Category Archives: Flappertising

Interview With The FLAPPERHOUSE

Flappertising, Flappricana, Interviews, ,

RroseSelavyInterviewer: FLAPPERHOUSE has described itself as “Dragging the future back through the past, like a rotting donkey on a grand piano.”

FLAPPERHOUSE: Chien! Andalusia! We are un!

Interviewer: Precisely. And by “the past,” more specifically you mean circa the 1920’s?

FLAPPERHOUSE: Yes and no. Mostly yes. We do think the future should have much more futurism. But with much less fascism. We’d also like to see more surrealism, expressionism, dadaism, psychological horror, and, of course, modernism.

Interviewer: Post-modernism?

FLAPPERHOUSE: Is punk rock post-modern?

Interviewer: Is that a rhetorical question?

FLAPPERHOUSE: It wasn’t meant to be, but we’ll answer it anyway. Punk rock is kind of post-modern, right?

Interviewer: …

FLAPPERHOUSE: Right. So we want to see post-modernism as long as it’s punk rock.

Interviewer: Punk rock is more of a 1970’s thing.

FLAPPERHOUSE: Technically, yes. But the 20’s were punk rock too.

Interviewer: I see. So who are some of the writers in the FLAPPERHOUSE family?

FLAPPERHOUSE:  They’re writers you should know, but probably don’t yet. They’re very good.

Interviewer: Like George Saunders?

FLAPPERHOUSE: Yes, like George Saunders, if you didn’t know him yet. We don’t have George Saunders though. We do have Todd Pate. He calls himself a “hobo journalist.” A real American vagabond. Like a 21st-Century Kerouac, only sober.

Interviewer: Kerouac was more of a 50’s guy than a 20’s guy.

FLAPPERHOUSE: Yes but he was born in the ’20s.

Interviewer: Touché.

FLAPPERHOUSE: In our Spring 2014 issue we’re gonna publish a story Todd wrote called “The Better Cowboy,” a mix of American mythology and psych-horror. A sexy, bad-ass, bastard spawn of Cormac McCarthy & HP Lovecraft. Once we’re done editing it we’ll run an enticing excerpt on our website.

Interviewer: My blood’s tingling already. Who else you got?

FLAPPERHOUSE: Jeff Laughlin. He’s a writer and musician living in Greensboro, North Carolina. Writes for YES! Weekly, Creative Loafing Charlotte, and The Awl.

Interviewer: I know The Awl!

FLAPPERHOUSE: Jeff wrote their obituaries for Leslie Nielsen and David Markson, among other things.

Interviewer: I remember those obituaries! Two of the best obituaries I ever read.

FLAPPERHOUSE: Damn right they were. Well, Jeff’s also a fantastic poet, and our Spring ’14 issue will feature work from his collection Alcoholics Are Sick People. It’s a dark yet tender exploration of the forces that drive us to drink. It’s also kinda funny sometimes.

Interviewer: Sounds poignant.

FLAPPERHOUSE: It is. Touching, even.

Interviewer: Indeed. Any more FLAPPERHOUSE writers you can tell us about?

FLAPPERHOUSE: We’ve heard rumors that we may publish a brand new tale by Cameron Suey, a rising star in horror and dark fantasy fiction.

Interviewer: Rising where?

FLAPPERHOUSE: All over. In the past couple years his stories have appeared in Pseudopod, No Monsters Allowed, Mad Scientist Journal, and in anthologies published by Hazardous Press and Cruentus Libri.

Interviewer: My, how prolific.

FLAPPERHOUSE: Dude’s like the next Stephen King, but with much tighter prose.

Interviewer: And that’s all?

FLAPPERHOUSE: What do you mean, “That’s all?” That was intended as very high praise.

Interviewer: I meant, is that all the writers you can tell us about for now?

FLAPPERHOUSE: Oh yes, that’s correct.

Interviewer: You know for a magazine called FLAPPERHOUSE you don’t seem to have a lot of women on board. Or any.

FLAPPERHOUSE: Yeah we know. We’re working on it.

What We’ll Be Looking For, Once We’re Ready To Look For It

Flappertising, Flappricana

SunHeadWrestlerFLAPPERHOUSE does not want unsolicited submissions right now. We are, however, still currently open to pre-elicited transmissions.

We’ll probably change our mind someday. After all, as the brilliant M. Wolfram Powell famously said: “To change one’s mind is to embark upon a journey into what must be; never to change one’s mind is to fly upon the back of a cranky pterodactyl.”

When we want unsolicited submissions we’ll want stories that are relatively short, ideal for subway & bathroom reading. We’re primarily interested in the genres of Psycho-Mythology, Biographical Mystery, Historical Rebus, Quantum Leap Fan Fiction*, Dystopian Southern Gothic Young Adult, Erotic Political Satire, and Culinary Espionage.

* Remember, FLAPPERHOUSE will be published once per Earth season, so avoid making any Quantum Leap Fan Fiction too “current-eventy.”

Welcome To The FLAPPERHOUSE

Flappertising, Flappricana, , , , , , , , ,

Drum Tissue Outburst? Throbbing Dust Generation!

Dorothy Parker, Jorge Luis Borges, and HP Lovecraft walk into a speakeasy. Louis Armstrong sings “St. James Infirmary Blues” over a rusty phonograph. Behind the bar, Salvador Dalí pours absinthe into a hubcap full of peanut butter and raw macaroni, and he stirs the mixture with the antler of a live moose.

“Four martinis, Sally,” says Parker. “Plus whatever the boys want.”

Borges excuses himself to the basement in search of the restroom. He must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere because before long he’s lost himself in an infinite labyrinth full of shelves with mirror-spined books. He starts to imagine what stories these books contain, and how he might review them.

Back upstairs, Josephine Baker dances in sensual ecstasy on Fritz Lang’s table while he peeks at her sideways through his monocle and pretends he’s not aroused. René Magritte paints himself painting them both through a castle’s window. Apples hover before their faces.

The ghost of Franz Kafka’s in a corner, leaning sharply against the wall.  Lovecraft spots him and approaches, timid yet determined, as if helpless to confront his most horrifying fear. ”What’s it like?” Lovecraft asks, referring to death. Kafka’s ghost replies only with facial expressions: First with what seems like laughter, then a grimace like he might cry instead, and finally he shakes his head to say no, I really shouldn’t tell you, no. Lovecraft sits and stares at the floor for a while.

“We are neither living nor dead!” shouts TS Eliot, raising a glass of gin. “And we know nothing, looking into the heart of light, the silence!“

Parker’s sipping her second drink when she finally notices the ants crawling from the stem of her martini glass and onto her hand. Fucking Dalí, she thinks, as she swats and squashes as many bugs as she can. Kafka’s ghost can hear their screams.

She holds her cameraphone in front of her face: bemused, rankled, heartsick, yet almost drunk enough to be tickled by it all. Once she’s got enough good madness framed in the background, she sips, clicks a picture, and posts it to Instagram, caption, “Just another night at the Flapperhouse… #thirsty”