Second this month but still primary, we continue our stream of journal content with six stories in a largely landscape issue—Fiddleblack #11.

Three familiar authors return: Contributing Editor John McManus graciously allows us to reprint his 2003 story, an absolute legend of his earlier public readings, “Cowrie,” while Dane Elcar, a favorite reader from our first podcast episode, lends us his wilderness fatigue, “The Sespe,” and Elias Marsten is yet again present, this time with the brief exi-Christian primer “Sensing and Closing Light.”

Lindsay D’Andrea joins us for the first time, producing a fantastic invocation of Carol Rifka Brunt’s Tell the Wolves I’m Home, with her story “Edna of the Pines,” and 3:AM Magazine contributor Steve Himmer, also a first here, excerpts bits of desiccation from his novel Fram.

Finally, Eric Shonkwiler, starts something of a first for our journal: the serialization of his novella, Rene. Shonkwiler begins with part one of three, thinking antipastoral, outlines of As I Lay Dying‘s transience, and, perhaps another of our firsts—the subtle, journal cliffhanger.