World Book Day??!!  hell yeah. awesome excuse to make book lists.

Top 5 Go-Tos for Random Infusions of Beauty 

Sometimes I need icebears and sometimes I need Mario to tell me about the fans’ sounds at night… these are my shelf-grabs for snippet reading or total re-ingestion

1. Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller

2. The Strangeness of Beauty – Lydia Minatoya

3. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace

4. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

5. East of Eden – John Steinbeck

Top 5 Quickest Reads in the Past Year

There’s no way to list the best things I’ve read, there are WAY too many. But for what it’s worth, I devoured these in just a couple days apiece, and I think that says plenty about them. In order beginning with the speediest:

1. Growing Up Dead In Texas – Stephen Graham Jones

2. Full Dark, No Stars – Stephen King

3. Nod – Adrian Barnes

4. Murder and Other Distractions – Michael Estrin

5. The Sound of Loneliness – Craig Wallwork

5 Self-Pimps Because Why Not? I’m Proud to Be In This Stuff

1. Warmed and Bound – “The World Was Clocks” available now

2. In Search of a City: Los Angeles in 1000 Words – “Gilded Bones” available now

3. cutaway – “The Cabbage Muse” available now

4. Cipher Sisters – “Asymmetry” (and co-editor) coming very soon

5. The Booked. Anthology – “Short Tendon” coming very soon

P.S. to this list, still a year in the future so can’t really gloat about it just yet - Burnt Tongues – “The Line Forms on the Right” coming summer 2014

Happy World Book Day!!! READ READ READ!!!

Six short stories hand-picked by yours truly, plus awesome poems selected by Kelly Boyker. AND artwork by my awesome friend Ryan Case, that MH was nice enough to allow me to interview.

Click over for brand new fiction by:

Kate Velguth

Court Merrigan

Liz Young

Mia Avramut

Matthew Burnside

Gisella Faggi

Menacing Hedge Spring 2013

Bird of Pray by Ryan Case

fast forward a few years, and it’s very difficult for me to keep ANY of my fiction to myself. and one of those stories – “The Line Forms on the Right” – that i oh-so-fearfully handed over to be judged, praised and shredded in the writing workshop ends up here:

Chuck Palahniuk news release:

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/news/the-cult-anthology-burnt-tongues-has-a-publisher?fb_action_ids=137646729749885&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%22137646729749885%22%3A503271313067906%7D&action_type_map=%7B%22137646729749885%22%3A%22og.likes%22%7D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D

Medallion Press news release:

http://www.prnewschannel.com/2013/04/03/fight-club-author-chuck-palahniuk-to-release-new-book/

Burnt Tongues! Coming Summer 2014!!

Cipher Sister

Table of Contents

Darcy and Lucy among the Flowers by Alexander Davis

 Lucky by DB Cox

 The Cipher Sisters and Kid Nosferatu Dance the Bally-Kooch by Edward Morris

 Mickey Slim by Chris Deal

 A Witch in West Kansas by W.P. Johnson

 Mercy by Rebecca Brown

 1951 by Matt McGee

There’s no Business Like BLANK by Xander Stronach

That’s Showbiz by Jason Lee

1971 by Ken Goudey

Real Lookers by Audrey Hare

Dance, Darling by Richard Thomas

Regular Earharts by Andrew McElrath

You & Me by Adam Autin

Saga Sideshow by Tone Baker

 Chance Meeting at the Back of the Apollo Theatre, Harlem, NYC by Sek Han Foo

Asymmetry by Amanda Gowin

 Sister is the Sister by Edward J Rathke 

It’s the voice in my head, speaking over the exhale of smoke, the only thing interrupting the quiet of the collective zen – every animal in sight is asleep, stretched in the sun unconscious absorbing the warmth and the good and the light and the cool of the half-dead grass on their underbellies. The trees are sleeping in the fake winter, and the dogs and llamas, and the rabbits in the neighbors’ pen – the horses with droopy silver eyelashes with the perpetual hand of the sun resting on their backs. The only thought and it’s meaningless and meaningful and my mind is the only one not tuned to the day but perfectly tuned to the universe inside each closed set of eyelids, each drowsy mourning dove that waddles in the yard pecking songbird mix from the mud and leaving x-s in their wake.

Every…

I dreamed I was stretched in a field with horses around me, snuffling the grass, and Bingo, the horse that loved me, was sniffling my face, horse kisses, my eyes closed and every horse in the field gave me a pass, their legs a soft corral with light spilling between, the smell of sun and horse and the feel of a smile.

Woke to freezing rain and a dead rat belly up in the yard, batted around all night by irritable dogs, horses that didn’t love me tossing indifferent glances my way to see if i’d be the bearer of sticky sweet corn, not a cigarette to be found.

But this afternoon, the cellophane crackled and the foil caught the light, and the beasts slept and my mind woke, and I thought The first cigarette and the last cigarette are the only ones that matter, the rest are incidental. And I added my exhaled smoke to the lazy clouds above.

anyway. here’s a link to the page itself and to a few of the boards. they’re purty.

Main Page: http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/

Cipher Sister: http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/cipher-sister-a-collection-2013-thunderdome-press/

Brain: http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/brain/

Beauty in People : http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/beauty-in-people/

Ghosts : http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/ghosts/

Nefarious :http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/nefarious/

There’s a big honkin’ portrait of Jesus in the middle school. Someone asking to take it down isn’t a reason to sound a battle cry…. I throw in my two cents in a short opinion essay over at Manarchy:

http://manarchymag.com/2013/01/the-jackson-jesus/author-amandagowin

proper capitalization is obviously not one of them. BUT! i’m confident i can persuade you to send me your loveliest, most beautiful things to read, and i will handle and read them delicately, like scrolls of parchment. i shall light candles about the room in the dead of night and shuffle to my old table with arms full. i’ll unroll them carefully one by one, and believe you me i shall mouth the words while following every single line with the tip of my index finger.

Qualifications:

1. In the 2nd grade i did very well in 5th grade reading comprehension, so i have a lot of experience grasping a story. this wasn’t through any sort of school program, there was just a really big 5th grade girl that rode my bus and ‘persuaded’ my friend and i to do her reading homework every day on the way home from school.

2. i read ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘Gone With the Wind’ when i was ten years old. this just illustrates that i read feverishly and compulsively. i wasn’t supposed to read those books, so i hid them and devoured them in delicious secret moments.

3. my first novel was completed at age fifteen – it was shit and i’ll never show it to anyone even though i worked on it for a year. i know how much time it takes to do this! i know you work really hard on whatever you send, and you worked really hard for years before that to get to a place that you wrote things you felt were worthwhile to show the world.

4. i was almost thirty before i ever showed even one written word of my own to anyone in the outside world. it takes serious balls to cut out a little piece of yourself and send it to strangers, only to have them tell you objectively what a part of your insides is worth. this act of courage will never be taken for granted.

5.  i don’t give a shit about your bio. seriously don’t. won’t read it until after the story. if you have seven published novels, an MFA and teach a creative writing class, i won’t know you weren’t a seventeen year old who scribbled her story out in biology class instead of taking notes. because everyone makes magic sometimes, and i don’t need to know where you’ve been to feel it.

6. Craig and Kelly trust me. and i don’t take it lightly. i’ll do my very best, and i’m very excited.

SO SEND ME SOMETHING!

here is a photo of me just after my head transplant, so you can be assured i’m using the very best brains available:

http://menacinghedge.com/

TOP TEN, in no particular order:

1. Tom Hardy

2. Tom Waits

3. Justin Townes Earle

4. Kevin Corrigan

5. Sheri Moon Zombie

6. Eric Gowin

7. Craig Wallwork

8. Vincent Louis Carrella

9. Lady Gaga

10. my awesome zen demon cat Billie Idol.

music, pictures, ideas, conversation, companionship. YES!

places to go and people to see, strangers to meet and friends to excavate. words to find and words to make.

Happy 2013

Reblogged from Curiouser and Curiouser:

• 

Alice's winter hibernation has begun. Picture her, if you will, on a chaise lounge next to a long window, her skull and crossbones Snuggie divided into four smaller rectangles by cold late afternoon sun. On the table beside her is a mug of coffee, a tall green bottle with a fairy on the label and a stack of books. A blue caterpillar climbs a lettuce leaf in an empty mayonaisse jar on the shelf above, his boredom evident behind the half-peeled Hellman's label.

Read more… 150 more words

ooooh, things are getting fun. Mike and i compiled the final list of stories for the collection (and no one even threw a punch! negotiations on the list went really smooooth) and the acceptances/rejections have been sent. i feel really good about all of it. weird to get so many stories – not to mention so many COOL stories – from such a specific prompt. so we’re on our way!

next is artwork, contracts, proofreading….

but still, pretty early in the New Year.

i feel super-important. like i need a special hat that says “EDITOR” on the brim, and i should keep a clip-on tie nearby at all times so when i read/discuss/work on anything involving the Cipher Sister stuff i can grab my hat and tie and immediately look professional and efficient. the hat would cover my hair-horns and the tie would cover  (or at least neutralize) the stick-on tattoo i currently have on my neck.

here’s a quick synopsis of what the collection will be like, pulled from Thunderdome:

CIPHER SISTER follows a simple premise inspired by a true story:

“The sheriff’s department in El Dorado County broke protocol this week and released the names of two deceased residents without notifying their relatives.

The problem is they can’t find any relatives of the twin sisters who were found dead inside their South Lake Tahoe home last week.

The bodies were discovered on Feb. 27, according to the sheriff’s department. Authorities say they most likely died within a short time of one another of natural causes.

The sheriffs haven’t been able to locate the next of kin of the women. Apparently throughout their lives, they always listed each other on all official forms.”

Their names are Lucy and Darcy.

We’re putting their lives back together in imperfect fragments.

 A collected history based purely on hearsay and conjecture. We know when they were born. We know when and where and how they died. What happened in between?

or, if you’re more into a visual representation of the tone, here’s the pinterest page i cobbled together:

http://pinterest.com/mandajunemiller/cipher-sister-a-collection-2013-thunderdome-press/

it’s essentially a bunch of stories about the lives of two very, very mysterious ladies. no Black Dahlia, no true crime – just peeking through eighteen different keyholes at eighteen imaginary moments….