Buy Me!

Second printing has apparently happened. Available in stores, at Amazon, and from the publisher's website directly. Amazon is apparently selling new copies for cheaper than used for some reason. Featuring me, LeAnne Howe, Eddie Chuculate, Sharmagne Leland-St. John, Simon Ortiz, Danny Romero, and loads of other folks. Yes, you should buy it.

FEM 2: Fairytales

Featuring Heather Riccio, Adrian Castro, Mab Jones, Rick Marlatt, Ching-In Chen, Ann Marie Trietley, Zachary Kluckman, Allison A Hedge Coke, and more! Including a new series of paintings by the fabulous Melissa Regas, and photographs full of sword and gun goodness with Alex Bahr and Lauren Shoemaker from photographer and filmmaker Joseph Boeing! And a screenplay by Caroline (Nightmare Before Christmas, The Secret Garden, and The Addams Family) Thompson!

edited to say: Woooo! We're runing a George MacDonald adaptation by Caroline Thompson! We got new Adrian Castro poems! Rick Marlatt is publishing everywhere under the sun right now and we still got a few pieces from him! Daniela Gioseffi! Roger Weaver! Zita Muranyi!

Call for Submissions - FEM - Food

Food. Sustenance is more than just meat and potables, and when it comes down to it, it’s true, you can’t live on bread alone. You can’t live without, either. That’s hunger, need or desire, and that’s something only you know for yourself when it comes on you. You can prescribe, proscribe, and analyze for others all you want, but you don’t know somebody else’s hunger, you know your own. You hypothesize all hunger that is not yours. But, that’s alright, because clearly the world hasn’t stopped going ‘round and as artists and creative types, hypothesizing and extrapolating is part of your thing. You can, in fact, hypothesize other people’s hunger away (they don’t need that, they’re just addicted; it takes days to starve to death), but rationalizing off your own hungers is a whole different animal. Yours are real, and the rest, hypothetical.

Enter, empathy, stage left, but anyway…

Future Earth Magazine wants you to feed us, or to make us hungry if you want to be cruel about it. Give us consumption, desire, hunger, digestion or reclamation. As always, all visual and written mediums welcome in digital copies/representation, be it fiction, nonfiction, prose or poetry, paintings or sculpture, leatherwork or lyrics, comic strips or triptychs or technical essays. We want it all, the whole all you can eat buffet of entertainment and infotainment.

Send via attachment in an e-mail, along with a short bio, to future_earth_mag@yahoo.com and further information at the website.

Thank you all.

Beginner Mode

Even in fictions of knowing, been 'round the block, protagonists, the introductory pages are always framed in this learning-the-ropes, fish out of water, frame. Whether a novel or short story becomes a bildungsroman, its first bits will always follow that model. Except, arguably, for Sherlock Holmes stories, because Holmes learns and grows roughly at the rate of dead coral (see, The Woman for further evidence), and that's why Watson's always a step behind.

This model allows a presumably ignorant audience to be babystepped in alongside the protagonist (or documenter, if the protagonist is already competent), and therein lies the rub, as they say: the reader is presumed ignorant. Why? Isn't it conceivably better to have - couldn't you get ages more mileage from - an audience who are already up to speed with you and moving at the same pace? It would force the author to keep up with the audience, for one, and I'm a firm believer in pushing everybody. Death to the author who can't run at the same pace as an audience who're holding the other end of the noose around said author's neck. Death to dead weight (and once dead, they can pause a bit and catch up at their own speed).

What would that look like? I mean, you would have to assume the author and the audience can keep up, and everybody would have to be responsible and paying attention, but, heck, shouldn't they be? Shouldn't readers read responsibly? Should not the author be paying attention?

Suddenly, large chunks of the literary scene look cruel and parasitic, others lullingly symbiotic, but little of it appears synchronous.

Speaking of Which

I really don't like the sound or cadence of my voice much. Almost, at all. Some people have just marvelous speaking voices, and others have at least notable or distinctive voices. I have... a voice I am very very used to. I've heard my voice a lot. Once in awhile I'd like to open my mouth and hear Roy Orbison or Peter Dyneley's Jeff Tracy, maybe Julie Andrews. I'm possibly being too harsh on myself, and people keep telling me I am, but no amount of other people telling you something actually puts you over when you feel something negative, yourself, right? That seems to only work in the other direction.

The only small comfort I afford myself is that I am pretty critical of a lot of other folks' voices, as well. There are some hideously bad people out there reading aloud, performing aloud, singing or speaking when they really shouldn't be, on top of the beautiful public speakers and talented vocalists we have working in the world.

Which, is all a very longwinded way to a link which is only partly about me, is a bit old now, and includes some really excellent people besides. From the Lumberyard and featuring Marilyn Nelson, Patricia Smith, Orlando White, Amy Uyematsu, Harryette Mullen, Jennifer Foerster and more.

And, while we're on the subject of voices, if you are interested in participating in an online reading and panel discussion about identity politics, individual presentation and representation, and other stimulating topics, hosted by Future Earth Magazine, please drop a line at future_earth_studios@yahoo.com and we'll see about fitting you in.