christopher cocca

Kestor Swain: Brethren Christian College is on old state land an LP west of Milltown, a deep cut west from where the Susquehanna River moves through Harrisburg going south on its billion-year-old crawl from Northern County. The Eisenhower Interstates riddle Pennsylvania here in arcs and turns and New York-Miami drug runs and sometimes you think the goddamn river would be quicker.

- from Milton County Power & Light

Months ago, I wrote a short piece called “I Love You When You’re Pretty.”   I submitted it widely and got strong feedback from editors who suggested other editors I might submit to.   Yesterday, the piece got accepted at Pindeldyboz, one of the venues from the fist round of submissions.   This is good news for more than the obvious reason.  I’ve wanted to have something run at Pindeldyboz for a while now.  I’m not sure when it will run, but I’ll let everyone know when it does.

My guest post,   “Help Me Spend 50 Bucks”, is live at NathanKey.com.

Thanks, Nathan!

Our good buddy Nate has asked me to guest blog for him tomorrow. Make sure you check it out. I’ll throw the link up when I have it. His current post is a transcript of an interview he gave to Total Blog Network. You should check that out in the meantime.

Some (many) of the authors selected for the Six Sentences Volume II were announced today via a YouTube video by editor and social media beast Rob McEvily.  I’m in the company of our friends Peter at Notes From a Room and Tara Lazar.

Rob’s message  is below.  Emerging writers everywhere really need to stop and thank Rob for all the work he’s doing to grow his platform.  He really provides excellent resources and venues for writers of extremely short fiction, including a website/journal that’s updated constantly, a newsletter, a social networking site, countless tweets, an fb presence, two print anthologies…all true labors of love.  Thanks Rob!

 The “25 Random Things About Me” meme is everywhere right now.   Below are the all-time top 25 posts on this blog by popularity (most popular to least).  This turns out to be a pretty decent cross-section of what’s here.  

Best Metaphors and Similes + Leonard Cohen on Depression and Depression +  Just Like Brian Wilson +  I think it’s kind of funny, I think it’s kind of sad + Dirty Realism Rules +  A Winter Ascetic + Realism, Voice, and Form in Micro Fiction + Barack Obama and the Hero’s Journey + Song Titles as Short Stories + Public Domain Stories, Wikipedia, and the Creative Process +  Drabble On +  Writing In The Creative Commons + 50 Words in Boston Literary Magazine + Dying Metaphors + The Modern Library’s Top 100 + An actual line from “The Shack” + To Artists as An Artist + A Series of Posts to Progressive Christians + Consider Avoiding These +  Most Beautifully Sung Songs of the 20th Century + Flash Fiction Prompt #17 +  The Thing About Consumerism + Four Word Story + Micro Fiction and Micro Nonfiction + Dirty Realism

This is my first podcast.  These thoughts were shared at the Barn gathering in the Lehigh Valley back in June.  There are some lapses in the audio during the interactive parts of the message, so keep listening through those lulls. And then for some reason at the end it goes on and on in silence, but the track is supposed to end at the part where I start asking people to share around the 26 minute mark. On the tech side, I have some kinks to work out but this is a start.  Let me know if it works. 

The Gospel According To Ruth