My review of Ampersand, Mass by William Walsh is live at The Nervous Breakdown.
Posted on February 14, 2012 Leave a Comment
In this collection of stories, William Walsh has put together a unique collage of perspectives set in Ampersand, Mass (Keyhole Press). These tales run the gamut from fantastical and bizarre to sweet and touching to heartbreaking and morose. It’s a wild ride, so buckle up.
My review of Damascus by Joshua Mohr is live at The Nervous Breakdown
Posted on February 14, 2012 Leave a Comment
If you’re a fan of Charles Bukowski (and who isn’t) then you’ll probably like this seedy, depressing and ultimately touching and redeeming novel, Damascus (Two Dollar Radio), by Joshua Mohr. I had the pleasure of reading with Josh a few months ago in Chicago as part of The Nervous Breakdown reading series run by Gina Frangello. In addition to Josh and myself, we were lucky to have Kate Zambreno (Green Girl) as well. Josh is almost the exact opposite of his writing—kind, soft spoken, and generous, even when tatted up and reading dark passages from his novel. He has several other titles with TDR as well, so be sure to check out his other work too.
Punchnel’s Hard Boiled-Down Noir Fiction Contest – I’m a winner!
Posted on February 4, 2012 Leave a Comment
Steven Woods, for “Billy.”
Nik Korpon for “Gold Teeth.”
Alex Mattingly for “Marbles.”
Mimi Brooks for “Out Like A Lion.”
Richard Thomas for “Jimmy Five Ways.”
My story “Jimmy Five Ways” was one of the winners at Punchnel’s fiction contest. My good friend Nik Korpon was also a winner! All five of the stories and winners will have their work up live next week. So keep an eye out.
My review of Karl Taro Greenfeld’s NowTrends is live at The Nervous Breakdown.
Posted on February 1, 2012 Leave a Comment
My review of Karl Taro Greenfeld’s NowTrends is now up at The Nervous Breakdown. Great stuff. He’s known as a non-fiction author, but he writes fiction too, very well published—The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, BASS, O. Henry, etc. And KTG is one hell of a nice guy, too. I ran across his work in a few copies of TMR and TPR and posted up something at HTMLGiant one day about something, can’t remember what, but he dropped me an email to say that he agreed with my POV and we started chatting. Loved these stories.
Also, I’m a big fan of Hobart‘s Short Flight / Long Drive books. I’ve read many of them, and they’ve all been great.
Storyville Column Four is now up at Lit Reactor: Duotrope
Posted on January 19, 2012 Leave a Comment
And, now my fourth column is live up at Lit Reactor. It’s all about how to navigate Duotrope.com, one of the best sites going for doing research on magazines, journals, websites and publishers, for tracking your submissions, and for staying on top of all of your literary pursuits. I could not do what I do without these guys. And if you can, when you get a few extra bucks in your Paypal account, send it on over to these guys to help them out. If you write short stories, especially, and don’t use these guys, you could really get a lot out of this column. And, heck, even if you already use Duotrope, maybe I’ll point out something new.
Third Storyville Column at Lit Reactor: The Journey of “Rudy Jenkins”
Posted on January 19, 2012 Leave a Comment
My third column went up at Lit Reactor last month (December 2011) and I totally forgot to come back here and post up about it. This column talks about the journey of one of my problem children, “Rudy Jenkins Buries His Fears” and shows you what you have to go through sometimes in order to get published. Don’t worry, the story ends well.
“The Jenny Store” in the Thunderdome Press anthology In Search of a City: Los Angeles in 1,000 words is now out
Posted on December 22, 2011 2 Comments
So excited to be in here with my story “The Jenny Store.” This is a beautiful book. Inspired by photographs taken around the Los Angeles area, the book features short stories from 26 authors. Each author was asked to select a photograph from a collection taken by the editor and write a story of precisely 1,000 words inspired by what they saw – no more, no less. The result is quintessential Los Angeles: Dreams, Drugs, Hallucinations, Romance, Life and Death, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Redemption. Like the city itself, the book is multifaceted, hard to label and even harder to put down.
CONTENTS
Ryan Wilson – “American Trash”
Stuart Gibbel – “Break on Through”
Craig Clevenger – “Obsolescence”
Nik Korpon – “South of Thirteen”
Dennis Cruz – “Smile Now, Cry Later”
Pela Via – “Bathhouse”
Stephen Conley – “Don’t Feed the Animals”
Grigori Black – “This Was Heaven”
Doc O’Donnell – “Your Personal Apocalypse”
Nikki Guerlain – “Sick Ticket”
Patrick Verhagen – “Swim”
Craig Wallwork – “El Bordello Alexandra”
Nicholas Merlin Karpuk – “Ahm’s Bay”
Nik Houser – “Subtitles for a Silent Film”
H.R. Tardiff – “Walls in the Sand”
Richard Thomas – “The Jenny Store”
Bob Pastorella – “Alexandra”
Simon West-Bulford – “Project Asmodeus”
Jay Slayton-Joslin – “The Fantasy of California vs. The Reality of London”
Amanda Gowin – “Gilded Bones”
Chris Deal – “Padre Nuestro”
Boden Steiner – “Here”
Gordon Highland – “Fry Girl”
edward j rathke – “All the Dreams You Dreamt Retold”
Michael Paul Gonzalez – “Tidal”
Victor Bengtsson – “Venice, Forever”
“Transmogrify” in Dark Moon Presents: Vampires
Posted on December 21, 2011 Leave a Comment
I’m thrilled to announce that my twist on the classic vampire tale, “Transmogrify” is now available in a new anthology from Dark Moon Books. They’ve done a few themed issues, such as ghosts and zombies, so of course, vampires is up next. They’re doing great things over at DMB, and I’ll have another story coming out with them in a really cool flash fiction collection called Slices of Flesh, which will have some big names in it, like Jack Ketchum, Ramsay Campbell, and many more.
Here’s more about this book, as well as a tables of contents. I’m familiar with C.W. LaSart and Kenneth W. Cain, who are really excellent dark fiction authors.
SYNOPSIS: It’s true that few of us would choose the life of a zombie, mindlessly consuming every moving thing in sight as we rot and shrivel with decay. It’s also true that few of us would choose to become a ghost, dolefully watching the comings and goings of the living, unable to touch, to breathe, to feel them in a physical way. But, if given the chance to become a vampire, I think most of us would bite. Vampires make our pulses quicken: whether they are the velveteen figures of Anne Rice or Bram Stoker, or the violent monsters of Stephen King, we don’t care. Not the hunters. Not the hopefuls. The real, blood-drinking, neck-biting fiends. Vampires are timeless because they are immortal. And the vampires in these pages may just come back to bite you in the end. These are stories you can really sink your teeth into. Promise.
TOC:
Voices Carry (TOM WORTMAN)
Fountain of Flesh (NICKY PEACOCK)
Dawn Hunter (EARL PARRISH)
Green Eyes and Chili Dogs (KEVIN DAVID ANDERSON)
Cosmina (CHRISTOPHER LEPPEK & EMANUEL ISLER)
Rite of Passage (LORI MICHELLE)
7 Hours (MAX BOOTH III)
Liquid Blue (DREW WILCOX)
Ordering Out (KENNETH W. CAIN)
To The Last Drop (ERIC GRAWE)
Sekhmet’s Daughters (C. W. LaSART)
Entangled (JENNIFER LEFSYK)
The Spy Who Bit Me (LORELEI BELL)
An Unusual Occurrence at Pointe Laurent (MARYKATHRYN GELISSE)
Tough Love (DAVID THOMAS)
The Taste of Love (RENEE PAWLISH)
State of Grace (TARA FOX HALL)
Transmogrify (RICHARD THOMAS)
The Key to Happiness (PENELOPE CROWE)
Complete list of book reviews by Richard Thomas
Posted on November 23, 2011 Leave a Comment
This is a list of all of my current, live book reviews. It is in reverse
chronological order by web site. Last updated 3/22/15.
Entropy
Ugly Girls by Lindsay Hunter
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
Spent by Antonia Crane
The Nervous Breakdown
In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell
Don’t Kiss Me by Lindsay Hunter
Red Moon by Benjamin Percy
Donnybrook by Frank Bill
The Next Time You See Me by Holly Goddard Jones
Vampire Conditions by Brian Allen Carr
Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
At-risk by Amina Gautier
May We Shed These Human Bodies by Amber Sparks
Nine Months by Paula Bomer
Little Sinners and Other Stories by Karen Brown
Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye by Paul Tremblay
My Only Wife by Jac Jemc
Cataclysm Baby by Matt Bell
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
THREATS by Amelia Gray
Ampersand, Mass by William Walsh
Damascus by Joshua Mohr
NowTrends by Karl Taro Greenfeld
The Necessity of Certain Behaviors by Shannon Cain
Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill
Short Bus by Brian Allen Carr
The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
Follow Me Down by Kio Stark
Zazen by Vanessa Veselka
Drinking Closer to Home by Jessica Anya Blau
Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City by Michael Bible
The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
Volt by Alan Heathcock
Normally Special by xTx
You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know by Heather Sellers
Sarah Court by Craig Davidson
The Ones That Got Away by Stephen Graham Jones
In The Mean Time by Paul Tremblay
Cut Through The Bone by Ethel Rohan
The Wilding by Benjamin Percy
Daddy’s by Lindsay Hunter
The Avian Gospels by Adam Novy
It Came From Del Rio by Stephen Graham Jones
The Physics of Imaginary Objects by Tina May Hall
Triquarterly
The Cost of Living by Rob Roberge
Lit Reactor
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
Joyland by Stephen King
11/22/63 by Stephen King
Outsider Writers Collective
Wild Life by Kathy Fish
Hiram Grange and the Chosen One by Kevin Lucia
Emerging Writers Network
“Windeye” by Brian Evenson
Black Tickets by Jane Anne Phillips
Bookslut
The Cult
Cape Cod Noir edited by David L. Ulin
Forecast by Shya Scanlon
Slut Lullabies by Gina Frangello
My review of Kate Zambreno’s Green Girl is now live at The Nervous Breakdown.
Posted on November 23, 2011 Leave a Comment
Kate Zambreno’s Green Girl (Emergency Press) is a wild ride though London. Her protagonist, Ruth, is detached and a bit of a sadist, and yet, at the same time, lost, vulnerable and endearing. Head over to The Nervous Breakdown for the full review. Loved it.
- Richard Thomas - 