Book Reviews

Saving El Chico by Meta Strauss

What authors say about Saving El Chico: “Anyone who has ever been to West Texas will feel the authenticity in Ms. Strauss’ writing. The landscape, the characters, the weather; all of it rings true. Funny and poignant, this book captures universal feelings of hope and the resilience of the human spirit.” —Janice Crow, I Give You My Word “Strauss makes a stunning debut, with refreshing writing and fascinating, original characters.” —David Berg, Run Brother Run and The Trial Lawyer, What it Takes to Win. “Strauss has created an electric, character-driven book with a clever plot and sense of place so vivid you can feel yourself being whisked away to the West Texas town of El Chico.”—Martha Braniff , Step Over Rio and Songs from the Bone Closet “Get ready to laugh out loud as you enter Meta Strauss’s world of El Chico. She deftly weaves romance and suspense into this…

Places to submit

Apple Valley Review – ready for your submission

The Apple Valley Review is an online literary journal, published twice annually.  Each issue features a collection of poetry, short fiction, and essays. Submissions for the Spring 2016 issue ends March 15, 2016. Some of the submission guidelines: Submissions accepted year-round. Writing needs to be mainstream with literary appeal. Original, previously unpublished, and in English. Prose submissions may range from approximately 100 to 4,000 words. Shorter pieces stand a better chance of being published. Longer pieces will be read and considered. Novel excerpts must be self-contained. Preference is given to short (under two pages), non-rhyming poetry. This is not currently a paying market.  However, all work published in the Apple Valley Review during a given calendar year will be considered for the annual Apple Valley Review Editor’s Prize.  From 2006 to 2015, the prize was $100 and a gift of a book of poetry or fiction.

Guest Bloggers

Where Do You Get Your Story?

Guest Blogger Leslie Larson gives us the scoop on where stories come from. Writers on reading tours can be pretty sure that as soon as it’s time for Q & A, someone’s going to ask them where they got the story. That’s the word that’s usually used, got, as if the author might have picked up the story in the maternity ward at San Francisco General Hospital, or found it in the frozen food aisle at Safeway. The question might be offhand, as in, “Where’d you find those chenille throw pillows? or it may be asked with the earnestness and urgency of a child questioning the existence of God. It’s often followed by a swarm of spinoff questions. Did the story come to you all of a sudden? Did you just start writing and see what happened? Did you start with an outline? Did this happen to you? Some writers…

Book Reviews

Voice Lessons by Marcy Telles

Reviewed by Marlene Cullen. The set-up of Voice Lessons by Marcy Telles: Wham! The ball hit Phoebe squarely on her 12-year-old rump . . . “Sor-ree,” said an unfamiliar voice behind her. [Phoebe] was used to being made the butt of jokes, but this seemed a bit literal, even for her somewhat crudely oriented classmates. A hand dangled suddenly in front of her face, and looking up, Phoebe found it attached to a person she’d never seen before. Having spent her entire life in this neighborhood and knowing pretty much everyone in her class, a new face was enough of a novelty to capture her fractured attention. . . . It was not easy to be a small, unorthodontured, bookish sort of person (who had not had a nose job) in a big New York junior high school where everyone was in a permanent state of competition. Right away, I…

Places to submit

Booth ~ A Journal looking for nonfiction, comics, lists and more.

Booth ~ A Journal publishes one new piece or author every Friday, front and center, on their home page. Booth is now reading new submissions. All accepted work will appear on their website. Two print issues are published yearly, usually in winter and summer. To submit work, please visit  submission manager. Booth publishes 50 pieces a year online. Twice a year they release print issues, curated from material that appeared on their website.

Guest Bloggers

Guest Blogger Rob Koslowsky explains future verbage

Guest Blogger Rob Koslowsky writes about how . . . Mathematicians Address Verb(al) Decay Regular verbs feature a past tense that ends in “ed.” Words like brush or bump become brushed and bumped in the past tense. But what do you do with those irregular verbs that don’t follow such an easy rule? Arise becomes arose (past simple) or arisen (past participle) while find becomes found in both cases of past tense. English students need not despair. Two mathematicians recently collaborated and uncovered the fact that irregular verbs will convert to a regular form. It just takes time. The principle of atomic half-life is invoked. Erez Lieberman and Jean-Baptiste Michel’s formula suggests that the more popular the verb the longer the time it takes to be reduced to a regular form in its past tense. For example, have will become haved instead of had—in 38,800 years—and hold will become holded…