Tuesday night class is canceled! Class is cancelled today, Tuesday, 2/09/10! With tonight's impending snowfall and the already snowy road conditions, driving after dark may be a serious challenge. Therefore, we'll reconvene on 2/16/10. Check the schedule here for updates.
Had Saturday Comp. I class with Savannah, but couldn't get there? No worries! Because of the snow storm, it was cancelled on 2/06/10. Check out the details here. (We'll reconvene on 2/13/10!) * * * *
Reference Short Takes Column, February 2010-- February's Short Takes column is online at Library Journal. Read it here. * * * *
We're Gearing Up for Season 3 of TNY Presents! Pittsburgh's acclaimed reading series begins again on Wednesday 2/17/10. The season kicks off with readers Adriana Ramirez, Diana Joseph, Che Elias, Angele Ellis, and rocker Weird Paul. Join us at 8:00p.m. at Modern Formations ~ 4919 Penn Avenue ~ Pittsburgh!
Savannah's horror tale, "A Thousand Incarnations and A Thousand Deaths," appears in the Winter 2010 issue of Strange Weird and Wonderful Magazine. To read it, download the .pdf file at right and scroll to page 35, where Loretta's story begins.
"...Loretta noticed a fine tracery of wrinkles fan outward across his pallid cheekbones. She saw that the man’s eyes were a brown so pale they bordered on yellow, and the pupils narrowed to the size of a nail trimming, more feral and feline than any human’s she’d ever seen. For an instant, she saw pockets of emerald flare out around the tiny black slice of pupil, like the momentary appearance of malachite deposits, or the incendiary spark of fireworks. And then, they disappeared just as quickly as they revealed themselves. The hair on Loretta’s arms lifted."
"While Boone did not project the kind of immortality political leaders sometimes did, he still wished for it in the metaphorical sense. He yearned to be recorded in historical annals as more than just an oil man. While money and purpose were important to him, historical meaning was, by far, the superior reward. He wanted to be one of the great forces in history."
"The landscape and the local culture have a definite impact on my world view, and this mood trickles into my stories. I used to work at a newspaper after I got married, and I would hear terrible things on the police scanner. One of the stories in American Soma is called “Horizontal Plane” and that is based on one of the conversations that I heard between policemen talking to each other on the scanner." * * * *
Savannah's story "The Corpus Lupi Experiment" has WON TWO of Strange, Weird, and Wonderful Magazine's "Best of 2008" awards!
It won both Best Work of Fiction AND Best Horror Story!! Thanks to everyone who voted!
Here's an excerpt:
"Liam confronted the mirror now. Perhaps, he thought, I have not become some awful monster. What he saw there drove him from the bathroom. He looked exactly like a dog, though not a handsome one. There was nothing noble in his appearance, nothing that suggested loyalty. The vault of his cranium had decreased dramatically and his maxilla and mandible now protruded, which explained the nature of his pain: his whole craniofacial structure had changed. And now, with the flattening of his skull and the protrusion of his mouth, he was beginning to lose the capacity for conventional speech. One thing that did captivate him were his eyes. Flecked with gold, they were otherwise a deep, opaque black, showing no evidence of white at all. They reflected the light coming in through the bathroom window with a green-to-purple glow that reminded him of his mother’s old bi-colored tourmaline ring."
Bill O'Driscoll reviews American Soma in Pittsburgh City Paper Read the review here: http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A71099 "...Her cautionary science fiction sits alongside "Patent Leather Sidewalk Evangelist," a bitingly ironic story that recalls Flannery O'Connor. The humanistic fantasy of "The Fountain" -- filthy tavern toilet springs the fountain of youth -- contrasts with the quietly chilling "Secret Convexity," about a young woman's descent into depression. Guz even offers a few short, funny epistolary pieces, including "A Salesman Reborn," a kiss-off to a boss that suggests something from George Saunders' oeuvre...."
