On "Excerpts from 'Mr. Deadman'" by Peter Cherches (531 words) ***

Cherches's playful deadman is, of course, a set of vignettes about Death, you know, in the pale man with scythe sort of way--i.e., the grim reaper. The cartoonish figure gets use in horror tales, in literary tales, and in comedy, and it is in this last one that Cherches here focuses. The comic element comes from the locations that Mr. Deadman opts to visit. This isn't Mr. Deadman on the job, after all. This is Mr. Deadman on vacation, literally. What does he like to do when he's not reaping souls? Or really, what does any dead person like to do? But of course, they like to pretend to be alive again. Read the story here at Eclectica.

On "Exposure of the Breasts While Being Demeaned" by Dennis Kaplan (8445 words) *****

I like a good mystery, especially when it doesn't involve murder or some other typical crime. Creating a mystery is a natural way to make a story interesting, since readers are curious people. In a sense, all stories are mysteries of a kind. We read to find out what happened or what will happen. We read to find out how a character changed or didn't. We read to find out why a character is the way he or she is. We read for information we do not know.

Kaplan's "Breast" story is a mystery that may or may not involve a crime. It's rooted in a strange phone call that one Lillian Kern receives one day regarding a psychology experiment in which she once took part. Someone's trying to track down the participants--ten years later. Who is this person and why do they want to know who was involved? That's just the start. As the story proceeds, we end up wondering if the experiment is what it was supposed to be or whether more sinister ideas were at work--or whether those doing the tracking are more sinister. I even ended up wondering at one point about the main character's husband. The piece, as I'm thinking of it now, actually reminds me a bit of Thomas Pynchon, which its focus on these kind of why questions about our pasts interacting with worlds we cannot even begin to fathom. In fact, the whole search seems, in a way, like yet another psychology experiment of dubious taste--but then, as the narrator's husband might say, that's life. This one seems much shorter than its 8,000-plus word length. Read the story here at Eclectica.

On "Publisher" by Corey Mesler (13,702 words) *****

Here's a story that in its youthful enthusiasm for literature and life and the female sex reminds me a little of John Fante. Reading it is a pleasure. But it's a story too of disappointment and of reading and the love of it. Our narrator is a man who wants a job in publishing. Locked out, however, he takes a job at a bookstore. And then, one day, he gets a break. He manages to get a job at . . . a vanity publisher.

But what vanity publishers are to writers they also prove in a way to be to editors. There are prices to be paid. What happens when you get your hands on a good book, one that deserves publication better than what you can offer? How far will you go for literature? And will in the end it matter?

I'm reminded of some of the unpublished work of friends and former classmates that I keep in files at home. Sometimes, I return to visit their stories. Sometimes, over the years, the writing has tarnished; what I thought so good twenty years ago, I now recognize wasn't. But other times, on rereading, I sit back rather amazed--and saddened--that the story never saw the light of day, and the writer gave up. Finding publication for good material (and then actually marketing that publication so that it finds an audience) is hard work, but it also involves a bit of luck. But maybe, in the end, even if only one reader appreciates a given piece, the author has still managed to convey something to do something special. Read the story here at the Workplace Anthology or here at Eclectica.

On "For Lack of White Robes" by Wade Hartel (3548 words) ***

Lust and religion--it's something juxtaposed a lot, probably quite a few stories involving religion. I think of a Rick Bass story about a Mormon girl dating a non-Mormon guy. I think even more of John Fante's Catholic protagonists, so full of bluster about the women around them, so full of guilt every time something goes wrong. Hartel's story doesn't involve much of Fante's Catholic guilt, but like the Bass story to which I refer (collected in Bass's The Watch), it does use religion as a context in which to talk about how people come together. In this case, it's Catholics on a mission, and our narrator has a particular interest in one young woman. Will he get her? You know how these kind of stories go, but you don't know how this one ends. Read the piece here at Eclectica.

On "Sexy, Hot, Sad, Tragic, Accident" by Krishan Coupland (2404 words) ****

Look the words of this title up on the Internet and see what you find. You probably won't find this story, but such is the cruelty of Google's automated search and recover. Why not this story? Why some other site? Unless you're up on all of what goes in to search engine ratings, you probably will never know. Just like you'll never know "Em," the character at the center of this story--though if you had the film that this story discusses, you might get an understanding of what people think of Em, not the real Em but the Em projected on our screens. This story of loss, of trying to recapture what was, is quite the thing to save and hold on to for as long as you can. Read it here at Eclectica.