all paths diverge in the woods

If you noticed a gap in entries, it came from pondering things. One night I zoomed through and tried to update every site, and a few projects wove themselves together.

I launched an email newsletter called "Dark Windows." It is taking a book-length collection of dark poetry and stories and serializing it in 2,000-word chunks. With some extra features. You can find it here:
http://archives.zinester.com/38141

So, darker works and dreams will be moving over there. The new feature that entered the stream was a huge collection of quotes from old books, what I call "odd clips". There are so many great lines and strange moments and arguments, both silly and strange, scattered through a million volumes ... I've had fun finding them, and they add some spice and humor to these "streams of thought" of mine. Things to ponder. Fun to guess where they came from before checking the credits. Anyway, odd clips are going to start appearing, here, there and everywhere.

"Unfuture Chronicle" will continue as the venue for my sci-fi and futuristic works and ponderings.

Along the way, I have been forced to look at how the various genres interact and how I fit into them, while reading more genre history and classic works. Some fascinating stuff. My new, streamlined rationale is "order vs chaos." The darker genres are rooted in the chaos and unknowns of the world, mostly channeled from the distant past. Sci-fi and futurism are rooted in the order and knowns of the world, and look toward the future. The present day is caught in the middle, and that's why it makes no sense at all.

And now, a quick wrap up of my recent creative sales. Thanks for visiting.

=====> NEW SALES:

"swirling eyes" (poem) accepted at Not One of Us (Jan 08)

"what the spirits taught us" (poem) accepted at Tales of the Talisman (Jun 08)


=====> COMING SOON:

"Quake Man" (flash fiction) accepted at Swimming Kangaroo Press

"At Ripley's" (poem: ode to the Ripley's Museum) accepted for Helix #6.

"Unusual Vampire Lore" (article) accepted at Hungur.

"Blue sky tentacles" (cover art) accepted by Beyond Centauri.

Poems accepted by Expressions newsletter, Sword Review, and the Verb.

"Harrod Runs his Mouth" (flash fiction) in Burst magazine.

A gruesome illustration has been accepted for the Hungur 2 anthology.

"Jane Doe Discovered" (Poetry chapbook) coming in late 2007 from SamsDotPublishing.com

what dreams have come

Strange how dreams come and go. Maybe one night a road rally, the next Elysian Fields, a plane crash or some kind of Westworld with the bald gunslinger chasing us across a broken desert. So real at the time, sometimes TOO real (where we have to get up and walk around the house at 4 a.m. wishing the images will go away), yet at the same time they're less than vapor, gone in the flash burn of our minds before they can make a lasting impression. Sometimes fun, sometimes horrifying, never fully explained.

Yet there is a line we can't cross, where we start to believe that they have a reality of their own, that the creatures we see actually live in the cracks and shadows of our world, that all waking people are living in denial. If we follow that path, we can start to deny our real lives, give the dreams more reality, and then we are lost in the greatest cover-up in history, the non-meaning of existence itself. From that lonely hilltop, we can see whatever we wish to see, but it can never touch us, and we can never leave a mark or bring back any kind of solid road to walk upon.

On the other hand, the alternative -- a complete drab explanation of dreams -- would spoil life itself.