"Model Airplanes" Nominated for Best of the Net 2010 / New Piece in elimae

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My story "Model Airplanes" was nominated by Emprise Review for Best of the Net 2010. This story is a chapter from my unpublished novel, The Immortals Act Their Age (Big thanks Patrick and crew...). (Here is an interview editor Patrick McAllaster conducted with me this past May.) This is my second Best of the Net nomination, including my story "Snowing Fireflies" (title story of my chapbook, Snowing Fireflies) which originally appeared in Willows Wept Review. Big congrats to all the other Emprise nominees, including Ben Loory, Sheldon Lee Compton, Roxane Gay, Steve Himmer, JP Dancing Bear, as well as the Willows Wept nominees such as Howie Good, J.A. Tyler, and all others...

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The October issue of elimae is up, and it includes a small excerpt from my unpublished novel The Quarantine Ceremony (Big thanks, Kim...). (Here's another, longer excerpt from The Quarantine Ceremony that appeared in elimae this past May.) Also in this issue are Peter Ramos, Monty Reid, Mike Meginnis, Lisa Forrest, Răzvan Ţupa, Howie Good, and many others...

'Snowing Fireflies' Reviewed in PANK

Renee Emerson reviews Snowing Fireflies over at PANK today:


"Reading Eric Beeny’s Snowing Fireflies is like entering a dream about childhood. Even the look of the chapbook is playful—meandering font, drawings of little fireflies here and there, a picnic basket on the cover. The stories are whimsical, imaginative, but with something dark lurking in the background, threatening to turn to nightmare at any moment..."


Big thanks, Renee and Roxane...

A Glowing Review of 'Snowing Fireflies' / Best of the Net 2010 Nomination

Glen Binger, today, gives Snowing Fireflies a glowing review at The Broad Set Writing Collective. Big thanks, Glen. I'm big happy you liked this collection...

Also, the title story of my chapbook, "Snowing Fireflies," has been nominated by Willows Wept Review for Best of the Net 2010 (Sundress Press). Big thanks, Molly and Troy...

For Jason Jordan

For Roxane Gay

Rocky Movies Are the Best Movies Ever Made

Maybe not the 'best'. That doesn't mean anything. But I really like them. They're funny (Rocky's malapropisms and oxymorons are on par with Yogi Berra's), inspirational, and about so much more than just boxing. (Even though 'inspiration' is a lie, it seems somehow necessary. That feels weird to write—a 'necessary' lie—as I don't believe in [g]od, and find the idea of [g]od not only an unnecessary lie, but a dangerous one.) I don't even like boxing, any sports really. But I really like Rocky movies. The speech below, from Rocky Balboa (Rocky VI), as well as others from the Rocky series, have 'gotten me through' some 'rough times':

Back to the Lab

When I was a kid, when my family lived in the projects on the lower west side of Buffalo, a girl who lived across the way used to babysit me and my sister. She used to watch MTV and draw in a notebook after she put us to bed. She'd invite this guy whose face I never saw to the back patio door. He whispered things to her like, “Show me your titties.” I know this because I would spy on them from the top of the steps. I never got to see anything. Her back was always turned to me.

One night, my dad got home from work and I heard him yelling. I got out of bed and went to the top of the steps. He was yelling at the babysitter because she’d drawn a picture and written something on a page she tore out of her notebook. I saw the page later, when my dad questioned me about the whole thing. The page said, “I love Eric B.” The television was still on while my dad was yelling at her. He thought what she'd written was about me.

'Watering the Fires'

I've 'rereleased' a self-published e-chap of poetry called Watering the Fires. The poems are socio-political in nature, something I don't see very much of in poetry these days—at least, not overtly. The poems are, in many ways, 'radical liberal', as in this poem:

WAL*MART FAMILIES FOR FRIENDLY FIRE
(originally published in HazMat Review)

Letting your children join the armed forces,
you might as well hold the hunting rifle yourself,
shove them off into the woods

while you chase after their memories
pumping round after blind round
practically sawing trees in half

and if even you hit one you couldn’t
hear a scream from that far away

and like when you did all your shopping
at discount department store chains
you’d pick a designated rendezvous point

so when whoever makes it out alive
comes back you can say,
Oh, thank God . . . I missed you.

And poems like the following are more so wishful thinking as reaction to ignorant, though rampant, ideological beliefs and practices of 'reactionaries':

ETHNIC CLEANSING
(originally published in Nuvein)

If only all the world’s nations could
pool their people into a sixty-year orgy,

mix all the paint in the same bucket, so to speak,
where we’d whirl a thick, liquid hurricane

whose only eye is a clearly blurred sweep
of one color we’d paint our prison walls with

to calm us down when nightsticks are
just canes to support short tempers

and we’d look up to find the ceiling’s been lifted,
flung off somewhere, and we’ve turned

the sky’s limited-edition blue t-shirt inside-out,
hidden seams blossoming light beams

to blend us blind, but we’re still too busy
adjusting the tints on our rec-room monitors

to rebuild those pedestals we so often soapbox on
rather than oxing erasers around for old slates,

erasers I’ve mistaken for brushes, not just
to paint over something anyone could

say, but anything that could be said.

I have a full-length manuscript of poems like those found in Watering the Fires, called How Much the Jaw Weighs. I've had, I suppose expectedly, trouble 'placing' this manuscript (as I've had with all my manuscripts, as all writers have with their manuscripts). I'm not sure where to send it anymore. I thank you in advance for any suggestions.

'Snowing Fireflies' Hostage Crisis

I am holding 4 copies of Snowing Fireflies hostage, and I would very much like to release them as a gesture of good will. My demands are ridiculous and arbitrary, but simple. The first 2 people to comment on this post, stating their favorite song from the 1986 musical version of Little Shop of Horrors directed by Frank Oz and starring Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene, or stating their favorite quote from any episode of The Simpsons (preferably from seasons 1-12), will receive a copy of Snowing Fireflies.

I would also like to give away 2 copies of Snowing Fireflies for review, so, if you are interested in reviewing Snowing Fireflies, please say so in your comment (while still adhering to the above demands) and I will send you a copy. I am holding 4 copies in total hostage, which I would like to release from captivity, 2 of which will be review copies.

Here is what Shane Jones, author of Light Boxes (PGP, 2009; Penguin, 2010), wrote about Snowing Fireflies:

"A quaint and mysterious little collection that balances the unreal and real. Eric Beeny writes with a child-like wonder, resulting in powerful surreal images, and a yearning for human connection. It's a satisfying balancing act that I enjoyed immensely. I'm looking forward to the next thing Eric Beeny does."

I like Shane Jones. He's nice to me. He's nice to everyone. Shane Jones is a good human being. To the left is an image of my 6-year old daughter Maya's transcription of her favorite poem, "A So Sad Big Man," from Shane's collection, A Cake Appeared, published by Scrambler Books. She transcribed the poem by ear as I read it to her, without looking at the text.

Here is a review of Snowing Fireflies by Mel Bosworth, in which he states:

"Eric Beeny is one of the most consistent independent authors you’ll ever come across. He’s also, in my opinion, one of the best. And one of the humblest. You won’t find him shouting in the hallways of places like Facebook or Twitter. He’s more comfortable keeping it low key."

This was just before he urged me to get on Facebook and Twitter. I like Mel Bosworth. He's nice to me. He's nice to everyone. Mel Bosworth is a good human being.

(A review of Snowing Fireflies by J.A. Tyler is also forthcoming, I think, in the next issue of The Chapbook Review. The issue was supposed to come out in August, I guess, but, for some reason, seems to have been delayed.)

Thank you for your cooperation during this hostage crisis negotiation. As I type this, these 4 copies are fighting to breathe through snowballs like eggs duct-taped into their mouths. Please take pity on them before the incubators of their mouths melt the eggs and birds hatch, sharpen their beaks on the teeth of these copies and peck these copies' tongues and lips to ribbons trying to escape.*

Thank you.*

* This metaphor maybe would work better if I'd said something like the birds hatching were copies of Snowing Fireflies, and I was the mouth holding them hostage.

* If you weren't able to take part in this hostage negotiation, you can pay the publisher's ransom to help release all the hostages here: http://www.foldedword.com/buy/beeny.html

UPDATE: All the hostages have been released. Thank you for your cooperation during this hostage crisis...