One Piece

/ Take offense to looters smashing storefronts and kicking car windows. Compelling cinema on your hi-def flat screens. The masked thug marauding through nightmares excuses your fear. Drunken mob. Biker gangs. Lynch party. Unwashed hordes. Deviant Huns. Mau Mau Mongrels. Animals (according to my friend) Shaka Zulus decapitating orphaned babies out of Darwinian mercy. It's more primal to fear animal behavior than human designs. / The abstraction of evil lurks in the line items. Bill riders, amended clause, and fine print. The fine print is not evil. It is just so small that you don't see the damaged planned.  Etchings on the back of the eyelids extincting cultures in legalese so clean that the abomination seems preordained. No one has nightmares about the fine print. Basic user agreement and the long scroll to the bottom. Click the 'yes' box. / Animals haul TVs and computers out of gashed security gates. Viruses carried in the microchip unleash more carnage than any riot....

Updated 1/17/22 Pan Macmillan Australia is accepting electronic manuscript submissions directly from writers - no agent needed. Pan Macmillan is a major Australian publisher with a wide range of titles under group imprints, including Macmillan, Pan, Picador, Plum, Momentum, Macquarie Dictionary Publishers, Pancake, St Martin's Press, Tor, Forge, Griffin and Sidgwick & Jackson. It publishes commercial and literary fiction, children's and YA fiction, picture books, Australiana, history, biographies, cooking, health and self-help, sports and travel. It also handles sales for Guinness World Records. Other Australian publishers have also opened their doors to unagented submissions. Allen & Unwin  accepts submissions every day of the week. ___________________ From the website : We do not generally publish poetry, plays or textbooks but are happy to receive any genre of manuscript. We are particularly interested in the following: Fiction: Contemporary drama, sagas, psych...

Updated 5/29/19 Here are two agents eager to build their client lists. Trena White (Transatlantic Agency, Canada) is looking for nonfiction in these areas: current affairs, business, culture, politics, technology, religion, and the environment. Leila Campoli (Stonesong Literary) is seeking nonfiction projects in business, finance, investing, science, pop culture, and current events. ALWAYS check the agency website before submitting. Agents may switch agencies or close their lists and submission requirements may change. If these agents do not suit your needs, you can find a comprehensive list of new and established agents seeking clients here: Agents Seeking Clients . ______________________ Leila Campoli  of  Stonesong Literary About Leila : Before joining Stonesong, she was most recently an editor at Palgrave Macmillan. Some of her previous titles include: Mark D. White’s The Illusion of Wellbeing, Gudrun Johnsen’s Bringing Down the Banking Industry, Deborah Gregory’s Unmaskin...

Even shorter than short. Tiny. It's between you and someone else ...and we all hate her. The list is so small you're almost not there. It's just you and your shadow. Now. We have not made our minds but the list is Liliputian. So micro that you wouldn't even know if you were on it. *** It was a close call. You missed it by that much. Nano-fractions. I just made up the word because none exist to describe the infinity of chances in a fateful splinter. *** Did you feel that? Luck just waved her hand right above your head Almost touched a hair. You didn't feel it? Maybe you're just numb to close calls, and the short cent. Almost maybe's in an endless sprint.

May is a busy month for writers. This month there are conferences from one coast to the other (plus Alaska and Hawaii). They range from intimate retreats, where you can get writing time in addition to workshops, to large events featuring book fairs, talks, pitch sessions, and the rare chance to chat with agents and editors. A few of these conferences offer scholarships and financial aid. While conferences lasting several days can be expensive, one-day workshops are usually affordable. (The one-day workshop held in Ohio on May 2 is free.) __________________________ 14th annual Muse and the Marketplace Conference . May 1 - 3, 2015: Boston, Massachusetts. "The Muse and the Marketplace is a three-day literary conference designed to give aspiring writers a better understanding about the craft of writing fiction and non-fiction, to prepare them for the changing world of publishing and promotion, and to create opportunities for meaningful networking. On all three days, prominent and nati...

I’m trying to tell a story but the words get in the way. Indented implies and royal pauses implicate language’s conspiratorial play to confuse and obscure the causes, of rubbish gathered from the day. I’m going to build a skyscraper rising unending stacks tower of babel is a series of floors swaying paragraphs that crack as mounting meter of rampart soars iambic measures we track. I’m slowly daming this river whose currents never cease logic and lyrics vortex pool divert me from the path of peace and roping myself with trade and tool to streams of tales I release. I’m whipping this beast to tame unbridled animals rage lashing scars of meter rest saddling the wild sage that keeps the gallops best on to this domesticated page.

NEW WORK! EXCITED TO HAVE THIS GO UP NEXT WEEK! THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO F#GGOTS Written By  Aurin Squire Directed by  Aurin Squire and Zi Alikhan Friday-Saturday, May 1-2 @ 8:00pm Sunday, May 3 @ 6:00 pm Tickets: $16 General | $10 Low-Income [ Buy Tickets ] CAST: James Edward Becton, Israel Gutierrez, Joey Lozada, Nathaniel Ryan, Donnell E. Smith “The Gospel According to F#ggots” is a multimedia queer translation of Biblical text through verse, video, and vogue. It’s a Church pageant play remixed and remastered into an epic journey that combines poetry, movement, and music. If Jesus was a radical rabbi who walked around in a dress with 12 men…wait, that’s what he actually was but he has been whitewashed into by capitalism, patriarchy, and heterosexuals into a shaming, punishing, saint. He has become a sacrificial lamb of the cross. But that’s not what he preached about. If he were alive today, Jesus would probably vote for Nader, live off-the-grid, and ask people to love in wh...

This is an idea whose time has come: A brick-and-mortar bookstore for self-published authors. Essentially, it's a coop. Each writer pitches in enough per month to pay for rent and overhead. How cool is that? I'd like to see this model in other parts of the country where tourists gather. (Or where people are still accustomed to reading print.) Take a look at the Gulf Coast Bookstore's website . It's inspiring. (And you know what else a few dedicated self-published authors could do? Form a cooperative publishing company. We really need to stop going it alone.) ________________________ First Bookstore Dedicated to Self-Published Authors Opens in Florida By Judith Rosen, Publishers Weekly Frustrated by a lack of opportunity to display and sell their work, self-published children’s author and illustrator Patti Brassard Jefferson and history author Timothy Jacobs decided to create a bookstore of their own, Gulf Coast Bookstore, and to only sell books by indie authors. “It’s j...

You have much to gain from entering writing contests. If you win, your chances of getting published increase exponentially. And if the contest is free, what have you got to lose? _____________________ Crucible: Poetry and Fiction Competition  is sponsored by the Barton College Department of English.  Genres : Fiction (limited to 8,000 words or less) and poetry (limited to five poems).  Restrictions : All work must be original and unpublished.  Prizes : $150.00 First Prize. $100.00 Second Prize. Publication in the  Crucible .  Deadline : May 1, 2015.  Read guidelines  HERE . The Society for Humanistic Anthropology Fiction Competition .  Genre : Stories that relate to the four fields of anthropology.  Restrictions : Stories should not exceed 20 pages typed double-spaced. There is a limit of one story submission per applicant.  Prize : The first place story will be published in the Society’s journal,  Anthropology and Humanis...

Vanishing lifespans of love. Used to be years and months. Shortened to holiday weekends and then in between meals. Infatuation condensed to flickering light shutters. Opening and closing aperture edit engagement and divorce, infatuation and amnesia. lust and disease. Deja vu is now any previous pause, fading echoes of endearment, this lingering glance of a hand, the cool remains of pillow’s sigh, a burning veil of lips crinkling into white smoke, waning shadows that linger in the back of eyes.

Alexis de Toqueville is famously quoted as saying, "In a democracy, people get the government they deserve." De Toqueville may not have actually said those words, but the sentiment remarkably apt, for it implies a world of manipulation, coercion and downright shenaniganing. The principle of "one person one vote" underlies all forms of democracy. It is predicated on the faith that power brokers will not game the system. From the first day the system was devised, they have, and they will continue to do so in ever more ingenious ways. In the case of the sadly "broken" Hugo awards, the system was gamed by some old right-wing dogs, the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies, both of which attempted to stuff the box with nominations of authors they perceived to be conservative. Two of those authors have now pulled their names from the nominations and Connie Willis, who was asked to present the Campbell Award, has also withdrawn. George R. R. Martin says the Hugos are...

1st whip n' piss of spring on my subway. Goat-stench of a man staggered up, yanked his licorice black cock into fluorescent view. Passengers scramble to the other side but I stayed close and cozy, a curious need for depravity. Warm waves from his spongy pink slit splashed across the floor lapped against the steel pole. I considered tossing Old Faithful out, as he was in the high-tide of mid-piss ...but that we would be rude. Stuffing his exhaustion back into jeans the goat-man grabbed a glob of vaseline from his wet pockets and smeared the yellow congeal over his face into a shiny mask of petroleum. he spread across his head and down his neck I got off train and the streets were blocked off police tape and roving cops circumambulate an ominously isolated van in middle of road and the words 'SWAT Team' being mentioned. And all this after a folk song musical that Disney-fied Woodie Guthrie and his life. The most vulgar act of the night was the musical.

Updated 1/15/22 Allen & Unwin is an independent Australian publishing company established in 1976 as a subsidiary of the British firm George Allen & Unwin Ltd., one of the leading publishers of the twentieth century. After the HarperCollins buyout of George Allen & Unwin Ltd. in 1990, Allen & Unwin became an independent publisher. It currently publishes up to 250 new titles a year, including literary and commercial fiction, a broad range of general non fiction, academic and professional titles and books for children and young adults. Although Allen & Unwin primarily distributes its titles in Australia and New Zealand, it has international distribution channels in the UK, the US, Asia, and South Africa. Authors report good experiences with Allen & Unwin. They are responsive to their authors, and have a hands-on, personalized approach. Despite its name, the Friday Pitch is open all week. ___________________ From the website : THE FRIDAY PITCH Allen & ...