Month: October 2022

Beyond the Boundaries

Pop Lit Fiction

THE APPEAL of science fiction is the idea of testing the outer limits of science, technology– and of the imagination. To stimulate questions of “What if?” and “What then?” At its best, sci-fi combines creativity of ideas with creativity of writing. Such is the case with our new fiction feature, “DEDCOM-204” by Courtenay Schembri Gray, one of the most talented young writers on today’s literary scene. We hope you enjoy her offering.

What is life but a series of little deaths? Those impactful, perhaps traumatic moments that take a part of us, all in preparation for our eventual big death—the one we don’t return from. I like to visit mine, from time to time; at the facility on the edge of town. Dad loves to remember his adulthood; the time before—when a firefly was a glowing bug, rather than a moment in your life preserved in a jar.

XXX

By the way, Ms. Gray also has a poem in our newest print publication, the ultra-collectible Fun Pop Poetry. Have you purchased your copy?

Thinking About Fiction Writing

Pop Lit Fiction

With National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) almost upon us, our thoughts turn to fiction writing. What’s the mark of a good writer? What characterizes a good novel or short story?

For decades, good writing has been thought to consist of a sequence of well-written sentences. This has been the doctrine pushed by writing programs and by all those on the “literary” end of the writing and publishing spectrum. The result has been bombardments of thick texts of grandiose lyrical sentences, pages upon pages of them, displays of endless virtuosity like a prog rock lead guitarist given a ten-minute guitar solo going nowhere, as a means of showing off, then he forgets to end it regardless and continues on and on until even the most indulgent listener has vanished.

What if the experts are wrong?

What if the key to writing great fiction is simply telling an amazing, wonderful, human, magical story?

Today we present an argument for the latter idea, with one of the best stories we’ve ever featured, “Tales Along Turtle Heart Road” by Zach Smith. A simple and unassuming narrative that will sneak up on you. Read it and see what we’re talking about.

Harry stopped under the bridge. There was police tape but no other sign of the event. He had no intention of duplicating the actions; he just wanted to see it. No, that wasn’t quite right; he didn’t want to see it, he needed to. He didn’t know why he started climbing up the hill toward the trestle bridge, and he didn’t know how far he would have gotten, but when he turned around, high on the steep overgrown hill, he looked down at his car and saw something familiar in the road.

Fun Pop Poetry Has Arrived!

Announcement

MUCH TALK is happening everywhere about the literary scene where it’s headed its obstacles and divisions, What To Do, Where To Go why wherefore what’s your ideology your stance your pose your attention to minutaie your perspective on world issues– this and that– while we at New Pop Lit can only say: ENOUGH! Our answer to literary critics our solution to gatekeepers traditional or contemporary is embodied in our newest print publication: FUN POP POETRY.

Why do you read?

Why does anyone reaD?

aS A DUTY? aN OBLIGATION? a task??

Or maybe possibly to be amused for a few minutes– or dazzled– to find escape from the insoluble unsolvable eternally mad world of problems??

(Craft?? What’s that?)

We seek to blow the doors off institutions, the prison houses of literature, the gates of the gatekeepers, with words to be read and remembered.

Order your copy here, now. All Color, every page. You won’t regret it.

The future of poetry has arrived.