One last reminder: We're bringin' the Joyland to the Book Cellar tomorrow night.

A quick post tonight to remind any of you who are in Chicagoland about the first-ever public reading by Joyland Chicago authors that we're having tomorrow night, September 25th, at 7 p.m. at the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square.

I don't know what any of my four authors are going to be reading, but I feel confident in promising a good time, and we'd love to see you.

More details are in this post. Hope to see you there!

Come out, come out! Joyland Chicago goes public!

In this recession-riddled economy, what better way to spend a Friday night than at a free reading?

Well, be sure to mark your calendars, line up a date, press your tux, and warn the babysitter you just might be out all night, because next Friday night, September 25th, the good folks at the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square will host the first-ever Joyland Chicago reading!

I'll be introducing a solid lineup that includes some of my favorite contributors to the site's first year:

Jeff Waxman
Samuel Bennett
Paul LaTour
Joseph Clayton Mills

The Book Cellar is at 4736-38 N. Lincoln here in Chicago. The reading starts at 7 and will probably last a bit less than an hour--but I recommend you allow yourself some extra time to browse the shelves, eat pastries, and drink wine.

Hope to see you there!

There is no Joyland in childhood . . .

{Photo by rocketlass.}

When he wasn't torturing animals, he was actually a pretty nice guy. We usually talked girls. Our tastes in them diverged considerably. He was an ass man, and preferred blondes. I, on the other hand, hadn't yet formulated an opinion on what I liked. Besides girls, we also shared an interest in the Steve Miller Band. We loved his sound, and his lyrics spoke to us where we live: I really like your peaches want to shake your tree. It was a music that was surreal, low key, and cool all at once. We'd play Steve Miller tapes, and hang out in his garage where his father had a device for making shot-gun shells. We spent hours hand-making twelve gauge shot gun shells.

That's from "Berkowitz," by Joe Peterson, a conversational, rough-hewn, moving story of boyhood longing, risk, and violence that's one of my favorites among those I've published in my brief tenure as Chicago editor for Joyland.

Which is my way of reminding folks that I'm still happily taking submissions from Chicagoans and/or former Chicagoans; if you fit that simple criterion and have a story you think well of, drop me a line. {In particular, I'm looking for some female contributors--surely all writers who've passed through Chicago in recent years aren't male, right? I know the whole "city of broad shoulders" thing, but seriously . . . )

Meanwhile, Joyland in general is definitely worth checking out, if you've not yet done so. It continues to grow--a London editor, Benjamin Wood, has just joined the stable--while offering more than half a dozen good stories online every month for free. In the midst of the New Austerity, what more could you reasonably ask for?

Is there no joy in Joyland?

{Photo by rocketlass.}

I recently mentioned that I'd taken on the job of Chicago editor for Joyland, a hub for short fiction. As such, I'm responsible for publishing one or two stories each month from writers who live in or have lived in Chicago.

The first story under my editorship went up last night: "Insult," by Joseph Clayton Mills. Hope you enjoy it.

I'm still taking submissions; if you meet the criterion and have a good story, drop me a line at the e-mail address in my Blogger profile. I got a great batch of stories after my initial notice, some of which I'm sure will turn up at Joyland in the coming months, but I'm always ready to look at more.

As for the headline of this post: all but two of the stories I received after my initial call for submissions involved a suicide. Of the remaining two, one made up for that deficiency with a murder. Is this indicative of a prevailing Windy City gloom? Should I worry? Could it be possible that even Mayor Daley suffers dark nights of the soul?

Let not your imagination plague you--send me stories instead!

From Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy:

For as the body works upon the mind by his bad humours, troubling the spirits, sending gross fumes into the brain, and so per consequens disturbing the soul, and all the faculties of it . . . with fear, sorrow, etc., which are ordinary symptoms of this disease: so, on the other side, the mind most effectually works upon the body, producing by his passions and perturbations miraculous alterations, as melancholy, despaire, cruel diseases, and sometimes death itself. . . . What imagination I have is sufficiently declared in my digression of the anatomy of the soul. I will only now point at the wonderful effects and power of it; which as it is eminent in all, so most especially it rageth in melancholy persons, in keeping the species of objects so long, mistaking, amplifying them by continual and strong meditation, until at length it produceth in some parties real effects, causeth this and many other maladies.

Attention Chicagoans! If your imagination produceth such real effects and maladies, it no longer need do so in vain: I've taken the position of Chicago editor for Joyland, an online hub for short fiction, and my mailbox is now open for submissions! In the face of the perennial gloom and doom about the short story, Joyland is an effort to try something new, and I'm excited to be part of it. Joyland is organized by city, with each editor responsible for stories from residents (or former residents) of his or her city; authors already published there include Joe Meno, Ed Park, Nathan Sellyn, Rebecca Rosenblum, and more. I'll be posting one story a month or so, and I'm open at this point to pretty much any style or theme. So if you've had a story percolating in your brain, disrupting your sleep and bringing despaire, drop me a line and I'll be happy to give you more information.

For if, as Montaigne agrees, the imagination can be a troubling possession--

Wee sweat, we shake, we grow pale, and we blush at the motions of our imaginations; and wallowing in our beds we feele our bodies agitated and turmoiled by their apprehensions, yea in such manner as we are sometimes ready to yeeld up the spirit.

--you might as well get some good short stories out of it, right?

And now to find the place in The Anatomy of Melancholy where Burton explains the melancholy that can be caused by taking on too many responsibilities . . .