new fiction 2022

Art and the Actual World

Pop Lit Fiction

INSTITUTIONS MOVE SLOWLY, including those of the established literary world, while super-plutocrats like Elon Musk are able to move at lightning speed. Coming technological changes are upon us designed to make the human animal, including writers and artists, obsolete.

HOW do we oppose this?

For starters, with better art– art which emphasizes humans and the human and our interactions with the natural world around us.

WE HAVE such example in our new feature story, “The Slow Pace of Pardon” by Christopher Laurence, set in a cabin in the woods, concerning possible wolves, a dog, a family, a mysterious reappearance, and unwanted interlopers. Atmospheric and well-written– making for terrific reading.

“So, looks like this’s what’s been making those tracks.” he thought. He felt a kind of relief knowing he could remove from his deposit of worries the vision of a rabid, snarling wolf bounding up his path. It was just a poor dog some sad bastard must have let free at the start of winter, when he decided he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be feeding it anymore. He could tell it was thin, and hunger must have finally forced it to put fear aside and come out into the open, where its energy failed it finally, and dropped it on their doorstep.

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IN THE NEW YEAR we intend to do more to forestall our replacement by artificial devices concocted by diabolical billionaires bent on constructing an artificial cyber world of robots, brain implants, fake realities and other nightmares.


ALSO: Speaking of real-world reality, we’ll be releasing within days an alternate version of our latest “zeen” print publication. We’re calling it Fun Pop Poetry Special Edition. The zeen is a mere sample of what we’re gearing up to achieve: actual custom-made publications with countless combinations of colors and styles, to fit the reader’s personality. Is any other publisher large or small offering this? (Are any even imagining such a thing?) We’re determined to lead the world in literary innovation.

The Pop Mission

Pop Lit Fiction

AS WE enter the dwindling days of 2022, our thoughts turn toward our plans for the new year. Fresh ideas geared toward grabbing increased territory on the literary map. WHILE we’re not sure exactly how to accomplish that, beyond rough notes on strategy and tactics, we know that by necessity it means reliance on literary POP– readable writing which has clarity and intelligence. Toward that end we feature writers able to achieve that elusive mix. One of them being Bud Sturguess, whose new story– “No Romance On Mount Nebo”— we spotlight now. We hope you like it.

As friends will often do with friends, my friends decided it was time for me to hop back into the dating scene. I had no interest, but romance and relationships are among the things friends push on friends the most. Even more than narcotics. I’ve no statistics to back up this claim, but it seems to me friends are always selling friends the outlandish claim that “there’s somebody out there for everybody.”

Superheroes and 1940’s Style

Pop Fiction

WE’VE BEEN accepting new fiction only sporadically of late, as we ready other aspects of our campaign. BUT we have new writing today– from long-time DIY scribe Wred Fright, an excerpt from his newest novel, Fast Guy Slows Down.

We’re running it because A.) it’s from Wred Fright, whose unique style combines fun with wit and intelligence, B.) it’s about a superhero. What could be more pop?

A superhero’s reflections on his career and crucial events through the decades. We chose for our excerpt the glamorous decade of the 1940’s, whose conflicts of flawed good guys versus evil Nazis brought about the need for pop superheroes– and led to their rise and maybe the birth of modern pop culture itself.

We hope you enjoy it!

The superhero is a child’s power fantasy, he or she all grown up and powerful. Big not small.  To reach that, the parent must be gone, maybe because the child thinks he or she will  always remain a child with the parent around, even though that isn’t true. Anyway,  Superman’s an orphan. So’s Captain Marvel. So’s Batman. So’s Robin. Wonder Woman  doesn’t have a dad, at least in the stories I read; I think they gave her a dad later on. Initially though, her mom makes her out of clay or something.

(Art: “Miss Fury” by Tarpe Mills c/o Camilla Nelson.)

Chaos In America

Pop Fiction

MOST of the chaos is in our heads as the networks and social media pump images of violence, tragedy, and trauma into our heads 24/7. BUT there’s enough reality to it to concern everybody with a conscience and with half a brain in their head.

The populace is in panic.

OUR TASK as a literary site is to capture the current cultural vibe– the real one, not a watered-down and insular Manhattan-Brooklyn version.

At the moment, the strongest vibes aren’t coming from New York. They’re coming from hinterlands like Uvalde or Buffalo, where the already-unhinged have completely lost it, and the world explodes into chaos like a fictional Killtown.

Which we present in a short story, “Chaos In Killtown.” Its “3-D” multi-dimensional framework is an ideal vehicle for the expression of chaos. The narrative comes at the reader from every direction. The goal with this particular story is to be completely pop, but also to capture the hysteria of now. Does it?

The mayor sat in his riverfront mansion at an enormous table sampling yet another enormous meal. Calls came into his private phone from aides saying the city was in chaos and he had to do something.

“The city is always in chaos!” the mayor shouted back, and disconnected.