped found 4 internet solider from the Russia army and EWR: You have a wife? companies from Sweden. I do not any military officer. I did not DFM: Ja, the times are much want to disclose the ones I still want to risk the safety of my more progressive. People have hold shares in. family. Of course by the time they understood scars for many years. EWR: I’ve been told that you are came to remove everyone from It started getting better in the 60s very wealthy? the island, it was just Ahnah. and now people are afraid to look DFM: I do not have Bill Gates Aipaloovik had died years before at you for too long. They are even money, but I do ok. (He grins). that. more polite. It’s much better than At this point he must go. He is EWR: I’m sorry for this. Do you before. My wife is very beautiful. telling me he is late for a meeting, still live there?

EWR: Do you have children? (I and that it has been nice speaking DFM: Only the Russian military interject this. He eyes me.) with me. He says I can walk with lives there now. I moved away DFM: No children. I do not think him. Walking down the street we

pass a Halloween shop. In the window there is a cut out of the Frankenstein movie monster.

EWR: Do you feel Iconic? Every Halloween millions of people dress up like that, and it was inspired, partly by your story.

DFM: At one time, long ago, it’s how I thought of myself. Now it doesn’t even occur to me anymore. I have a great life right now. I’m going to a meeting with IBM, and my wife is shopping and will meet me later at the hotel. Besides (he points to the face in the window) that’s out dated, it’s 2013, no one cares if you look like a monster, it’s on the inside that counts. (He walks over to a limo sitting idle in the street. As he opens his door he yells back to me). It never hurts anyone to have a few 100 million in the bank. (laughs) We have several more meetings later. All of the details will be released in a new novel Spring 2014.

She ate too much chocolate and let the sticky caramel ooze all over her lips. She drank Pinot Grigio and Cabernet Sauvignon and Smirnoff Vodka after he cheated. It was the satin on her tongue, the silk sliding down her throat, and it seemed to help tame that fury inside. So eventually she slept. Fifty nine hours later, Vivian finally slept.

by Angela Carlton She slept and slept and slept.

Much later, it was disgust.

At first she felt free, after Yes, the disgust crept on in. She her husband cheated. Oddly, ate packets of Mentos to feel Vivian found herself walking clean and washed it down with through a local park in the July the lemon vodka. She rode down heat without a bra on. She simply dusty roads and those black didn’t give a damn about attire streets in a complete daze. now with her stringy hair and Vivian drove at low, low speeds puffy eyes. Above her in the trying to find the path, this place branches of a thick oak tree, she while the other car horns blared spotted a vibrant red cardinal. In at her. The horns blasted and an instant, she threw her palms blared as Vivian’s car slowly out as if she might be able to veered into the wrong lane, and catch the creature, drag it home the oncoming truck swerved and let it flutter wildly all over sharply to avoid her. The Chevy her bedroom. truck skidded and ran off the Next, were the extras, all median, tumbling over the bank the tiny extras, stuffing it down, and crashing into a heap of indulging. She drank too much boulders below. It burned below.

Maxwell House after he cheated. And it R-A-T-T-L-E-D her.

After He Cheated

Babies in Reverse

by Ray Stiefvater –for G.G. The old people, the beautiful people – they are our babies in reverse, our treasures, our gifts.

They are crystal flowers, rare stamps, precious coins glistening in bright yellow light brought to the surface from Spanish galleons

EWR: Short Stories Last Call

By Arthur Mackeown Damn undertaker. This coffin was built for a midget, not a six-foot two ex-rugby player. He must have stuffed me in with a shoe horn. And the heat. If anyone’s coming to rescue me they’d better hurry up, before there’s nothing left but a puddle. But suppose nobody comes? Suppose they’ve already checked on me, and I was still dead to the world? What then? Buried alive in me prime, that’s what…Help! No, don’t shout. That organ’s making such a racket they’ll never hear me, anyway.

You’d think I’d be used to it by now. I mean, I’ve dropped dead and woken up again so often my doctor calls me a medical miracle. This is twice I’ve woken up in the middle of my own funeral service. I can hardly wait to see that poor old parson’s face when I leave on my own two feet yet again.

He looked quite annoyed the last time But why don’t they come? They…Hold on! What is the matter with me? The cell phone. My wife left me a cell phone. No wonder no-body came to check. Eh? What’s this? Bloody battery’s almost dead. Silly woman, let’s hope she hasn’t turned hers off just because she’s at a funeral. Well, here goes nothing…

Hello? Mary? Well, of course it’s me. Do you know anyone else who’s being buried alive today?

How about letting me out, then? Excuse me? Why don’t I call one my bits on the side, instead? Don’t be ridiculous. All that ended years ago. You’re the only one for me, you know that. Just get me out and I’ll show you. They what? Well, how do I know what they’re all doing here, bawling their eyes out? I didn’t invite ‘em, did I? Anyway, never mind about that now. You can pull their hair out later. And will you please stop giggling? You’re at a funeral, for Pete’s sake. What will everybody think? You just concentrate on getting me out on the double, it’s like an oven in here. Come again, you’re breaking up. What do you mean, it is an oven in here?

Arthur Mackeown is 66 years old and originally from London, but has lived on a Kibbutz in Israel for the past 38 years. He began writing short stories 4 years ago, when he bought my first computer, and have been published in several print and online magazines. He is also a small time artist and sculptor. His hobbies are reading, photography, and travel, and he sometimes uses his travel experiences in his stories.

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The Barmaid is a Consummate Artist

by Kunal S. Modi

‘Now, let me boil a pot of tea to Bella watches through table-glass help sober you up.’ as Yuri executes a point-perfect As Bella pours the tea into chasse along the bar. Yuri is her favourite steklo for Yuri, he never so sad, Bella thinks, as wonders out-loud what her when he is showing-off. He stirs fascination is with the faceted for another performance in front glass. ‘Look carefully,’ she of his potted audience, loudly explains, ‘if you stare through the greeting Bella with the American surface of the glass toward the diminutive ‘babe’ so they can all light, you can see many dancing hear him. This causes a chuckle Berehynias.’ to distribute amongst the Poor, inebriated Yuri reverent crowd. They think him a doesn’t understand the simple god. But to Bella, he is a clown. concept – that one might He leans over the bar, as if correlate the movement of light Cover Image: Classic about to plant a kiss on her to the motion of fairies, as one Cruch

by James Sholes cheek, and says; ‘Could you pour does the grace of a ballerina to a me four vodkas and a half beer, delphinium floating in the babe?’ atmosphere – so Bella decides to ‘Is that half-sized beer for show him. your half-sized penis, ballerino?’

‘Here, I’ll demonstrate

by Khaula Nazir Bella replies, drawing a much with my glass,’ she says, seating A delusion louder roar of laughter from the herself around the side of the bar faithful. on which Yuri has never seen her. Amplified by That evening when Yuri She lifts her glass up to his face Sneering veins arrives home, he is plagued by and begins to slowly turn it. Yuri And deceiving nerves It rises the laughter. Drunk and biting is mesmerised by the motion.

A silent whisper with rage, he decides to go back ‘See,’ she exclaims, into town to get his revenge on stealing away the vessel just as he Finding way To bruised memories Bella. At the bar, Yuri finds Bella is becoming completely Reminding me alone in the lounge. transfixed, ‘it is like many What I’ve been through ‘Why must you be such a dancing Berehynias!’ pig, ballerino? You dance like a Yuri picks up his own glass Again and again. new flame, but you act like an old – half filled with hot, red tea – fool,’ Bella says, drying her and begins to swirl it carelessly. Khaula Nazir is a student at glassware with a white teacloth. ‘You’re right,’ he says unevenly, Punjab College of Sciences. She is currently doing F.Sc with English The frankness of the statement ‘it’s beautiful. Like a million, disarms Yuri of his anger. ‘I’m angelic Berehynias performing a Language, Biology, Physics and Chemistry as her main subjects. sorry. I was only trying to perfect pirouette.’

She has been published on entertain my guests.’

Bella brings her face closer ‘Those sycophants, you in. Together, they watch the light Infinitron, RF’s e-magazine.

She currently lives in Lahore. could entertain them by misting dance tenderly through the their spectacles with your beer steaming glass. It refracts and breath. Besides, you should folds, then starts over again. always consider my feelings first!’

Bella says, addressing the dancer in a more jovial tone than before.

Bruised Memories

I Left the Radio On

by Ann Yu Huang

I left the radio on for a thousand days, the whisper of my name, the sigh, the breadth, the thrust on my throat and the hold of your heart.

One thousand days of joy, happiness and misery, of blinking wishes, political debates, lights turned-on-and-off, cats and dogs, wind with oranges, fish and grapefruits, nights and lies.

One thousand days of red velvet, blue sea, green scotch, dark skin, amplified music, lonely nights, loathsome mornings, bewildered moments in between them.

One thousand days of sunny lounges, rainy shoes, baby calling and touching, regretful words, forborne arguments, budget rooms, rioting car chase, eventful forgetfulness, crazy moods, ennui and shortcomings.

One thousand days of wandering and finding a place, seeking the right hour, making jokes, asking for advice, shocking, choking, playing Monopoly, staging the desk with a bamboo tree in a heart shape.

One thousand days of picking up mail, jogging alone, craving Mexican food, jumping for the excitement of loving and living, emptying the gold fish pond, asking for help, the different kinds of assistance, the longing, making a home, cooking and reading, wondering about jealousy and the promise, if it is going to be another one thousand days (have to stop here or I will never!)

Ann Yu Huang was born in Shanghai, China and moved to Mexico when she was a teen. She graduated from Bernard Baruch College of the City University of New York cum laude and has co-founded the home-healthcare brand Nature Bright Company. She is currently a candidate of MFA program in poetry at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has studied with poets and writers Michael Steinberg, Barbara DeMarco-Barret, Nahid Rachlin, Gerald Costanzo, Jean Valentine, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Leslie Ullman, Natasha Saje and Richard Jackson. Her first chapbook collection Love Rhythms was published in October 2012 by Finishing Line Press, and was noted by OC Metro Hot Read section in Jan 2013.

Ann Yu Huang

“Tell me about it.”

“You haven’t seen her since, I suppose.”

“Nope. Nor do I intend to.”

“It’s just good to see you getting out and about again.”

“Well, I thought about it and thought about it and finally I figured, what the hell. The kind of shape she’s in, no way she’s ever gonna be … rehabilitated. Figured I needed to suck it up and cut.”

“Smart. Gotta be tough on you, though. After five years. Seeing how attached you were to her, and all.”

“Five years, fifty years. What you gonna do, sit around the house forever moping over spilled milk?

Ween by James Sholes Can her and move on.’’

‘Really.”

“What set her off?”

“Damned if I know. Never “Course, the whole frigging business is costing me an arm

By Denis Bell saw it coming.” and a leg.”

“Weird. Something like “Picked her up last week at this, you think there’d have been “I hear your pain, man. Nothing comes cheap these days.”

Lincoln Mall. She’s hot, man!” signs that things weren’t right.

“Yeah. Gotta be worth every last “Sweet. Been out much?” Signals along the way. A red penny, though.”

“Took her to a dive in Old light.”

“Nice to see you taking it so well.”

Town last night.”

“You’d think, wouldn’t “Life has a way at times of “How’d that go?” you? That’s what I’ve been compensating us for our losses.

“A-okay!” pondering myself. Racking my “Glad to hear it, man. You brains ever since it happened. I’m Wait till you catch a load of this deserve some joy in your life, thinking that perhaps the signs hot little number I’m into now!” after the business with were there and I missed them.” “Charlotte’s replacement.”

“Yee-haw.”

Charlotte.”

“How’s that?”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“I don’t know, seems like she was “Something a bit special, I’m guessing.”

“Bit rough, there, by the acting cranky for a while.

“You might say.” sound of it.”

Whining, like I wasn’t treating “You don’t know the half ofher right. Sucks. I always did the “Cool. When can I meet…?

“Christine. She’s right outside as it. Five years. Everything hunky best I could by her.” dory. Then she goes and has this “I know it. I was saying to Sheila we speak. I asked the valet to pull her up to the back door.” major melt down. Just like that. just the other day, never was a Lucky to get out of there with my man so committed as old Bilbo – skin intact.” took care of her real good.”

“Jesus. What happened, “I so much want to believe that.” man?”

“Yeah, well…What happened to “Your guess is as good as her afterwards?” mine. She just … exploded on “What do you think? They came me.” and took her away. State Police.

“Exploded.”

Fire Rescue. Looked like a scene “Only way I can think to from NCIS.” describe it.”

“Sounds like a total nightmare.”

Moving On

Sex in the Kitchen

by Lindsey Lewis Smithson

Heat resonates from the lower rack of the stove The drag of your finger along my leg Will often result in a space where I dispose of the mask To let your breath blow back my hair

Stories Old Bells, Young Mountains

by Eric Bosse She felt a little drunk from the constant motion of sleeping in the car, but when he asked her to drive she slapped her cheeks and adjusted the rearview mirror.

Sunlight glinted off the RV at the next pump back. She crossed herself, twisted the key, and merged onto the highway. He reclined his seat then rose on his elbows to watch the truck stop sink into the prairie. “You know Yawn by James Sholes what’s wrong with this country?” She passed a Coke truck and a he said.

Mayflower moving van.

“Tell me,” she said. Drizzle “So, come on,” she said. became rain. She flicked the “Why do you want more wipers on high. churches?”

“Not enough churches.”

He removed the cap and He pulled his wool cap over his used it as a pillow. “I don’t. I face. want more bells. In Italy, you “I thought you were an can’t go five minutes without atheist,” she said. “Presumably hearing at least one bell. Or ten. you disagree with everyone who Or twenty.” goes to church, and on fairly The car dipped into a significant grounds, right?” ravine. Antelope ate grass by the He nudged the cap from gravel shoulder. Rain flowed into his mouth. “Correct.” grooves along the road and The road began to slope. spilled into gullies. Not far off,

she imagined, a stream washed through a gulch and eroded a snake fossil embedded a million years before the first bell ever rang. She switched on the radio, and the speakers hissed like wind through a broken whistle.

“In Seattle,” he said, “no bells, just hippy wind chimes.”

“Plus,” she said, “in Seattle, the gelato sucks.”

They crested a hill.

Mountain peaks bent northward in the distance. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “I give you the Rockies—weighing in at two

hundred million years old, the poetry, photography, visual art youngest mountain range in the and film. All entries must be in hemisphere.”

English. Translations are He sat up to see over the acceptable and should be dashboard. “I mean, how many accompanied by a copy of the wind chimes does it take to original text. While we entertain match the decibels of the most works associated with the smallest church bell in the genre, please keep in mind that smallest village in Europe? our goal is to offer something Fifty? Five hundred? And think new within the genre with a of all those people kneeling and focus on the psychological bowing their heads.” aspects of horror.

“Seven hundred miles to Tell us about upcoming go,” she said. events or contests We are “I don’t believe what they currently poring through believe. I don’t even want to submissions of all kinds, but we believe it, but I feel its absence.” would like to see an uptick in After a while, he fell non-nonfiction and visual asleep. She put a hand on his leg submissions. Please check out and whispered a prayer for a our double sized, Halloween issue good Italian restaurant within in October to get an idea of what sight of the next gas stop. Then we’re looking for. You can follow she apologized for this and took it us on Tumblr Website back. Too specific, and too ( blog.hellohorror.com ) or on http://www.hellohorror.com selfish. Every now and then, a Twitter ( @hellohorrorlit ) for moan spooled through the thrum updates on issue release dates. of the engine. Eventually, the From the Editor clouds parted.

HelloHorror is a recently created Information online literary journal and blog. Print publication? No Eric Bosse’s work has been The primary motivation behind Approx. Response Time? 2 to 3 published by The Sun, our publication’s existence? The months Mississippi Review, Zoetrope, How often do you publish? Every current saturation of gore and Exquisite Corpse, The Collagist, shock value in the horror we see other month Wigleaf, Night Train,and several and read today. A story that gives Year Founded? 2011 other journals. He lives in Do you pay? No you goose bumps is a much Oklahoma with his wife and greater achievement than a story Do you take online submissions? children, and teaches at the Yes that just grosses you out. We University of Oklahoma. His have television for that. The true short story collection,Magnificent challenge is bringing about real, Mistakes,will be published by psychological fear to an audience Contact Ravenna Press in 2011. He blogs Editors Name Brent Armour that is persistently more and at Everything is Beautiful, and Mailing Address: 6609 Lindy more numb to its face value Nothing Hurts. tactics. You may find blood, guts Lane, Houston TX 77023 Email and gore in the pages of our hellohorror@hellohorror.com selected works, but most importantly, you will find true Twitter @hellohorrorlit If you are interested in having Facebook fear. your featured in our e-edition, facebook.com/hellohorrorlit please contact us at eds@everywritersresource.com Submissions Please place featured listing in HelloHorror accepts works of the subject line. fiction, non-fiction, micro-fiction,

HelloHorror

Featured Listing

The Lesson

by Lynn WynenChamberlain She was standing there, her head thrown back in abandonment, her eyes at half mast enjoying the moment. Her coiffed hair in disarray, tendrils meticulously placed now flowing free. Glistening droplets rolled down her neck and nestled in the valley of her breasts. Her body arched in perfect harmony joining her partner, she floated with the tide.

Goals by James Sholes It was delicious being in his Missouri and a Bachelors Degree capable hands and, letting him in Business from the University make the decisions for both their of Maryland. glistening exhausted bodies.

Just at the climax of the encounter the music suddenly ended. His hands left her cold— alone. Her wide dilated eyes There was no yesterday, no stared at him in disbelief as he tomorrow, no past, no future, gentlemanly bowed and moved only the moment. His hand away. Suddenly, a loud firmly rested upon her inner back microphone voice broke her guiding her every movement, concentration, “Ladies to the swaying in sensual time to his right, gentlemen to the left. beat. The fingers playing her Everyone shift so you have a new backbone and she felt him partner for the next dance.” It guiding her to where he wanted was over. She moved as directed to go. There was no power by the voice. struggle, he was the master and Her eyes downcast— waited. she was his pawn as he tightly A pair of manly shoes stood controlled her, yet gently eased before her. Coyly she raised her both first to the right, next to he head, anticipated the feel of his left. She felt his warm hands slide broad shoulders, firm torso, she upward, caressing, guiding her to smiled. She waited for the music the next position of submission. to begin and to be taken in his Lightly, her fingers rested upon arms. The dance lesson his strong masculine shoulders continued. and she could feel his sweat Lynn Wynen-Chamberlain soaked skin. Prowess, energy, attends the MFA in creative experience propelled his next writing program at Lindenwood move. Elated, she felt his firm University in St. Charles, muscles straining to be set free.

Missouri and currently teaches She waited in anticipation not high school. She has a Masters in knowing, not caring, she was his.

Education from the University of

A Friend Indeed

by Sue Buckwell As brand new elementary school teachers, Faith and I bonded when we discovered, in mid-September, that we hated children and agreed that if we ever again encountered our respective high school guidance counselors, we would do them serious bodily injury for suggesting that we might be well suited to careers in education.

To mitigate our wretchedness, we took to meeting every Friday afternoon for happy hour. On those occasions, we

participated in lively discussions But things began to change.

Sue Buckwell lives and regarding which of our pupils we Her attendance at our afternoon works in an idyllic suburb of Los believed would be first to commit summits became sporadic. On Angeles. She taught in the public felonies, first to stuff cocaine the occasions when she did school system for many years. rather than fingers up their appear, she ignored the chips and After weathering the storm, she noses, first to deliver bastard asked for celery and carrots found the solitary occupation of children before completing which she dipped parsimoniously writing both soothing and middle school. And when we into the guacamole, blue cheese satisfying. In her leisure time she were drained of the vitriol our dressing and parmesan artichoke enjoys good friends, good wine young charges inspired, we were dip. She ordered wine spritzers and bad television. content to while away the and Skinny Margaritas and made afternoons feasting on mountains only a few unenthusiastic trips to Holy Water of barbecued meatballs, stacks of the appetizer bar while I

by Keith Hoerner fiery Buffalo wings and basket lumbered back and forth upon basket of the oil soaked continuously. But my worry did I stand at the kitchen sink popcorn that comprised the not turn to fear until she began to washing the one thing I took from happy hour fare. There we would shrug nonchalantly when I sit, immobile, save for our regaled her with tales of the back- home after you died: The Madonna and Child statue I multiple strolls to the hors talking, paste-gobbling, scabd’oeuvre table and our hands that picking savages that populated meditated on kneeling before you – being beaten, traumatized, traveled languorously from plate my world. loving you, year after year. to mouth.

Then one day, I happened I wash it gently, However, the proprietor of upon her whispering with the our usual watering hole soon night janitor. He touched her hair remembering the time you realized how much our patronage and she stretched and purred like unknowingly soaked a statue of St. Joseph – carved out of salt – was costing him and began a newborn kitten. And then I seating us at tables so distant knew. Here was the intruder, the in a sink of warm water.

You did not realize it would from the snacks that traveling trespasser, the interloper who from one to the other became was trying to steal my Faith. In a dissolve, desert you like your onerous. So as our dimensions whirlwind of fury, I pushed her man-made religion. Only to broadened, so did our horizons. aside, grabbed the mop he held in return later, pushing your hands through the milky-white water, We sought out new dining one hand, and beat him to a confused, almost frantic, as you establishments where the drinks bloody pulp, ignoring her were cheap and the food screams and hardly feeling her thrashed about in search of what you had laid there. abundant. Our quest yielded a sharp nails as they tore at my Keith Hoerner is a recent plethora of eateries so enticing flesh.

MFA-in-Writing Graduate who is we took to meeting not just on It is only the memory of enjoying a foray into teaching Fridays, but every day of the Faith that has allowed me to week. So I endured my daily weather the privations of my long after a successful sales and incarceration with those and arduous confinement. That marketing career. A St. Louisan, diminutive barbarians because I and the plans I’ve made for our his recent work can be read in Mid Rivers Review and Untamed knew, when the final bell reunion.

Ink. sounded, Faith would be waiting.

Tell us about upcoming events or contests

worthwhile for writers and every writer on the web should support them.

Here you have former editors and writers who have worked for or published in publications, such as Narrative regularly host contests.

Esquire, GQ, and Vogue, and who are Currently their Fall 2013 Story Contest is trying to bring great writing on the web open for submissions. They are seeking: like never before. The site states, “OUR FALL CONTEST is open to all “Narrative was founded in 2003 with the fiction and nonfiction writers. We’re idea of exploring what could be done looking for short shorts, short stories, with quality literary publishing on the essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic Internet. At that time nothing existed stories, all forms of literary nonfiction, online that could stand alongside welland excerpts from longer works of both established literary periodicals, but it fiction and nonfiction.” You can view was clear that unless writers moved onto their contest guidelines here: the Internet they would soon be http://www.narrativemagazine.com/nod marginalized.” e/220797 Deadline: Novemember 30, 2013. The N30B (Narrative Thirty Below) contest is now open and runs until We list Narrative Magazine as a November 3rd, and our Winter Contest first tier magazine. The publication will open January 1st and closes March started publishing in 2003 and has 31st. published outstanding work by authors. http://www.narrativemagazine.com/ Narrative is setting a standard for literary Editors Name Carol Edgarian and Tom magazines both on the internet and in Jenks print. We highly recommend that you Print publication? No read this publication.

Do you take online submissions? Yes They do it right, and they are Year Founded? 2003 http://www.narrativemagazine.com/sub working very hard to promote writing as Do you pay? Yes mit-your-work a mainstay of the web. Read them, subscribe and visit often. They are number 1 on our list for both their content and their vision. They could, if they were in print, be at the top of our Edited by Carol Edgarian and Tom Jenks print magazine list as well. two well-established editors, the publication is making a real run at being a “big time” literary magazine on the web.

Not many publications in print or online Narrative publishes fiction, have been able to be successful AND keep poetry, and nonfiction, including creative content as their bread and stories, novels, novel excerpts, novellas, butter. Narrative is attempting to do just personal essays, humor, sketches, that. They are working week after week to memoirs, literary biographies, bring great writing to the web and to commentary, reportage, interviews, and promote writers–many new and features of interest to readers who take emerging ones as well as established pleasure in storytelling and imaginative authors. It’s like the Atlantic Monthly prose. They are looking for high quality depending on fiction and poetry first and submissions, and they do accept articles second. Narrative’s readership in submissions from new and emerging 2013 reached 160,000, and with that authors. kind of circulation the magazine is able to carry literary writing to the mainstream.

They are doing something amazing and

From EWR:

Narrative Magazine

Website

Information

Submission Guidelines URL About the Magazine:

Submission Type

does, those writers are probably publishing in, and editing literary with Literary magazines.

So the recognition and Magazines Website feedback from writers are 2 very http://blackheraldpress.wordpress.c So what’s the big deal right? Long good reasons to publish with ago (20 years or so), if you literary magazines. Meeting om/magazine/ wanted to share your work, short writers and editors is another. of going door to door, you had to Literary magazine editors, publish. Publishing with literary especially those publishing From the Editor magazines made a lot of sense. electronic only literary The Black Herald is an internationallyYou got the recognition of magazines, are looking to minded bilingual magazine (Frenchpublishing/someone giving you promote their publications. They English) published in Paris. Co-edited by the nod, and you had a place to are working, maybe a little every Blandine Longre and Paul Stubbs, the tell people to go and read your day, maybe a lot, to push their magazine’s only aim is to publish new poem. content out on the web. The original world writers, not necessarily Today, of course, the scene internet of old had millions and linked in any way by ‘theme’ or ‘style’. is much different. If you want to millions of people searching for Writing that we deem can withstand the share your work and get lots of very few articles, poems and test of time and might resist praise you can just post your stories. There is the old story of a popularization – the dangers of instant work to Facebook. You can get a soda machine at Harvard (I literature for instant consumption. free site or blog and publish an think) getting millions of visitors.

Writing that seems capable of escaping entire book. You can write your Those days are gone. If you create the vacuum of the epoch. Where the mind, your friend’s mind, your a web site and let it sit, no one rupture of alternative mindscapes and poems, essays, rants, chants, and will come. You can build it, but nationalities exists, so too will The Black whatever else you feel is web they will ignore it unless you are Herald. worthy or not. Sharing your work tweeting, Fbing, Googling, isn’t much of a trick these days. emailing, RSSing, and any other Submissions Poetry, short fiction, essays, translations. It’s clicking a button and boom, kind of ing-ing you can think of.

So that means those Poésie, fiction courte, essais, traductions. everyone you know can read it.

So why publish with literary editors, if and when they Information literary magazines? If you can publish your work, are also share your work with everyone promoting your work. That’s Editors Name Paul Stubbs & Blandine you know, at the click of a button, worth something. It might be Longre it stands to reason that you worth a lot if you have selfPrint publication? Yes publish your work with literary published a book. You could build Approx. Response Time? 3 months How often do you publish? once a year magazines to share your work an entire network of editors who Year Founded? 2011 people you don’t know. Those are promoting your work to all Do you pay? no people tend to be, for the most their readers. That’s something Do you take online submissions? Yes part, other writers. Now if you arethat can be worth cold hard cash. living the utopian dream of 1930s This also begs the question Contact Paris, rubbing elbows with why people publish with a literary Twitter @Blackheraldpres tomorrow’s greats, the next magazine and not send a link to Facebook Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and their website to the editor. If you www.facebook.com/BlackHeraldPress others, maybe you don’t need to are published in a literary Mailing Address: Paris, France share your work with writers magazine, use it to promote your Email blackheraldpress@gmail.com outside your circle. I’ve yet to findwork. The editors, most times, that island of misfit writers who are just fine with it. It’s part of know writing so well and joke the way the web works. Editors about cats and travel the world know a link on their site is worth telling stories and writing poetry. visitors, so they usually don’t I hope that place exists, and if it mind sending people to author

The Black Herald Reasons to Publish

sites.

literary works and magazines, read your work, and remember you.

I forgot that you have not seen Mark Twain, you people of no account!

There are many more reasons to publish with literary magazines, I could go on and on, but instead I’ll keep this Saved from the jaws of the cowshort. If you had a top 10 catcher, me wandering devious a reasons for publishing with stranger met. literary magazines list, it might look something like this: “Elmira is the place. Elmira in 1. To share your work with the State of New York—this other writers and people State, not two hundred miles you don’t know away;” and he added, perfectly 2. To get a free promoter unnecessarily, “Slide, Kelley, You are a contemptible lot, over 3. Feedback slide.” yonder. Some of you are 4. Recognition Commissioners, and some 5. Feel like part of a Lieutenant-Governors, and some I slid on the West Shore line, I community (of writers) slid till midnight, and they have the V. C., and a few are 6. Get traffic for your privileged to walk about the Mall dumped me down at the door of a website arm in arm with the Viceroy; but frowzy hotel in Elmira. Yes, they 7. Get book sales knew all about “that man I have seen Mark Twain this 8. To vote for and believe in golden morning, have shaken his Clemens,” but reckoned he was the utopian society of hand, and smoked a cigar—no, not in town; had gone East writers (even if it doesn’t two cigars—with him, and talked somewhere. I had better possess exist) my soul in patience till the with him for more than two 9. Meeting other writers hours! Understand clearly that I morrow, and then dig up the (online and in the real world do not despise you; indeed, I “man Clemens’” brother-in-law, if you are lucky) who was interested in coal. don’t. I am only very sorry for 10. To make poetry, art, you, from the Viceroy stories, your ideas, your downward. To soothe your envy philosophical children, your and to prove that I still regard love, peace, joy, sadness, and you as my equals, I will tell you disillusions all exist in the all about it. real world and on the web OR to simply keep art and They said in Buffalo that he was writing alive in the world. in Hartford, Conn.; and again So here are at least 10 they said “perchance he is gone reasons literary magazines are upon a journey to Portland”; and still a very useful, realistic, and a big, fat drummer vowed that meaningful to writers. Even he knew the great man though you are not earning intimately, and that Mark was millions (maybe some books spending the summer in Europe sales, maybe some more traffic), —which information so upset me you are still writing. Not that I embarked upon the wrong everything is measured in dollars, train, and was incontinently and not everything meaningful, turned out by the conductor Mark Twain 1907 Picture is in the public beautiful, or worthwhile costs three-quarters of a mile from the domain money. station, amid the wilderness of Oh yeah, and the 11th railway tracks. Have you ever, reason might just be, that some encumbered with great-coat and The idea of chasing half a dozen day, long from now, after you are valise, tried to dodge diversely- relatives in addition to Mark dead and in the ground, someone minded locomotives when the Twain up and down a city of might find the old web archive of sun was shining in your eyes? But thirty thousand inhabitants kept

My Interview with Mark Twain by Rudyard Kipling

me awake. Morning revealed Elmira, whose streets were desolated by railway tracks, and whose suburbs were given up to the manufacture of door-sashes and window-frames. It was surrounded by pleasant, fat, little hills, rimmed with timber and topped with cultivation. The Chemung River flowed generally up and down the town, and had just finished flooding a few of the main streets.

Presently the driver stopped at a miserable, little, white wood shanty, and demanded “Mister Clemens.”

“I know he’s a big-bug and all that,” he explained, “but you can never tell what sort of notions those sort of men take into their heads to live in, anyways.”

distance, after all, and the chase had not been in vain. With speed I fled, and the driver, skidding the wheel and swearing audibly, arrived at the bottom of that hill without accidents. It was in the pause that followed between ringing the brother-in-law’s bell and getting an answer that it occurred to me for the first time Mark Twain might possibly have other engagements than the entertainment of escaped lunatics from India, be they never so full of admiration. And in another man’s house—anyhow, what had I come to do or say? Suppose the drawing-room should be full of people,—suppose a baby were sick, how was I to explain that I only wanted to shake hands with him?

There rose up a young lady who was sketching thistle-tops and The hotel-man and the goldenrod, amid a plentiful telephone-man assured me that supply of both, and set the the much-desired brother-in-law pilgrimage on the right path. was out of town, and no one seemed to know where “the man “It’s a pretty Gothic house on the Clemens” abode. Later on I left-hand side a little way farther discovered that he had not on.” summered in that place for more than nineteen seasons, and so “Gothich——,” said the driver. was comparatively a new arrival. “Very few of the city hacks take twainThen things happened this drive, specially if they know somewhat in this order. A big, A friendly policeman volunteered they are coming out here,” and he darkened drawing-room; a huge the news that he had seen Twain glared at me savagely. chair; a man with eyes, a mane of or “some one very like him” grizzled hair, a brown mustache driving a buggy the day before. twainhouseIt was a very pretty covering a mouth as delicate as a This gave me a delightful sense of house, anything but Gothic, woman’s, a strong, square hand nearness. Fancy living in a town clothed with ivy, standing in a shaking mine, and the slowest, where you could see the author of very big compound, and fronted calmest, levellest voice in all the Tom Sawyer, or “some one very by a verandah full of chairs and world saying:— like him,” jolting over the hammocks. The roof of the pavements in a buggy! verandah was a trellis-work of “Well, you think you owe me creepers, and the sun peeping something, and you’ve come to “He lives out yonder at East Hill,” through moved on the shining tell me so. That’s what I call said the policeman; “three miles boards below. squaring a debt handsomely.” from here.”

Decidedly this remote place was “Piff!” from a cob-pipe (I always Then the chase began—in a hired an ideal one for work, if a man said that a Missouri meerschaum hack, up an awful hill, where could work among these soft airs was the best smoking in the sunflowers blossomed by the and the murmur of the longworld), and, behold! Mark Twain roadside, and crops waved, and eared crops. had curled himself up in the big Harper’s Magazine cows stood in armchair, and I was smoking eligible and commanding Appeared suddenly a lady used to reverently, as befits one in the attitudes knee-deep in clover, all dealing with rampageous presence of his superior. ready to be transferred to outsiders. “Mr. Clemens has just photogravure. The great man walked down-town. He is at his The thing that struck me first was must have been persecuted by brother-in-law’s house.” that he was an elderly man; yet, outsiders aforetime, and fled up after a minute’s thought, I the hill for refuge.

Then he was within shouting perceived that it was otherwise,

and in five minutes, the eyes looking at me, I saw that the grey hair was an accident of the most trivial. He was quite young. I was shaking his hand. I was smoking his cigar, and I was hearing him talk—this man I had learned to love and admire fourteen thousand miles away.

you hear men talking of Bret Harte’s works and other works and my books being pirated, ask them to be sure of their facts. I think they’ll find the books are paid for. It was ever thus. twainbook“I remember an unprincipled and formidable publisher. Perhaps he’s dead now. He used to take my short stories—I can’t call it steal or pirate them. It was beyond these things altogether. He took my stories one at a time and made a book of it. If I wrote an essay on dentistry or theology or any little thing of that kind—just an essay that long (he indicated half an inch on his finger), any sort of essay—that publisher would amend and improve my essay.

to exactly the same thing. No law can make a book live or cause it to die before the appointed time.

“Tottletown, Cal., was a new town, with a population of three thousand—banks, fire-brigade, brick buildings, and all the modern improvements. It lived, it flourished, and it disappeared.

To-day no man can put his foot on any remnant of Tottletown, Cal. It’s dead. London continues to exist. Bill Smith, author of a book read for the next year or so, is real-estate in Tottletown.

William Shakespeare, whose works are extensively read, is real-estate in London. Let Bill Smith, equally with Mr. Shakespeare now deceased, have as complete a control over his copyright as he would over his real-estate. Let him gamble it away, drink it away, or—give it to the church. Let his heirs and assigns treat it in the same manner.

Reading his books, I had striven to get an idea of his personality, and all my preconceived notions were wrong and beneath the reality. Blessed is the man who finds no disillusion when he is brought face to face with a revered writer. That was a moment to be remembered; the landing of a twelve-pound salmon was nothing to it. I had hooked Mark Twain, and he was treating me as though under certain circumstances I might be “He would get another man to an equal. write some more to it or cut it about exactly as his needs About this time I became aware required. Then he would publish that he was discussing the a book called Dentistry by Mark copyright question. Here, so far Twain, that little essay and some as I remember, is what he said. other things not mine added.

“Every now and again I go up to Attend to the words of the oracle Theology would make another Washington, sitting on a board to through this unworthy medium book, and so on. I do not consider drive that sort of view into transmitted. You will never be that fair. It’s an insult. But he’s Congress. Congress takes its able to imagine the long, slow dead now, I think. I didn’t kill arguments against international surge of the drawl, and the deadly him. copyright delivered ready made, gravity of the countenance, the and—Congress isn’t very strong. I quaint pucker of the body, one “There is a great deal of nonsense put the real-estate view of the foot thrown over the arm of the talked about international case before one of the Senators. chair, the yellow pipe clinched in copyright. The proper way to one corner of the mouth, and the treat a copyright is to make it “He said: ‘Suppose a man has right hand casually caressing the exactly like real-estate in every written a book that will live for square chin:— way. ever?’

“Copyright? Some men have morals, and some men have— other things. I presume a publisher is a man. He is not born. He is created—by circumstances. Some publishers have morals. Mine have. They pay me for the English productions of my books. When

“It will settle itself under these “I said: ‘Neither you nor I will conditions. If Congress were to ever live to see that man, but we’ll bring in a law that a man’s life assume it. What then?’ was not to extend over a hundred and sixty years, somebody would “He said: ‘I want to protect the laugh. That law wouldn’t concern world against that man’s heirs anybody. The man would be out and assigns, working under your of the jurisdiction of the court. A theory.’ term of years in copyright comes

“I said: ‘You think that all the world has no commercial sense.

The book that will live for ever can’t be artificially kept up at inflated prices. There will always be very expensive editions of it and cheap ones issuing side by side.’

Tom Sawyer in two ways. In one I in which a man, against his own would make him rise to great will and in spite of his utmost honour and go to Congress, and striving to the contrary, revealed in the other I should hang him. himself in his true light to the Then the friends and enemies of world. the book could take their choice.”

“A good deal of your life on the Here I lost my reverence Mississippi is autobiographical, completely, and protested against isn’t it?” I asked. twaincigar“Take the case of Sir any theory of the sort, because, to Walter Scott’s novels,” Mark me at least, Tom Sawyer was real. twainboat“As near as it can be— Twain continued, turning to me. when a man is writing to a book “When the copyright notes toms“Oh, he is real,” said Mark and about himself. But in genuine protected them, I bought editions Twain. “He’s all the boy that I autobiography, I believe it is as expensive as I could afford, have known or recollect; but that impossible for a man to tell the because I liked them. At the same would be a good way of ending truth about himself or to avoid time the same firm were selling the book”; then, turning round, impressing the reader with the editions that a cat might buy. “because, when you come to truth about himself.

They had their real estate, and think of it, neither religion, not being fools, recognised that training, nor education avails “I made an experiment once. I got one portion of the plot could be anything against the force of a friend of mine—a man painfully worked as a gold mine, another circumstances that drive a man. given to speak the truth on all as a vegetable garden, and Suppose we took the next four occasions—a man who wouldn’t another as a marble quarry. Do and twenty years of Tom Sawyer’s dream of telling a lie—and I made you see?” life, and gave a little joggle to the him write his autobiography for circumstances that controlled his own amusement and mine.

What I saw with the greatest him. He would, logically and He did it. The manuscript would clearness was Mark Twain being according to the joggle, turn out a have made an octavo volume, but forced to fight for the simple rip or an angel.”

—good, honest man that he was— proposition that a man has as in every single detail of his life much right to the work of his “Do you believe that, then?” that I knew about he turned out, brains (think of the heresy of it!) on paper, a formidable liar. He as to the labour of his hands.

“I think so. Isn’t it what you call could not help himself.

When the old lion roars, the Kismet?” young whelps growl. I growled “It is not in human nature to assentingly, and the talk ran on “Yes; but don’t give him two write the truth about itself. None from books in general to his own joggles and show the result, the less the reader gets a general in particular. because he isn’t your property impression from an any more. He belongs to us.” autobiography whether the man Growing bold, and feeling that I is a fraud or a good man. The had a few hundred thousand folk He laughed—a large, wholesome reader can’t give his reasons any at my back, I demanded whether laugh—and this began a more than a man can explain why Tom Sawyer married Judge dissertation on the rights of a a woman struck him as being Thatcher’s daughter and whether man to do what he liked with his lovely when he doesn’t remember we were ever going to hear of own creations, which being a her hair, eyes, teeth, or figure.

Tom Sawyer as a man. matter of purely professional And the impression that the interest, I will mercifully omit. reader gets is a correct one.”

“I haven’t decided,” quoth Mark Twain, getting up, filling his pipe, Returning to the big chair, he, “Do you ever intend to write an and walking up and down the speaking of truth and the like in autobiography?” room in his slippers. “I have a literature, said that an notion of writing the sequel to autobiography was the one work “If I do, it will be as other men

have done—with the most earnest the cob pipe. I would have given though a singer of street ballads desire to make myself out to be much for nerve enough to were to hear excellent music from the better man in every little demand the gift of that pipe— a church organ. I didn’t stop to business that has been to my value, five cents when new. I ask whether the music was discredit; and I shall fail, like the understood why certain savage legitimate or necessary. I others, to make my readers tribes ardently desired the liver of listened, and I liked what I heard. believe anything except the brave men slain in combat. That I am speaking of the grace and truth.” pipe would have given me, beauty of the style.” perhaps, a hint of his keen insight This naturally led to a discussion into the souls of men. But he “You see,” he went on, “every on conscience. Then said Mark never laid it aside within stealing man has his private opinion Twain, and his words are mighty reach. about a book. But that is my and to be remembered:— private opinion. If I had lived in Once, indeed, he put his hand on the beginning of things, I should “Your conscience is a nuisance. A my shoulder. It was an have looked around the township conscience is like a child. If you investiture of the Star of India, to see what popular opinion pet it and play with it and let it blue silk, trumpets, and thought of the murder of Abel have everything that it wants, it diamond-studded jewel, all before I openly condemned Cain. becomes spoiled and intrudes on complete. If hereafter, in the I should have had my private all your amusements and most of changes and chances of this opinion, of course, but I shouldn’t your griefs. Treat your conscience mortal life, I fall to cureless ruin, have expressed it until I had felt as you would treat anything else. I will tell the superintendent of the way. You have my private When it is rebellious, spank it— the workhouse that Mark Twain opinion about that book. I don’t be severe with it, argue with it, once put his hand on my know what my public ones are prevent it from coming to play shoulder; and he shall give me a exactly. They won’t upset the with you at all hours, and you will room to myself and a double earth.” secure a good conscience; that is allowance of paupers’ tobacco. to say, a properly trained one. A He recurled himself into the chair spoiled one simply destroys all “I never read novels myself,” said and talked of other things. the pleasure in life. I think I have he, “except when the popular reduced mine to order. At least, I persecution forces me to—when “I spend nine months of the year haven’t heard from it for some people plague me to know what I at Hartford. I have long ago time. Perhaps I have killed it think of the last book that every satisfied myself that there is no from over-severity. It’s wrong to one is reading.” hope of doing much work during kill a child, but, in spite of all I those nine months. People come have said, a conscience differs “And how did the latest in and call. They call at all hours, from a child in many ways. persecution affect you?” about everything in the world.

Perhaps it’s best when it’s dead.”

One day I thought I would keep a “Robert?” said he, interrogatively.list of interruptions. It began this TwainShakespeareHere he told way:— me a little—such things as a man I nodded. may tell a stranger—of his early “A man came and would see no life and upbringing, and in what “I read it, of course, for the one but Mr. Clemens. He was an manner he had been influenced workmanship. That made me agent for photogravure for good by the example of his think I had neglected novels too reproductions of Salon pictures. I parents. He spoke always through long—that there might be a good very seldom use Salon pictures in his eyes, a light under the heavy many books as graceful in style my books. eyebrows; anon crossing the somewhere on the shelves; so I room with a step as light as a began a course of novel reading. I “After that man another man, girl’s, to show me some book or have dropped it now; it did not who refused to see any one but other; then resuming his walk up amuse me. But as regards Robert, Mr. Clemens, came to make me and down the room, puffing at the effect on me was exactly as write to Washington about

something. I saw him. I saw a third man, then a fourth. By this time it was noon. I had grown tired of keeping the list. I wished to rest.

I do not object to two or three interruptions. When a man is in the full swing of his work these little things do not affect him.

Eight or ten or twenty interruptions retard composition.”

the least. Once outside the door, I yearned to go back and ask some questions—it was easy enough to think of them now—but his time was his own, though his books belonged to me.

“But the fifth man was the only one of the crowd with a card of I should have ample time to look his own. He sent up his card. ‘Ben I was burning to ask him all back to that meeting across the Koontz, Hannibal, Mo.’ I was manner of impertinent questions, graves of the days. But it was sad raised in Hannibal. Ben was an as to which of his works he to think of the things he had not old schoolmate of mine. himself preferred, and so forth; spoken about.

Consequently I threw the house but, standing in awe of his eyes, I wide open and rushed with both dared not. He spoke on, and I KiplingcroppedIn San Francisco hands out at a big, fat, heavy listened, grovelling. the men of The Call told me many man, who was not the Ben I had legends of Mark’s apprenticeship ever known—nor anything like It was a question of mental in their paper five and twenty him. equipment that was on the years ago; how he was a reporter carpet, and I am still wondering delightfully incapable of “‘But is it you, Ben?’ I said. whether he meant what he said. reporting according to the needs ‘You’ve altered in the last of the day. He preferred, so they thousand years.’

“Personally I never care for said, to coil himself into a heap fiction or story-books. What I like and meditate until the last twainpricne“The fat man said: to read about are facts and minute. Then he would produce ‘Well, I’m not Koontz exactly, but statistics of any kind. If they are copy bearing no sort of I met him down in Missouri, and only facts about the raising of relationship to his legitimate he told me to be sure and call on radishes, they interest me. Just work—copy that made the editor you, and he gave me his card, now, for instance, before you swear horribly, and the readers of and’—here he acted the little came in”—he pointed to an The Call ask for more. scene for my benefit—’if you can encyclopædia on the shelves—”I wait a minute till I can get out the was reading an article about I should like to have heard Mark’s circulars—I’m not Koontz exactly, ‘Mathematics.’ Perfectly pure version of that, with some stories but I’m travelling with the fullest mathematics. of his joyous and variegated past. line of rods you ever saw.’”

He has been journeyman printer “My own knowledge of (in those days he wandered from “And what happened?” I asked mathematics stops at ‘twelve the banks of the Missouri even to breathlessly. times twelve,’ but I enjoyed that Philadelphia), pilot cub and fullarticle immensely. I didn’t blown pilot, soldier of the South “I shut-the door. He was not Ben understand a word of it: but facts, (that was for three weeks only), Koontz—exactly—not my old or what a man believes to be private secretary to a Lieutenantschool-fellow, but I had shaken facts, are always delightful. That Governor of Nevada (that him by both hands in love, and … mathematical fellow believed in displeased him), miner, editor, I had been bearded by a his facts. So do I. Get your facts special correspondent in the lightning-rod man in my own first, and”—the voice dies away to Sandwich Islands, and the Lord house. an almost inaudible drone—”then only knows what else. If so you can distort ‘em as much as experienced a man could by any “As I was saying, I do very little you please.” means be made drunk, it would work in Hartford. I come here for be a glorious thing to fill him up three months every year, and I Bearing this precious advice in with composite liquors, and, in work four or five hours a day in a my bosom, I left; the great man the language of his own country, study down the garden of that assuring me with gentle kindness “let him retrospect.” But these little house on the hill. Of course, that I had not interrupted him in eyes will never see that orgy fit

for the gods!

Reprinted from Sea to Sea Letters and Travels by Rudyard Kipling (1913)

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