What a busy week!  I'm working on the three themed anthologies for Static Movement: Hell, Grave Robbers and Serial Killers 2.  Static Movement is a "for the exposure only" publisher.  I've wondered about that.  Like most writers, I want to be paid for my work.  On the other hand, getting noticed goes a long way toward earning that "payday."

Aaron French's Static Movement anthology (and I have a story in this one) The Shadow of the Unknown had two short stories nominated for the 2011 Bram Stoker Award (preliminary ballot).

I'd call that great exposure.  My boss, Chris Bartholomew, made the top 10 in Book Editor in the Preditors and Editors 2011 poll.

If you know me, then you know I am dedicated to helping Indiana writers published through my Indiana Horror, Indiana Science Fiction and Indiana Crime anthologies.

I've brought this dedication to Static Movement.  Great Indiana writers such as Paula D. Ashe, Murphy Edwards and and the poet Davis S. Pointer have made it into the anthologies.  If you're an Indiana writer, get to it and submit your work to jwkstaticmovement@att.net.  Just put the title of the anthology in the subject line.

Indiana Science Fiction will open to submissions on July 1, 2012.  Send your work to indianascifi@att.net.  I will be offering a free download of Indiana Science Fiction 2011 on the same day as submissions open.

So, Indiana writers, let's get those stories written and published!

Love and peace,

James Ward Kirk
 

 

 

 

Edgar Allan Poe is Alive

(And the number two)

Edgar Allan Poe still lives.

Anyone familiar with Poe’s work should already have an understanding of how important the number two was to him.  Consider “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “William Wilson,” and “The Purloined Letter.”  Each of these stories speaks of dichotomy, but a broken dichotomy.  Of course, the crack in the foundation of the setting for Usher indicates the broken mind—using two characters to portray what happens when duality of the mind is fractured.  At the end of William Wilson the narrator stabs his nemesis and in this action suffers the same fate.  The same is true for “The Purloined Letter.”  Norman N. Holland’s piece “Re-Covering “The Purloined Letter”: Reading as a Personal Transaction” in a collection of criticism titled “The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading (The John Hopkins University Press, 1988) is insightful as to the number two in the literature of Poe.           

The human body has two eyes, two ears, two thumbs, two arms, two legs.  The brain has two hemispheres.  The liver has two lobes. 

            The human body is divisible by two.  The heart has four chambers.  We have eight fingers.  Even the number of teeth is divisible by two.

            We have body and mind.  We have mind and soul, love and hate; even our individual desires are only quenched when that desire is met.

            There is life and death.  There is heaven and hell.  We have God and Satan, and between these two lies man—the crack in duality. 

            And in the horror tale dichotomy is answered with the number two: the story and its teller.

James Ward Kirk

06/24/2012

You see the cover for Indiana Crime on a page dedicated to horror?  Just let me say this: horror arrives in various disguises.

Indiana Horror 2012 is now on sale.  Find it first on Amazon!

Indiana Horror Anthology Publishing Soon

Indiana Horror Anthology for 2011 will publish before the end of the month.  The contributors I have worked with are among the best people out there and I've enjoyed working with them.