Dave Clapper

I've moved.

2011-07-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

Stopped blogging forever. Just started again, but more about improvisation than about writing. New place is called An Hour of Play.

Order This

2009-05-22T11:26:00.001-07:00

Just found out I'm in this bad boy. It's a hell of a line up. Go order it.

Contributors:
DAVID AICHENBAUM
C. EDWARD ANABLE
CORBY ANDERSON
BILL BARR
RUSTY BARNES
LAUREN BECKER
ERIC BENNETT
CL BLEDSOE
BEN BROOKS
RANDALL BROWN
CHRISTY CALL (COVER ART)
DAVE CLAPPER
LYDIA COPELAND
SPENCER DEW
ROBERT A. DOLLESIN
NICOLLE ELIZABETH
KATHY FISH
TIMOTHY GAGER
MOLLY GAUDRY
ROXANE GAY
ALICIA GIFFORD
BARRY GRAHAM
KYLE HEMMINGS
JAMIE IREDELL
ALEXANDRA ISACSON
BRYAN JONES
HARDY JONES
DREW KALBACH
KIP KNOTT
CHARLES LENNOX
SEAN LOVELACE
ANTONIOS MALTEZOS
RAVI MANGLA
CORTNEY MCLELLAN
STEVEN J. MCDERMOTT
KYLE MINOR
KIM PARKO
JENNIFER PIERONI
SAM PINK
TED POWERS
S. CRAIG RENFROE, JR.
FORREST ROTH
EDMUND SANDOVAL
PETER SCHWARTZ
M. BARTLEY SEIGEL
EMILY SIEGENTHALER
ANI SMITH
CLAUDIA SMITH
AUDRI SOUSA
ATHENA STRICKLAND
ROBB TODD
ANIA VESENNY
JARED WARD
BRANDI WELLS
BLYTHE WINSLOW
XTX
ORLO YEAHBLIP
MIKE YOUNG

There's a whole lot of writers I love on that there list.

SmokeLong Quarterly issue 23

2008-12-16T13:20:00.000-08:00

I'm really blown away by this latest issue. The new staffers did an incredible job of unearthing some absolute gems. Please have a look:

Issue Twenty-Three (December 15, 2008): Ants by David Aichenbaum «» Earthrise by Christopher Bundy «» The World Before This One by Jon Chopan «» Ghost Bike by Thomas Cooper «» The Sway of Trains by Lydia Copeland «» Impressionists by Debra A. Daniel «» Danseuses Nues by David Harris Ebenbach «» The Head Fields by Terry Ehret «» Shadows by Sherrie Flick «» Heroin Girl by Larry Fondation «» She Doesn't Ask Where He Goes by Stefanie Freele «» Caved In by Barry Graham «» Chicago World's Fair, 1893 by Kyle Hemmings «» Coat and Shoes by Tania Hershman «» Thirteen by Tai Dong Huai «» Phoenix by W.P. Kinsella «» Nearly Free by Dorianne Laux «» Alien Lunch by Liane LeMaster «» The Society for the Preservation of Everything by Kuzhali Manickavel «» 216 East Boalt by Jeannie Vanasco «» Potatoes by Spencer Wise «» Interviews: David Aichenbaum «» Christopher Bundy «» Jon Chopan «» Thomas Cooper «» Lydia Copeland «» Debra A. Daniel «» David Harris Ebenbach «» Terry Ehret «» Sherrie Flick «» Larry Fondation «» Stefanie Freele «» Barry Graham «» Kyle Hemmings «» Tania Hershman «» Tai Dong Huai «» Dorianne Laux «» Liane LeMaster «» Kuzhali Manickavel «» Spencer Wise «» Cover Art "morpheus" by Marty D. Ison «» Letter From the Editor

SmokeLong issue 22 is live

2008-10-03T17:58:00.001-07:00

As my kids like to say, "Pretty, pretty, shiny, shiny." Enjoy!

Issue Twenty-Two (October 2, 2008): Innocence, Briefly by Jenny Arnold «» Tapioca O's by Natalie DeClerck «» How Anything Got Done by Paul Elwork «» Tenderoni by Kathy Fish «» Breathing Oysters by Stefanie Freele «» The Mime's Dog by Steven Douglas Gullion «» Two Minute Silence by Sarah Hilary «» Constructing Birds by Jo Horsman «» Crazy Sun by Lauren Huckstadt «» One Night Out by Ashley Kaufman «» Asian Girl by W.P. Kinsella «» Fatback by Jeff Landon «» Bounty by Tricia Louvar «» Beautiful by Antonios Maltezos «» Private Room by M.E. Parker «» True Identity by Kevin Sampsell «» Campfire by Donna D. Vitucci «» Interviews: Jenny Arnold «» Paul Elwork «» Kathy Fish «» Stefanie Freele «» Steven Douglas Gullion «» Sarah Hilary «» Jo Horsman «» Ashley Kaufman «» Jeff Landon «» Tricia Louvar «» Antonios Maltezos «» M.E. Parker «» Kevin Sampsell «» Donna D. Vitucci «» Cover Art "November Leaves" by Marty D. Ison «» Letter From the Editor

Biology class

2008-09-12T14:01:00.000-07:00

Love this.

I want this button.

2008-09-10T14:46:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted in forever...

2008-08-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, I think I should do more with this here blog. Well, today at lunch, we were talking about various actors, which got me thinking back to my previous career, and I was curious to see whether any of the reviews of work I did turned up online anywhere. Sure enough! Here are the very few I could find, with relevant quotes:

"Criminals in Love" by New Mercury Theater
reviewed by Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"I don't know. It seemed funny at the time. Maybe it was just the inane cockiness that Dave Clapper whips up in his portrayal of the father."
reviewed by Seattle Times
"Thanks to his dense convict father (played by Dave Clapper), the hapless Junior (Christopher Thomle) gets enmeshed in the evil doings of Wineva (Kia Sian), a domineering mobster-moll."

"Salt of the Earth" by Bricolage
reviewed by Seattle Times
"Still, the ensemble cast is strong, each affecting poignant moments by turns, and Ada McAllister and Dave Clapper stand out in vibrant, varied characterizations."

"Peacekeeper" by Northwest Passage Theater
reviewed by Seattle Times
"By day, Hickey and his quirky fellow officer, Dave Clapper, sit in a bunker, 200 feet underground, hoping they will never have to do what they have been programmed to do - launch a nuclear missile."

Kinda disappointing that there aren't any reviews online for my favorite show from my stint in Seattle theater, John Godber's "Bouncers." Ah, well. Funny looking back at these: I was always clearly a character actor, rather than a leading man, and wouldn't have had it any other way. Would be great to get back at it some day.

SLQ issue 20

2008-03-18T15:06:00.001-07:00

Issue 20 of SmokeLong Quarterly, guest edited by Claudia Smith, is now live.

Issue Twenty (March 15, 2008): The Cockroach by David Barringer «» Trestle by Matt Briggs «» Worried & Wondering by Aaron Burch «» Dead Dog Rising by Kate Hill Cantrill «» Tinder by Chanel Earl «» Scrape by Utahna Faith «» Arlo's Big Head by Stefanie Freele «» Wei-Ch'i by Vanessa Gebbie «» Last Fall by Katherine Grosjean «» David Dreams of Australopithecines by Savannah Schroll Guz «» The Last Stop by Jenny Halper «» Blue by Stephanie Harrison «» Cadet by Tiff Holland «» Slam by Liesl Jobson «» Beret by Darlin' Neal «» Camp by Elizabeth Oliver «» We by Patricia Parkinson «» Seconds Are Ticking By by Nik Perring «» Brother by Sue Powers «» Carol by Sophie Rosenblum «» Elizabeth Bishop by Glenn Shaheen «» Favorites by Gail Siegel «» Blank by Michelle Tandoc-Pichereau «» Medicinal by Girija Tropp «» Interviews: David Barringer «» Matt Briggs «» Aaron Burch «» Kate Hill Cantrill «» Chanel Earl «» Utahna Faith «» Stefanie Freele «» Vanessa Gebbie «» Katherine Grosjean «» Savannah Schroll Guz «» Jenny Halper «» Stephanie Harrison «» Tiff Holland «» Liesl Jobson «» Darlin' Neal «» Elizabeth Oliver «» Patricia Parkinson «» Nik Perring «» Sue Powers «» Sophie Rosenblum «» Glenn Shaheen «» Gail Siegel «» Claudia Smith «» Michelle Tandoc-Pichereau «» Girija Tropp «» Cover Art "Male Figure" by Marty D. Ison «» Letter From the Editor

writing news

2008-02-01T10:04:00.000-08:00

Although almost all of my blogging lately has been over at SmokeLong News, I actually do have some personal writing news to share, which seems better suited for posting here.

First off, a microfiction I wrote last month, "Nothing," has been solicted by Per Contra, and will appear in their Spring issue, which goes live some time in March. Yay! It had been a while since I'd written anything new, and longer still since I'd delved into the whole getting published deal. Per Contra is a great venue, so I'm really pleased.

Also, my flash Spike. Resonance., originally published in FRiGG, has been accepted to be published in a new anthology entitled "Freak Lightning," edited by Pamelyn Casto and Lawrence Greenberg. Not sure of the publication dates yet, but I'll post more when I know more. I've never really pursued getting into anthologies before, so this is pretty exciting.

And, later this month, I'll be traveling back to Chicago to speak to students at my alma mater, Fremd High School, about writing and editing as part of their annual Writers Week. I'm hugely looking forward to this. Weeding through my published work for stories appropriate to read at a high school is proving somewhat of a challenge, but I think I've got it covered. Can't wait!

Finally (and I probably will blog about this at SLQ News once I have the final schedule), I'll be presenting at Pecha Kucha again in about a week and a half. The theme is love, which is a challenge, since most of the stuff we publish in SLQ isn't really about love in the usual Valentine's Day sense. Had a blast when I did this in December, and really looking forward to doing it again. Looks like a stellar lineup this time, too. Woo!

snowy weekend

2007-12-04T14:10:00.000-08:00

Since I'm doing all the kind of blogging I used to do here over on SmokeLong News now, I might as well use this blog as more of the personal space most bloggers do. Just had a crazy snowy weekend that was virtually perfect: it snowed like mad for two days and then melted before the week began, so my commute wasn't impacted in the least. Got to have snowball fights with the kids and they built (and destroyed) snowmen. Also swung by the office to show them where I work now, and my boss happened to be in and snapped a pic, which y'all can see here. Sunday, spent the day with Ellen, Kate, the boys, and my mom and her husband Jim, who are in town for a week to meet his first grandchild, who is now a few months old (son of his son—although Jim has two kids who both live in Seattle, I've never really thought of 'em as stepsiblings per se, since Mom and Jim married after I was already out of the house). Had a good time with them, and will be having dinner with them and Ellen again tonight.

Top Ten Page Views for October

2007-11-01T10:04:00.001-07:00

Except for the juggernaut of "Pornography" and another strong showing by John Leary, the top ten is comprised entirely of flashes from the September 15 issue. And for the second month in a row, the five fat men are gone, but Landon retains a spot with "Starfish."

1. (2) When the Toasts Stopped Being Funny by Steve Almond (9/15/07)
2. (1) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
3. (3) Raymond Carver by Dan Chaon (9/15/07)
4. (7) Ten Very Short Stories by John Leary (3/15/07)
5. (8) Ethnic Lego Girls Carry Spears by Heidi W. Durrow (9/15/07)
6. (5) Mole Man by Stuart Dybek (9/15/07)
7. (6) Nailed by Robert J. Bradley (9/15/07)
8. (NR) Party by Emily Fridlund (9/15/07)
9. (9) The Sound of Success by Terry DeHart (9/15/07)
10. (10) Starfish by Jeff Landon (9/15/07)

Incidentally, I'm also blogging this information at SmokeLong News now. We had a News section there a couple years ago, but it was infrequently used. We re-launched it last week, with SLQ staffers Kelly Spitzer, Thomas White, and me, joined by uber-lit bloggers Myfanwy Collins, Katrina Denza, and Matt Bell. I think it's averaging about two new posts a day, and the info folks are getting posted there is as terrific as you would expect from having read the individuals' blogs previously. The news covers more than just SLQ--we're seeking to get flash news of any kind out there, so hopefully, it'll be a great resource for writers of flash. You definitely owe it to yourself to check it out. Here's a little tease of it:

Get this widget!

Applications open for 2008 Fish Fellowship

2007-10-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

Applications are open now for the 2008 Fish Fellowship. There is no application fee, and the prize is $500 for a one-year "residency" as a writer for SmokeLong. The full announcement and details for entry are at http://smokelong.com/features/102407.asp.

Top Ten Page Views for September

2007-10-11T13:11:00.000-07:00

And, once again, I'm incredibly late in posting stats for last month. Almond moves not only back into the top spot, but into the #2 spot as well. The man's a powerhouse. And if y'all haven't checked out his latest yet, (Not That You Asked) is worth the cover price for the piece on Vonnegut alone.

1. (2) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2. (NR) When the Toasts Stopped Being Funny by Steve Almond (9/15/07)
3. (NR) Raymond Carver by Dan Chaon (9/15/07)
4. (1) 8x10 by Elizabeth Ellen (12/15/06)
5. (NR) Mole Man by Stuart Dybek (9/15/07)
6. (NR) Nailed by Robert J. Bradley (9/15/07)
7. (NR) Ten Very Short Stories by John Leary (3/15/07)
8. (NR) Ethnic Lego Girls Carry Spears by Heidi W. Durrow (9/15/07)
9. (NR) The Sound of Success by Terry DeHart (9/15/07)
10. (NR) Starfish by Jeff Landon (9/15/07)

On a personal note, my tardiness is largely due to having been hitting the bricks to find a new gig after my contract at Microsoft ended. And I'm really excited to have accepted a position at the largest architectural firm in Seattle. Very, very cool place, and I can't wait to get to work there.

stats for issue 17

2007-09-18T16:02:00.001-07:00

Here are the stats for issue seventeen:

Issue Seventeen (live from 6/15/07-9/14/07)

6/15-6/30: 42659 page views
7/1-7/31: 75894 page views
8/1-8/31: 56439 page views
9/1-9/14: 20169 page views
Total Issue 17: 195161 page views

Bleah. We dropped back below 200,000 page views for the quarter, and fell off by 9.67%. This appears to be a summer trend. Last summer's issue saw a 17% drop in page views, and the fall issue then jumped by over 20%. Hopefully, we'll see a similar jump for the issue just published.

Top Ten Page Views for August

2007-09-18T15:53:00.001-07:00

Posting this REALLY late this time around, and only doing stories this time, because I've been (and continue to be) absolutely slammed at work. Only one story not rated in July cracked the top ten this time around, but boy did the top ten move itself around a lot. Welcome, Elizabeth Ellen, to numero uno.

1. (4) 8x10 by Elizabeth Ellen (12/15/06)
2. (1) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
3. (6) Oblivious by Gary Cadwallader (6/15/07)
4. (2) Heaven by the Highwayside by Mike Amato (3/15/07)
5. (8) First Night by Ric Jahna (6/15/07)
6. (7) One Purple Finch by Kathy Fish (6/15/07)
7. (9) The Wedge in Between by Debbie Ann Eis (6/15/07)
8. (5) Renoir Responds to Aline Charigot's Charges of Painting Her Ugly by Daniel Bailey (6/15/07)
9. (NR) Cymothoa Exigua by Christopher Battle (6/15/07)
10. (3) Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)

And, to appease Don once again, some personal news: in the building I'm working in now, they do a lot of shipping, and there's a massive scale just outside my door. When we were checking out the building a couple months ago, many of us walked across it. I weighed in at 195. Since cutting Coke almost entirely out of my diet due to kidney stones, I've noticed that my stomach looks flatter (not flat, mind you, but not so Buddha-like). Sure enough, I just walked across the scale and it came up 185. Yay, me!

SLQ Issue 18 is live!

2007-09-17T11:13:00.000-07:00

Guest edited by Mary Miller, it's a beauty.

Issue Eighteen (September 15, 2007): When the Toasts Stopped Being Funny by Steve Almond «» Nailed by Robert J. Bradley «» Raymond Carver by Dan Chaon «» The Sound of Success by Terry DeHart «» Ethnic Lego Girls Carry Spears by Heidi W. Durrow «» Mole Man by Stuart Dybek «» Party by Emily Fridlund «» From Halliville To Grice's Town by Jason Jackson «» Starfish by Jeff Landon «» Insomnia of an Elderly French Designer by Sean Lovelace «» Display by Davin Malasarn «» Little Bones by Kuzhali Manickavel «» Stigmata by Susan O'Neill «» Inroads by Dominic Preziosi «» Bachon by Teri Davis Rouvelas «» Voc Rehab Vignettes by Jessica Schantz «» Neighbors by Curtis Smith «» Caging the Thing by Beth Thomas «» Interviews: Steve Almond «» Robert J. Bradley «» Randall Brown «» Dan Chaon «» Terry DeHart «» Heidi W. Durrow «» Stuart Dybek «» Emily Fridlund «» Jason Jackson «» Jeff Landon «» Sean Lovelace «» Davin Malasarn «» Kuzhali Manickavel «» Mary Miller «» Susan O'Neill «» Dominic Preziosi «» Teri Davis Rouvelas «» Jessica Schantz «» Curtis Smith «» Beth Thomas «» Cover Art "Repression of an Open Mind" by Marty D. Ison «» Letter From the Editor

Top Ten Page Views for July

2007-08-02T14:41:00.001-07:00

Not a ton of shakin' up this time. The powerhouses of Almond, Amato, and Landon keep it up.

Stories
1. (1) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2. (2) Heaven by the Highwayside by Mike Amato (3/15/07)
3. (6) Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
4. (NR) 8x10 by Elizabeth Ellen (12/15/06)
5. (NR) Renoir Responds to Aline Charigot's Charges of Painting Her Ugly by Daniel Bailey (6/15/07)
6. (7) Oblivious by Gary Cadwallader (6/15/07)
7. (8) One Purple Finch by Kathy Fish (6/15/07)
8. (10) First Night by Ric Jahna (6/15/07)
9. (9) The Wedge in Between by Debbie Ann Eis (6/15/07)
10. (5) The Attraction of Asphalt by Stefani Nellen (6/15/07)

Interviews
1. (1) Mike Amato (3/15/07)
2. (8) Stuart Dybek (6/15/05)
3. (2) Tod Goldberg (3/15/07)
4. (6) Ric Jahna (6/15/07)
5. (NR) Brian Reynolds (8/15/04)
6. (NR) Steve Almond (6/15/05)
7. (NR) Stephanie Johnson (6/15/07)
8. (4) Maggie Shearon (6/15/05)
9. (NR) Tavia Stewart (6/15/07)
10. (NR) Sarah Leavitt (3/15/06)

And, since Don kvetched about not enough personal stuff on the blog, here's a pic of me celebrating my 41st birthday last month at a barbecue with friends from SurvivorBlows. (Fortunately, this pic is after the hot tub, or it could serve as an illustration for Jeff Landon's piece.)

Top Ten Page Views for June

2007-07-09T15:43:00.000-07:00

Just realized that I'm incredibly late with this. Almond's back on top again, probably because linkage to Amato from the front page went away on the 15th when the new issue went live. Speaking of Almond, I'm reading the galley of his next book right now, and there's an essay in there about Vonnegut that's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Stories
1. (2) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2. (1) Heaven by the Highwayside by Mike Amato (3/15/07)
3. (4) Ten Very Short Stories by John Leary (3/15/07)
4. (5) This Is What You Left Behind by Tod Goldberg (3/15/07)
5. (NR) The Attraction of Asphalt by Stefani Nellen (6/15/07)
6. (6) Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
7. (NR) Oblivious by Gary Cadwallader (6/15/07)
8. (NR) One Purple Finch by Kathy Fish (6/15/07)
9. (NR) The Wedge in Between by Debbie Ann Eis (6/15/07)
10. (NR) First Night by Ric Jahna (6/15/07)

Interviews
1. (1) Mike Amato (3/15/07)
2. (2) Tod Goldberg (3/15/07)
3. (7) Myfanwy Collins (3/15/07)
4. (NR) Maggie Shearon (6/15/05)
5. (NR) Nancy Zafris (3/15/07)
6. (NR) Ric Jahna (6/15/07)
7. (NR) J.M. Patrick (6/15/07)
8. (NR) Stuart Dybek (6/15/05)
9. (NR) Kathy Fish (6/15/07)
10. (6) Jeff Landon 6/15/06)

stats for Issue 16

2007-06-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

Here are the stats for issue sixteen:

Issue Sixteen (live from 3/15/07-6/14/07)

3/15-3/31: 43262 page views
4/1-4/30: 70069 page views
5/1-5/31: 64773 page views
3/1-3/14: 37953 page views
Total Issue 16: 216057 page views

That's a 9.98% increase over our last issue. Yay! And that takes us past the 200,000 page views barrier!

SmokeLong Quarterly Issue 17

2007-06-19T12:06:00.001-07:00

New issue of SmokeLong went live on Friday, and I just haven't had a chance to post about it until now. It's a beauty, guest edited by Bob Arter. Take a look!

Issue Seventeen (June 15, 2007): Renoir Responds to Aline Charigot’s Charges of Painting Her Ugly by Daniel Bailey «» Cymothoa Exigua by Christopher Battle «» Oblivious by Gary Cadwallader «» The Wedge in Between by Debbie Ann Eis «» One Purple Finch by Kathy Fish «» Clouds by James Hanley «» Mousafa's Woman by Kyle Hemmings «» First Night by Ric Jahna «» My Great-Aunt Meets Jesus at the Mobil Station in Montana by Stephanie Johnson «» Old Leningrad by Sandra Maddux-Creech «» Selective Memory by Mary McCluskey «» The Attraction of Asphalt by Stefani Nellen «» Of Potential by Jim Nelson «» Portrait of a Mother, Beforehand J.M. Patrick «» Midnight in Albuquerque by Tiffany Poremba «» Flatlining in the Edward G. Bellacosta Memorial Park by Jake Ruiter «» Prow by Claudia Smith «» I Know This Man; He is My Father. by Tavia Stewart «» In the Last Frame by Beth Thomas «» My First Two-Headed Boy by Veronica Thorn «» Interviews: Bob Arter «» Daniel Bailey «» Christopher Battle «» Gary Cadwallader «» Debbie Ann Eis «» Kathy Fish «» James Hanley «» Kyle Hemmings «» Ric Jahna «» Stephanie Johnson «» Sandra Maddux-Creech «» Mary McCluskey «» Stefani Nellen «» Jim Nelson «» J.M. Patrick «» Tiffany Poremba «» Jake Ruiter «» Claudia Smith «» Tavia Stewart «» Beth Thomas «» Veronica Thorn «» Cover Art "Peace in a Time of Monsters" by Marty D. Ison «» Letter From the Editor

Top Ten Page Views for May

2007-06-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

The king is dead, long live the king! Almond actually fell to #2 last month as Mike Amato took over the top spot. It'll be interesting to see how long Mike can maintain that place, especially since there'll be a new issue going in live on the 15th.

Stories
1. (2) Heaven by the Highwayside by Mike Amato (3/15/07)
2. (1) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
3. (3) 8x10 by Elizabeth Ellen (12/15/06)
4. (5) Ten Very Short Stories by John Leary (3/15/07)
5. (6) This Is What You Left Behind by Tod Goldberg (3/15/07)
6. (4) Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
7. (7) There Swells and Jets a Heart by Rusty Barnes (3/15/07)
8. (8) Miss Hempstead's Brother by Myfanwy Collins (3/15/07)
9. (NR) Seven in the Morning by Max Ruback (3/15/07)
10. (9) Baby in a Jar by Tom Saunders (3/15/07)

Interviews
1. (6) Mike Amato (3/15/07)
2. (1) Tod Goldberg (3/15/07)
3. (NR) Thomas Kearnes (12/15/06)
4. (2) Holly Selph (3/15/07)
5. (9) Stefani Nellen (3/15/07)
6. (10) Jeff Landon (6/15/06)
7. (NR) Myfanwy Collins (3/15/07)
8. (3) Rusty Barnes (3/15/07)
9. (NR) Spencer Dew (10/15/04)
10. (NR) Ann Walters (3/15/07)

Top Ten Page Views for April

2007-05-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

Almond is still #1, but he was seriously challenged last month by Mike Amato, whose story had only 75 less page views than Steve's. Since I'm late posting this time around, I took a little time to delve a little more deeply. 54 stories last month had 100 or more page views. Pretty cool. Also, after the top ten page views of stories, I'm including the top ten page views for interviews.

Stories
1. (1) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2. (5) Heaven by the Highwayside by Mike Amato (3/15/07)
3. (NR) 8x10 by Elizabeth Ellen (12/15/06)
4. (2) Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
5. (6) Ten Very Short Stories by John Leary (3/15/07)
6. (4) This Is What You Left Behind by Tod Goldberg (3/15/07)
7. (8) There Swells and Jets a Heart by Rusty Barnes (3/15/07)
8. (7) Miss Hempstead's Brother by Myfanwy Collins (3/15/07)
9. (NR) Baby in a Jar by Tom Saunders (3/15/07)
10. (9) The Color of Moths by Holly Selph (3/15/07)

Interviews
1. Tod Goldberg (3/15/07)
2. Holly Selph (3/15/07)
3. Rusty Barnes (3/15/07)
4. Robert Travieso (3/15/07)
5. John Leary (3/15/07)
6. Mike Amato (3/15/07)
7. Jeff Vande Zende (3/15/07)
8. Max Ruback (3/15/07)
9. Stefani Nellen (3/15/07)
10. Jeff Landon (6/15/06)

so much writerly goodness

2007-04-04T14:16:00.000-07:00

In the past few days, there has been just tons of great stuff coming out. I know I'm going to forget something, so I'll come back and edit as I remember. In no particular order:

Night Train is up and running again! And they're taking submissions. Of particular interest, they plan to publish one new flash every week. So go! Submit!

insolent rudder has a new issue up, with fiction by SLQ editor Katrina Denza, SLQ author Davin Malasarn, and SLQ author-to-be (in our upcoming issue) Debbie Ann Eis. The author spotlight shines on previous SLQ guest editor and top ten stalwart Jeff Landon, and the author interview features frequent SLQ author Susan Henderson. Also features the always cool Dennis Mahagin. That, my friends, is one hell of a lineup.

The latest Kelly Spitzer's Writer Profile Project is up: Ann Walters, who has graced SLQ's pages a couple times now, and is a very cool woman to boot. I especially loved her answer about her profile photograph: totally heart-melty.

Vestal Review has a new issue up featuring, among others, SLQ author and Flashquake editor Didi Wood.

Speaking of Flashquake, their spring issue is up, and features SLQ alum Wayne Scheer and the aforementioned Kelly Spitzer.

NOÖ Journal's latest ish is up, too, and features no SLQ alums! But it still kicks ass.

And have you read Juked? They update so frequently that it's difficult to single out an issue, per se, but some recent authors include Ann Walters (that same groovy chick in the interview link above), Cami Park, Kathy Fish, Myfanwy Collins, Elizabeth Ellen, and Joseph Young. That's a lot of very, very fine reading right there.

3:AM Magazine is another frequent updater, and some of the folks recently featured there are Claudia Smith, Kim Chinquee, Debbie Ann Eis, and Myfanwy Collins.

Finally, my absolute favorite annual issue of Hobart is live. My Mariners are 2-0 to start the season against the dastardly Oakland A's (against whom my M's went 2-17 last season!) and I'm feeling giddy. Reading Hobart's annual baseball stories only increases the giddiness.

Top Ten Page Views for March

2007-04-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

Almond's at the top, as usual, although his page views dipped below a thousand for the first time in ages. I wouldn't be too surprised to see his usual place usurped in the months to come. Except for the top three, all of the top ten are stories published in the middle of last month.

1. (1) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2. (3) Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
3. (2) A Deep Desire for Blue by Alexandra Fox (6/15/05)
4. (NR) This Is What You Left Behind by Tod Goldberg (3/15/07)
5. (NR) Heaven by the Highwayside by Mike Amato (3/15/07)
6. (NR) Ten Very Short Stories by John Leary (3/15/07)
7. (NR) Miss Hempstead's Brother by Myfanwy Collins (3/15/07)
8. (NR) There Swells and Jets a Heart by Rusty Barnes (3/15/07)
9. (NR) The Color of Moths by Holly Selph (3/15/07)
10. (NR) Seven in the Morning by Max Ruback (3/15/07)

interviewed

2007-03-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

Kelly Spitzer interviewed me today as part of her Writer Profile Project. I was totally blown away by the care and work Kelly put into this interview.

Also, check out her previous interviews with Fleur Bradley, Ellen Meister, Alicia Gifford, Kathy Fish, Aaron Burch, and Mary Akers.

stats for issue 15

2007-03-19T10:59:00.001-07:00

Here are the stats for issue fifteen:

Issue Fifteen (live from 12/15/06-3/14/07)

12/15-12/31: 35460 page views
1/1-1/31: 67285 page views
2/1-2/28: 62218 page views
3/1-3/14: 31496 page views
Total Issue 15: 196459 page views

That's a 6.68% increase over our last issue. Purty good. Not nearly the jump the last issue had, but still going in the right direction. It'll only take a 1.8% increase for issue 16 to break the 200,000 barrier. Whee!

Issue 16 is live!

2007-03-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

And it's a beauty. C'mon. Click it. You know you want to.

Top Ten Page Views for February

2007-03-01T10:57:00.000-08:00

Almond's still at the top, although the distance closed a bit. In the next few days, I should be able to post the line-up for issue 16.

1. (1) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2. (NR) A Deep Desire for Blue by Alexandra Fox (6/15/05)
3. (7) Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
4. (4) Moth by Joanne Comito (12/15/06)
5. (6) Aquarium by Nadine Darling (12/15/06)
6. (3) Untitled (Gum) by Aaron Burch (12/15/06)
7. (5) 8x10 by Elizabeth Ellen (12/15/06)
8. (8) On the Way to Work by Stephen Elliott (12/15/06)
9. (NR) Prey by Myfanwy Collins (3/15/06)
10. (10) I Am Waiting for My Dogs to Die by Davin Malasarn (12/15/06)

Top Ten Page Views for January

2007-02-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

Lotsa shakin' up in the top ten after issue 15's first full month online. Eight out of the ten are from the latest issue, which reflects just how amazing I think this issue is. Only stalwarts Almond and Landon remained here from previous issues. (Almond continues to post insane numbers: just under 6,000 page views in January.)

1. (1) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2. (NR) Photographers by Joseph Young (12/15/06)
3. (5) Untitled (Gum) by Aaron Burch (12/15/06)
4. (NR) Moth by Joanne Comito (12/15/06)
5. (7) 8x10 by Elizabeth Ellen (12/15/06)
6. (8) Aquarium by Nadine Darling (12/15/06)
7. (2) Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
8. (NR) On the Way to Work by Stephen Elliott (12/15/06)
9. (NR) Disgusting by Pam Mosher (12/15/06)
10. (NR) I Am Waiting for My Dogs to Die by Davin Malasarn (12/15/06)

Top Ten Page Views for December

2007-01-02T11:55:00.000-08:00

Steve Almond continues to be Steve Almond: over 6,000 page views for "Pornography" again in December. Three stories from the latest issue crack the top ten (and if you haven't read Issue 15 yet, what are you waiting for?) in the half-month it was live. Also, an oldie from Chad Simpson makes the list. The rest are the stories that have been here a lot. Happy reading!

1. (1) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2. (2) Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
3. (7) Irvin Hammers a Cat House by Mike Young (6/15/05)
4. (4) Prey by Myfanwy Collins (3/15/06)
5. (NR) Untitled (Gum) by Aaron Burch (12/15/06)
6. (3) Axl Rose Is My Dog by Scott Ford (12/15/04)
7. (NR) 8x10 by Elizabeth Ellen (12/15/06)
8. (NR) Aquarium by Nadine Darling (12/15/06)
9. (NR) Miracle by Chad Simpson (6/15/06)
10. (10) Brisket by Stuart Dybek (6/15/05)

In the next few days, if I'm feeling particularly industrious, I may try to assemble a top page view list for all of 2006. Here's hoping everyone has a creative, productive, and happy 2007.

stats for issue 14

2006-12-17T09:20:00.000-08:00

Here are the stats for issue fourteen:

Issue Fourteen (live from 9/15/06-12/14/06)

9/15-9/30: 29775 page views
10/1-10/31: 60608 page views
11/1-11/30: 58636 page views
12/1-12/14: 35143 page views
Total Issue 14: 184162 page views

That's a 20.29% increase over our last issue. Looks like we're trending in the right direction again.

Three Announcements

2006-12-15T19:02:00.000-08:00

1) Issue Fifteen is live! Clicky, clicky!

Guest edited by Matt Bell, with writing by Aaron Burch, Joanne Comito, Nadine Darling, Elizabeth Ellen, Anne Elliott, Stephen Elliott, Kathy Fish, Thomas Kearnes, Davin Malasarn, Pam Mosher, J.D. Riso, J. Chris Rock, Chris Sheehan, Paul Silverman, Hailey Sowden, Fred Spears, John Sperling, Joseph Young, Mike Young, and Catherine Zeidler.

2) Issue 16 will be guest edited by Alicia Gifford, so get your subs on!

3) The winner of the 2007 Kathy Fish Fellowship is Beth Thomas. She will receive $500.00 over the course of the next year and will be published in each of our 2007 issues. Many, many thanks to all of the amazing applicants, and congratulations both to Beth and to finalists Terri Brown-Davidson and Kelly Spitzer. We can't wait to start working with Beth in the new year.

lineup for issue 15

2006-12-04T11:01:00.000-08:00

As promised, here's a sneak preview of the lineup for issue 15, guest edited by Matt Bell. I love this issue. There are a few authors being published for the first time (one is a high school freshman!), which is always a delight, the return of some favorites, and some authors I've long admired whom we've never published. Randall Brown refers to one of the flashes as his "favoritest flash ever," and one of the flashes stylistically reminds me of what I'd write if only I had the skills. Matt did an amazing, amazing job.

Aaron Burch
Joanne Comito
Nadine Darling
Elizabeth Ellen
Anne Elliott
Stephen Elliott
Kathy Fish
Thomas Kearnes
Davin Malasarn
Pam Mosher
J.D. Riso
J. Chris Rock
Chris Sheehan
Paul Silverman
Hailey Sowden
Fred Spears
John Sperling
Joseph Young
Mike Young
Catherine Zeidler

While putting this list together, I kept finding myself wanting to make more comments about the love I have for this issue. Can't wait til this beauty goes live December 15.

Top Ten Page Views for November

2006-12-01T11:43:00.000-08:00

Well, Almond continues to explode. Over 6,000 page views for "Pornography" last month. And an old favorite makes a return after a long absence. In other news, I'll be offering a glimpse of our lineup for issue 15 in the next few days. It's a great one. Without further ado, the top ten for November:

1. (1) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2. (3) Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
3. (8) Axl Rose Is My Dog by Scott Ford (12/15/04)
4. (2) Prey by Myfanwy Collins (3/15/06)
5. (4) Everything by C.B. Anderson (9/15/06)
6. (5) Twelve Steps Down by Mark Budman
7. (6) Irvin Hammers a Cat House by Mike Young (6/15/05)
8. (7) Hands by Stace Budzko (9/15/06)
9. (10) Chancing by Utahna Faith (9/15/06)
10. (NR) Brisket by Stuart Dybek (6/15/05)

Top Ten Page Views for October

2006-11-01T11:23:00.000-08:00

Not a lot of shaking up in October's top ten. A few pieces from the latest issue mixed in with several pieces that have been in the top ten often. The #1 exploded in October, registering over 3,000 page views. I'm adding last month's ranking in parentheses this time around.

1. (1) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2. (2) Prey by Myfanwy Collins (3/15/06)
3. (3) Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
4. (6) Everything by CB Anderson (9/15/06)
5. (8) Twelve Steps Down by Mark Budman (9/15/06)
6. (NR) Irvin Hammers a Cat House by Mike Young (6/15/05)
7. (NR) Hands by Stace Budzko (9/15/06)
8. (7) Axl Rose Is My Dog by Scott Ford (12/15/04)
9. (4) How the Broken Lead the Blind Until They Both Become Something Else Entirely by Matt Bell (6/15/06)
10. (NR) Chancing by Utahna Faith (9/15/06)

Germans love "Pornography"

2006-10-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, I get curious about what the stats for a month are looking like before the month ends. Today is one of those days. And I notice that, for the month so far, Steve Almond's Pornography is not only in its accustomed spot atop the list of most viewed flashes on SmokeLong, it's having another berserk month, looking like it might actually register 2,000 hits for the month. So I got curious. I've wondered for some time now where all the hits are coming from, but haven't gone into the log files to find out. The log files, alas, are somewhat skimpy--they don't show what the referring link is, which is what I really want to know. But I still wanted to know physically where these links are coming from. Is there one person obsessed? Well, here's where they're coming from today:

00:06:54 Germany
00:25:57 Morocco
00:36:18 Morocco
00:45:36 Belgium
00:45:46 Spain
01:28:42 Australia
01:58:54 Brazil
02:02:47 Canada (Montreal)
02:07:45 Germany
02:54:39 Colombia
02:58:17 United States (Live Oaks, FL)
03:13:40 Dominican Republic
03:34:44 Mexico
04:04:22 Germany
05:17:57 Germany
05:29:59 Costa Rica
05:41:27 Greece
05:51:59 United States (Sunnyvale, CA)
06:07:37 Turkey
06:12:54 Netherlands
06:34:44 Germany
06:49:01 Germany
06:52:59 Japan
06:53:00 Japan
06:55:11 Germany
07:13:35 Romania
07:23:11 Germany
07:26:17 Germany
07:38:36 Macedonia
07:40:37 Finland
07:43:53 United States (Redmond, WA)
08:04:47 Germany
08:41:16 United States (Dulles, VA)
08:47:57 Czech Republic
08:54:39 Germany
09:28:13 United States (Sunnyvale, CA)
09:29:32 Turkey
09:36:47 Italy
09:47:05 Germany
09:47:08 Germany
09:57:02 Finland
09:57:43 Romania
09:58:33 Austria
10:04:59 Romania
10:17:21 Portugal
10:24:24 Germany
10:36:30 Turkey
10:38:38 France
10:42:35 Turkey
10:45:13 Italy
10:51:51 France
10:53:07 France
10:55:16 Norway
10:57:46 Romania
10:59:51 Saudi Arabia
11:00:31 Germany
11:19:26 Germany
11:19:43 Germany
11:30:32 Germany
11:37:59 Lithuania
11:40:13 Germany
11:42:36 Germany
11:48:39 Germany
11:57:59 Turkey

Okay, that's a half day's worth of data. Which leaves me even more bemused than I was before I began this exercise. How many of the people above are likely to be English speakers? Who are these people? Has Steve's piece somehow made it into an international (most likely German, based on the above) porn directory? I have no idea. But it makes me more curious than ever where our traffic is coming from. I'll have to see what resources I can tap to find what the referring pages are... stay tuned.

why aren't people outraged?

2006-10-18T11:48:00.000-07:00

First they came for the Socialists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left
to speak up for me.

interviewed

2006-10-12T10:42:00.000-07:00

Kay Sexton interviewed me on her blog today. Reading it back, the one thing that bugs me about it is that I'm so damned serious. I used to be funny. When did I stop being funny?

Amazon reviews

2006-10-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

Did you know that Amazon hosts reviews of web sites now? I didn't, either. And SLQ has a page where it can be reviewed. Pretty barebones right now. But if you're a fan (or, okay, even if you're not and want to pan us), consider heading on over here and giving us a review.

Top Ten Page Views for September

2006-10-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

Steve Almond is still on top, although Myfanwy Collins came very close to unseating him. A couple stories from the issue released in the middle of the month, and I imagine they'll show more prominently in October, once they've had a full month's worth of page views. Scott Ford is still hanging in there with his piece that will celebrate its third birthday in December. Choke on that, print mags.

1) Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2) Prey by Myfanwy Collins (3/15/06)
3) Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
4) How the Broken Lead the Blind Until They Both Become Something Else Entirely by Matt Bell (6/15/06)
5) Daffodil by Kathy Fish (6/15/06)
6) Everything by CB Anderson (9/15/06)
7) Axl Rose Is My Dog by Scott Ford (12/15/04)
8) Twelve Steps Down by Mark Budman (9/15/06)
9) A Foreign Woman by Roberta Allen (6/15/06)
10) See Odi Naked by Lisa K. Buchanan (6/15/06)

new review on SmokeLong

2006-09-29T17:23:00.000-07:00

This actually went up a couple days ago, but I just didn't get around to posting about it here til now. Ellen Parker has a) found an amazing piece of flash and b) written an equally compelling review. You should read the story and the review. Right now.

issue 14 is live!

2006-09-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

With great thanks to Robbie Shapard, James Thomas, and all the writers, our special "Flash Fiction Forward" issue of SLQ is now live. Of the 80 authors in FFF, we were fortunate enough to be able to publish 24 in this issue, plus a piece by one of the editors, Robert Shapard. Great flash by CB Anderson, Mark Budman, Stace Budzko, Robert Earle, Utahna Faith, Sherrie Flick, R. L. Futrell, David Galef, Bayard Godsave, Tom Hazuka, Jennifer A. Howard, G. A. Ingersoll, Kit Coyne Irwin, Barbara Jacksha, John McCaffrey, Peter Mehlman, Christopher Merrill, Stacey Richter, Bruce Holland Rogers, Robert Shapard, Ersi Sotiropoulos, J. David Stevens, Melanie Rae Thon, Katharine Weber, and Kathleen Wheaton, with cover art, as always, by the inimitable Marty Ison.

Click the cover!

stats for issue 13

2006-09-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

Here are the stats for issue thirteen:

Issue Thirteen (live from 6/15/06-9/14/06)

6/15-6/30: 29481 page views
7/1-7/31: 51817 page views
8/1-8/31: 42117 page views
9/1-9/14: 29679 page views
Total Issue 13: 153094 page views

Hmmm. Down 17% since our last issue. Not sure what that means? Maybe less people reading during summer break? Or, perhaps more likely, since we were closed for subs, not as many writers were swinging by to see what we publish. Hopefully, this won't become a trend.

sneak peek at issue 14

2006-09-13T17:10:00.000-07:00

I've been busily putting together issue 14, which will come out in two days, so I thought I'd give folks a sneak peek at the lineup:

CB Anderson
Mark Budman
Stace Budzko
Robert Earle
Utahna Faith
Sherrie Flick
R. L. Futrell
David Galef
Bayard Godsave
Tom Hazuka
Jennifer A. Howard
G. A. Ingersoll
Kit Coyne Irwin
Barbara Jacksha
John McCaffrey
Peter Mehlman
Christopher Merrill
Stacey Richter
Bruce Holland Rogers
Robert Shapard
Ersi Sotiropoulos
J. David Stevens
Melanie Rae Thon
Katharine Weber
Kathleen Wheaton

A slightly larger issue than usual. Check in Friday to see why.

latest review is up

2006-09-04T16:35:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit late posting about this, but check out Joseph Young's review of Mary Miller's Broken.

Top Ten for August

2006-09-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

Here are the top ten flashes in page views for August:

1. Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2. Prey by Myfanwy Collins (3/15/06)
3. How the Broken Lead the Blind Until They Both Become Something Else Entirely by Matt Bell (6/15/06)
4. A Foreign Woman by Roberta Allen (6/15/06)
5. Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
6. See Odi Naked by Lisa K. Buchanan (6/15/06)
7. Memory of Sky by Jai Clare (6/15/06)
8. Axl Rose Is My Dog by Scott Ford (12/15/04)
9. Fetichismo by Christopher Battle (6/15/06)
10. Daffodil by Kathy Fish (6/15/06)

And we're open for submissions again! Wheeeeeee!

found stories

2006-08-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

Remember that poetry idea I stole from Sharon Hurlbut a while back? Well, Fringes has since stolen it from me, and taken it a couple steps further: rather than poetry, she built a story, and she also made each piece of the story happen in the order that the blogs appear in her sidebar. Zoinks! As if that wasn't enough, FlashFlood took it one step further yet: she made every phrase in her story link back to the posts in the blogs from which they came. Yowza! Now I'm thinking I might have to do this again with the new rules. But first, I gotta write this week's review for SLQ.

Update: Fringes and Flood are holding a contest. Or an experiment. Or both. Jump in, see how you do.

latest review is up

2006-08-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

Latest review is up. I love the personal angle in this one. Thomas White reviews Visit Home: March 2006 by Kevin Walters.

In other news, E and the kids and I all went up to Canada over the weekend to hang out with writer friends Patricia Parkinson and Phil Jones and their family. Lots of fun, although the border crossing takes way too much time. I'll post more about it once I've found the cable for my camera and can post a few pix.

Buy a book for a soldier.

2006-08-02T17:21:00.000-07:00

If you know me, you know how I feel about the war. And if you don't know me, going through early entries in this blog would probably clue you in pretty quickly. That said, there's a program that I think just about anyone, regardless of political stripe, can support. Buy a book for a soldier. The list of titles is fairly limited, but I can vouch for the writing of one of the authors, Tom Sheehan, as we published his work in SmokeLong. I'd love to see some larger book retailers undertake such a program. Kudos to Press 53, and thanks to Clifford Garstang for pointing it out.

a deeper look at July stats

2006-08-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

It looks like July was a really good month. I don't know how much reviews did or did not contribute to that beyond the raw numbers for the reviews, i.e., I don't know how many people came to read a review and then surfed to other parts of the site as well. Here are some numbers for July, though:

Analysis for the Month of Jul, 2006.

Total pages tracked during period: 568
Total page views recorded: 51817
The average number of views per page: 91.23

I don't know why I've never really looked at that whole section of the stats before beyond the total number of page views. It's pretty interesting. For example, I knew we had a lot of pages, but I had no idea it was anything like 568! That's a really deep site. It's also really interesting to me that on average a page gets viewed over 90 times a month. That means the average story gets viewed over a thousand times a year!

As far as raw numbers for the reviews, here's the dope:

reviews index: 274
071006 (Blood): 173
071906 (After My Nephew...): 126
072406 (Remember): 104

073106 (Disintegration) was posted too late in the day on the 31st to register much, but I assume its numbers will reflect similar average views per day. Breaking out the reviews by average per day looks like this (I'm giving each a one-day period of assuming it wasn't live, because I think most of them were posted at night of the date indicated, so didn't get a full day's worth of data for that day):

071006 (21 days): 8.2 views per day
071906 (12 days): 10.5
072406 (7 days): 14.9

So the average continued to go up, probably as more people became aware that reviews were being posted on a regular basis. And they're already getting higher averages than the overall site average, which is pretty impressive for a feature that was launched somewhat on the down-low. I'd say it's a pretty great success. :)

Top Ten Page Views for July

2006-08-02T10:30:00.000-07:00

I'm going to follow this post up with another about the overall stats for July, because in answering a question Randall Brown had about how the reviews are doing, I took a much deeper look than usual. July's #1 and #2 look very familar, and most of the rest of the list is from the latest issue, with the exception of #9, which was published almost two years ago! I'll evangelize over and over and over again the power of online mags to put stories in the hands of readers, and this is one more example.

1. Pornography by Steve Almond (6/15/05)
2. Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (9/15/05)
3. How the Broken Lead the Blind Until They Both Become Something Else Entirely by Matt Bell (6/15/06)
4. Prey by Myfanwy Collins (6/15/06)
5. A Foreign Woman by Roberta Allen (6/15/06)
6. Memory of Sky by Jai Clare (6/15/06)
7. See Odi Naked by Lisa K. Buchanan (6/15/06)
8. Daffodil by Kathy Fish
9. Axl Rose Is My Dog by Scott Ford (12/15/04)
10. Tough Act by Steven J. McDermott (6/15/06)

Ellen Meister

2006-08-01T11:00:00.000-07:00

Previous contributor, guest editor, staff member, and continual good friend Ellen Meister's debut novel, Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA is in stores today! Patricia Parkinson interviews her about the book, and you can also read an earlier interview by SLQ here (and read her wonderful story while you're at it). More about Ellen on her web site.

the latest review is up

2006-08-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

Katrina Denza reviews Kelly Spitzer's Disintegration this week. Great review, fascinating story. Go read 'em both.

off my ass

2006-07-31T14:35:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure I actually remember the last time I submitted any of my work anywhere. It's been a while. The other day, though, I read a hilarious piece about Cookie Monster over at McSweeney's, and it reminded me, just a touch, of a piece I wrote a couple months ago about Winnie the Pooh. So I just emailed it off to 'em. Whether they take it or not is of little consequence (although it's a great pub and I'd love to be in it). Just seemed like it was time to put some of my work out there again.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the weekend included tie-dye, croquet, and bocce.

weekends in Seattle

2006-07-28T12:49:00.000-07:00

I've been living back in Seattle for two months now, and I love it. I knew that I would. Poulsbo is a nice little town, but... it's just that... a nice little (pop. 8000) town. With the weekend nearly here, I'm thinking about things to do with the boys, as usual. I'd thought we might go to the beach again, but it's finally cooled off from the high 90's back down to 61 (as of right now). In Poulso, our options were movies, playing video games, church, and um... hmm... that about covers it. In the two months I've been here, here's a partial (partial because I'm sure I'll forget something) list of activities the boys and I have done:

picked two cherry trees, one with succulent, sweet, juicy cherries, one with very sour cherries that are really only good for making pies
made a cherry pie from scratch
went to the beach and built huge sand castles and caught crabs
been to about a dozen different playgrounds/parks
hiked a nature trail
got a pet rat
went bowling
went to the horse races
went to the Seattle Center and rode the rides, including the log ride and roller coaster
pet-sitted for two dogs, three cats, and two rats
went to a horse farm
had water fights
saw "Monster House"
went to a new church, but decided to keep looking because they didn't have Sunday School for grade school kids during services
played outside a LOT (this is significantly different from Poulsbo in that I lived in an apartment complex where I didn't really trust my youngest not to run off and we play at E's house in a fenced in back yard here)
went to the zoo (can't believe I almost forgot that one)

That's a pretty great list for two months, no? And we've only just barely scratched the surface of all the things there are to do in Seattle. It's so good to be back here.

did a reading last night

2006-07-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

My favorite book store in town does an open mike reading series the last Wednesday of every month. I'd only been to one before and that was a hair over three years ago to promote SmokeLong and drum up submissions for our first issue. Amazing how the mag has grown since then. Last night, I asked E what she wanted to do and she said she was out of reading material and would I like to go to a bookstore? Funny you should mention it, sez I, I'd been thinking about going to Elliott Bay to do their open mike and promote SLQ, but I'd pretty much decided not to since we're closed for subs right now. But it would be fun, so you wanna go to that and then browse the books after? Sure, sez she.

I'd have liked to have had a teeny bit more time to prepare: take some time to select what to read, print it out, peruse it a few times to re-familiarize myself with the rhythms so that I could make more eye contact with the audience. From getting off the bus to getting to E's to getting back downtown didn't allow for much time, though, so I grabbed two print pubs I was in (both defunct now, alas) and read from those. 'Twas fun. I plugged the mag (and was surprised that the emcee actually remembered that night three years ago, even saying, "Yeah, you were here three years ago." Good memory!) and read Flicker and Pink Fuzzy Bunny Slippers. It went pretty well and it was great to be in front of an audience again (for those who don't know, my creative jones used to be filled with acting).

All of the other readers did poetry (we were a little bit late, so I may have missed one or two, and they may have done prose), so I'm not sure whether plugging the mag for subs will result in any, but it was still fun. I'm clueless about poetry, so I'm not sure how good the other readers' work was, but there were a couple I really enjoyed. Will have to do it again some time.

best news of the day

2006-07-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

Man, I hate bumping down the poem idea already, but I'm giddy about something my favorite baseball team FINALLY did today. They designated Carl Everett for assignment! For those of you who don't follow baseball, a few brief tidbits about Carl:

1) He hates homosexuals (which probably isn't that unusual in professional sports, but he's vocal about it).
2) He doesn't believe dinosaurs existed.
3) He's a fundamentalist, if the above two didn't give it away (and this, in and of itself, doesn't bother me; it's other pieces that go along with it).
4) He nearly lost his child to the foster care system in New York because of alleged child abuse.

Those things alone would make me dislike him, of course, even vehemently. But sports fans are willing to overlook a lot of bad things about players on their team if they actually help the team on the field. C-Rex doesn't and hasn't. He has the worst stats of any designated hitter in Major League Baseball. By a LOT. We have a pitcher who is 43 years old who has marginally better hitting stats. Get the picture?

In his place, the Mariners have called up an Australian kid named Chris Snelling who is impossible not to like. He has been injured so many times and has always come back with such tenacity that one of his nicknames is Seabiscuit.

Goodbye, C-Rex. Helllllllllloooo, Doyle!

(And I'm going nuts because my favorite Mariners blog, USS Mariner is down at the moment, so I can't celebrate with my fellow hard-core stathead fans.)

my feeble attempt at a blog poem

2006-07-26T13:23:00.000-07:00

This was sort of fun, but I didn't do as good a job as Sharon did. Here's my attempt, followed by the blogs from which the lines came:

"we just want you to be happy"

despicable characters who have a moment of redemption
will threaten to tear you in two

Enough about death for now

despite my best efforts, a lot of concentration, and several curse words,
I have never vomited over a guy before
Made from spare car and computer parts,
he'd already fulfilled his calling, but didn't know it.
They aren't actually slathered with honey.

Forgive me while I powder my nose
obsessively, while sipping Red Stripe

A photo is helpful but certainly not necessary.

Catt Poop
Katrina Denza
Myfanwy Collins
Daphne Bueter
Sharon Hurlbut
History Detective
Matt Getty
Sarcastic Fringehead
Mike Young
Stephanie Anagnoson
Theresa Boyar
Ellen Meister

Oh, in case you haven't read Sharon's post, the idea is to pull lines from blogs you like to read to assemble a poem. The order of the blogs listed at the end corresponds to the order of the lines in the poem.

a poem

2006-07-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

Hey, kids! Go read this post by Sharon Hurlbut. I'm not generally much into poetry, but I love what she did with lines she pulled from blogs she regularly reads (including--lucky me!--this one). If I'm feeling particularly industrious, I'll have to try constructing one myself a bit later.

Randall Brown reviews Myfanwy Collins' "Remember"

2006-07-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

The latest review from the SLQ staff is up, and it's terrific. Check out Randall Brown's review of Remember, written by the sublime Myfanwy Collins.

I love dialogue.

2006-07-20T17:37:00.000-07:00

Sycamore Review has two blog posts up in response to Steven's review: SmokeLong Quarterly and How Do You Classify Prose Poems? and Editorial Response: That Awesome Cow-in-the-Tree Thing. They pose the question as to whether definitions of literary forms matter and what those definitions should be, a conversation that's been going on for years, sometimes heatedly. I like a lot one bit in particular of what Rebekah Silverman, the editor, had to say: "As SR's editor, I don't really see it as my job to label work into genres: I'm fine taking an author's determination of their work's genre. I do, however, see it as my job, to push those genres by juxtaposing them, mixing them up."

Hell, yeah. Genres should be pushed and artists should be given room to color outside the lines. Which I also think is one of my great joys regarding flash: that it gives more room in its fuzziness of definition to artists to push the language in interesting ways. I've actually said this for a while now. I can even point to a quote! Whee! In Miriam Kotzin's An Essay on Flash Fiction in Per Contra, she posed a very similar question: "When asked about the relationship between prose poems and flash, Dave Clapper, editor of the excellent SmokeLong Quarterly, which publishes flash and interviews with the authors, said, 'I don't really distinguish between the two. Some flash pieces are definitely prose poems. Many aren't. Prose poetry is just one of many valid writing styles, and flash doesn't exclude any styles. I think even some straight poetry could be considered flash.'"

I encourage y'all to jump into the discussion over at SR. It's a great-looking publication with some terrific writing, and this topic presents a discussion that is almost always interesting.

new review on SLQ

2006-07-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

A new review by Steven Gullion is up on SLQ. Terrific review of a very, very fine story by Carla Panciera. What I like best about the review is how much it made me want to read the story, and I'm so glad that Steven found this one, because it's terrific work.

40/2

2006-07-13T17:45:00.000-07:00

Three days ago was my 40th birthday. Beats the alternative, right? And two years ago today, I met with E for drinks, and that led to our first "date" a few days later. I'm a lucky, lucky man.

New section on SLQ

2006-07-12T13:31:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the reviews of Fringehead, The Angler, and Storyglossia, we've started reviewing stories on SmokeLong. Index is here, and the first review is here. Look for new reviews once a week.

Top Ten Page Views for June

2006-07-02T23:57:00.000-07:00

Interesting list. I'll be really interested to see how much this shakes up in July, once the June issue has had a full month of page views.

1. Pornography by Steve Almond (June 2005)
2. Irvin Hammers a Cat House by Mike Young (June 2005)
3. Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (September 2005)
4. Memory of Sky by Jai Clare (June 2006)
5. How the Broken Lead the Blind Until They Both Become Something Else Entirely by Matt Bell (June 2006)
6. Daffodil by Kathy Fish (June 2006)
7. Friendship/Love by Ania Vesenny (March 2006)
8. A Foreign Woman by Roberta Allen (June 2006)
9. The Captain by Ron Currie, Jr. (June 2006)
10. Tough Act by Steven J. McDermott (June 2006)

summer

2006-06-30T17:04:00.000-07:00

The weekend is almost here, which means the kids will be with me again. Beautiful, beautiful E wrote something great inspired by our time at her place last weekend and she's agreed to let me share it here. She also took the accompanying picture, which I love (you can click on it to see it full-size). Here are her words:

How does the seal go? the small boy cries, standing naked in the kiddy pool, big water-filled gut, and his father makes the noise, and the boy says, I'm a seal, I am bigger than the sharks, and the boy says, What's this? Ribbit and the father calls, A frog! and the boy goes, Good! and he aims the hose, set on Jet, into the plum tree leaves and says, I'm giving them food so they won't die, and then he turns the Jet onto the little dog, who devours it, section by section, as if it were a rattler, and the father calls, Don't get the dog wet again! And the dog stands away and shimmies her drenched fur, a smart little dance, her lion head first and then her tummy and then her bushy tail, and her slender back legs stretch high, wriggle, and her rear paws leave the ground and the boy shoots the water at her, yells, Do it again!

odds and ends

2006-06-28T22:53:00.000-07:00

A site called Realbook.com took the time to do a nice little write-up of this here blog. Looks like a pretty cool site. I'll have to do a little surfing over there.

Also, this week I got to see some old friends from my acting days. My old writing partner, Stephanie Roberts, does dell'arte clown work and was part of a benefit to send some local clowns to India, so I attended that Monday night. Ran into a couple of folks who started in the Seattle theater scene the same year I did (1990) and who are still touring the world and producing theater and now live about two miles from me. Also ran into Brett Fetzer, another fringe theater guy from back in the day who's still going strong and who we published back in issue two. So nice to be back in the city again.

Oh, and I'll be starting an editing contract with a major online bookseller next week. You know the one, but I won't say the name, as I generally try to keep blog life and work life separate. Whee!

7 Things Meme

2006-06-20T18:14:00.000-07:00

Eep! I just did one of my periodic Technorati searches and realized I'd been tagged by both Ellen Meister and Katie Weekley for a meme... in February. I'm a bad blogger. So here, at last, are my 7 things.

Seven things to do before I die:
1. Get both of my kids through college.
2. Finish a novel.
3. Quit smoking.
4. Make sure SmokeLong isn't something that'll die with me.
5. Make enough money that my kids don't have to support me when I'm old.
6. Get a novel published.
7. Get back on stage again.

Seven things I cannot do:
1. Eat green olives.
2. Vote for a Bush.
3. Watch golf.
4. Read a romance novel.
5. Play the banjo (it's not an instrument you can learn to play quietly, or I'd probably try).
6. Wear tighty-whities.
7. Go off my meds.

Seven things that attract me to my mate:
1. Her intelligence.
2. Her honesty.
3. Her eyes.
4. Her... well, I could make the parts of her body several entries, but I'll just say her body. Yum.
5. Her talent.
6. Her creativity.
7. Her compassion.
(This was the easiest seven to fill out, by far.)

Seven things I say:
1. That's a good question.
2. Leave your brother alone.
3. I love you.
4. Do you have to go potty?
5. Yes, you're very cute. (I say this to pets a lot.)
6. Whee! (I actually type this more than actually saying it.)
7. I don't know.

Seven books I love:
1. "The River Why" by David James Duncan
2. "My Life in Heavy Metal" by Steve Almond
3. "The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood
4. "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" by Michael Chabon
5. "The Coast of Chicago" by Stuart Dybek
6. "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
7. "Gilead" by Marilyn Robinson

Seven movies that I've loved:
1. "Delicatessen"
2. "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai"
3. "Off the Map"
4. "The Princess Bride"
5. "My Dinner With Andre"
6. "This Is Spinal Tap"
7. "Some Kind of Monster"

Seven People I Tag (gonna go with folks outside the usual Zoe suspects, since this meme seems to have made that circuit already):
1. MiamiCatt
2. Breezy
3. HistoryDetective
4. Don
5. PhoenixMons
6. Matt Getty
7. CQVenus

The Angler

2006-06-19T18:10:00.000-07:00

I'm really digging on a fairly new publication called The Angler. In addition to publishing flash fiction, they also publish reviews of flash fiction. In issue three, there are two such reviews, both of them noteworthy to SmokeLong afficionados:

Peter Anderson reviews Katrina Denza's What She Gave to the Sea, which appeared in the December 15 issue of SmokeLong. And, of course, Kat just guest edited the June 15 issue and is joining us full-time on the editorial staff.

Joseph Young reviews Kathy Fish's The Photograph, which appeared in issue 6 of InkPot. Kath, of course, was our long-time fiction editor, and Joe has appeared in SLQ more than any other author (five times).

I love the idea of lit mags including reviews of pieces from other lit mags. We absolutely should all be promoting one another. The more readers one magazine has, the more readers another is likely to gain. I think I may drop Donovan Hall (The Angler's editor and publisher) a line to ask if he'd mind if we started doing something similar at SLQ. Y'all should absolutely go read his very fine magazine.

Now about that cover...

2006-06-17T17:31:00.000-07:00

I know that a lot of people have had very strong reactions to the current cover, some positive, some negative. I don't think I've yet heard anyone who had a neutral reaction to it. So I'll paste here a little of my logic in deciding to use it. Here, edited a tiny bit so it makes sense without context, is something I posted in a discussion of the painting. And I (and I'm sure Marty, too) welcome all comments on the cover, positive or negative:

Maybe it's not my job as an editor to incite discussion, but dialogue is largely what I hoped for in choosing to use this cover. I think it's true that some folks new to the magazine may be repulsed enough to turn away and not read what is within. I also think that there are other readers new to the magazine who will be struck enough by it to delve in further, and hopefully to delve deeply. We're seeing a case of this already on a blog called On Life as a Sarcastic FringeHead--she was so intrigued by the cover that she dove in and devoured the entire issue and is now going through and writing reviews for every single piece. That's not just being intrigued, that's being captivated. That's giving serious thought to the material within.

Was I going for shock value? Was Marty? I can't speak for Marty, so I'll only speak for myself. I'd be lying to say that I didn't think anyone would be shocked by this, but that's not my primary motivator. When a friend asked me the other night what my favorite story was, after thinking about it for a while, I told her the cover was my favorite story in this issue. And that's not to disparage any of the stories within--I love them all. But as much as I've loved Marty's artwork for every cover, I've never really thought of any of them as being stories. This is, and it's a very strong story and one that is open to an incredible amount of interpretation (as was seen in the thread where this originally appeared).

Many people have had the initial reaction of turning away. I had the same feeling. But people are coming back to it. "What does this say? What does it make me feel? Why does it make me feel this way?" To affect people this way, to make them feel deeply and think deeply... isn't that one of art's greatest purposes? Maybe its single greatest purpose?

Again, I totally see the point about whether it is welcoming or not, and I've worried a great deal both about whether this would turn too many people away. In the end, I felt like the story this painting has to tell and the dialogue(s) that would hopefully result from its use were too compelling to pass on it.

So... as Linda Richman said, "Discuss."

reviews of stories in issue 13

2006-06-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

Gotta love this. A reader of Katrina's blog is so taken with the current issue that she's reviewing every single story within the issue on her blog. Check it out: On Life as a Sarcastic Fringehead.

stats for issue 12

2006-06-16T01:20:00.000-07:00

Here are the stats for issue twelve:

Issue Twelve(live from 3/15/06-6/14/06)
3/15-3/31: 48338 page views
4/1-4/30: 51800 page views
5/1-5/31: 60645 page views
6/1-6/14: 23620 page views
Total Issue 12: 184403 page views

Holy cow. I thought the jump of about 15% in page views for our last issue was big. The jump this time is 37%. That's just insane. And it looks like the major part of the spike was in the first two weeks the issue was live. I hate to spout cliches, but maybe we hit some kind of tipping point recently? It seems very likely that we'll crack 200,000 page views with the issue that just went live. That'd require a comparitively modest bump of 8%. Who'd've thunk it?

Oh, and by the way... happy birthday to us. With issue 13, we've now published three years worth of issues.

issue 13 is live!

2006-06-15T11:27:00.000-07:00

And it's a beauty. Katrina Denza has been amazing as our guest editor. Dig this lineup: Roberta Allen, Christopher Battle, Matt Bell, Lisa K. Buchanan, Jai Clare, Ron Currie, Jr., Steve Cushman, David Erlewine, Kathy Fish, Mike Hagemann, Jennifer A. Howard, Jeff Landon, Steven J. McDermott, Srdan Papic, Ellen Parker, Mary Lynn Reed, Chad Simpson, Claudia Smith, Girija Tropp, and Joseph Young.

Click the pic to read now!

The Canadian Writers Collective

2006-06-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

Hey, kids! You owe it to yourself to check out a newish blog that features some very, very fine writers. The Canadian Writers Collective is chock full of rich, buttery goodness. Check out the line-up: Thea Atkinson, Melissa Bell, Anne Chudobiak, Tricia Dower, Steven Gajadhar, Tamara J. Lee, Pasha Malla, Antonios Maltezos, Anna McDougall, Patricia Parkinson, Denis Taillefer, Craig Terlson, Andrew Tibbetts. That's a hell of a lot of talent right there. Go! Read!

a good day for freedom

2006-06-07T18:25:00.000-07:00

Seems so rare lately that we hear anything good about Americans' rights. Every day, another seems to be taken away. So today's news brought two good stories, both related to gay rights. Happy day!

Senate rejects gay marriage ban
Eyman fails to deliver

Now if only Eyman would just go away...

pride of the day

2006-06-06T16:25:00.000-07:00

One thing I forgot to mention in my loves of the day post: the church where my first son was baptised and where we went this weekend (and will continue to go). I was crazy about many of the people in the congregation of the church I was involved with on the other side of the water, but occasionally, the politics of the church were diametrically opposed to mine. For example, I've often used a church's views on hommosexuality as a litmus test. While the issue itself is important to me, it is also reflective of a larger world view. It's interesting to note, for example, that Jesus is never attributed as saying anything regarding homosexuality. In the entire Bible, I believe there are 8 references to homosexuality (and some of those are debatable). In other words, views on homosexuality are hardly a cornerstone of the religion. And yet, to hear the most vocal religious "leaders" today, one would think it's one of the church's most vital issues. So... I want my church, at the very least, to be ambivalent about the issue, and preferably, to welcome homosexuals into the congregation with love. The pastor at my previous church and I disagree, at least to an extent, on this. I like him a lot, and I think he is a good man, but on this issue, we are in disagreement. And it's an important issue to me.

The church that I'm now attending, on the other hand, bills itself as "an open and affirming congregation." I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I believe that close to 50% of the congregation is gay. At church on Sunday, for example, I saw an older lesbian couple very comfortably holding hands in the pews. In other words, I saw a committed and loving relationship that was allowed to express itself in the same way that a heterosexual couple would. Also, the pastor made a point of mentioning a meeting about participation in Seattle's upcoming Gay Pride Parade, where our church will have both an information booth and a float. Not what you'd generally expect from a church based on what is portrayed in the media, no?

And on that note, please do click on the headline for this post. In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today is an article about local religious leaders speaking out against an initiative attempt currently in the works that seeks to roll back gay civil rights laws recently passed in Washington state. Much of the signature gathering has been done at conservative churches. Some quotes from the article:

"Not all Christians feel that way," said the Rev. Jack Sullivan Jr., the regional minister for the Northwest of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). "God confers dignity and worth on all people."

Opponents of gay rights "use discrimination to sanctify wrong and to sanctify themselves," said the Rev. Jon Luopa, the senior minister of University Unitarian Church, who vowed to mobilize his ministry if the anti-discrimination measure were challenged.

"There are not to be any second-class citizens," said the Rev. Paul Benz, the director of the Lutheran Public Policy Office for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Benz, like many of the others present, was irked that the state's religious voice was perceived as prejudiced against gays.

"Let the world know we are Christians not by our support of discrimination but by our love," Sullivan said.

I'm thankful for leaders such as these. This is what Christianity should be.

things I love today

2006-06-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

In no particular order:

1) Seattle.
2) My new apartment in Seattle. It's good to be back home again.
3) The very helpful building managers in my new apartment.
4) The T1 line that this building has that costs only $20/month and that was set up as simply as plugging the ethernet cable into the back of my computer.
5) Vonage, which is plugged in through a router (which came free after instant rebate from Vonage), which was also really easy to set up, and which costs $25.00/month for unlimited local and long distance. Buh-bye, phone company!
6) My kids, who helped make my first full weekend in the apartment lots of fun.
7) The park nearby, which has a great playground and a trail which leads to it right across from my apartment.
8) My incredible girlfriend, who is now five minutes away, instead of an hour and a half away.
9) My cat, who is settling in nicely, and my girlfriend's multiple pets, who are all a blast (both for me and for my kids).
10) My girlfriend's daughter, who is endlessly entertaining to my two sons.
11) Safeco Field, where the three of us (girlfriend, daughter, and I) will be going tonight. It'll be girlfriend's first baseball game in Seattle (she followed several other teams growing up) and her daughter's first baseball game anywhere (I think).
12) Woodland Park Zoo, where the boys and I now have a family pass.
13) Ikea.
14) Prozac.

And I could add multiple things I love related to writing or editing, but just this once, I'll post something completely unrelated to either.

Top Page Views for May

2006-06-02T21:42:00.000-07:00

And Almond keeps his intense grasp on the top slot. Landon makes a big jump and Mike Young has a re-birth eleven months after publication. Y'know one of the things I love about these lists? I may be mistaken, but off the top of my head, I don't recall a single month when one author had more than one piece in the top ten. I think it's pretty damned cool that, even though people are clearly reading more than just the current issue, the wealth of readers' eyes always seems to spread out across many authors. Gotta love that.

1. Pornography by Steve Almond (June 15, 2005)
2. Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (September 15, 2005)
3. Prey by Myfanwy Collins (March 15, 2006)
4. Voodoo by Gary Cadwallader (March 15, 2006)
5. The Rest of Your Life by Sarah Leavitt (March 15, 2006)
6. The Cellist by Antonios Maltezos (March 15, 2006)
7. Knowing Love by Tristan Moss (March 15, 2006)
8. Irvin Hammers a Cat House by Mike Young (June 15, 2005)
9. Friendship/Love by Ania Vesenny (March 15, 2006)
10. Rain or Shine by Mary Miller (March 15, 2006)

I heart Steve Almond.

2006-05-25T20:44:00.000-07:00

And not just because we've published him a couple times and one of those times brings in more visitors to SmokeLong than any other story we've ever published. And not just because he's funny, warm, sexy, and talented. I love him because he's passionate and principled and acts on those two things in concert. Click the header of this post to see an example.

I know he'll land on his feet, but I wish him the best of luck nevertheless.

line-up for issue 13

2006-05-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

We've just sent out our final acceptance for the June 15 issue, and it's a doozy. Katrina Denza has been truly amazing as our Guest Editor, and she'll be joining us on staff on a permanent basis. Yay! Here are the folks you'll be reading in June:

Roberta Allen
Christopher Battle
Matt Bell
Lisa K. Buchanan
Jai Clare
Ron Currie, Jr.
Steve Cushman
David Erlewine
Kathy Fish
Mike Hagemann
Jennifer A. Howard
Jeff Landon
Steven J. McDermott
Srdan Papic
Ellen Parker
Mary Lynn Reed
Chad Simpson
Claudia Smith
Girija Tropp
Joseph Young

Ten Highest Views for April

2006-05-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

I have way too much to do right now, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about this, but another month has ended, so it's time to look again at where the most hits were going. With a couple exceptions, it's all stuff from the latest issue:

1. Pornography by Steve Almond (June 15, 2005)
2. Voodoo by Gary Cadwallader (March 15, 2006)
3. Prey by Myfanwy Collins (March 15, 2006)
4. The Rest of Your Life by Sarah Leavitt (March 15, 2006)
5. Five Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (September 15, 2005)
6. Friendship/Love by Ania Vesenny (March 15, 2006)
7. Everybody in Holland Is Mad at Me by Andrew Tibbetts (March 15, 2006)
8. Mice Getting the Points by Robert Lopez (March 15, 2006)
9. The Cellist by Antonios Maltezos (March 15, 2006)
10. Shrapnel by Chivas Sandage (March 15, 2006)

Duotrope

2006-04-19T18:43:00.000-07:00

We are swift... and daunting, according to Duotrope's stats. According to them, we are the fourth fastest market to respond to submissions, averaging 2.9 days. Unfortunately, we're also the 21st toughest market to crack, with a 100% rejection rate (the reason we're 21st is that the others higher up are also 100%, but have sent more rejections to people who use the site than we have). They do note that, "No publication has a 100% rejection rate. This estimation is based on reports sent to Duotrope's Digest, and we have not received reports of any acceptances yet. The higher the publication appears on this list, the more rejection notices we have received." Well, we ain't actually 100%, but we are at about 96% rejections, so this probably isn't that far off. Great to see that we're still living up to our established turnaround times (although I think we used to average 2 days, so maybe we've slowed down a teensy bit).

Waiting for Godot: The Interactive Adventure

2006-04-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

I love this. Click it. Okay. You may not love it. Tough. I do.

March Top Ten

2006-04-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

Here are the ten stories that received the most page views in March:

1. Pornography by Steve Almond (Issue 9)
2. Prey by Myfanwy Collins (Issue 12)
3. Voodoo by Gary Cadwallader (Issue 12)
4. The Rest of Your Life by Sarah Leavitt (Issue 12)
5. Forks in the Road by Eve Abrams (Issue 11)
6. Axl Rose Is My Dog by Scott Ford (Issue 7)
7. Friendship/Love by Ania Vesenny (Issue 12)
8. Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (Issue 10)
9. Everybody in Holland Is Mad at Me by Andrew Tibbetts (Issue 12)
10. The Cellist by Antonios Maltezos (Issue 12)

The most interesting of these, to me, is the piece by Scott Ford. Issue 7 came out on December 15, 2004! Scott's piece was featured prominently on StoryGlossia last month, and it drew a fair number of readers. Steve Almond's piece was also featured, which helped bump its already impressive totals that much higher. This is another great example of the power of online lit mags and their ability to draw readers to stories well after they were initially published. Because they're archived and easy to find, stories are often "discovered" long after they were published. Print mags, as much as I love them for other reasons, just can't do this.

Also, it's interesting how quickly pieces garner attention once they've been published. Issue 12 was published on March 15, so all the stories within were viewable for only half a month. Like print mags, it's important for online pubs to maintain regular publishing schedules so that their readerships know when to find new content.

An adventurer is you!

2006-03-22T19:02:00.000-08:00

Here's my silly post for the day. My favorite site to kick back and relax on lately is Kingdom of Loathing. It's one of them thar fantasy role-playing games. Sort of. While it is an FRPG, it also mocks the whole genre. The character classes are Seal Clubber, Turtle Tamer, Pastamancer, Sauceror, Disco Bandit, and Accordion Thief. And to really get ahead in the game, you need to know how to mix "fruity girl drinks" and cook various kinds of chow mein and ramen. All of the artwork is done in modern stick figure (which, aside from being funny, helps the game to load more quickly). The chat feature requires that one pass a literacy test before using it (one must know the difference between "they're," "their," and "there," for example). The currency of the game is meat. And almost every chunk of text has at least one pop culture reference in it. For example, the Meatloaf Helmet: This is a helmet made out of meatloaf. You feel like a Bat out of Hell when you wear it. You would do anything for this helmet (but you won't do that.)

What's not to like?

Oh, by the way, should you happen to log in, I'm Tenzing. Shoot me a kmail.

The Simpsons

2006-03-21T14:02:00.000-08:00

Ever wanted to be on "The Simpsons?" Well, you can at least make a character of yourself. Thanks to my pal Don for pointing this out. (And happy 4-0, Don!)

stats for issue eleven

2006-03-20T10:03:00.000-08:00

Here are the stats for issue eleven:

Issue Ten (live from 12/15/05-3/14/06)
12/15-12/31: 25306 page views
1/1-1/31: 41947 page views
2/1-2/28: 40727 page views
3/1-3/14: 26664 page views
Total Issue 11: 134644 page views

Wow. That's a pretty serious spike. 15.75% jump in page views from issue ten.

If I may, I'd like to take a moment to address our wonderful guest editor of issue eleven: Well, Myfanwy, you said you're a sucker for data. And you gotta LOVE this data, girl. WOOHOOOOOO! You rock!

Kathy Fish Fellowship

2006-03-19T17:31:00.000-08:00

Not sure how many people read this blog that don't also read SmokeLong, but I figure it can't hurt to mention it here as well:

Announcing the Kathy Fish Fellowship

It seems that many awards in people's names are established posthumously. We're ecstatic that we can recognize Kathy Fish while she's still very much alive and kicking. As she steps down as our Fiction Editor, we at SmokeLong want to recognize Kathy's enormous contributions to the magazine and to the writing community as a whole. In particular, Kathy has always been a great champion of new writers and has exhibited an uncanny talent for finding previously unpublished writers whose work just shines.

We want to foster that sort of commitment to new writers, and in that vein, we're creating the Kathy Fish Fellowship. All writers previously unpublished in SmokeLong Quarterly are eligible to apply. Following are the guidelines for application and the terms of the award itself:

Application Guidelines
1. Applications should be emailed to fellowship@smokelong.com.
2. Applications should include five samples of your flash fiction (stories of a thousand words or less). These samples may be unpublished or previously published in venues other than SmokeLong. We'll be reading these to get impressions of each applicant's writing. The writing samples should, as a whole, best reflect your ability, style(s), etc. Show us who you are as a writer through these samples.
3. Applications should include a few paragraphs (under a thousand words total) about what you hope to accomplish in the next year with your flash writing. Are there specific elements you want to improve? A larger story you want to tell through a series of flashes? Help us learn how we can help you realize your goals should you win this award.
4. Samples and paragraphs about goals, etc. should be included in the body of the email, rather than as attachments.
5. There is no application fee.
6. Application deadline is September 15, 2006.

Fellowship Awards
1. The winner of the 2007 Kathy Fish Fellowship will be considered a "writer in residence" at SmokeLong for each of the four issues to be published in 2007. Each issue will include one flash by the Fellowship winner.
2. The winner of the Fellowship will receive $500.00, to be paid as follows: $100.00 on announcement of the winner, and $100.00 upon publication of each of the four issues in 2007.
3. The winner will be announced December 15, 2006.

Again, this award is open to any writer not previously published in SmokeLong Quarterly. It is not restricted to writing program students (as we are all, in some way, students of writing), although we will certainly be distributing this announcement to various writing programs. We also encourage teachers of writing to pass this announcement along to their students.

We're looking forward to reading your applications, and we want to once again extend our deepest gratitude to Kathy for all she's done for SmokeLong and for writers of flash fiction. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Kath.

Issue Twelve is live!

2006-03-15T23:36:00.000-08:00

Besides great writing from Gary Cadwallader, Myfanwy Collins, Sarah Leavitt, Robert Lopez, Antonios Maltezos, Mary Miller, Tristan Moss, Chivas Sandage, Tom Saunders, Paul Silverman, Andrew Tibbetts, Ania Vesenny, Joseph Young, and Jamie Zerndt, there's an announcement that should be of interest to writers we've not yet had the pleasure to publish. Go! Read!

SmokeLong Quarterly

lineup for issue twelve

2006-03-14T11:31:00.000-08:00

Issue Twelve of SLQ will be going live tomorrow. Here is the lineup of writers:

Gary Cadwallader
Myfanwy Collins
Sarah Leavitt
Robert Lopez
Antonios Maltezos
Mary Miller
Tristan Moss
Chivas Sandage
Tom Saunders
Paul Silverman
Andrew Tibbetts
Ania Vesenny
Joseph Young
Jamie Zerndt

Nice mix of new and familiar voices. I think y'all will like it. :)

Storyglossia

2006-03-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

Meant to post about this a while ago, but spaced. Storyglossia has had some nice things to say about a couple of SLQ pieces recently: Pornography and Axl Rose Is My Dog. And he frequently has much to say about lots of good reads. So go check it out. Nice blog.

another meme in the same vein...

2006-03-09T11:17:00.000-08:00

You Are 54% Evil

You are evil, but you haven't yet mastered the dark side.
Fear not though - you are on your way to world domination.

How Evil Are You?

going to Hell

2006-03-06T16:39:00.000-08:00

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

into the unknown

2006-03-06T15:24:00.000-08:00

I was trapped. I put in 40ish hours a week at a job that didn't pay very well and didn't really have much of a future. And as soon as I finished the day at work, I picked up my kids and took care of them until it was time to go back to work again. My ex faced the same schedule. Both of us were completely exhausted all the time, and occasionally sniping at one another for not doing one another's "fair share," when we were both doing far, far too much and just killing ourselves in the process.

No more. I just gave two weeks' notice.

The final impetus? For the past month or so, I've been doing some freelance editing work on weekends that pays about four times as much per hour as the web development job I've held for the past three and a half years. Today, I had to pass up on doing more of this so that I could be in the office. Why?

The editing work allows me to work from home. It allows me to pretty much set my own hours (any time of day is fine, as long as deadlines are met). It allows my ex to move from the graveyard shift back to a more normal schedule, since I can watch the kids during the day and work at night. And once I'm settled into a set routine, it will likely allow us to be able to pay for daycare so that we can both work during the day. And we'll be able to trade off nights with the kids so that each of us occasionally gets some time to ourselves.

Also, in cases where there isn't the prime work available, I have a backup that pays a hair more than what I currently make. That, too, is contract work, so it's not a dead certainty, but it allows for more than one possibility for work at any given time. My hope is that the client base will build to the point that knowing where my next job is coming from will never be in doubt. And I think I have a good start.

The down side? Uncertainty. With contract work, there's no guarantee that there will be work at any given time. There's no health insurance. It's scary as hell, frankly. But it allows me to move more deeply into the field that has become my passion over the past few years, and to make significantly more money while doing so. Happier me, happier ex, happier kids.

Wish me luck!

Top Ten

2006-03-05T10:41:00.000-08:00

Taking a little break from some freelance editing work. Randall Brown conducted some workshops at a conference for high school writers in Texas recently, and asked me for some information about how many people read SmokeLong as compared to how many people read print mags. I put together the five most viewed stories for each of the past several months. Found it pretty interesting, so I'm going to continue doing something similar each month, mostly for my own perusal. Will be interesting to see if any obvious patterns emerge over time, and perhaps this'll help us better understand what people want to read and how we can better promote some stories that may not be getting as many reads.

Anyway, ten stories with the most views in February are:
1. Pornography by Steve Almond (Issue Nine)
2. Forks in the Road by Eve Abrams (Issue Eleven)
3. Retirement Home by Greg Ames (Issue Eleven)
4. No One Left to Care About the Fat Man by Rusty Barnes (Issue Eleven)
5. Five Fat Men in a Hot Tub by Jeff Landon (Issue Ten)
6. A Drop of Dew by Edgar Omar Avilés, translated by Toshiya A. Kamei (Issue Eleven)
7. Ice by Joseph Young (Issue Eleven)
8. The Mother’s Guide to Flight Patterns by Theresa Boyar (Issue Eleven)
9. Song of Giants by Girija Tropp (Issue Eleven)
10. Flights by Jim Tomlinson (Issue Eleven)

A few things I'll note here, because it's easy to make assumptions:
1. Steve Almond's story was published on June 15. Jeff Landon's was published September 15. All of the others were from the issue published December 15. The fact that two of the top five are older stories attests to the power of archives, something that print magazines don't really have the capacity to exploit.
2. One might think Steve Almond's story is up there because... well, because it's by Steve Almond. Interestingly, though, that story was out of the top 5 a few times since it was first published. Also, his other story, "The Evening of the Dock," is not ranked. And Stuart Dybek's "Brisket" similarly dominated the number one spot for a while, but has since fallen out. I wouldn't be surprised to see it come back, though, as "Pornography" has had similar fluctuations.
3. One might think Steve's story gets such big hits because of its title. When Googling for that title, though, it doesn't appear anywhere near the top of the search listings (surprise, surprise). There are also several other stories with similarly provocative titles that haven't seen this sort of -ahem- exposure.
4. Steve's story has absolutely dominated for the past three months, each time outpacing the second most viewed story by about a 4:1 ratio. But, as I mentioned, it wasn't even in the top 5 at all for a few months. So what happened? Good question. I've found recent links specifically to that story on blogs, etc., but no such links going back as far as the spike in hits for Steve began. Go figure.

All of that said, one final point that I mentioned to Randall: based on the numbers of hits that stories get on SLQ, it's more likely that a specific story on any given day will be read by at least one person than that it won't. And that includes everything we've ever published, going all the way back to issue one. Pretty freaking cool, and not something that most print magazines can claim, I'd guess. The power of the internet to put literature in front of a lot of people on a long-term basis is amazing.

amazing kid

2006-02-24T14:51:00.000-08:00

I don't normally post about stuff like this (hell, I hardly post about anything lately), but this is pretty wonderful. Thanks to Ellen Meister for passing this along.

if you're in Chicago...

2006-02-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

Go see this play. Lookingglass Theatre was founded by several of my classmates at Northwestern University, and they're incredible. They've won numerous Jeff Awards (which is like Chicago's Tony) and are one of the big guns on the Chicago theater scene. And this looks like a show that will be particularly great. Laura Eason (hi, Laura!) has adapted Stuart Dybek's "The Coast of Chicago," which is one of my all-time favorite short story collections. Back when I moved out to Seattle to start a theater company with fellow graduates (exactly two years after Lookingglass did the same in Chicago), our first production was an adaptation we did of one of the short stories in the book, "Blight." That experience began an off-and-on (more off than on) acquaintanceship with Stuart Dybek for me, at one point resulting in our being blessed to publish his flash fiction, Brisket.

Stuart is just an amazing writer, Laura is terrific at adapting texts to the stage, and Lookingglass stages things beautifully. If you have the chance to see this show, you're in for a rare treat. You really should go see it.

The show runs January 12-February 19 (I wish I'd stumbled across it sooner). Call their box office at (312) 337-0665.

a few random things

2006-01-16T17:20:00.000-08:00

Gawd, it's been forever since I've posted anything here. Every now and then, I think of something I'd like to blog about, but then, when I actually have time to do it, I completely forget it's here. Anyway... a few random things since last I posted.

First off (and Don should find this highly entertaining) I've been quoted by an arch-conservative group. And not quoted as someone horrible. Quoted as someone they agree with. How completely weird is that?! Little did I know when I reviewed Matt Getty's You Will Behave that an organization that presents medals depicting Ronald Reagan would honor the book. But it is a sort of sexually perverse book. And based on the stuff that Bill O'Reilly and Scooter Libby have penned, maybe I should've known better. Still, it cracks me up. From their press release:

The novella takes enormous risks in both form and content. Not only is You Will Behave the first book-length work of fiction to be written in the second-person future, but, as one critic has put it, "it pulls the reader into an ugly world wherein violence and sexuality are forever intertwined" and "questions that link without flinching from honest answers."

Lookie there. Crazy, I tell ya. The full press release is here. Congrats, Matt!

Also, I was interviewed for P.H. Madore's new e-zine, DISPATCH. Unfortunately, due to publication timelines, some of the answers are a little dated by now, but I enjoyed it. It's a pretty lengthy interview, and I suspect that some folks may think I'm a bit of a religious zealot after reading a few of my answers. The mag looks pretty good, and holy crap, what a ton of content there is in it. The list of contributors is huge: Gary L. Adams, Anne R. Allen, EP Allen, John Allen, Brian Arundel, Cynthia Bateman, Greg Richard Bernard, Joseph Boes, David Breeden, Raegan Butcher, Henry Chalise, William Champion, Jr., Clara Chandler, Dave Clapper, Lily Corwin, D. B. Cox, Angeline Hawkes-Craig, James Craig, Louis Crew, Carl Miller Daniels, Caroline Eikenberry, Tom Englehardt, Brenda Frezell, Megan Friddle, Jnana Hodson, Paul Hostovsky, Leigh Hughes, Sandra Hunter, Andrew Jones, Melissa F. Kaelin, Paul Kavanagh, Sean Kilpatrick, John Lawson, Lisa Lilly, Erik Linzbach, Nathan Alling Long, D. L. Luke, David Lunden, Kerry Maddix, Ann McGovern, Ed Miller, Dave Morrison, Christopher Mulrooney, Steve Oetjengerdes, Mick Parsons, Naim Peress, Kenneth Pobo, Adrian S. Potter, Juan Carlos Reyes, Shelly Rich, Rochelle Ratner, K. Rice Alicita Rodríguez, Gavin Salisbury, Vera Searles, Tomi R. Shaw, Willie Smith, Merry Speece, D. A. Sumrall, Paul Renato Toppo, Kyle Torke, M. B. Uhall, Anca Vlasopolos, Shanti Weiland, D. Harlan Wilson, Laura Madeline Wiseman, and Frank Zafiro. Give it a look.

Issue Ten Stats

2005-12-20T16:02:00.000-08:00

Here are the stats for issue ten:

Issue Ten (live from 9/15/05-12/14/05)
9/15-9/30: 23154 page views
10/1-10/31: 40187 page views
11/1-11/30: 36870 page views
12/1-12/14: 16111 page views
Total Issue 9: 116322 page views

Which is up by 8% over issue nine, so we're still moving in the right direction. Based on the bumps we've been getting these last two issues, it'll probably be another year or two before we break 200,000 page views per issue. That said, I'm pretty happy being over 100,000 for a literary magazine.

Issue Eleven

2005-12-19T15:04:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays, everyone! As an early present, may we offer our eleventh issue, an absolute beauty guest edited by the one and only Myfanwy Collins? Please do take a look. Heart-filling and/or breaking fiction by Eve Abrams, Greg Ames, Edgar Omar Avilés (translated by Toshiya Kamei), Rusty Barnes, Theresa Boyar, Nadine Darling, Katrina Denza, Patry Francis, Laurie Frankel, Judd Hampton, Niranjana Iyer, Beverly A. Jackson, Erica Plouffe Lazure, Mary McCluskey, Mary Miller, Claudia Smith, Elizabeth Smith, Jim Tomlinson, Girija Tropp, and Joseph Young. Interviews with all of these fine folks, as well as bonus interviews with Myfanwy Collins and Marty D. Ison.

Click the pic and let the stories fill your heart like the Whoville Whos singing up to the Grinch.