James Dorr's Blog, page 15

Jan. 3rd Sunday Write Follows Local Cold Snap

Ah, that time again has come, the Bloomington Writers Guild “Third Sunday Write” (cf. December 19, et al.), with four prompts supplied by moderator Shana Ritter, of which I chose the first. That is, perhaps because we’re just past a single-digit (and moments below zero) cold snap, in which I had to go out several days and — perhaps because of, perhaps not — am now at home resting, trying to shake off a bothersome cold, I went with the snowy one (almost all melted outside by now, though).

1. Under the Snow

Moles, voles, shrews, insects,
the cat treats them as equals —
a snack or a quick lunch —
as they create their own tunnel-world
underneath the snow.
It’s surprisingly warm there,
body heat building up
out of the wind,
but that gives them away too.
Tiny pores in the white
from partial melting
bring the air in —
vermin gotta breathe too, you know.
But it’s the bigger holes
that you watch out for,
signifying that larger subterranean creatures
feed on small beings also
and, should they rise,
breaking through the surface,
ice trolls enjoy people too!

Automobilia At Last At Publication Destination

First seen on Facebook Sunday night: AUTOMOBILIA is finally available in Trade Paperback and Kindle Digital from Amazon.com. Now starts the work of promoting the book to benefit the contributing authors and provide some great reading entertainment for fans of that one machine that affects everyone’s life, the Automobile. The hardcover version will be available in February 2024. Please SHARE if you are inclined to help spread the word. In that it happens I have a story of my own in it. . . .

Or, via Amazon: Since the first automobiles rolled down a street, the range of human emotions attached to these machines has run from love to hate, humor to horror, joy to sadness. This book is a sampling of how fiction writers have viewed the automobile, from yesteryear to tomorrow.

Famous writers, experienced story tellers, and new literary voices are mixed together between these covers.

Automobilia is the first in a trilogy of stories and poems featuring that one machine that has changed the face of the earth, for the good and for the bad…the automobile.

Not much more is said, though it is a whopping 494 pages (“41 stories, 9 poems”), according to the site. And as for my small part, to quote this blog from some time past (cf. November 3 2020): I’d sure forgotten it, yes, a story originally sent on May 26 . . . 2016! Yes, that’s four and a half years. But today the word came from Editor Jason Marchi.

This will come as a shock to you after all this time . . . but after many interruptions, long waits on a number of permissions, and factors beyond our control, the AUTOMOBILIA book is finally nearing completion and will be published in August 2021.

We would like to include “The Christmas Vulture” in the anthology.

“The Christmas Vulture?” Originally published in Fall 2010 in UNTIED SHOELACES OF THE MIND, as well as elsewhere (cf. March 21 2012; December 23 2010), a tale of poor driving habits and an unexpected just-before-holiday rescue, this highway horror will now re-emerge in AUTOMOBILIA in, tentatively, August 2021. Other details were offered involving contracts and payment, to which I sent back my “yes” this evening.

As for AUTOMOBILIA, original guidelines having long been lost, I can still quote from THE GRINDER from way back when: as the title suggests an automobile should be such an integral part of the story that if removed the story collapses. While as for the rest, well, time will tell.

So, yes, such is the writing life, that some things may take a little more time than others. Re. the waitup from 2020 in this blog, see also January 11 2022, and December 10, 2021. And this isn’t even academic publishing, as with Dennis Wise’s SPECULATIVE POETRY AND THE MODERN ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL seen more recently (cf. January 15, et al.) in these pages.

But it has come, at last, and with it my “Christmas Vulture,” for more on which — and for possible ordering — one may check here. 

Two-Day “Trigger” Showcase Thursday and Today

This was the message re. TRIGGER WARNINGS (cf. November 18, October 28) in Wednesday’s email. Readers: The Thursday and Friday events are showcasing the pieces in the book, so that’s what you should plan to read. The time listings for readers are approx. We’ve tried to alter long readings with shorter ones. And I’ve tried to put people with sensitive time schedules in set one. For the longer pieces (prefaced by “20″), do try to keep a 20 min max. since the evening will be long. Ortet will begin setting up at 4:30. I’m getting a ride and help with bringing books, so I’ll be there closer to 5:30. Kalynn and I began working on this the day after Trump was elected in 2015. So it’s been a long haul and I’m so grateful to all of you for hanging in there, to Tony Brewer for helping us find a publisher and for producing the book, to Ortet for always being there, and to Chris Rall, Pixie, and BackSpace for giving us a place to do a truly public reading (the reading at the Library will be behind closed doors.

And Trigger Warnings is the MeToo anthology, edited by Joan Hawkins and Kalynn Brower — containing work by Bloomington authors.

That was at the Backspace Gallery downtown. But that wasn’t all. Six people read then, interspersed by performances by the musical group ORTET. And then more were scheduled the following afternoon, today, in the Monroe County Library auditorium, of whom the second was me with the story “La Fatale,” of events happening after those of the novel DRACULA concerning Mina Harker who now calls herself Guillemette, having fled to France,and who — unlike in the novel — has become a vampire. And when Parisian street toughs attacked her and her friends. . . .

Well, to see for yourself you’ll have to read the book which will also be introduced/signed by editor/authors Hawkins and Brower at Morgenstern Books tomorrow, Saturday, from noon to 2 p.m. (but due to forecasted sub-freezing weather I’ll most likely miss myself — sorry). And of which (the book) the Amazon blurb begins this way: We began this volume in 2017, shortly after Donald Trump was elected. We began working on it in response to the outrage we felt over the Access Hollywood Tape, in which Trump openly admitted that he randomly assaulted women. While previous presidential candidates’ campaigns had been derailed when sex scandals were reported by the press (Gary Hart, for example), Trump seemingly faced no consequences, even when multiple accusations of physical molestation and rape were made against him. His election and imperviousness to charges of assault seemed to signal a new step in the normalization of rape culture. . . . It was in this climate that we began soliciting stories, poems, essays and nonfiction pieces about the assault and attempted assault that is a striking aspect of so many women’s psychosexual histories. . . .

Or for more, press here. 

Marcie and Sisters, and Rabbit Hole VI Arrived!

It came to my finally ordering one, an author’s copy not forthcoming (not all contracts offer one in print, but it is a nice thing and much appreciated — at least by me), but then the whole story was kind of based on illusion, wasn’t it? The story, “Marcie and Her Sisters,” originally published in REEL DARK (BlackWyrm Publishing, 2015). And now reprinted.

This is the blurb, via Amazon: “Life is a journey, not a destination.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson.­

Emerson’s point has been echoed by many, but in the Land of the Weird the question arises, “A journey to what destination?” At the same time, you might ask, “Is the journey therefore the destination?” The journey may well be an individual’s destination, because it will define them physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And in the Land of the Weird, that journey can take twists and turns that amuse, sadden, or horrify.

This trip into the Land of the Weird offers you 39 unique trails to follow, assisted by 35 different guides, each leading you down their own singular paths, manifesting their own view of journey as destination, some laughing, some weeping, and some, eyes wide with fear, shaking as they point out the spectral footpath for you to follow on your way down The Rabbit Hole.

And the book: THE RABBIT HOLE, VOL VI (cf. November 7, October 25, et al.) — or THE RABBIT HOLE WEIRD STORIES DESTINATION: JOURNEY, as Amazon lists it — edited by Tom Wolosz, and publisher The Writers Co-op. It was released in a will-o’-the-wisp way, as befits Halloween, on October 31 2023 but the problem then was to actually get it. This is the way I had put it November 7: ­The book can be found, in some places and some forms: on Amazon it can be bought in e-form . . . [w]hile for paper copies it’s presently “out of stock” — which I understand to mean not yet in stock. But should be coming soon.

So, long story short (and other things going on anyhow), I gave it the rest of the year to settle down, then re-tried Amazon on January 2 and . . . actually bought it! On January 4 I received an email that it had shipped, but the gremlins weren’t done yet. A second email on the day it had been supposed to arrive cited a “shipping delay,” and new expected arrival date of January 15. And today (the 16th) it’s finally here!

And so of my story, as mentioned above (of the subtitled “Journey,” and quoting myself again): “Marcie and Her Sisters” decide one day they might marry zombies — or do they? In any event, the journey (ah, now!) is not one wholly filled with flowers and butterflies. Oh, no! Nor is the narrator entirely reliable. . . . In THE RABBIT HOLE VI in front of me now, then, I’m hoping for the kind of surreality of my own book, AVOID SEEING A MOUSE. But will it be there?

Supply problems presumably over by now, one can check for oneself by pressing here. 

Winning Writers Lists Mouse, Alliteration; Mouse Reviews Requested

It’s from the January 2024 WINNING WRITERS NEWSLETTER, a useful listing of “the best free literary contests” that writers might enter each month, plus a few things more. So I’d let them know specifically about AVOID SEEING A MOUSE AND OTHER TALES OF THE REAL AND SURREAL, and a few other matters, for their Subscriber News section. And there it was, a listing with my name amongst others, and a link two paragraphs down labeled “Learn about our subscribers’ achievements and see links to samples of their work.”

So plunk the magic twanger and then, under the aegis “Recent Honors and Publication Credits for Our Subscribers,” there IT was: Congratulations to James Dorr. His story collection Avoid Seeing a Mouse: And Other Tales of the Real and Surreal will be published this month by Alien Buddha Press. In other news, his poems “The Worm in the Wood” and “The Westfarer” were included in the anthology Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival, edited by Dennis Wilson Wise and published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Visit Dorr’s website for more information about his many books.

Of course, you’ve read it here before (see January 8, et al.; and December 15 2023, et al.) but all publicity helps. And the listing has live links too under the books’ two titles, the one for MOUSE leading to its Goodreads listing, as well as the word “website” which, if pressed, will lead you back here.

So go ahead, try it. To see “Recent Honors” etc. click here. And then, if you wish, explore around WINNING WRITERS itself. The newsletter can be subscribed to free, and you may find it worthwhile.

And then one more announcement: as of last notice, two of three reviews of AVOID SEEING A MOUSE on Goodreads have also migrated to its Amazon listing. But they would like company (or, as noted above, all publicity helps — and that even includes less than five-star ratings)! So to all readers, please check the book out for yourself — it can be found on Amazon by pressing here — and consider a purchase. It’s good for gifts too and, at $12.99, it’s modestly priced. But buy, beg, or steal it (or borrow it from your quicker-to-buy friend), if you’ve read the book please consider reviewing it, even if it’s just a sentence or two, and sending it to Amazon and Goodreads both.

It would really help. 

Big Giant Royalty Revealed on PayPal

Sometimes we get to be detectives in this, the writing game. What fun! Well, actually it is in a way. It’s like solving a puzzle.

For instance, royalties! As we know from posts in the past (cf. September 9, June 4 2023, et al.), for short story writers these are rarely large. By “large” we mean, say, able to swing a cup of coffee at pre-inflation prices. Rare, as said, unless perhaps at the Salvation Army or some such.

And, as is my custom, I don’t report amounts or those who are paying them to avoid embarrassment on both sides (a pittance for an anthology, for instance, must then be divided to pay all the authors, plus editor, etc. — it subtracts down. Is that the opposite of “adds up”?). Though it does add up too, even fractional pittances, and so sometimes a publisher will heap a whole year’s worth into a pile paid just past that year’s end.

But publishers get embarrassed too, and so, today, having had to check PayPal on some other matter, what did I discover but a tiny sum sneaked in on January 7, under some name I didn’t know. And so the detection — who and/or what might it be from and/or for?

Well, I had my suspicions, and it wasn’t hard. A payment for several items combined, from a publisher that had been absorbed by a larger outfit. So now I know the “for what” (sort of, as it would be for several items and I don’t know the breakdown, though I have my suspicions there as well) and the “from who.”

But as is my custom, I’m still not telling.

Avoid Seeing a Mouse, Tales of Real and Surreal Is Here!

Embark on a mesmerizing journey through the realms where reality intertwines with the surreal in “AVOID SEEING A MOUSE: AND OTHER TALES OF THE REAL AND SURREAL” by James Dorr.

So begins the blurb for my latest book, officially published and listed on Amazon as of today. In paperback form it’s available for $12.99, an ultra-low price in view of today’s post-inflation standards. It is, to be sure, a shortish collection with just twelve stories (by contrast, my 2013 Stoker® nominated THE TEARS OF ISIS had seventeen plus a poem), but with a purposeful hoped-for effect of piling skewed images, one atop another, inviting readers to see the whole as one prolonged vision — a kaleidoscope of dream reaching toward madness.

Or, quoting the blurb further: From the enigmatic landscapes of ancient Memphis to the mysterious dreams that blur the lines between waking and slumber, Dorr weaves a tapestry of stories that defy conventional boundaries.

Delve into the secrets of an otherworldly love, the apocalyptic visions that haunt the corners of our minds, and the strange encounters that shape the destiny of characters on the brink of revelation.

Dorr’s prose, rich with symbolism and mysticism, invites readers to explore the intricate dance between the tangible and the fantastical. In this collection, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the surreal whispers the hidden truths of existence.

“AVOID SEEING A MOUSE” beckons you to step into a world where dreams and reality converge, inviting you to question what you thought you knew about the nature of the universe.

And thus it goes. It can be found on Amazon for additional information, or — hopefully — ordering, by pressing here. And that isn’t all, there’s even a sample story offered through the publisher, Alien Buddha Press, which can be found here.

And one more item: If you should read AVOID SEEING A MOUSE and find it worthwhile, please consider reviewing it — even if only a single sentence on why you enjoyed or didn’t enjoy it — and posting it on sites like Amazon and Goodreads, along with your own blog and any other place you think appropriate. Or just tell your friends. With so much available on the internet, it’s the personal touch like that that’s the lifeblood of writers, helping a work stand out through the confusion.

New Year’s “1st Sunday” Brings Two Ryder Stories

This afternoon brought the first 2024 Bloomington Writers Guild’s “First Sunday Prose and Open Mic,” from 3 to 5 p.m. at Morgenstern Books. It was also the last in its afternoon time slot, with it as well as “Last Sunday Poetry” switching to evenings at 7 p.m. for future meetings which, unfortunately, will likely cut down my own participation, especially during the winter months.

Be that as it may, it was also a special session with the featured readers presenting selections from the December/January THE RYDER’s “Short Stories from Bloomington Writers” issue (in which this April, in a newly named Second Thursday Spoken Word, the other three tales from that issue, including my own “Casket Suite,” will be featured as well). Leading off was IU Astronomy Professor emeritus and short fiction/poetry author Richard Durisen with a far-future set science fiction tale, “Remembering,” set in the same general world as an almost completed first novel. He was followed by School of Education faculty member emerita and author of fiction collection OLD TECHNOLOGIES, Sharon Pugh, with “Landlord’s Cottage,” an anti-romance on divorce and a questioning of one’s sense of purpose. Both of these may also be read for yourself by pressing here.

For the main event there were possibly upward of two dozen listeners, pared down to about half that for the beginning of the “Open Mic” portion, with one or two more drifting off as it progressed, in which I was fifth of seven readers. Noting that both featured stories had to do in a sense with mortality, I read a “Casket Girls” (cf. “Casket Suite” mentioned above as a preview for April) story, “1815,” of what the risk of actual annihilation might mean for a vampire, even if normally all but immortal.

Avoid Seeing a Mouse, Still a Few Free PDFs Left

Just a quick note that AVOID SEEING A MOUSE, AND OTHER TALES OF THE REAL AND SURREAL, is still expected out Monday, January 8, and has garnered three reviews on Goodreads thus far. But there’s still time left to get a review copy for yourself, if you’re so inclined.

Avoid WHAT?, you may ask. For an official blurb (actually a condensed version of the original pitch to the publisher, a “trimmed down” synopsis as one might say) ­see post for January 1, just below. And what then, you say — after reading it for yourself, of course? Well there’s no obligation, but if inclined to look at a copy and, if the spirit moves, write an honest review for posting on Goodreads, Amazon, etc. — as well as any personal blurbs, spreading the word to friends, and the like — there are still some PDF copies available over the weekend. Just email a request (including the words “Free Mouse” in the Subject line) to edgarc@rocketmailcom, including your email, and I’ll send one right out.

And reviews don’t have to be written right away either. A few days, or even weeks later is fine — the sites still will be open. (And for some examples, the ones already on Goodreads can be found now by clicking the book’s picture in the center column.) 

Happy 2024 Includes (Avoid) Seeing a Mouse!

And a new trimmed-down blurb written last night, for a Horror Writers Association announcement to come. Or at least one may hope (you send in the information, they decide when — and if — to use it). But one must try, yes?

So the book itself, AVOID SEEING A MOUSE AND OTHER TALES OF THE REAL AND SURREAL, is expected out in exactly a week, January 8, if things go as expected. Look for it on Amazon then! Not that I’m not going to plug it here too when the moment comes, and may I remind: There’s still time to ask for a PDF pre-publication copy (cf. December 26, way down at the bottom), hopefully with an eye to writing an honest review — but no obligation. I just want to see the collection read! Although better, of course, would be to buy a paperback copy.

And then, if you like it, perhaps still write a review?

AVOID SEEING A MOUSE is a relatively short collection as such things go — twelve stories combining to just under 40,000 words. But with lots of variety in it, I think. For the “trimmed down” synopsis: AVOID SEEING A MOUSE AND OTHER TALES OF THE REAL AND SURREAL offers twelve stories set in times from the mid-part of the previous century to a heat- and pollution-baked far-future Earth, but all in worlds a bit askew from what we might be used to. A city-wide celebration with only the dead invited, an anti-Communist who collects bottles, a twisted take on the ’80s Voyager space probes to Saturn, and a title tale of a 1999 pre-New Year’s Memphis where Y2K fears combine with an ancient Egyptian curse, and more, conspire to blur the lines that separate waking from dreams.

And for me as well, the whole thing was a surprise. I hadn’t expected to write/compile a new book in 2023, but a chance “manuscripts wanted” announcement for a shorter-than-usual collection tempted me to try to put one together — just as an exercise, if for no other reason — and I sent it in. So it was rejected, but then a second publisher’s Facebook post spurred some minor tweaks and a re-sending there, and . . . Bingo! A rapid acceptance (see November 21, et al.) — proof sheets and edits wrapping around the Thanksgiving holiday — covers and pre-publication copies. . . .

And a happy all-but-unexpected New Year!