Menacing Hedge Spring 2013 Issue LIVE!!

Woo hoo!! The Spring Issue just went up.

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

Chuck Palahniuk Anthology ‘Burnt Tongues’ Will Include…ME!!

a few years ago i joined a workshop. i was getting long in the tooth and decided it was about time people KNEW i wrote stories all the time, as opposed to just scribbling them down then hiding them in notebooks, folders, envelopes, folding them up and shoving them in books as markers, and what have you. maybe at some point i wanted actual humans to see them. so, other people working to become better writers seemed a good place to start.

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!!

 

the wasp

The Ides of March: ‘Cipher Sister’ Table of Contents Floats to the Surface….

 

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 

Shutter Speed

Pincushion Queen

i’ve been storing all my brain droppings and subconscious organizations on Pinterest. i just realized that looking at the boards, they’re pretty cohesive and i can spot exactly what piece of my brain i’m storing each picture for – and anyway, they’re pretty. when i’m too tired to write or read and it’s almost bedtime i spend a lot of fifteen minute spurts going “ooooh,” click, “ooooh,” click…

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/

Regarding the Locals…

 

 

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

Hi, Menacing Hedge

so, Kelly Boyker and Craig Wallwork are having me over to play…. hi, anyone from MH who clicked over to see what qualifications i might possibly have to sift through your work for the Spring Issue.

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/

All In the Family: 9 Family Values in House of 1,000 Corpses (in ManArchy Magazine)

I’ve been waiting YEARS for an excuse to have this conversation outside my own head, so click on over!!

http://manarchymag.com/core/2012/10/fireflys/author-amandagowin

 

 

ThunderDome REVAMPED!

Thunderdome just had an overhaul. The site is sexy and easy to navigate, and there are lots of new projects – wander around:

http://thunderdomemag.com/index.php

keep peeking around for news – i’m about to become a co-editor. so far that job has entailed digging up pretty photos from my hard drive, but i have a feeling it’s going to get a BIT more intense than that. for now, here are the updated links for my stories in the Thunderdome:

“Teetotaler” http://thunderdomemag.com/component/k2/item/44-teetotaler

“Fever” http://thunderdomemag.com/component/k2/item/25-fever

“Tin Man”  http://thunderdomemag.com/collections/the-collective-speaks/writers-in-residence-warmed-and-bound/item/100-tin-man

Congrats, Mike, on a site well done!

LA1K hits ebook form! In Search of a City: Los Angeles In 1000 Words

THE LINK:  http://www.amazon.com/Search-City-Los-Angeles-Words/dp/1466338172/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330368769&sr=1-1

seriously, it’s $2.99 and this is what you get:

Table of Contents

Ryan Wilson – “American Trash”

 Stuart Gibbel – “Break on Through”

 Craig Clevenger – “Obsolescence”

 Nik Korpon – “South of Thirteen”

 Dennis Cruz – “Smile Now, Cry Later”

 Pela Via – “Bathhouse”

 Stephen Conley – “Don’t Feed the Animals”

 Grigori Black – “This Was Heaven”

 Doc O’Donnell – “Your Personal Apocalypse”

 Nikki Guerlain – “Sick Ticket”

 Patrick Verhagen – “Swim”

 Craig Wallwork – “El Bordello Alexandra”

 Nicholas Merlin Karpuk – “Ahm’s Bay”

 Nik Houser – “Subtitles for a Silent Film”

 H.R. Tardiff – “Walls in the Sand”

 Richard Thomas – “The Jenny Store”

Bob Pastorella – “Alexandra”

 Simon West-Bulford – “Project Asmodeus”

 Jay Slayton-Joslin – “The Fantasy of California vs. The Reality of London”

 Amanda Gowin – “Gilded Bones”

Chris Deal – “Padre Nuestro”

 Boden Steiner – “Here”

 Gordon Highland – “Fry Girl”

 edward j rathke – “All the Dreams You Dreamt Retold”

 Michael Paul Gonzalez – “Tidal”

 Victor Bengtsson – “Venice, Forever”

Curiouser and Curiouser (Mad, Mad Interview Blog)

i like to ask questions.

there are seven thousand author interview blogs, so why shouldn’t there be one more? the sister blog to Miss Ohio will be Curiouser and Curiouser, and i will ask many questions to many authors (25 in the line-up so far) and few of the questions will pertain to anything regarding writing. i can google bibliographies and birthdates and where people went to school, but maybe i want to know if a particular person wears shoes in the house or likes David Bowie or has ever been stabbed. maybe i just want to know what’s in your pockets.

there’s a ten question cap to keep me from getting out of control with the interrogations - and judging by the interviewing i’ve done so far, these brave and wonderful writers should thank whatever deity or synapse made me commit to ten. with the answers and stories and unexpected candidness, these would be Neverending Interviews without a cap – a dialogue that went on until my question mark finger dropped off or restraining orders were filed….

so! on with the useful information. Curiouser and Curiouser will post its first interview on TUESDAY MAY 1st. every following tuesday will be a new interview with a new writer – some questions will be different, some will be the same, some of the writers will be strangers and some will be names you know. i can promise you one thing: NONE of the answers will be boring.

the writers who have graciously agreed and even volunteered for this project are apparently incapable of being boring or average. i cannot thank them enough for participating. the interviews are spectacular based on the quality of the pictures they draw, not the frames i provide.

TUESDAY, MARCH 27th i will release the 5 Author Interview line-up for May.

for now, you can like the Curiouser and Curiouser Facebook Page and recieve a very, very conservative amount of updates, mainly to announce the Interview of the Week as those Tuesdays roll around:

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Curiouser-and-Curiouser/304516562938553

the Curiouser and Curiouser site itself is still under construction, and the link will also be released on TUESDAY, MARCH 27th. the easiest way to be reminded of this is to like the Facebook page.

I’M SO FRICKIN’ EXCITED!!

you should be, too. it’s a bit insane that these people have agreed to talk to me and be so receptive to such questions.

i’ll see you on the sister site on Tuesday, May 1st, and until then hopefully on the Facebook page.

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER!

Appalachian Acumen in ManArchy Magazine

ManArchy Magazine launched yesterday, and somewhere in all the comedy and cleverness i managed to weasel in a column of my own – i now have a place to dump all that  have learned about Appalachia and white trash etiquette!

link to Manarchy Mag’s main page: http://manarchymag.com/core/

link to my column: http://manarchymag.com/core/2011/12/50-ways-to-leave-your-lover-well-5/

picture of my hair as of New Year’s Day:

 

LA1K (In Search of a City: Los Angeles In 1,000 Words)

BUY HERE!!

 http://thundadome.com/LA1K/ 

 

BOOKED REVIEW AND INTERVIEW WITH MIKE:

http://www.bookedpodcast.com/2011/11/30/episode-53-michael-paul-gonzalez-and-in-search-of-a-city/

 

and NOW, i name drop:

 Table of Contents

Ryan Wilson – “American Trash”
Stuart Gibbel – “Break on Through”
Craig Clevenger – “Obsolescence”
Nik Korpon – “South of Thirteen”
Dennis Cruz – “Smile Now, Cry Later”
Pela Via – “Bathhouse”
Stephen Conley – “Don’t Feed the Animals”
Grigori Black – “This Was Heaven”
Doc O’Donnell – “Your Personal Apocalypse”
Nikki Guerlain – “Sick Ticket”
Patrick Verhagen – “Swim”
Craig Wallwork – “El Bordello Alexandra”
Nicholas Merlin Karpuk – “Ahm’s Bay”
Nik Houser – “Subtitles for a Silent Film”
H.R. Tardiff – “Walls in the Sand”
Richard Thomas – “The Jenny Store”
Bob Pastorella – “Alexandra”
Simon West-Bulford – “Project Asmodeus”
Jay Slayton-Joslin – “The Fantasy of California vs. The Reality of London”
Amanda Gowin – “Gilded Bones”
Chris Deal – “Padre Nuestro”
Boden Steiner – “Here”
Gordon Highland – “Fry Girl”
edward j rathke – “All the Dreams You Dreamt Retold”
Michael Paul Gonzalez – “Tidal”
Victor Bengtsson – “Venice, Forever”

I Love Zombies and Zombies Love Me (MEDIA!!!)

 An Interview with Bill Grundy’s corpse, via Craig Wallwork:

http://craigwallwork.blogspot.com/2011/10/zombie-interview-2-amanda-gowin.html

Episode #47 – Zombie Extravaganza Spectacular (With Livius waving his arms in the air)

http://www.bookedpodcast.com/2011/10/15/episode-47-zombie-extravaganza-spectacular-with-livius-waving-his-arms-in-the-air/