Steve Almond is a funny, funny man, or so his short stories lead me to believe. Many of the stories within his newest collection, The Evil B.B. Chow, are laugh out loud funny and the ones which did not make me laugh out loud, did make me groan or nod at their precise depiction of the sad and cringe-filled human experience. And, really, what … Read More

New Obsession

Hershey’s Dulce de Leche Kisses are to die for. If you are a fan of Hagan Daz Dulce de Leche ice cream (or Dulce de Leche anything), these will not disappoint. I was sceptical and worried that they might be a bit gross, but they are delicious. Trust me! I have only seen them at Target. Go on and get yourself a bag and … Read More New Obsession

New at Salome, a prose poem by the remarkable Katrina Denza: An Afternoon Under a Plum Tree

Mary Guterson‘s debut novel We Are All Fine Here offers us a fresh new voice that is one part Lorrie Moore and one part Helen Fielding. The narrator, Julia, is funny, neurotic, and brutally honest (at least in her internal monologue). In short, she is real–take this bit for example (which could be a scene from my own life, as I once told a … Read More

New at Ink Pot: Taking Comfort, an excerpt from Roger Morris’s forthcoming novel & Steve Hansen interviews Lit Pot Press author, J. Eric Miller

If you are like me, your computer screen is usually filthy and you don’t notice this until you are in a public place with your laptop and someone’s looking over your shoulder noticing all of the dust and food bits on it. Not pretty. Well, your problems are solved when you use this new-fangled, high-tech screen cleaner. (note: the download may take a while … Read More

And the winner is…

The winner of the 24th edition of SJSU’s Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (which is a contest for the worst first line) is Dan McKay of Fargo, ND. And here is his winning sentence: As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, … Read More And the winner is…

"Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver"

That was a “tip” one of my regulars (What a guy! Guess he didn’t realize that cash would have gone a long way seeing as I was paying my way through college on tips) gave me when I was a bartender. I’d like to add a tip, never trust that a flight originating from the midwest in the middle of the summer is going … Read More "Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver"

You would like to think that the love the young women (and men) experience in Alicia Erian’s collection The Brutal Language of Love is not normal–that people don’t really treat each other that way–but it is, they do. My favorite story in the collection, “Still Life with Plaster,” shows most perfectly how this angry dance keeps marching on, as it gives us a glimpse … Read More

A couple of things of note before I sign off until Thursday… Happy Birthday to my friends: Beverly Jackson on Sunday and Katrina Denza on Tuesday. And Happy Anniversary to my beloved. It will be our third anniversary (that’s us on the steps of the church on our wedding day)on Wednesday, but it feels as though only three seconds has passed.

Lisa Glatt’s collection entitled The Apple’s Bruise reads very quickly because the stories are less about plot and more about characterization. This is not to say they aren’t well plotted, rather the characters are so engrossing, so flawed, that they become the story. The thing that connects these stories, these characters is that tender, shameful part inside of them, that damaged fruit, that bruise–and … Read More

I remember when I first started working on the internet one of the catch phrases was, “content is king”, meaning without content, data, there wouldn’t be so much drive to be online (except for porn, that is) and it seems that phrase is now truer than ever–Web Publishers Eye Your Wallet: The only thing slowing down the move away from free content is the … Read More