GREATEST UNCOMMON DENOMINATOR - GUD!!

GUD ISSUE 3...ON THE CHOCKS!

I love this lot because they’ve been brilliant and have reviewed Glass Bubble. Editor Debbie read and makes some very interesting comments… a great review.

REVIEW OF GLASS BUBBLE HERE

I was so pleased earlier this year to have one of my favourite stories in this terrific publication. It is beautifully produced, a complete paperback, and is packed with creativity, imaginations, not a single ploddy piece in there.

I also love this bunch because they are so ‘heart on sleeve’. Nothing is left to surmise or puff. Look: here’s their submissions statistics info, from their website. Cross check with Duotrope, taking into account that not everyone uses Duotrope, and you begin to get an idea of this magazine’s popularity. It is seriously not easy to get into!

GUD’s SUBS STATS PAGE

now why don't more places do this? Huh?


I also love GUD because they have three of my writing friends in the upcoming Issue 3. Bev Jackson’s poetry, and Tania Hershman’s and Michelle Tandoc Pichereau’s fiction.

Issue 3 is on the chocks. They are having a little fun buzz contest, to get things zipping before the copies hit the readers…

PRE LAUNCH CONTEST HERE

Good for GUD!

What makes a story 'beautiful'?

I have no answers to this one, just questions...


A writer asked me to give him an endorsement for a forthcoming short story collection a few days ago. (Ballistics by Alex Keegan. Salt Publishing (naturally!) June 2008... look out for this one.)

This is the guy who I credit with teaching me so much... and I was delighted to do so. I hadn't read his work for a while, and asked for a few stories to read, just to refresh...

I read a few pieces, and the floodgates opened. His stuff is terrific; I was instantly back in that place you are as a slightly wobbly learner, awestruck.

And the few lines I wrote (which will probably never be used, who am I anyway?!) included this phrase

"emotionally true, sharply intelligent and often beautiful."

And that got me thinking.

Then today, there's a review of Issue 2, GUD.

In one of the most beautiful stories in this issue, Vanessa Gebbie creates Jamie Hawkins in "Jamie Hawkins' Muse"

and

The story that won at Per Contra (Silver Leaves for Judah Jones...HERE) was described by the editors as 'beautiful'.

But WHY and HOW is work beautiful? What makes Jamie H so? The language is fairly simple and deals with a mortician! Judah is more rhythmic...and he's a window cleaner in love with a window... I dunno!

I know in the work of the writer mentioned above, its a combination of rhythm (he's Welsh, and the rhythms remind me so much of my childhood, and they sing, and flow), and character... the creation of real people who take you by the hand and look closely at you as they tell their stories... and thematic stuff. Themes that touch.

And I am sitting here wondering if you can be taught to write beautiful, and if that is what happened when I was taught, or whether its a hit and miss thing that happens with a combination of craft things almost by accident.



Because if I try to write beautifully, I miss by a few miles.

On the other hand, maybe its not in the writing at all. Maybe its in the air, the thing that happened when the floodgates opened, that made me feel a bit wobbly? Is it a chemistry thing?

I get =the same sense when reading The Shawl by Cynthia Ozyck, or In The Gloaming by Alice Eliott Dark. Both those stories are beautiful.

GREATEST UNCOMMON DENOMINATOR

I'm delighted to have a story in the latest issue of cult magazine GUD.

From the website: (links below)

Issue 2 celebrates Heaven, Earth, and Space in-between; it is touched by religion, grounded in technology and comfortable with the occult.
Including a language-stretching piece triggered by the Talmud from the legendary Hugh Fox, poems by haiku heavy-hitter Jim Kacian, the surprisingly touching “By Zombies; Eaten” from Christopher William Buecheler, and an alien perspective on human spirituality by Tina Connolly in the remarkable “The Salivary Reflex”
— all part of a drool-worthy two-hundred page selection of over twenty authors and artists.

What is GUD?
GUD (pronounced “good”) is Greatest Uncommon Denominator, a print/pdf magazine with two hundred pages of literary and genre fiction, poetry, art, and articles. Fiction ranges between 75 and 15,000 words.
The hardcopy is 5"x8", slightly narrower than a mainstream paperback but solid in the hands, easy to read with one hand while drinking your coffee or munching your sandwich. Or perfect for curling up with in your favorite lounge chair, sipping tea. The paper is "natural" 60-weight; a little rough to the touch, off-white so that the contrast of type's not hard on the eyes when reading outside or under fluorescents…


For listings and tasters of all the work in this collection CLICK HERE!



Including V’s offering, Jamie Hawkins’ Muse: READ THE TASTER HERE!

Then go to the website and buy the magazine. NOW.