We add to what’s left of your summer with the release of Fiddleblack #17, a collection of presumptuously un-sunny stories put together with the hope of giving early welcome to dimmer days.
Pay close attention to Luke Bartolomeo’s scan through time in “A Glimpse of the Structure and System,” which is a solid entrant our informal austerely weird hall of fame alongside Nick Rombes, Adam Cantwell, and Matthew Jakubowski:
I have constant visions of peeling off my face, cutting with a shard of her glass from left temple at diagonal toward right side of chin, doing that several times at different spacings and then peeling each slowly, thumb and forefinger peeling, the type of peeling its takes to get slippery strands of bacon out of a greasy package. I peel and peel, and when I am done I don’t get any farther underneath. It’s my face again, exactly the same.
Likewise, Alexandra Kessler’s brilliant “Fish” is a smart dazzler:
In my sophomore year, I won a science-themed essay contest with a piece about the mating habits of the Anglerfish. I wrote about how only the female Anglerfish are fully formed, and the male Anglerfish are basically these miniscule specks of sea-dust that mate by clinging to the female like a parasite. I think Leah and I are two big Anglerfish stuck in a tiny aquarium. A girl is a host, an ache that holds everything together.
We’re working on a few things for later this year. We owe you an annual edition for 2014—this is still in production, but we plan to have it soon. We’re also on the edge of releasing our first audiobook with author and performer Dane Elcar. Dane’s work with John McManus’s award-winning short story collection Stop Breakin Down is enthralling and brilliant in every sense possible. Charles Dodd White’s novel A Shelter of Others is available for sale. Our neighbors at PANK recently wrote about the novel, and Charles has been on the road all summer, touring his with art and working his role as an artist quite truly. We have exactly ten hand-numbered copies of our Clive Barker book left in stock. Afterward, this book will be forever out of print. Fiddleblack t-shirts may be available soon… Some were printed and handed out a few years ago, but we’re developing more designs and options. Let us know if you’re interested.