Monday, July 30, 2012

Aberations
Issue 6
Published 1992
Editor-in-chief: Jon L. Herron

Features fiction by David R. Addleman, Stephen Gresham, Don Hornbostel, Gerald Daniel Houarner, K.A. Kern, Daniel K. Munson, Dan Persons, Thomas S. Roche, David Starkey and Carter Swart; and poetry by John Binns, Marthayn Pelegrimas, Robert Dyer, Kimberly Wade, William Robertson, Paul Weinman, Francis DiPietro and Marian Crane.

Favorite short story:  Thomas S. Roche’s “Alice” is easily the most haunting piece in this issue, but I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the dark humor of Don Hornbostel’s “The Fast Feast.”  Hornbostel nicely captures and encapsulates the grim absurdity of 1980s post apocalyptic wittiness.

Favorite poem:  Both of Kimberly Wade’s poems stood out, but of the two, “Acid Tears” really won me over with its melancholic language.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Aberations
Issue 1
Published 1991

Features fiction by: Jeff VanderMeer, Lori Ann White, Mark Rainey, David Addleman, Kiel Stuart, Nigel Sellars, Barry Harringon, Robert L. Fleck and W.C. Leadbeater; and poems by Jon L. Herron, Richard L. Levesque, K.L. Jones and Mark Fewell.

Favorite short story:  “The God of Byzantium,” by Mark Rainey.  Arcane gods, a thirst for revenge and a seedy adult bookstore make this graphic nightmare a memorable tale.  Rainey’s marvelously sleazy details left me wanting to cleanse my hands with antibacterial gel.

Favorite poem:  “Nekton Wish-Kisses by the Pale Moonlight,” by Richard L. Levesque.  A dark ode to serial killer Ed Gein, Levesque’s poem has some unconventional – but evocative – imagery.

The quality of the artwork is fair to fine.  One illustration that particularly caught my eye:  Artist Richard Dahlstrom’s on page 45 – very reminiscent of images routinely found in 1970s horror comic magazines like Eerie and Creepy.  The artist has a gallery and a website: www.dahlstromgalleries.com.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Hey: Long time, no blog post.


It has been about two years since new content appeared here at Muted Mutterings of a Mad Poet.  The thing is, over the last couple of years I’ve hardly had time to write anything – fiction, poetry or witty, informative blog entries.  Besides, Muted Mutterings had mainly degenerated into a self-promotion page … a place to share sales and recent publications. 

These days, I do all that plugging on Facebook.

So, recently, I started working on a website.  It’s moving along nicely, and should be up and running within the next month.  It will have its own blog, too, where I can share publishing news.

So, what to do with Muted Mutterings of a Mad Poet …

I’ve decided to use this space to post informal reviews:  I’ll be unearthing some gems from my personal collection and discussing them here – things like long-lost small press publications, old pulp magazines and some of the books, anthologies and comic books that influenced or inspired me along the way.

Sounds like a plan, doesn’t it? 

Stay tuned …