James Dorr's Blog

Poets Kaczmarczyk, Kell for Writers Guild Sept. Last Sunday

The weather offered a pleasant, warm late September night for The Bloomington Writers Guild’s Last Sunday Poets at Morgenstern Books, with Massachusetts-raised, cat-appreciative Peter Kaczmarczyk, with work in over eighty magazines and anthologies as well as three chapbooks, to start with a largely domestic-tuned sheaf of offerings, the last from his third chapbook COULD HAVE GOTTEN A CAT titled, in fact, “Fat Shame a Cat.” He was followed by multi-talented, long-time Bloomingtonian Bruce Kell with work somewhat more ironic in tone in places up to and including a mock-heroic quartet, “The Sad Story of Lothario,” but also with more benign reminiscences and ending, too, on a pleasant tone.

This was followed by nine or so “open-mic” readers of which I was third, with a 10-line poem based on a “Third Sunday Write” prompt from August, “Bounty,” which (as with last month’s) is unlikely to be published by any third party. So here it is now:

Bounty, gee that’s where they had
the mutiny wasn’t it? Bounty, Tennessee
as I remember. They were always doing mutinies
in Bounty those days — kept the tourist trade
excited.
In fact, I remember one mutiny they had —
a protest or something about paper towels.
Wiped out the whole city!
(They don’t get much tourist trade these days,
however.)

Jazz-Dancing Night Child Finds Necro-Sapiens Anthology Home

At first it looked almost like a rejection. I am so torn on your story, because I love it. . . I love the writing, I love the tension and atmosphere. but it is not quite a story. . . And so I had marked the MS that way. But then I looked at the email more closely.

It wasn’t quite that. What it actually was was asking some questions, in effect wanting my take on why it should not be rejected. And so I looked at the story again, a tale titled “Night Child” about jazz, and dancing, and big-city life in the decades following World War II — or at least hints of such insofar as it was only a little over 1,000 words long. And so I sent back an explanation about why some things had to remain a mystery, at least by my thinking, lest too many answers be anticlimactic. And similar details.

Then seemingly almost just moments after came the reply from NECRO-SAPIENS editor Matt Damon: Thank you for explaining it. . . It actually makes perfect sense — And with that an acceptance which makes the moral, I suspect, something akin to always look carefully at an email’s small print. And if it suggests there’s more to be said, then by all means say it.

Eating Asbestos: Bizarro Circus of Madness Contents, Cover Recorded

The story: “Eating Asbestos,” accepted for BIZARRO CIRCUS OF MADNESS just last month (see August 19). But who’s there besides me? Well, moving fast, the circus has already announced its table of contents with “Asbestos” listed in third position as noted below. But not only that, its cover has now been previewed as well, for which also see just below.

Something Burrowed, Something Blue by Em Starr
Ad Augendam Dolorem by John Chambers
Eating Asbestos by James Dorr
My Tiny Aphrodite by Sebastian Gray
Gothic Heroine Pixelated by KT Wagner
Would You Like to Join My Cult by Jacy Morris
Our Love Was Nitro by Nathan Carson
The Phoenix Corp by Alex Rogers
What She Took by Stephen Millard
LOOK AT ME by Madeleine Swann
Family Appreciation Day by Arvee Fantilagan
The Garfield Phones from the Ocean by Ben Arzate
The Hanger Technique by Jonathan Torres
The Effect of Magene on Life, Lifestyle, and Longevity: A Proposed Randomised Controlled Trial Studying the Effects of the Magene Mutation by Ben Matthews
Debbie My Eyes by Michael Fowler
Patchwork Girls by Hannah Baxter
Hamster Hackers by Sam Logan
Of Course the Tiger Was Invited (And Other Acceptable Realities from the Parish Noticeboard) by Paul Merrell
Aphelian’s Masterpiece by Joe Koch
Oh, to Be a Wooden Ship, Sailing an Endless Sea! by Scott Edelmen
The Very, Very Last Gender Apocalypse by Bitter Karella

Tears of Isis New Edition Due Sept. 30, Cover Art Revealed

A well written collection of short stories to chill you to your core. Ghouls, insects, vampires, and gods. Tantalizing bits taken from Egyptian mythology and woven into highly original tales. These stories aren’t for the fainthearted. . . . So begins the blurb on the back cover of THE TEARS OF ISIS (cf. May 23 2022, et many al.), my 2013 collection from Perpetual Motion Machine Publications, and the first I might add where editing/story selection were both entirely in my own hands. But one that’s been out of print for a number of years — out of print and pretty much unable to even be found.

But that’s due to change — a new edition is now in the works!

The culprit: Alien Buddha Press, publishers also of my 2024 collection, AVOID SEEING A MOUSE, as well as the current edition of TOMBS: A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH. And the date to be published, September 30, just in time for the October run-up to Halloween. Which seems proper somehow.

More to be announced here as it becomes known.

Double Header Plus Poem at Fourth Street Fest

Came the next-to-last day of August, or, Labor Day weekend Saturday afternoon, and with Bloomington’s annual Fourth Streets Arts Festival of the Arts and Crafts (cf. August 31 2024). Or more to the point, on Grant Street just off Fourth, the Bloomington Writers Guild’s part in the party — the first of a two-day series of poetry and prose and occasional music in half-hour segments. And so mine of these was at one p.m. Saturday, prime time for me as the just-after-lunch slot, and so I appeared with a small bag of fiction as well as a poem.

Well, the stories were short so two would fit with just enough time to open with the poem, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” as a mood setter. It offered as well a musical theme to lead into the first tale, “The Dark Call of the Sea,” of a New England shore vacation, an eldritch violin or — more precisely — a viol, the narrator’s sister who’s also an artist, and . . . some thing powerful and dangerously attractive that lurks in the ocean. Or maybe beyond.

Then tale number two added a (ahem!) taste of the surreal, “Chocolat,” hinging on an actual European Union change in the sweet’s definition about ten years back, and a take on the adage “you are what you eat,” which ended the session, fitting just into the time allowed. A fun series, I thought, and one I’ll look forward to next year as well.

Chagrin du Vampire Holds Up Honors for Poetry

And the good news continues. The call this time was from DRACULA BEYOND STOKER: MINA HARKER for stories that feel like they could be canon, but we also enjoy fun alternate takes and pastiche. Prequels, sequels, updates, divergent timelines — unleash your creative powers of darkness and show us something exciting. Not quite speaking to me yet but, a few bullet points down: Poetry will be considered, but is not necessarily sought (We are hoping to have an all poetry issue sometime in the future).

But now is now, and I did have a poem — this a reprint but that would be okay if, again a few bullet points down, “at least 10 years old.”

So, back to the annals: it happens such a poem does exist. The title, “Chagrin du Vampire,” about a Mina Harker for whom the destruction of Dracula did not halt the process that was turning her into a vampire — only slowed it. She married, had her son Quincy, all seemed well but blood was blood, and eventually fate was to catch up to her. Not that she wasn’t able to handle it with some aplomb, explaining to her husband why they must part and taking up a new life (unlife?) in France.

But fate catches up — she may be a vampire, but her son was still a normal human, with implications . . . well, that’s what the poem, originally published in Fall 2010 in STAR*LINE, is about. So off it went on June 5, and today as I write this, Sunday, the word came back: We’ve read Chagrin du Vampire and would love to include it in the MINA issue.

King Rat Caught by Money Trap Metrics

The call was straightforward: We’re looking for honest, strange, genre-bending stories that examine how systems of economic metrics entrap individuals, corrode societies and redefines reality itself. Whether speculative, surreal, realist, horrific, satirical, or philosophical — bring us tales where earning becomes obsession, value becomes control and money becomes a mythical God manifested off barterial convenience. In other words, the American Way. As a patriot, then, what was I to do?

Go to the catalogue of past stories, of course — with a premise like that there should be pay dirt enough. Or, shoot, one could just write a new tale too, but, unsurprisedly, a prospect jumped out at me as quick as lightning: a tale of entanglement, debts and payoffs, promises, payments — a net that weaves through every aspect of life. Or pretty close to it.

The tale: “King Rat,” originally published on March 11 2002 in GOTHIC NET, a saga of municipal workers cleaning out a long-abandoned basement. But one teeming with rats, intertwined, a reflection in small scale, perhaps, of the scurry of economic entanglements just outside? It doesn’t end well.

But as for the story, it went out on June 22 and today as I write this, August 23, came the word back from publisher CultureCult: We are pleased to inform you that “King Rat” has been selected for publication in our upcoming anthology METRICS: THE MONEY TRAP. True to the system, I should in honesty add, it doesn’t pay at all (well, other than an e-copy) but heck, with its premise, it’s one I would probably think of buying the book for myself — so I’ll count it a win, with more to be here as it’s known.

Eating Asbestos Bought, Pay Received Monday

The story moved faster than the check — or, technically, the PayPal deposit. But it’s a story I’ve always been fond of, one with a rather far-fetched premise — “Eating Asbestos” — so it may not come as a great surprise that the anthology that’s bought it is titled BIZARRO: CIRCUS OF MADNESS. But such is the way of the life of the writer and, for that matter, the pay isn’t exactly shabby either.

But, long story short, the story was sent on May 13, accepted on June 10. That’s less than a month, not a record by any means but still pretty good. Then the pay received Monday, August 18, two months and a week and a day after that, not overly long as these things go either, but still the progression is interesting. Sort of. But then the thing really is that “Eating Asbestos” is set to be published!

With more details coming when they become known.

Three Poets Grace 2nd Thursday Spoken Word

A warm August evening marked today’s Bloomington Writers Guild Second Thursday Spoken Word, at at the city’s downtown Backspace Gallery, with three poets on tap. First was Bloomington poet and educator and recent author of O BODY (Haymarket Books, 2024) Dan “Sully” Sullivan with work exploring professional wrestlers, manliness, and body image; followed by Indianapolis writer and army veteran Siren Hand with more personal, experiential poems; and rather excitingly capped by researcher, educator, and founding director of Indiana prison literacy program Power of a Sentence Dr. Adam Henze with poetry often about violent crime.

After a short break, these were followed by no less that seventeen Open Mic readers of which I was third, with a prose mini-story titled “School Nights,” in which schoolmates included such entities as bats and spiders.

Summer Heat Melts Into Last Sunday Poetry With Winston, Tavarez

The night was hot — albeit beginning to cool a bit from brief spot of rain — and not just from flaming with fiery or incendiary thoughts. In fact with the store air-conditioning on the evening at Bloomington’s Morgenstern Books was a welcome retreat from the weather outside. Or at least until one got too used to the cold.

But then that’s July — too much of one, or else the other.

Of the formal session at the Bloomington Writers Guild Last Sunday Poetry, first up was THE WORRY DOLLS author Shannon K. Winston with a flurry of work mostly from that book on such things as anxieties, growing up, music (though, as she said, herself “not a musical person” but still enjoying writing about it), and even Bloomington itself with a poem called “The Mulberry Bush.” She was followed by Paula C. Tavarez, with her own book titled THAT’S NOT LOVE, THAT’S A LIVE GRENADE, with a variety of poems with a Cuban/Dominican/Miami flavor ranging from story-like narratives to more personal treatments.

This was followed by a relatively short Open Mic portion with only six readers, of which I led off with a seasonal prose-poem of unseemly appetite, “Lawnmower Man,” for whom the lawn itself served as salad. Or quoting it here (why not?):

He ate lawnmowers. He chomped ’em good. He ate off the little wheels, gulped down the guts, push mowers, rotaries, he gobbled ’em for breakfast. Picked his teeth with the chewed-off blades. He even ate the truck the new lawnmower came on, the one to replace the one he’d just ingested, starting with the tires, working up through the axles, gnawing through the gear shift, bodywork, bumpers, licking off chrome with his rough, strong tongue. He ate out the garden shed, tossing trowels down his throat as if they were candy — “Gotta have desert,” he said, burping up a sickle and a pair of canvas gloves. Then he started on the lawn itself, pointing out that everybody’s got to have a salad — “It makes sense, it’s vitamins, you need ’em, if you don’t take them you’re gonna get scurvy.” Burping, this time, worms and moles.