Tag: fiction

Read-in-One-Sitting ebooks

A regular novel of about 90 000 words takes about five or six hours to read end-to-end. That is, if you count all the time you spend reading, that’s what it will amount to, which means a lot of reading and a lot to remember. Unless you choose some Read-in-One-Sitting ebooks to load onto your electronic eReader.

Read-in-One-Sitting books are those you can read on one train ride, say. Or one visit to a dentist’s waiting room. Or one stand in a long queue, or at a bus stop. Continue reading “Read-in-One-Sitting ebooks”

Open Submissions: Sawmill Magazine

Typecast’s free online magazine, Sawmill, is produced six times a year. Each issue focuses on one branch of the literary tree: fiction, graphic stories, and poetry.  Sawmill has open submissions at this time in fiction and graphic stories.   Per their website, Sawmill does not discriminate against any genre or brand of fiction writing. Please send your fiction submission to [email protected] as a .pdf, .doc, or Pages attachment. Submissions should be 6,500 words or less.

Deadlines are:

For Summer 2012: Open submissions begin on December 1, 2011 and close on March 1, 2012.

For Winter 2013: Open submissions begin on June 1, 2012 and close on September 1, 2012.

For more information, visit their site.

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Indies Unlimited is pleased to provide this submission information for the convenience of our readers.  We do not, however, endorse this or any magazine.  Authors should always research a magazine prior to submission.[subscribe2]

The Purple Shirt.

They sit, like astronauts in their bubble helmets, reading different magazines that all say the same things…magazines that teach them things no self-respecting old woman should know.  When they talk about Lady Gaga, it makes me inexplicably sad.  I want them to talk about quilts and recipies for pie crust.  I want them to be like Grammy was.  She died years ago, but, I guarantee you, she wouldn’t care about Amy Winehouse.  But they come, and we accept them.  Every Wednesday.  Like clockwork.  We call them the tottering trio.  They are old…they like their hair orange and their hairdressers gayer than a Cher concert.  Tito and I tolerate them because they are consistent.  They are easy.  They pay in full and tip well.  But there is no art in it.  I always secretly hope that they will leave the salon without anyone seeing them.  Their coiffures are not exactly something I am proud to be a part of.

While they sit under the dryers, Tito does his best to avoid making eye contact with me.  He is angry because I said that I liked his shirt.  He wore it to see if I pay attention or to test my sense of aesthetics.  Or something equally stupid.  My assertion…my support of the shimmering purple shirt…is a betrayal, or too cavalier…or something.  And now I will pay for it.  It will start with the cold shoulder.  Not just cold…glacial.  Then there will be long stints in the bathroom with crumpled tissues strategically placed around and red eyes that I will not be allowed to ask about.  I sigh and run my hand over the stubble on my head. Continue reading “The Purple Shirt.”

The Double Shot. (for Louis L’Amour)

The man came into the border town at dawn.  He sat tall in his saddle, and he was a tall man.  A handful of inches over six feet, but slim and wiry.  He was some dirty, and a week’s worth of stubble smudged his rawboned face.  Behind him, the desert heat was building and the red sun was rising like a phoenix.  It had been a hard ride, but Thane Johnson was a man used to hardship.

He sprang from the saddle and threw his reins over the strangest looking hitching post he had ever seen.  Looking up and down the quiet street, he realized that it wasn’t just the hitching post.  This was the strangest town he had ever seen.  And he had seen many. Continue reading “The Double Shot. (for Louis L’Amour)”