a taste of the frozen moment: HOW TO DISSOLVE

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date was DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

HOW TO DISSOLVE by Christine Calfas

the dark asked me to marry him this week, and i said yes. i kissed him on the mouth, and a sweet musky taste came on my tongue. like earth. wet earth.

[Christine Calfas is a professional actor, performance artist and singer. She also writes. See her in the film noir short: THE BIG BLACK DARK by Brian Padian. You can follow her work at www.christinecalfas.com. ]

The Frozen Moment can be ordered through Publication Studio here or in person at Publication Studios in Portland, Oregon, Berkeley, California, Vancouver, BC, Toronto, Ontario, and someplace the Publication Studio website calls the Midwest Radical Culture Corridor. In Portland, look for the anthology also in select bookstores, including Powell's City of Books.

frozen moment reading night

It was another lovely reading, last night, for The Frozen Moment. I was a little worried about the snow, of course, since we in Portland get a little nuts with any bit of a dusting, but we had a good turn-out. EAT at Crow Arts Manor is a cool spot for a reading. The event space is a nook just off from the bar and tables, so you have the best of both worlds - refreshment without too much noisiness. In our nook, we had church pews set up facing the stage [plus a tiny plastic children's set of table and chairs, which I kind of wanted to sit in] and great swaths of orange fabric swagged overhead.

Editor Colin Farstad was all stylish in suit coat and tie, giving everyone a sweet and personal and sometimes funny intro. I was first in the lineup, and as I stepped up on stage, there was a sudden scuffle of techs trying to figure out why we were getting that awful buzz from the speakers. I stood there at the podium. Someone in the audience called out, "entertain us!" I leaned into the mic and sang, "Let me entertain you..." and got a little laugh but was smart enough to not keep going. Colin stood and said, "Shall we do a song and dance?" and for one crazy moment, I thought he was serious, that we should think of something to sing. My impulse to sing in public is always so great that if I get an opportunity, even a teeny one like this, my brain goes blank of all the songs in the world. Tom Spanbauer was sitting right there in the front row, and at a recent party he and I did a lovely, if awkward duet of Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend, but then Colin said, "I don't know how to dance," and I said "check, check, check" into the mic and some guy turned a dial, and the buzzing quieted.

I read the first ten minutes of my story "Book Club." Had a nice reaction from the audience, some good laughs. I loved that I'd been chosen to go first, because then I got to sit back down, relax and just watch the show...

Elva Redwood, all punk elegant in gown and feather boa with her bangs spiked up. British accent, saying the one thing you need to do is suspend your disbelief and picture that her narrator comes from Southern California. Reading slow and smooth - her voice matching her steamy-dreamy language - about a young woman's down-deep reaction to the baby inside her.

It was one of those nights I got pregnant. I know exactly when it was because it was my mistake.

Us awake in the late night. In the tacked on bedroom of our cabin, far from the wood stove. Hearing Doug fir and sugar pines, long feathery arms brush the roof. Big sops of snow slipping down. 

Holly Goodman reading her entire story, an intensely personal piece that got me choked up by about halfway in and left me in a bit of a state by the end. It's beautifully constructed and elegantly crafted, but it's also very close - to the hard time in my own life.

All of us standing at the ticket counter, checking luggage, but him not going. 

Security is the end of the line for Sam.

"I love you," he says. "I wish I was going."

He's hugging and I'm not hugging back.

"I know," I say.

I can't say I wish he was going too.

"That's it?" he says. "You know?"

He's crying into the glass wall of a newsstand, head against the window, when I look back, and I hate myself.  

Nora Robertson pulling me back into my body with two poems from her series Body-Making Cookery, a lush and visceral collection of poetry that explores the ties between food and sex, fertility, personal history, human connection, desire, belief... She read "Sun Tea," which is featured in The Frozen Moment, and "How to Boil an Egg," which was nominated for a Push Cart Prize and expanded into the short film The Body Show in 2010.

I would run my hands over and over my belly. I imagined it taut. I imagined the nine months of waiting, of growing rounder. I didn't care anymore about the kids who avoided me at passing time and or whether my thighs were too chubby. I whispered to myself, I am strong and I can give birth. On my futon, cradled in the lush black, I had a dream that a thousand small frogs tumbled from between my legs in a rush of gray-green water, tiny and writhing.

Kathleen Lane opening the second half after an interlude of music, with one of my all-time favorite short stories, "In the Jetway," which starts with one of the funniest first lines ever and then shoots out transcendent and keeps going. I could talk forever about the quirky greatness of her voice, but I won't. I'll let it speak for itself:

Right now, I could lick that bald man's neck. I could just stick my tongue out and lick that man's neck and no one could stop me.

A person could just lick another person's neck.

The bald man would probably jump a little, that's probably what he'd do. He'd probably whip around and look at me.

Did you just lick me, he'll say, more loudly than necessary because I'm standing right there. And I'll say, yes, I did lick you, because it would be a difficult thing to deny. 

[did you see what she did, there, with her verbs? how she went from i could to i would to i will? masterful.]

Gage Mace giving us an excellent impersonation of JFK in his intro and then launching into his piece with a dramatic flair. Reading about the disconnect between a father and a son, giving us, at least in this part of the story, a kid narrator - funny, real, without cutesy sentimentality. It's hard to write "kid," and Gage has got it down.

I'd been begging for a bicycle since first grade, but Mom and Dad wouldn't let me have one until I was eight. I kept telling them I'd been ready since before I was seven, but Dad said to stop asking or I wouldn't get one even when I was eight. But eight lasted a whole year, and my birthday went by with no bicycle.

Kevin Meyer, up on stage with his iPad, ready to read electronically until he realized the print was too small and had to grab a copy of the book. Power of voice [that confidence, that edge of dry wit, that sense of simple inevitability] pulling us from the announcement of a death, through the plane ride home, almost through a doggy door, and stopping just short of the blood.

Daniela's father, my father-in-law, died the kind of alone that left his body dead on the floor of his laundry room for two days before he was found. Wednesday, sometime in the morning, they think, he hit his head, bled to death. It wasn't until Friday we found out.

and further [when they find out]:

Daniela pinched her phone between her ear and her shoulder. She drank the glass of wine in one chug, then poured herself another. Tipped the bottle damn near upside down, and the wine came out in gasps that splashed purple on the tablecloth.

Christine Calfas rounding out the evening with two offerings. First a vocal performance from her one-woman show "Sounding Hecate," which she sang, accompanying herself on harmonium, her sweet, clear voice and her lyrics doing a lovely, languid dance around one, long droning note. Then her poem from The Frozen Moment, which is deep, dark and lucious.

an ancestor whispered in my ear. she huffed. blew smoke from her pipe. in norway it snows for months and the dark eats her family up, the dark swallows her house, and they live in its belly like a winter whale.

what a world of fools is this. none of us knows now to die.

Great turnout, great readings, great evening. Plus, I got to see lots of family and friends, got to meet an e-friend and fellow writer I'd been looking forward to meeting for a long time, got to do a little signing of the book, and at the end of things, a woman came up to me and told me how much she'd particularly loved my piece.

...Then the woman started talking all about narrators licking people's necks, but I didn't tell her she'd gotten the wrong brunette.

a dream of reading

Morning of the second Frozen Moment reading. I dreamed the reading took place in a church. After some of the contributors had read, the thing had turned into some sort of open mic reading, and it had gone on so long, the audience was leaving. Now there was just a scatter in the pews. I hadn't read yet and Kevin Meyer, all the way from San Francisco, hadn't read yet, and there was a woman on stage talking in a long monotone with words I didn't understand.

She started walking down the side aisle, still reading, getting quieter and quieter like the fadeout of a song, and everyone started applauding, but she said, back at her seat now, "I'm not done yet!"

But she was, and she got up and put her whole hand on top of my head and said, "I want her to read next."

Up on stage, I somehow had decided to read from one of my children's books instead. The lights were in my eyes. I looked down at the [blue-purple] fingers of my hand and wondered why I couldn't see the words written there. I tried to recite from memory. I looked up and Kevin was gone.

a taste of the frozen moment: BOOK CLUB

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

OK, so I keep forgetting to do one for myself. Here's a piece of my story Book Club.

I figured the whole thing with the affair was okay, because, when it came down to it, I wasn’t doing it for myself.

Kimbo was the one who wanted the sex.  Oh, I’m not saying I didn’t get anything out of it, but mostly I was doing it for him.  He really, really wanted it, and I didn’t like disappointing people.

That day, I have to say, I wasn’t disappointed either.  It was a Monday, of course, and he was always better on Mondays than on Thursdays.  Sometimes I thought about asking him why he was good on Mondays, but I figured that would be like saying he wasn’t good on Thursdays, so I didn’t.  I just lay back against the lumpy mattress of the fold-out couch—he liked using his fold-out couch because, he said, that way he wouldn’t be disturbed by dreams of yearning for me when he slept alone in his bed at night.  Now, he lay long down the length of the mattress, tipped up on one side, elbow in the pillow and his chin in his hand in a way that said his smile was so heavy he had to concentrate to keep his head held up.

Kimbo looking at me, Kimbo beautiful in the way I figured that guy who played Alfalfa was probably beautiful when he grew up—little boy eyes and too many freckles.

“So, here’s what we do,” he said.  “We seal our secret love with a tattoo.”

I'll will be reading along with contributors Kevin Meyer, Kathleen Lane, Christine Calfas, Gage Mace, Nora Robertson, Dian Greenwood, Elva Redwood and Holly Goodman at Crow Arts Manor on January 15th. You can also order The Frozen Moment through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: DISCONNECT

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

DISCONNECT by Holly Goodman

I’m on the #75 bus with Baby Lila smelling like a pancake breakfast beside me the morning The Zone slips its hot little hands around my phone and ganks it clean out of my pocket. Way I was always losing things Sam used to say I had a Zone of my own, a personal wormhole that sucked in my things and spit them back at me ages after I stopped needing or wanting or looking for them. Said there was meaning in the things it took and if I listened close I’d get the message. The last three years of our marriage, I wished it would open up and suck him in.

Never came through for me, though. I had to end it the old fashion way with therapists and texts and a double-long U-Haul in the driveway. I got a new apartment for me and the girls and we got to know city bus schedules down to the minute.

Weekdays the #75 runs every 15.

[Holly Goodman lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Her short stories, essays and reporting have appeared in The Journal, Literary Mama, and various magazines and newspapers. She is a past winner of The Journal's Alumni Flash Fiction writing contest and is currently at work on her first novel.] 

Holly will be reading along with contributors Kevin Meyer, Kathleen Lane, Gage Mace, Nora Robertson, Dian Greenwood, Elva Redwood and Gigi Little at Crow Arts Manor on January 15th. You can also order The Frozen Moment through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: THE HOLE

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

THE HOLE by Gage Mace

Dad had a Hole he carried around in him and passed on to me and my brother and sister. It was kind of an heirloom, handed down from generation to generation. A cold, black, raging Hole that was a prison with enough empty space to trick you into thinking it was freedom.

[Gage has been a broadcaster, visual artist, and teacher besides being a writer, and has held every kind of day job from limo driver to museum guard. He is a member of Tom Spanbauer's Dangerous Writers group and is hard at work finishing his first novel, The Big Happy Later On.]

Gage will be reading along with contributors Kevin Meyer, Kathleen Lane, Holly Goodman, Christine Calfas, Nora Robertson, Dian Greenwood, Elva Redwood and Gigi Little at Crow Arts Manor on January 15th. You can order The Frozen Moment through Publication Studio here. 

a taste of the frozen moment: YOU SAID BOY

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

YOU SAID BOY  by Tori Malcangio

You were hardly showing that day. The minor bump under your t-shirt could have easily been mistaken for a large meal. Though at five months along, you’d probably already Googled “Down syndrome” every morning, every night, every moment the reality grew physically intolerable. I imagine you let your long fingers tap, tap out the two words on your keyboard because it was the closest thing to regurgitating them. In your desperate search did you secretly hope to run across an herb or yoga pose to stop the Syndrome, wherever it was at that point, and hold him steady at almost, not quite full-blown Downs?  Though at that point, everything had already been cast in flesh and bone. 

[Tori Malcangio is a freelance advertising copywriter, mom, cereal expert, ninja, etc. in San Diego. Current Pushcart Prize nominee; Winner of 2010 Waasmode Fiction Prize; Finalist in 2010 Iowa Review Fiction Contest. Publications: ZYZZYVA; Passages North; Smokelong Quarterly; Pearl Magazine; Literary Mama; The Reader; and more. Story forthcoming in Cream City Review. MFA candidate at Bennington College. Oh, the mom blog that's anything but: halfassedmom.com.]

Tori and fellow The Frozen Moment contributors Nicole Vollrath, Andrew Printer and Judy Reeves will read from the Anthology on Sunday, January 21, at The Ink Spot in San Diego. Publication date for The Frozen Moment anthology is December 17th. You can order books through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: THAT STUFFED TIGER

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

THAT STUFFED TIGER by Elva Redwood

Never felt a damn thing like it, not in this life.  That baby with her long fingers and dark dark eyes looking right into mine.  She wrapped those fingers all the way round my thumb.

This whole, clean feeling in me, new like mountain rain.  With that utterly real hand, by reflex just holding on.

I never felt so profoundly related.  Like this child was physically part of me.

Then my thought was: Thank God.  Now I don’t have to have one of my own.

[Elva Redwood lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is privileged to study with Tom Spanbauer and the Dangerous Writers. She is a counselor and is inspired by the ways people relate their internal, private experiences to others and the world.]

Elva will be reading along with contributors Holly Goodman, Kevin Meyer, Kathleen Lane, Gage Mace, Nora Robertson, Christine Calfas, Dian Greenwood and Gigi Little at Crow Arts Manor on January 15th. Details to come. The publication date of The Frozen Moment is December 17th. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: SUBURBAN BITCH CRUISE

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

 SUBURBAN BITCH CRUISE by Akhim Cabey

I remembered how, when Lisa and I would get high at night in her room, we’d fasten a scented dryer sheet to the end of a cardboard toilet-paper roll and blow the smoke through it. Our breath came out the other side smelling like perfume, and we’d marvel at the magic of changing one thing into another. Then we’d make love all night. We were both screamers and believed our pants and moans had the power to drown out the memories of molestation and a dead father, of a physically abusive stepfather and crackhead parents, to take away the odor of our pasts and make us come out smelling fine on the other side. Sometimes, when we woke up the next morning, we were at peace for several hours and no longer so painfully, brutally in love.

"Suburban Bitch Cruise" was originally published in the Sun magazine.

The Frozen Moment anthology came out on December 17th. You can order books through Publication Studio here. 

book launch night

Excellent book launch event last night. We arrived about ten minutes after doors opened, and already The Woods was packed. The Woods is a campy-charming event space that was once a funeral parlor - Spanish style with big chandeliers hanging down. What do you call those chandeliers that aren't sprays of crystal but look like giant plastic beehives? Nooks opening off of the main room, all bright painted but low light, kooky couches, a bar on one side that we never made it to. So sad that this place will be closing sometime soon.

Before showtime it was a rush to say hi and throw hugs around so many people. We never made it out of the entryway, and it didn't look like there were any seats left, anyway. I sidled myself up to the edge of the open archway to the main room, and I and a number of us stood there in and behind the archway for all the readings. Where I was, I had a straight shot over the heads of people in seats, to the readers on stage. Colin gave each reader a sweet, little intro - made me selfishly look forward to hearing my own in January. Colin all suave and confident and wearing a tie. There were a lot of readers, but nothing bogged down. Every piece was totally engaging, and the evening really moved.

Mary Wharff making us all laugh somewhere between delighted and horrified as she read about wanting to eat the baby. How deftly her narrative moved back and forth between the scene in the drug store and the scene in the bar, between funny and heartbreaking. [Mary came all the way from Kansas to be part of this event.]

Wes Griffith with his voice all biscuits and molasses. In his intro, Colin said something like, if you fall in love with his voice, look out, because he's married. Sometimes I'm glad I have such a dysfunctional memory, because things I already know can be new again. I've read Wes' piece in a number of incarnations, but still, last night when he got to the end, it hit me so hard I made a little gasp, standing there.

Liz Prato getting up on stage and saying that, here she is reading at a 21-and-over event, and for the first time she's presenting a piece that doesn't contain the F-bomb.

"So," and then a tiny pause, and, "Fuck!" she shouted.

It's a deft piece of writing, laying down a leapfrog of moments and details, and no F-bomb is needed. 

Margaret Malone and her lovely monotone, reading half of an intensely personal essay. Fragmented and laced together the way memory is. Precise, little moments written in her precise, graceful voice.

Bradley K. Rosen, clown at heart, saying he was told there was a time limit, so he'd shrunk his piece. Then he pulled out what looked like a tiny book, size of a pat of butter, and one of those big magnifying glasses.

"Florence...stepped out of the car...languidly..."

He pretended to try to read from the tiny pages until a friend walked up with a black notebook and handed it to him. Then Brad was off, reading his real piece, obliterating the cliché text of his gag opening with his lovely language.

Charles Dye so big on stage he looked like he was bursting out of his spotlight. Reading only a part of his story, starting at the beginning where it grabs hold of your heart and stopping in a spot where it punches you in the gut. I think when he stopped reading, the whole room had one of those moments where the breath stops at the back of your throat.

"It only gets darker from there," Charles tells me.

Michael Sage Ricci trying to raise the music stand but pulling the top clean off instead. Reading a story that starts out light and goes to surprising places. In each of the stories in this book, and in each of the readings, I've found myself, naturally, looking for the frozen moment. Trying to predict what each offering's frozen moment is going to be. Sage's piece, in particular, did real honor to Colin's theme, I think.

Tom Spanbauer stepping up in a vintage suit. [Last time I saw him, Tom had said, "What are you going to wear? I'm going to wear vintage." So I wore vintage too.]

"I'm feeling kind of tender," Tom said into the mic. "Brad says I always cry." This was Tom's way of steeling himself for his own reading after all the emotions already put out into the room.

He read his piece "The Visitations," which I've heard him read twice before. Once in workshop and once at the benefit reading for Walt Curtis. Every time I hear or read this story, it does something to me that I don't understand. We talk about writing as music, but when I hear this story, I hear real music. Some certain sound in my head, a dark, foreboding, relentless sound in my head. The second-person voice of his story is like an elegant nightmare, from which you're suddenly raised up into moments of transcendence.

After the readings, the first of two bands, Leaves Russell, started on stage. They sounded great, but we didn't want the music of the readings washed out of our heads. Stephen and I went over to the sale table and had a gander at the book. It's a sweet, handcrafted book, which comes with different colored covers. One of the cool things about Publication Studio books is that you can go into one of their studios and order one, and they make it right there in front of you. It's dated on the spine. I'll get a contributor's copy, but I also look forward to going into the Portland Publication Studio and getting one hot off the press. But last night, Stephen picked up a copy there, and we moved into the crowd to chat with people and give hugs and congratulations.

Then we ended up at an Italian place called Gino's, a big group of us ringing a large table, ordering wine and clinking glasses. A few of us who will be reading at the January event: Christine Calfas, Nora Robertson [and beau], Holly Goodman. Also Krista Price, another writer from the basement. Mary Wharff [and beau]. Tom and Sage, Tom sitting down next to me, Tom presenting me with the pages he'd read from, which made a lovely souvenir of the evening.

We ordered food. I was famished. "I spent all evening on one banana," I said.

Tom said, "Did it hurt?"

When Colin and his wife Rebekah showed up, we got to be obnoxious in the restaurant and applaud and cheer. When Brad Rosen appeared, we got to be obnoxious again. More joking about my banana. More clinking of glasses and then good food. A lovely way to round out a wonderful evening.

a taste of the frozen moment: ADVENTURES OF A MAYA QUEEN

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

ADVENTURES OF A MAYA QUEEN by Liz Prato

It was late in the morning when we arrived at Tikal. Most tourists got to the ruins early, at sunrise, because the pyramids were built to be seen with the sun rising or setting or at some other perfect point in the sky. But it’s hard to get there that early, really, when you begin in Belize and eat breakfast first at that little café in San Ignacio, the one that’s painted yellow and pink and has a three-legged dog sleeping outside.

“I’m calling him Franz,” I said, and fed him a sausage link. A dance troupe of fleas hip-hopped on his head.

“That thing’s mangy.” Peter peered over the top of his Peterson’s Field Guide. “I don’t think you should feed it. As a matter of fact, I don’t think you should name it.”

[Liz Prato's work has been nominated for four Pushcart-prizes and appeared in several publications, including Iron Horse Literary Review, Salon.com, Subtropics, Hunger Mountain, ZYZZYVA and Who’s Your Mama (Soft Skull Press). When she’s not teaching as an Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute, she fantasizes about Guatemalan limeade.]

Liz will be reading along with contributors Tom Spanbauer, Michael Sage Ricci, Margaret Malone, Charles Dye, J. W. Griffith, Mary Wharff and Brad Rosen on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: THE VISITATIONS

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

THE VISITATIONS by Tom Spanbauer

Two weeks of hot hot bright August. Portland. During the day, the kind of heat your old house soaks up into its bones.  At night, the heat is inside the walls, under the floor, comes off in waves from the ceiling. Forget about going upstairs. All your long skinny windows open with those pop-in expandable screens.  

At night, they walk by, drunk from the Alto Lounge or the Belmont Inn. They are loud and horny, passing cigarettes, joints, yelling fuck on their way to the bars on Stark and  28^th. Youth. You remember youth. How you walked from bar to bar. The night at Zefiro’s you drank espressos and dirty martinis back to back. Nat Shermans, Galois, Camel straights.  In one of the narrow toilettes, the door locked, a line of cocaine tapped out on the sink.  Above the toilet, the photo of the young naked woman on the beach.  A moment that one night when you stopped.  You looked around.  This isn’t supposed to be good for you, you said.

[Tom Spanbauer is the author of Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, Now is the Hour and In the City of Shy Hunters. You can find his website here.]

Tom will be reading along with contributors Michael Sage Ricci, Margaret Malone, Charles Dye, Liz Prato, Mary Wharff, J. W. Griffith and Brad Rosen on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: CAVERN OF SPACE

 [the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

CAVERN OF SPACE by Margaret Malone

The three of us spent most of our time together at Mark’s mom’s place. We all still lived at home with our mothers, but because Mark was older, it wasn’t weird to his mom that we were drinking forty ounce bottles of malt liquor and quarts of tequila. It helped that she spent a lot of time upstairs in her bedroom with the door closed, watching TV, smoking menthol 100s. Every night that fall, we had the first floor all to ourselves.

We were best friends. Always together.

We were all friends together until accidentally we were more.

[Margaret Malone's writing has appeared in The Missouri Review, Swink, The Wordstock Ten Anthology and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2009 Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction and a 2011 Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship. To contact her, visit her website at www.margaretmalone.com.]

Margaret will be reading along with contributors Tom Spanbauer,  Michael Sage Ricci, Liz Prato, Charles Dye, J. W. Griffith and Brad Rosen on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: AN ANCIENT AIR

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

AN ANCIENT AIR by Bradley K. Rosen

They say the air is older in Italy than it is in America. They say the cotton ball clouds and the rolling vineyards and farmlands and the sun’s warm light have been around for an ocean’s eon, since the day before Jesus rolled the rock. I know this romantic idea of an older air is certainly a scientifically ridiculous one, yet, when you are there, in Italia, the idea that the air is older somehow seems plausible, seems more I do believe in fairies.

[Bradley K Rosen grew up in Claremont, California. In 1992 he migrated to Oregon and now lives in Portland, where he has lived since 1998. He has two sons. His first novel, The Bunkie Spills, is in its final stages.]

Bradley will be reading along with contributors Tom Spanbauer, Margaret Malone, Michael Sage Ricci, Liz Prato, J. W. Griffith and Charles Dye on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: CONEY ISLAND KISS

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

CONEY ISLAND KISS by David Ciminello

The subway train raced along steel tracks. Wheels sparked. Inside ceiling fans spun. So crowded they had to stand. Stanford’s right ankle pressed against a wicker picnic basket, his left hip touched Jack’s. Hane’s white t-shirt crisp, skin soft, aftershave sweet. He wanted to beg for a kiss. Ask for it. Take a swan dive and go for it. But strange clown faces and burly immigrant bodies surrounded them. A whole circus pile of summer beach travelers ring-rounded them. A lurch and you were in someone’s lap. Maybe Jack’s. Maybe the old man eating fried chicken. Morty, can’t you wait!? Hands clutched beach balls, beach umbrellas, towels, blankets, and sacks. Jack in his new Palm Beach pants gripped a seat pole. His smile did all the talking.

[Coney Island Kiss  is a chapter excerpt from David's novel in progress, The Queen of Steeplechase Park.]

[David Ciminello’s fiction has appeared in the Lambda Literary Award winning anthology Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City, the literary journal Lumina, the online anthology Underwater New York, and on broadcastr. His poetry has appeared in Poetry Northwest. David is a 2011 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction.]

The Frozen Moment anthology comes out on December 17th. You can order books through Publication Studio here. 

a taste of the frozen moment: MESSY THINGS, PEPPER TREES

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

MESSY THINGS, PEPPER TREES by Judy Reeves

I am in the recovery room with my legs propped open and a sun lamp warming the torn place. If the doctor had arrived sooner he could have made a neat cut to open my vagina enough for the baby’s head and shoulders to fit through without tearing, but the nurses weren’t taught how to make the cut. Plus they didn’t have the knives.

[Judy Reeves is a writer, teacher and writing practice provocateur who has published four books on the craft including A Writer’s Book of Days, which was named
Best General Nonfiction in the 2011 San Diego Book Awards. She lives in San Diego and is cofounder of San Diego Writers, Ink. Her website is: http://judyreeveswriter.com/ ]

Judy and fellow The Frozen Moment contributors Nicole Vollrath, Andrew Printer and Tori Malcangio will read from the Anthology on Sunday, January 21, at The Ink Spot in San Diego. The Frozen Moment anthology comes out on December 17th. You can order books through Publication Studio here. 

a taste of the frozen moment: LAG

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

LAG, by Michael Sage Ricci

Here’s the final word, darlings:

6:15 AM at any major airport is distinctly unglamorous.

I mean really, it’s way too early to be herded through security checkpoints, mad cows in a pen awaiting approval. Now that the world lives in constant fear, security is paramount and I had to sacrifice my beauty sleep to catch my flight on time. Protection has a cost, darlings. Like most economies, the low man on the totem pole is the one that pays the price.

[Michael Sage Ricci writes and tattoos in Portland Oregon. He also teaches with Tom Spanbauer’s Dangerous Writers and has been published in Portland Queer, Death Magazine, White Crane Journal, RadicalFaeireDigest, Ellipses, and Under A Silver Sky, an anthology of Northwest Poets. He has just finished his first novel: The Resurrection of AquaBoy.]

Sage will be reading along with contributors Tom Spanbauer, Margaret Malone, Charles Dye, Liz Prato, J. W. Griffith and Brad Rosen on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

a taste of the frozen moment: EMOTICON

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

EMOTICON by Andrew Printer

Once inside his apartment, once inside any stranger’s home, these things happen fast. There’s no time to pause or be quick on my feet with clever excuses. Men who misrepresent themselves rarely linger. On the contrary, they hurry me in and then quickly out of my clothes, leaving me no time to un-promise anything. Today was no exception. Before I had time to say a word he had lifted my shirt up over my head and both his and my summer-colored shorts had dropped to the floor.

[one of the illustrations of EMOTICON] 

[andrew will be reading his piece at the san diego release party on december 16th at double break. more info is here. andrew and fellow contributors judy reeves, nicole vollrath and tori malcangio will read from the anthology on sunday, january 21, at the ink spot in san diego. you can check out andrew's art and film works here. the book can be ordered here. facebook page and info for the first reading event, to coincide with the december 17th launch of the book, is here.]

a taste of the frozen moment: MILWAUKEE

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

MILWAUKEE by Charles Dye

It doesn’t matter that I’m a boy standing next to his father’s deathbed. Doesn’t matter that I’m a week from my fourteenth birthday. Or that I’m wearing jeans with an Ocean Pacific t-shirt and a coat that’s not warm enough for Wisconsin winter. What seems important is the string of green blips on the heart monitor, and the idea that the black margins are squeezing the life out of him. To the grown man looking back on it a lifetime later, what really matters is that my father’s body is close enough to touch but my father isn’t close enough to reach.

Charles will be reading along with contributors Tom Spanbauer, Margaret Malone, Michael Sage Ricci, Liz Prato, J. W. Griffith and Brad Rosen on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.

[Charles Dye is a professional copywriter and digital media strategist, award-winning journalist, and a Dangerous Writer since 2004. Prior to settling in Portland, he fought wildfires and coached high school and NCAA football. His writing has appeared indie fiction anthologies Artscape and The Class that Fell in Love with the Man.]