In addition to writing novels, I do pen the occasional short fiction, and they add up over time. I’ve had more than two dozen published, and many of them are online. Here’s a sampling:

Satire & Humor

“Rebranding Thor” (Defenestration Magazine, April 2010)
“Restraint” (When Falls the Coliseum, March 2010)
“The Epiphany of Leonard’s Toenails” (Yareah Magazine, April 2009)
“A Reluctant Emcee” ( Abyss & Apex, Oct. 2004)
“The Feet Feelers of Frigheim Nine” (Fortean Bureau, December 2004). Online version
“The Monkey’s Tail, as Told by Marcel Duchamp the Day After Charles Lindbergh Landed at Le Bourget Field” (Trunk Stories, Issue #2, December 2004)

Cyberpunk

“Under the Blue Curve” (Abyss & Apex, Q4, 2007)
“Through the Lattice” (Chaos Theory: Tales Askew, Summer 2005)
“The Ghost and Its King” (Neometropolis, September 2004)
“Close to the Wind” (Far Sector SFFH, October 2003, available at Fictionwise.com)
“Any Port in a Storm” (Parsec, Summer 1999) *Nominated for a 2000 Aurora Award

Alternate History

“Gross Bodies and Light Convertible” (Oceans of the Mind, Fall 2006) –> note, this is a pdf!
“The Consolation of Victory” (Paradox, January 2004)
“Thor’s Brood” (The Meanderings of the Emily Chesley Reading Circle, 2003) –> note, this is a pdf!
“The Gallant Captain Oates” (Would That It Were, July 2002)
“The Afrikaners of East Nissouri” (Would That It Were, Jan. 2002)

Other SF

“The rush of heaven downward” (Flash Me, 2003)
“Hounding Manny” (Oceans of the Mind, Fall 2002)
“Courage Translated” (TT2000 Anthology, Summer 2000, (EOTU Ezine, Feb. 2002)

And if you’d like some more of my fiction, my second novel, Marvellous Hairy is now available as a $3.99 Kindle Edition. And my first novel, The Amadeus Net, is available on Scribbd for $5.

A commercial interruption: As you know, I am a writer of novels in addition to this blog, and my second book is now available as a Kindle edition.

As we lead up to the official release of the paper version, I’ve priced the Kindle version at $3.99. (Actually, I priced it at $1.99, but Amazon adds a $2 fee for downloading.) But even at $3.99 it’s a helluva deal. And it’s a limited-time offer!

You can buy it here, and find out more about the book here.

Voices, by Kyle Muntz

I need to state at the outset that I don’t read much experimental fiction, so it was at first difficult to pull away the lens of more traditional plot and character structures when reading Kyle Muntz’s poetical prose novel Voices. But once I’d accomplished this, there is SO much to admire in this book.

For starters, Muntz is a hell of a good writer.

The prose is electric, vibrant, thrumming with vitality and interest. The theme of “voices” runs throughout the work — voices in the narrator’s head, voices in your head as you read and the phonation of Muntz’s poetry in prose form. The story, as much as I can speak of it, follows a narrator who is strangely absent. He is a poet, a would-be wanton, and a wanderer in a surreal city-scape with his friends.

The narrator’s voice is consistent, but as I say, it is almost as though the brilliant observations and music of his language is his only way to maintain his existence. Without it he would simply vanish into the singularity that is his soul.

Muntz’s work is intense. It’s clearly designed by a great intellect, which is why I found it so strange to have such an emotional reaction. The text can vary wildly, from incredibly vivid scenes of beauty to images that are filled with existential horror, particularly whenever he visits his friend Jacob. It seemed to me that some of the best scenes were of intimate encounters like this one:

“We kissed
on the veranda. It was her arms and mine, sanctified: soft smooth skin, running hands down her back running them up. The night didn’t call to us, because the night couldn’t call, but we were there and we were really there. She tasted like something that wasn’t moonlight. Scent and oranges, color, ellipsoid racing, we kissed. It started to rain. She didn’t pull away. The rain matted her hair to us, a fall of water. We kissed. Her essence and the rain, gorgeous,
she didn’t
pull away.”

Now, I have an intimation of another way that “voices” influences this story, but I won’t share it here and spoil the chance for you to find it yourself.

So if you’re into beautiful writing, and not afraid to stretch your understanding of narrative, you should definitely give this a go.

Voices, by Kyle Muntz, vailable on Amazon.com. Get more info at the publisher’s website. Rain in the city photo by Abac07.

Didn’t anyone learn from the Planet of the Apes?

According to the People’s Daily Online, the Taliban are training monkeys to attack US forces in Afghanistan. According to their report:

Reporters from the media agency spotted and took photos of a few “monkey soldiers” holding AK-47 rifles and Bren light machine guns in the Waziristan tribal region near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The report and photos have been widely spread by media agencies and Web sites across the world.

Now if there is any truth to this, which I seriously doubt, given the doctored photo, it is completely outrageous. Then again, we’re talking the Taliban here, so why should we expect anything else.

Of course, according to the Chinese, this has been tried before by the CIA in Vietnam. You can find the nonsense at the People’s Daily here. HT Nothing to Do with Arbroath.

In 1779 Anton Mesmer proposed everything in the universe influenced everything else, and this was accomplished through “fluid universally diffused.” It is this premise that is the driving influence of Tom Bradley’s 2009 novel, Vital Fluid.

The story follows two sets of rival hypnotists; Phil Deacon, scion of an old-style showbiz family, and his nemesis, Simon Magus, who occupy center stage in our century. Their story is paralleled by the tale of historical mesmerist Charles LaFontaine, and his erstwhile rival, Baron Dupotet. Both sets of hypnotists are the yin and yang of one another — Phil is light, and Simon is dark — LaFontaine is famed and kind, while Dupotet is despised and cruel.

Bradley’s writing is deceptively easy, the plot whisking you through the pages with distractions and legerdemain worthy of the hypnotists of which he writes. But more than that, it is a fine satire of modern America, Christian fundamentalism, modern notions of what passes for entertainment, and the nature of professional rivalry and envy.

At times his characters and his prose are foul-mouthed and disturbing — a few of his characters are caricatures, but most of the time, you feel they are real people, even if you only spot them in the crowd. And there are hundreds of acute moments of fine observation and touching humanity, such as this scene at a native reservation in the desert:

“An amazingly beautiful girl of about fourteen walks by. She trusts the Medicine Man enough to try out what promises, someday, to be a formidable set of flirtatious skills. She eyes him sidelong and makes tentative little motions with her slender hips.

“The Medicine Man tilts his head and sighs, as if overwhelmed with adoration. His knees start to wobble comically and he grabs his chest. She breaks into girlish giggles and scampers off.”

Evidence of the vital fluid is all around the characters of Phil and LaFontaine, but harder to spot with Simon, and virtually invisible near the malignant presence of Dupotet.

In history, Mesmer’s proposition was first proved unscientific by a French Royal Commission in 1784, and then parodied by Romantic writers in the early part of the next century. But here in the new millennium, at the end of Bradley’s book, you’ll discover that the vital fluid has always been with us, and with any luck, always will be.

You’ll just have to read it to see how.

Buy it at the publisher’s website.

Hypnosis photo by Mastrobiggo – thanks for it!