June is the beginning of summer. It’s when we plan some kind of escape from everyday reality.
Some of us go on vacations packing up and taking off to lands far, far away, but if that’s not possible, we find alternate ways to escape through writing and our minds. June’s over-riding theme is escape. Escape from trauma, grief, consciousness, secrets and Sarah Palin as a possible contender for the 2012 presidency.
I also have a special feature this month. Jessica Anya Blau doing a video reading of an excerpt from her book! A review of her latest tour de force, “Drinking Closer to Home,” and an in-depth interview with her. And, as an added bonus, read one of her phenomenal stories, “Love Antics.”
Pat Pujolas is our featured mid-June writer of the month. He gives us a heart-wrenching, masterfully written short story, “Jimmy Lagowski Saves the World.” The pain of childhood is brilliantly rendered through these characters and how they find ways to escape.
Jeni Mae McKenzie delivers a haunting story of grief and how the ghosts of the past can shape the present in her memorable short story “Sticks and Stones.”
Rob Geisen imparts a brutal, yet hysterical mock-up drama of what Sarah Palin’s 2012 political race would be, step-by-step, in his short story, “How to Field Dress a Moose: Sarah Palin: The Road to 2012 Style.”
Paul Corman-Roberts offers us a glimpse of the 70’s San Francisco LSD inter-dimensional communication that transpired between his characters in this amusing, yet strangely familiar, short story “Panhandle’s End.”
Gerald Arthur Winter takes us back in time to the all-encompassing world of baseball and a secret of a lifetime in “Poker Face.”