The following stories are gifts. Some are PDFs on Sothis Medias and others are pages on webzines or other sites. Please feel free to share the PDFs and links with your friends. Following the titles are brief descriptions of the story in question.
The Green Lion Medicine Show: This story was written to submit to a contest John Michael Greer is having via his blog The Archdruid Report. It is a post-collapse love story set in an Ohio where the canals have reopened, where radio, both FM and Amateur are the primary modes of electronic communication, and where medicine shows once again travel the country selling alchemical elixirs.
Gertrude and Ludwig Spin a Web: This story was published in Flurb #12, a Webzine of Astonishing Tales edited by Rudy Rucker. September 2011.
Trepanning For Gold Stan Keigwin just wanted to get back home to his daughter in Toronto. First he had to finish off his sentence as an indentured servant at the Chemco penal factory in Cincinnati, Ohio where he was paying off his debts to the corporate world. He didn’t expect to be forcibly trepanned and wake up in a hospital, suddenly in possesion of a supernatural power that allowed him to see into the spirit world. Held hostage by nurses armed with tasers Stan must escape in time to report back to the workers barracks, all the while unraveling the mystery behind the cities enigmatic, ever shifting, movable streets. If he doesn’t report back to work on time Stan could be sentenced for life, shipped overseas to work the trash mines in Malaysia, and never see his daughter again. This novelette received an honorable mention in the first quarter of the 2009 Writers of the Future contest.
Jerry Rigged A Flash Fiction piece about a pinball wizard on asteroid space colony.
Fiction by Justin Patrick Moore is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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Justin,
I finished reading Trepanning for Gold last night…..I think I picked up on three or four different genres in there….The character of Stan……like the characters in Nathan Singer’s “In Light of You”…I didn’t really feel sympathetic towards….Nathan told me he loved that I didn’t feel attachment to any of the characters in his book…..Stan’s “friend” Eric wanted me to like him because of his committment to his mom, turns out to be a scum bag…..I’m not 100% sure about Stan either………..and I LIKE THAT!!!
I like the horror scene with the Nurse…..The whole idea of Trepanning to the head…..kind of reminds me of the classic horror novelette by one of my favorite horror authors Edward Lee called “Header”.. disturbing stuff for sure…..I’m not even sure if a “happy” ending would be appropriate for this peice.. I enjoyed the story as I do all of your stuff and I look forward to reading the next one………I got inspired for another chapbook idea for the future…I will tell you about next time we talk…..
Chuck,
Thank you for your long response, and as always for your support. I do like to mix my genres. Like religion or philosophy i can’t limit myself to one. I feel rather neutral towards Stan myself. I understand the pressure he feels, the need to get out of his various situations, etc., but perhaps he is a kind of anti-hero.
I’m going to have to check out that story by Edward Lee. I can’t wait to here about the chapbook idea, but I’ve got to get my shit cooking for the collection you have coming out in April (The deadline is almost due, but I do good work under pressure methinks). I’m sure we’ll be talking soon.
Justin
Mr. Moore,
I’m scrutinizing “Trepanning for Gold” for the sake of exercise. I’ve already found some edits and critique in the fist moments of the story:
“fuck up” should be “fuck-up”;
“It’s routine. It’s policy.” I think this creates an unessary break in the rythm of the narative. One sentence such as “It’s a routine policy.” At the end of paragraph 6 I think would be better.
“Tracing its hidden paths, bivalves and arteries, was like attempting to merge disparate philosophies: it left you feeling unsettled.” Maybe use a dash insted of a colon. Colons are generally used for lists – kind of a way of saying “such as.” Dashes are segways to tangent thoughts.
and so forth…
Anyhow, instead of writing up these things, I think it would be great to get together and put this under a microscope. Anyhow, let me know if you want to and when you are free. I’ll be having more free time soon.
Broomstix,
Mr. Mutant
Mr. Mutant,
Thank you for your critiques. I won’t really be revising “Trepanning for Gold” anymore anytime soon, and I don’t these “mistakes” detract from the story. I’m much more interested in churning out new material: this story is about four years old. It is important to have editors for these kind of grammatical errors, but focusing solely on this kind of stuff can get in the way of the fun part of telling a story. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about improving my craft. However, I don’t want to endlessly rehash old stories or I may never get around to writing new ones!
(If I ever do print this up in another format I would however ask you to comb through it for me for such changes. By-the-way, you might be interested to know that this story did receive an honorable mention in the 2009 Writers of the Future Contest.)
Also, if you are interested, the Cincinnati Council of the Bardic Arts, a literary group I started with my friend Chuck Byrd, are planning on having regular meetings to talk about our material, in addition to various publishing activities and public readings.
Either way, I do want to hang out. And as always work on fresh material!
Justin