Bøger udgivet af Moon City Press

Winner of the 2022 Moon City Short Fiction Award Reveal Codes is a collection of short stories mapping the ways in which people, and other animals, read and misread, communicate and miscommunicate, mask and unmask, with and around one another. In the abandonware word processing program, WordPerfect, "reveal codes" is the command that reveals the coding behind the face of a document. The stories in this collection spiral around a (bio)semiology of the multiplicities of desire. In a series of pas de deux, or duets, the characters in these stories try to make themselves legible to family, friends, and lovers--revealing their messy patterns, their bare-faced vulnerabilities. These are stories that unfurl tentacles of longing made with language in an attempt to decode the illegibility of an incoherent and inchoate surrounding world.

WILL VAUXHALL CONQUER THE CLUSTER? King Albert of Vauxhall, frustrated in his efforts for vengeance against the people he blames for his son's death, is now building a navy to conquer the cluster. But the cluster sees the threat and is enhancing its own capabilities. King Albert and Isabela Febo square off in this epic conclusion to the Agency series. They're playing a high-stakes game, and only one system will survive. Will it be the isolated democracies of the cluster, or will the powerful core world monarchies extend their dominion over all of human space? What role will Sam and Jules play in this struggle?>AN INTERVIEW WITH RICH WEYAND What's the setup for Agency #5: Reprisal? In Agency #4: Marque, the King of Vauxhall's plan to use letters of marque to get his revenge didn't work, so he sets to a longer-term plan to conquer the cluster by building a new navy that can go up against the cluster's navy. But the cluster knows that's what he's doing - they bugged his office in Agency #4: Marque - and Isabela Febo decides to go after the King of Vauxhall. So Agency #4 was his letters of marque, but Agency #5 is her reprisal? Yes. She decides not to let him scheme against the cluster without interference. Who are the main characters in Agency #5: Reprisal? Oh, everybody's back. Bert Mangum and Elina Stavros, Claude Portnoy and Phyllis Stickney, Gloria Dent and Davian Varley, Jules and Sam, Serp Kendall and Marge Schofield, Isabela Febo and Michael Corliss. Even Judy Blunt is back. I got a chill on that last one. Judy Blunt is back? Oh, yes. She's back, and the leash is off, in a really big way. How did Agency #5: Reprisal write? This one wrote fast. Twenty-three writing days, at almost 3500 words per day. I even had an 8900-word day in there. Action sequences write faster, and when you get deeper in a series, they write faster. Your universe is all set up, your characters are all set up. You still describe things, but you don't have to think them up. You already did that part. What is with that cover? Another outstanding piece of original art by Luca Oleastri and Paola Giari of Rotwang Studio in Italy. It's a rip-off of 'Liberty Leading the People, ' the famous piece in the Louvre. That's Judy Blunt as Liberty. What's with the dinosaurs? Nope. That would be a major spoiler. This is the last of the Agency series? Yes. It's set up that way. I round things up pretty tight at the end. But not in such a way that there couldn't be other Agency stories. I just wrapped all the story arc of this series. All the characters of this series. So what's next for your writing? Not a clue. I usually get a lot of story ideas out of LibertyCon. That's at the end of June, so starting July 1, I'll be off on some new adventure.

Winner of the 2021 Moon City Poetry Award Imagine a keen eye and spritely intellect turned toward this thread-worn world. Heartworm, Adam Scheffler's second full-length poetry collection, gives readers exactly that. An example: The poem "Advice from a Dog" translates wisdom from, yes, a dog, beginning with the exhortation to "Piss expressively." From there, however, the poem gets to the literal heart of the matter, commanding, "[S]mell also the worms coiled up in / the human heart, thousands." But maybe you're not a dog person. "For I Will Consider This Cockroach Belinda" is a contemporary reworking of "For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry" by eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart. Here, Scheffler praises Belinda, found in his sink "like a tiny Vishnu waving her many arms," or creeping up the curved wall of the sink "like a monk in silence." It doesn't matter what the world gives him; Scheffler pays attention - takes notes and shows up to the test prepared. Heartworm's forty-two poems send countless pricks and wriggles through the chest cavity as they ruminate on racehorses, ghosts, mosquitos, Zambonis, Mondays ... the ordinary and often devastating stuff of our lives.

IT STARTED AS A SIMPLE FAVOR... Bert Mangum, an operative for the secretive Agency, is back on the Crossroads space station waiting for a new assignment when Detective Elina Stavros of the Crossroads P.D. asks him to do her a favor. Could he help her figure out how the dangerous and illegal drug RDT is getting onto the station? But the more they dig, the more they find, until they're facing a cluster-wide drug manufacturing and smuggling operation. Worse, if they shut it down, Crossroads will go under and the economy of the cluster will go with it. Mangum, Stavros, and Sam, with help from Gloria Dent and Claude Portnoy, have to find a solution before the economy of the cluster falls down around them. .INTERVIEW WITH RICH WEYAND What's the setup for 'The Favor'? This book picks up the morning after 'Eve Of War' ends. Bert Mangum is on Crossroads station. Gloria Dent has gone to Wilbourne, and Mangum is with Elina Stavros, the beautiful police detective. She asks him if he can help track down how the dangerous drug RDT is getting onto the station. I assume they find something more than a local pusher. Yes. Spoilers are possible. But the investigation ends up spanning multiple star nations, drawing in Gloria Dent and Claude Portnoy as well as the chief executives of the six star nations of the local cluster. We have guns and assassins and thugs and evil masterminds and even nuclear weapons. And sex. Lots of sex. Well, yes. It's a spy novel. Dangerous men and dangerous women, adrenaline junkies who live their lives on the edge of danger and sudden death. Minor moral issues do not get in their way. All the same, as is my standard practice, the narrator leaves the room when things get steamy and comes back later. Sex is, by and large, not a spectator sport, and I find verbal descriptions even less interesting. How did 'The Favor' write? It started out slow. Espionage and mystery books always do for a pantser. I don't know anything more than our characters do as they dig into what's going on. I didn't know who the bad guy was until almost halfway into the book. That said, it wrote in forty-six calendar days, at about 1750 words a day. Fifteen days off in there to attend to chores that needed doing before the weather set in made it seem longer. So you wrote 'The Favor' into the dark? Oh, yes. And there are lots of twists and turns I could never have plotted out in advance. Some of them are even funny, if you have a certain kind of sense of humor. For instance, I had no idea that Gloria Dent has a wicked backhand with a cricket bat. What about the cover? Bert Mangum, Elina Stavros, Sam, and Jules. Another incredible piece of original art done for me by Luca Oleastri and Paola Giari of Rotwang Studio in Italy. That's a fetching outfit she almost has on. It's directly from the book. In the first chapter, actually. And a puppy? Yes. Spoilers are possible there, too. No further comment. What's next for your writing? I can see two more Agency books ahead in very broad form. So I will probably write those next before starting something else.

Recently widowed engineer Timothy Conner would always remember it as the day his life changed forever. The day he went to the estate sale. Timothy Conner bought an ancient book and got a cat into the bargain. But the cat and the book concealed a centuries-old secret. Conner probes that secret and releases an ancient being of unimaginable power. Life for Timothy Conner would never be the same. The world would never be the same. Because the world had never been what he had always thought it was. . INTERVIEW WITH RICH WEYAND "Hecate" is pretty clearly fantasy. This is a new genre for you? Yes, although I think of it as 'fantasy with rules.' That is, there are no deus ex machina moments, no place where our heroes are in dire straits and pull out some whiz-bang magic the reader doesn't know about. The reader is up to speed on each bit of magic by the time it is used. And the magic has to all fit together, be internally consistent, and make sense in some way. What sub-genres of fantasy is "Hecate" in? Your previous books were pretty solid in Military SF or Colonization SF or Hard SF. "Hecate" is in 'Gods and Godesses Fantasy' as well as in 'Sorcerer's Apprentice Fantasy.' The G&G Fantasy is because the main characters our hero comes in contact with are the gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon. The basic 'what-if' question of "Hecate" is, What if the Greek gods and goddesses were real, and they were still around in the modern era? SA Fantasy is the genre of things like J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books and Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy, where someone sets out on the journey to learn magic. Our everyman hero gets caught up in the Greek pantheon's activities and has to learn their magic. How well did you stick to Greek Mythology? The players here are all characters in Greek mythology, and their family relationships to each other, their areas of expertise or oversight, and much of their personalities are all from Greek mythology. Some of the weirder parts of Greek mythology - like Athena being born fully adult from Zeus's brow after he had swallowed her mother while already pregnant - are treated as "Where do people get that stuff?" by the characters in the book. The Greek gods and goddesses did a lot of sleeping around within the family. Yes, and that's all here. Zeus and Hera, for instance, were brother and sister, were then husband and wife, and had children together. I kept all of that, as it is essential to the story of the Greek pantheon. They just didn't play by our rules. There was really no way to write that out of the book. So some of the goings-on - like Aphrodite putting the moves on Zeus, who is her father - may be strange to someone who doesn't know the story. How fast did "Hecate" write, given that you're working in a new genre? A bit over 2000 words per writing day, where I'm usually more like 2500. There were parts that wrote slowly because I had to research the Greek pantheon rather than just make everything up. There were also two science fiction conventions in there, with half a dozen days out each given travel and attendance, so in calendar days it was longer than normal. What about the cover? Paola Giari of Rotwang Studio did the cover art to my specification. It is a scene directly from the book, as all of my covers. Paola did a tremendous job on it. That is the Hecate I saw in my mind.

Delivers a whimsical look at our culture's obsession with apocalypse as well as a thoughtful reflection on our resources in the face of disasters both large and small, personal and public. Pop-culture characters deliver humorous but insightful commentary on survival and resilience through poems that span imagined scenarios that are not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.

The editors of Moon City Press present another anthology of the best in contemporary literature. Established writers and new voices have both contributed short stories, poems, essays, book reviews, and translations to make up this annual edition.

In her debut collection, winner of the 2014 Moon City Short Fiction Award, Cate McGowan introduces us to a passenger manifest, an assortment of characters voyaging through loss and salvation. The book's title borrows from Melville's Moby Dick: "It is not down on any map; true places never are."

In her debut collection of stories, Laura Hendrix Ezell assembles a harmonious chorus of resilient female voices - many speaking from the margins of their own lives, all contemplating their complicated relationships with the men who influence their trajectories. Ezell's stories capture their characters not only at their most vulnerable, but also at essential moments of self-discovery.

"Moon City Press" presents another edition of its annual examination of the best in contemporary literature. Both established and up-and-coming writers contribute short stories, poems, essays, book reviews, and translations of works not originally penned in English. Contributors to this 2014 edition of MCR include Craig Albin, Roy Bentley, Vanessa Blakeslee, Cynthia Marie Hoffman, George Looney, Richard Newman, Phoebe Reeves, Amber Sparks, Matthew Vollmer, and Gabriel Welsch.

As the sequel to Morkan's Quarry, The Teeth of the Souls tells the story of a marriage betrayed, a lifelong and secret love, and an Ozarks city riven by an Easter lynching.The story begins just after the Civil War when Leighton Shea Morkan, son of Irish immigrants, marries Patricia Grnhaagen Weitzer, daughter of a German banking family. Yet he can't let go of his childhood love and wartime confidante, the house hand and former slave, Judith. Both unions produce children, one a shrouded secret, and one the heir to the Morkan legacy: the limestone quarries of Springfield, Missouri, and the bloody past, what Judith calls "e;The Teeth of the Souls."e;Grounded in broad historical research and spanning Missouri's reconstruction, vigilantism, and fall from grace, The Teeth of the Souls chronicles the violent melding of immigrant strains-Irish, German, Scots-Irish, and African American-into the fabric of the Ozarks.

When James T Whitehead (or 'Big Jim', as friends knew him) passed away in 2003, Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas lost one of its finest poets and beloved teachers. This anthology collects original poetry, short fiction, essays, and remembrances of Whitehead. It celebrates the man's life and contribution to American letters.

The 2011 volume in the MCR book series focuses on alumni in the broadest sense of the word. Some of the best writers and artists in and from the Ozarks are featured, along with a generous mix of Missouri State students and faculty. Readers from the Ozarks may recognize some old friends, and other readers will get a better idea about "where we're from." Authors include former Missouri Poet Laureate Walter Bargen, Michael Burns, Kerry James Evans, Brian Shawver, Roland Sodowsky, Alexandra Teague, Laura Lee Washburn, and National Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, who offers a poem and an exclusive interview.

Sally LaChance leads a double life. By day, she works as a park ranger in a midsized Missouri town. At night, she acts as emcee for the local roller derby team, the Boonslick Bombers, at the Empire Roller Rink. Sally loses her temper one day and pulls a gun on a group of polluters in Karst Park. Her boyfriend, a video artist, captures the moment on film and posts the footage to YouTube, putting Sally's job, her relationships, and her life at risk. Just before the financial crash of 2008, Sally LaChance must wind her way through the crumbling economy, a DIY skating corps, angry veterans, a slacker boyfriend, an evangelical mother, the war machine, and ever-encroaching private interests. "The Empire Rolls" captures the changing cultural landscape of the Midwest at a critical moment in history. The Empire Rolls. And it is rolling still.

Presents a collection of original poems, short stories, and essays from talented authors both established and emerging in their craft. The issue also features translations of work not originally composed in English, as well as reviews of recent contemporary creative books.

Lavishly colour-illustrated, the 2012 volume of Moon City Review centres on children's literature and its increasingly blurry borderlands. MCR 2012 offers a variable feast of poetry, fiction, criticism, graphic arts, and `archival treasures' by Rose O'Neill, Robert Wallace, and Young E. Allison, all for and/or about children and young adults.

The 2010 volume of Moon City Review takes `speculative futures' as its special theme, emphasising utopian, diastopic, sci-fi and fantasy literature and criticism. In addition, MCR 2010 includes original poetry by Jim Daniels, Jeannine Hall Gailey, and Alysse Hotz; fiction by Juned Subhan, Nancy Gold, Ted Chiles, and Pete Duval; criticism by Landis Duffett; and creative nonfiction by Julie Platt.

Shows off Jim W Corder's consummate skills as a memoirist, essayist, and cultural critic. This title features subjects that are wide-ranging - West Texas, World War II, writing and teaching, TCU football - one looms above the rest. It deals with Corder's lifetime love affair with America's pastoral sport, baseball.

A personal story of an abandoned seven-year-old boy whose alcoholic father (a Navy officer) went on to drink himself to death. It is a memoir of how one man forged his own healing narrative.

Jim W Corder will be remembered by students and colleagues at Texas Christian University for his writing, teaching, and original thinking. His numerous publications include ""Lost in West Texas"" (1988), ""Chronicle of a Small Town"" (1989), and ""Yonder: Life on the Far Side of Change"" (1992).

Through a series of dramatic monologues, the fourteen poems gathered here give life to the Jewish-apocryphal legend of ""Jesus, son of Pantera"" - the story that Jesus was sired by a Roman soldier. In his introduction to the collection, a Biblical scholar recounts the Scriptural, apocryphal, and archaeological evidence upon which the story is based.