Today is the first day of Autumn. Why not stop over at The Bees Are Dead, and mark the encroaching cold with a few dark futuristic visions?
There you’ll find Gary Glauber’s “After the Deluge”, which is a sanguine twist on the usual narrative of the post-apocalyptic poem. There is also some truly arresting photography — Paul Gerrard’s “Monochromatic Beginnings” is shudder-inducing and delightfully monstrous, and Kathryn Nee’s ““Windows into the End” is a haunting exhibition of abandonment art.
Hey, guys — if you liked my nanotechnology horror story that was published by The Bees Are Dead on Monday, then you might also enjoy my time-travel horror story, “Shine Now, Fiercely, Forever.”
It was featured by B.A.D. back in January, and it’s an important public service announcement about why you should never set foot inside a time machine.
You can find it at the link below:
“Shine Now, Fiercely, Forever”
Photo credit: By Bureau of Land Management – #conservationlands15 Social Media Takeover, June 15th, Top 15 Places to Stargaze on the #mypubliclandsroadtrip in BLM California, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42086907
I am quite grateful tonight to see The Bees Are Dead publish my apocalyptic science-fiction/horror story, “At the End of the World, My Daughter Wept Metal.” (You can find it at the link below.)
I hope you enjoy it. It’s definitely one of my darker tales, and I was fortunate to receive some terrific editorial guidance from Philippe Atherton-Blenkiron, which greatly improved my original text.
I’d like to thank both Philippe and Dennis Villelmi over at B.A.D. for granting me this wonderful opportunity to share my voice! Cheers, Mates!
“At the End of the World, My Daughter Wept Metal”
If you haven’t visited the The Bees Are Dead recently, then why not stop by this weekend? There is some terrific poetry from Wren Tuatha, Allison Grayhurst and Randall Rogers, as well as some truly amazing “Masters of the Universe” fan art by celebrated film art concept designer Paul Gerrard. (80’s kids will love it.)
The newest item featured over at B.A.D. is an official response by Beth Fukumoto, who is a member of the Hawaii House of Representatives, to a racist hate letter that she recently received. Fukumoto, who switched her party affiliation earlier this year from Republican to Democrat, has been a target of racially motivated antipathy since then. (Fukumoto was actually interviewed by B.A.D.’s own Dennis Villelmi in April.)
I am honored to share here that my colleagues over at The Bees Are Dead have agreed to publish my science fiction – horror story, “At the End of the World, My Daughter Wept Metal.”
The story, which originally appeared in Dagda Publishing’s “All Hail the New Flesh” story anthology, should be featured at the online magazine’s website by the end of this month. I will post a link here when it appears.
I am quite grateful to Philippe Atherton-Blenkiron and Dennis Villelmi for this opportunity — not to mention B.A.D.’s invaluable editorial input, which helped me to tighten up my writing considerably. Cheers, Mates!
There’s been some truly terrific new poetry published over at The Bees Are Dead; please stop by to enjoy a few dark or dystopian visions in verse.
The site is hosting both Paul Brookes’ “Telehaptic Love” and Wayne F. Burke’s “Bomber.”
You can also find what is a first for B.A.D. — Alastair Gambling’s “tone-poem,” entitled “A Certain Period.” From the B.A.D. Facebook page: “Gambling is a musician/music teacher by trade and this composition is a feat of technical brilliance. Experimenting with minimalism, unconventional time-signatures and discordant harmonies, ‘A Certain Period’ builds-up gradually creating a wonderfully evocative soundscape of paranoia and timelessness with an appropriately sci-fi aesthetic – very dystopian!”
Photo: Taken from British Bee Journal & Bee-Keepers Adviser, 1873. By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.
There’s some powerful new poetry over at The Bees Are Dead.
Stop by and enjoy Ananya S. Guha’s “Five Hill Poems,” as well as Dah Helmer’s “Strong Current.”
Photo credit: By Roger Kreja, Stuttgart (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Be sure to stop by The Bees Are Dead for Dennis Villelmi’s interview with actor and author Rob Goodman. Depending on your tastes in film and television, you might recognize him from “Gangs of New York” (2002), “Game of Thrones” (2014) or “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (2003).
Mr. Goodman was a truly wonderful interviewee, and spoke on subjects ranging from his own tumultuous school days to the field of paranormal inquiry known as psychogeography.
And hey — while you’re there at The Bees Are Dead, also be sure to peruse Ryan Quinn Flanagan’s poem, “The Birds of Afghanistan.” It’s a terrific piece.
If you haven’t caught up with The Bees Are Dead lately, now is a good time to do so. B.A.D. featured a particularly potent piece today by Stephen Jarrell Williams, “In the Desert.” It’s a surprisingly effective poem despite its deceptively simple language, and I recommend it highly.
You can also find an outstanding example of prose poetry in Darren C. Demaree’s “Trump as a Fire Without Light #86.” (This is actually one of my favorite poems submitted to B.A.D. so far, and I have no doubt that many readers both here in America and abroad will relate to its poignant social commentary.)
Be sure to peruse Wren Tuatha’s “The Trees Tell Our Future” too. It’s a beautifully evocative poem that has stayed with me long after I read it for the first time.
There is a dichotomy to Dennis Villelmi’s poetic voice. His work is at once grotesque and baroquely alluring; his poems are beautifully crafted to describe appalling subjects. I think that this is what makes me envy and return to his work, time and again — in addition to the facts that Dennis is a valued friend and that I enjoy dark poetry. I think that if I had to sum up what attracts me to his poetry, it would be his apparently effortless mastery of juxtaposing elegant language with horrifying subjects.
His newly published “As Zion’s Drawn” is an excellent example. (You can find it here over at The Bees Are Dead.)
This is the second in Dennis’ series of poems inspired by the research and writing of Richard Patterson, who has traveled the world gathering historical evidence that Jack the Ripper was actually former medical student Francis J. Thompson. (Mr. Patterson has graciously given his approval to Dennis and B.A.D. for this literary homage.) For more information about Patterson’s startling body of work, visit his website here at http://www.francisjthompson.com/.
For the first installment in this series of poems, please see “The Hidden Player” at The Bees Are Dead.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 