In This Issue: Jake Freivald

April Fools

Every year, we get some submissions that just seem a little out there. April, the month for fools, seems to be a good time to let the best of them get some ink. Michael Aaron gets close to his work in “CAPS LOCK and the Ellipsis of Doom,” Jakob Drud leads us in a gentle “Meditation for the Dead”, and John Wiswell takes us to the “Sun Belt” (and I’m not talking Arizona). Also, in honor of the weird weather, Punch gives us “Another Ruined Trade” from November, 1914. Bruce’s latest Technically Speaking column makes a liar out of him — you writers won’t want to miss it. Read more: HTML 

Technically Speaking #4: Bruce Holland Rogers

Make It a Good Lie: Verisimilitude

One of the questions often asked of novelists and story writers is “How did you get your start?” The answer I most often give is, “I lied a lot as a child.” My answer sounds glib and usually gets a laugh, but I also mean it seriously. Fiction is a special case of lying. Moreover, fiction and lying both depend on what psychologists call “theory of mind.” Read more: HTML 

Flash 4/2011, #3: John Wiswell

Sun Belt

The Sun sucked in her gravity, drawing the planets taut about her waist. It’d taken far too long to bead them all onto her 1-dimensional strings. She wasn’t giving up now. Planets shuddered from the strain, beaded so tightly that they really didn’t fit, bulging on her solar flares.

“I think they’re just too small to wear,” said a random moon. “Perhaps as earrings?” Read more: HTML