A Post From the Publishing Void 4
It's been a minute since I last posted, a minute chock-full of various poetry and story rejections, but I've come out on the other side of it with some good news, too (well, "good" if you're a fan of mine, I guess; otherwise you're probably just sitting there screaming "NO! NO! NOT MORE OF THIS, DEAR GOD, MAKE IT STOP!!!" In which case, why are you still here?). And what kind of person would I be if I didn't share that good news with the world?
Lock up your daughters and hide your wives, people! That's right: Mickey Grant, that sarcastic, rock 'n roll loving, good-natured eternal fuckup of an incubus and writer, and his long-suffering human best friend Kali Winters are back, loose once again on the streets of L.A. (well, in one of its dive bars, anyway) in "Final Notes," appearing in HellBound Books' latest anthology Dates From Hell. The pair made their debut in "L.A. When It Bleeds," appearing in Soteira Press's Horror USA: California anthology in 2019, a tale of moviemaking, sex, black magic, and murder set in Tinseltown, but "Final Notes" was actually the first Mickey and Kali story I ever wrote, back in 2017. The tale finds the friends at their favorite watering hole, The Moody Blues, for one of their open-mic nights, when up to the stage steps a beautiful stranger with a guitar and a voice that quickly casts a spell over everyone in her audience. It seems like a miracle to the lovelorn Kali when Lexi, the spellbinder in question, chooses her to go home with that night after her sets...but this is Mickey and Kali we're talking about, and it's a horror anthology called Dates From Hell, so take a wild guess how well the night goes after that. It's available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle, and if you wind up breaking a date or two to finish it...well, maybe you'll wind up being glad you did.
It's a case of both "right place, right time" and "wrong place, wrong time" with my most recent published story—right place, right time for its submission and wrong place, very fucking wrong time for the characters within it. "End of the Line" appears in Pulp Modern issue 2.7 (its tenth anniversary issue!) after having been previously rejected by a publisher who thought its premise was "a little too mundane" and withdrawn from an anthology call that kept getting extended...and extended...and extended—for all I know, it's still open somewhere out there in the ether, never responding to any of the pieces sent to it but still asking for more, more, more. The aforementioned misfortune befalls Harlow, a teenage mom who hits the road to make a better life for her infant daughter Ari only to discover that the road to Hell is, in fact, paved with good intentions (well, the road to an isolated Nevada bus station, anyway, but hey, there's a chance Hell does in fact resemble a bus station, am I right?).
Let me just say before I go on with the self-promotion that it was a.) an absolute fucking relief in this overly sensitive, overly censorious day and age to know there's a place like Pulp Modern and a guy like its editor, Alec Cizak, out there in the world causing trouble for the New Puritans, a place that believes, as they say, that "Absolutely NO SUBJECT is taboo" and which "believes in true and absolute freedom of speech"—not just saying it but living it with everything they print, quite a change from all those publishers out there who claim to support freedom of speech and diversity of thought, all the while listing pages of topics, words, and situations they won't allow in their precious journals and quarterlies lest they risk upsetting a single reader (or editor) who depends on other people to manage their triggers for them; and b.) an absolute fucking awesome time getting to work with them on this issue. Alec's suggestions and willingness to work with me on my story to make sure it was Just Right was a highlight of my publishing career to date (as well as finding out we share a love of The Doors—all hail the Lizard King!). I am just so, so thrilled that Harlow and Ari's story is finally out there in the world, and in this awesome magazine, to boot. You may have seen my Twitter blitz about it when and since the issue came out (at least until Twitter thought I was a robot again and locked my account until I could prove my humanity—yeah, I somehow managed it. Impressive, right?), but in case you missed it, here's the link for both the paperback and Kindle versions.
And as a bonus, there's also an author interview done as a lead-up to the issue's release on the new Pulp Modern website, in case you're curious as to what I'm reading(or was reading at the time), who I count among my influences, and what artist or group, living or dead, I'd love to see in concert—hint: the answer's somewhere in this post, and I'm not looking to cut in on Kali's date—among other things!
http://www.pulpmodern.net/authors/sarah-cannavo/
And as another bonus, one that I only just found out about recently myself thanks to the Twitter lockdown (still human, guys! Just a broke one without a mobile phone!), Gargoyle Graphics created a time-lapsed drawing inspired by "End of the Line," which is pretty fucking goddamn awesome, if I do say so myself. Thanks, guys! 🖤
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCm3QCr-u7k
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