Tag Archives: Todd Pate

FLAPPERHOUSE : Year One

January 21, 2015Flappertising, FlappricanaAlibi Jones, Alison McBain, Amanda Sarasien, Angela Enos, anna tizard, Anthony Michael Morena, aoibheann mccann, Ashley Lister, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Brendan Byrne, Cameron Suey, Carl Fuerst, Cassandra de Alba, daniel ari, Diana Clarke, Dusty Wallace, dylan k. jackson, Ed Ahern, Emily O'Neill, Eric Siegelstein, FLAPPERHOUSE Year One, foust, frederick pollack, J. Bradley, J.E. Reich, j/j hastain, Jeff Laughlin, Jenean McBrearty, Jennifer MacBain-Stephens, Jessie Janeshek, Joel Enos, john grey, Joseph P. O'Brien, Joseph Tomaras, Judith Skillman, julie c. day, Juliet Cook, Lauren Seligman, lonnie monka, Luis Galindo, M.A. Schaffner, M.N. Hanson, Mari Ness, Mariev Finnegan, Mila Jaroniec, Misti Rainwater-Lites, Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois, Natalia Theodoridou, Phyllis Green, Rebecca Ann Jordan, Reshad Staitieh, robin wyatt dunn, Samantha Duncan, Samantha Eliot Stier, Smith Smith, T. Mazzara, Todd Pate, Tom StephanJoseph P. O'Brien

Coming soon in soft, pulpy paperback.
Stay tuned…

Year One: A Brief Note From the Editor

October 1, 2014FlappricanaCameron Suey, Jeff Laughlin, Lauren Seligman, Todd PateJoseph P. O'Brien

On October 1, 2013, I sent a few emails to some writers I know, asking if they’d be interested in contributing to a lit zine I wanted to launch– one that would combine surrealism, irreverence, darkness, and sensuality. This zine didn’t have a website or even a name at the time. And yet, Jeff Laughlin, Todd Pate, Lauren Seligman, & Cameron Suey all agreed to jump on board and contribute their fine work to this nameless, shapeless thing that had been frolicking around my brain-cocoon and itching to break free.

Without them, FLAPPERHOUSE would not be a real, throbbing entity one whole year later. I still can’t believe it’s flown as far as it has, and I’m beyond grateful for that. Here’s to a very flappy year, and many many more to come. A million thank yous to Jeff, Todd, Lauren, Cameron, and everyone else who has supported this freaky little critter along the way.

Love + Hugs,
JO’B

Outside the Flapperhouse – 9.13.2014

September 13, 2014Outside the Flapperhouseaoibheann mccann, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Diana Clarke, Dusty Wallace, Emily O'Neill, J.E. Reich, Jeff Laughlin, Joseph Tomaras, Mila Jaroniec, Natalia Theodoridou, Rebecca Ann Jordan, Todd Pate, Tom StephanJoseph P. O'Brien

Holy Smoke! Our Flappers have been mighty prolific outside the Flapperhouse these past few weeks…

Joseph Tomaras’ sci-fi surveillance state story “Bonfires in Anacostia” appeared in the August issue of Clarkesworld.

Natalia Theodoridou has had a couple short stories published recently:“Wayward Sons” in Lakeside Circus and “That Tear Problem” at Kasma.

At Split Rock Review, Emily O’Neill has a poem partly inspired by the fantastic show Supernatural titled “Disguises for the Waxing Moon.”

Todd Pate blogged about his new gig with the North Dakota Museum of Art at El Jamberoo.

Aoibheann McCann’s “Premium Line” ran in issue 2 of The Incubator.

The cannibal-themed anthology edited by Dusty Wallace, “People Eating People,” is now for sale.

Mila Jaroniec’s “Desperate Strangers” was posted at Luna Luna.

Rebecca Ann Jordan’s “Gospel Of” was published in Infinite Science Fiction One.

Jeff Laughlin wrote on the loneliness of tennis in covering the Winston-Salem Open for Triad City Beat.

J.E. Reich wrote about how “We Never Notice Our Own Addictions” over at Medium.

Tom Stephan posted a sort of psychic detective tale, “Never Anything Useful,” on Jux.com.

Diana Clarke reviewed the documentary Kabbalah Me for the The Village Voice.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s “Tea With the Titans” appeared on NewMyths.com.

“Still Shooting” – Non-Fiction by Todd Pate

September 3, 2014Excerpts, Flappertising, Flappricana, Non-FictionStill Shooting, Summer 2014 (#2), Todd PateJoseph P. O'Brien

Drink Coca-Cola - Weegee (Arthur Fellig), c. 1950 — Drink Coca-Cola – Weegee (Arthur Fellig), c. 1950

Our good buddy & hobo journalist extraordinaire Todd Pate gets personal and shares “Still Shooting,” a plaintive account from some of his darker days, which you can also find in our Summer 2014 issue.

{ X }

I CAME UPON THE OLD JUNKIE at the corner of 111th Street and 3rd Avenue. Spanish Harlem. He’d just finished shooting up in the middle of the sidewalk. The thin rope he’d used to cut off the circulation to his left arm dangled loosely around the elbow. The syringe lay on the sidewalk at his feet but he still held his right hand to his left arm in shooting position, pressing his thumb down on the invisible plunger, over and over. People passed by with Spring afternoon speed, going in and out of the bodega, dollar store, fried chicken shack, Cuban or Chinese joint or liquor store. Never noticing, never caring.

I can’t say I cared, either. I’d quit drinking that Winter, I cared about very little then. I had no compassion for myself, much less for that old junkie, in those early months without the drink. I didn’t even know what compassion was anymore. I knew nothing about anything in those days. Without the drink, everything was one greasy unformed thing. The only thing that made sense was drinking and I wasn’t drinking anymore and the only thing to do about that was to walk, day and night, above freezing or below, around Spanish Harlem. The noise in my head faded a little when my feet were moving. While in motion, I could forget about the gaping hole running through the center of me, quit worrying if it would ever close up. I took each step as if they’d been predetermined. But my feet froze about 10 feet from that old junkie. Seconds after I stopped, the noise rushed in. I fought to push it away, putting all my focus on the old junkie…

His eyes were broken windows in his sagging gray face, curtained by stringy, salt-and-pepper hair. Sparse cactus-needle whiskers grew around his open mouth that looked to be stuck on a syllable of a word he’d failed to finish. A skinny and bony creature, but rogue flab managed to collect about his midsection. Shoulders rose and fell with each slow breath. Dirty sweater, holes in it. Dirty pants hanging below a pale ass. Belt buckled in the last hole, excess of belt swinging about like the withered remnants of some mysterious appendage. Sockless feet disappearing in tattered tennis shoes much too large.

He took three tiny crab steps toward me as if to balance against a wind blowing in his mind. Once stabilized, he looked at me. I looked down. I was wearing a sweater, too. Belt buckled on the last hole, too. My green cargo pants too big, cuffs shredded. The pants I wore the last time I drank. I pulled them up over my waist and there were my black tennis shoes. I felt the hole in the right heel. I wore them the last night I drank, also. I looked up just as the wind blew the junkie again. He crab stepped closer, I crab stepped further away as if he were the bull and I the matador. I couldn’t take his eyes anymore so I looked down. The same pants, the same shoes. But I can’t remember anything else about the last time I drank. Crab steps, crab steps. I just know Mount Sinai was the hospital…

Continue reading “Still Shooting” – Non-Fiction by Todd Pate →

Outside the Flapperhouse – 7.9.2014

July 9, 2014Flappricana, Outside the FlapperhouseBonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Cameron Suey, J. Bradley, J.E. Reich, Todd PateJoseph P. O'Brien

Some places around the internet where our Flappers have been flapping as of late:

In episode 4 of Scared Yet?, Kris Straub praised the polish, restraint, and unreliable narrators in Cameron Suey‘s horror & dark fantasy stories. And in S4E03 of the NoSleep Podcast, Jeff Clement and Derek Jensen performed a reading of Cameron’s “Dust.”

Our favorite hobo journalist Todd Pate recounted his drive from Hollywood to North Dakota in his latest post for El Jamberoo.

fwriction : review has been displaying “London, 1973,” an excerpt from J.E. Reich‘s novel-in-progress To Build A New World.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam has two more stories out there: “The Foster Child” at Expanded Horizons and “The Hoof Situation” at Scigentasy.

J. Bradley combined poetry with Information Mapping in “Zeke” for Plain Wrap Press.

FLAPPERHOUSE #2 is Now on Sale!

June 21, 2014Flappertising, Flappricanaanna tizard, aoibheann mccann, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, daniel ari, dylan k. jackson, Ed Ahern, foust, frederick pollack, J.E. Reich, Jeff Laughlin, john grey, Joseph Tomaras, julie c. day, lonnie monka, robin wyatt dunn, Summer 2014 (#2), Todd PateJoseph P. O'Brien

FLAPPERHOUSE #2 is no longer for sale– because it’s now available for free!
Just click the cover to read.

including

“The Heartless Boy” – Ed Ahern
“The fallow months,” “What’s cooking” – Daniel Ari
“Faerie Medicine” – Julie Day
“San Vicente” – Robin Wyatt Dunn
“Lemon Lane” – Foust
“Boko” – John Grey
“The Virgin” – Dylan Jackson
“The Workaday World,” “Lunch” – Jeff Laughlin
“One of those women” – Aoibheann McCann
“Waning & Waiting,” “Erotics of Silence” – Lonnie Monka
“Still Shooting” – Todd Pate
“Birdy Told Me” – Frederick Pollack
“Breakers” – J.E. Reich
“The New Mother” – Judith Skillman
“Scars” – Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
“Other Side of the Fence” – Anna Tizard
“Hypothetical Foundations of a Quantum Theory of Familial Social Physics” –
Joseph Tomaras

FLAPPERHOUSE #1 Now On Sale

February 3, 2014Flappertising, FlappricanaCameron Suey, J. Bradley, Jeff Laughlin, Jenean McBrearty, Joseph P. O'Brien, Judith Skillman, Lauren Seligman, Luis Galindo, Mariev Finnegan, Mila Jaroniec, Misti Rainwater-Lites, Phyllis Green, Rebecca Ann Jordan, Spring 2014 (#1), T. Mazzara, Todd Pate, Tom StephanJoseph P. O'Brien

UPDATE:

The PDF of FLAPPERHOUSE #1 is no longer for sale, because it is now available for free.
Click the cover to enjoy.

{ X } including { X }

“No More Poems About Resolutions,” “A Highly Magnified History,” “When A Poet Wants To Date You,” and “Yelp Review – Total Wine” – J. Bradley
“CRYONICS” – Mariev Finnegan
“The Puddle of Romeo’s Tears” – Luis Galindo
“The Thrill of a Lifetime” – Phyllis Green
“Window Glass” – Mila Jaroniec
“Stage Manager” – Rebecca Ann Jordan
“What Really Drives You To Drink” – Jeff Laughlin
“Rebel, Rebel” – T. Mazzara
“The Root of Everything Arty” – Jenean McBrearty
“Stanley Kubrick’s Shit Happens“ – Joseph P. O’Brien
“The Better Cowboy” – Todd Pate
“Angels Howling in the Trees” – Misti Rainwater-Lites
“Dare” – Lauren Seligman
“Rules and Secrets” – Judith Skillman
“Reach” – Tom Stephan
“Axis Mundi” – Cameron Suey

Teaser #1

January 22, 2014Flappertising, FlappricanaAlibi Jones, Cameron Suey, Dorothy Parker, J. Bradley, Jeff Laughlin, Lauren Seligman, Luis Galindo, Salvador Dali, Spring 2014 (#1), T. Mazzara, Todd PateJoseph P. O'Brien

We tease because we love.

“The Better Cowboy” – Fiction by Todd Pate

January 8, 2014Excerpts, FictionBetter Cowboy, Spring 2014 (#1), Todd PateJoseph P. O'Brien

The first piece we snatched up for our Spring 2014 issue was a short story called “The Better Cowboy,” written by our good friend Todd Pate. We were quickly seduced by its mix of Western American mythology and cosmic psychological horror– we like to think of it as a bad-ass bastard spawn of Cormac McCarthy and HP Lovecraft.

{ X }

ELLIOT ROUNDED THE BEND in the dry Paria River bed and came face to face with his own shadow. He pulled the reins, stopped his horse. He’d seen his shadow all along, bouncing across the red wall of the dry riverbank as he followed the missing calf’s hoof-prints through the desert. But the bend in the river put the sun at his back. Now his shadow confronted him, stood still and clear in form but filled only with darkness. The tracks continued through his shadow and beyond but he went no further.

Instead he rode out of the river bed onto a slight hill. Standing in his stirrups, he gazed far out at the massive canyon into which the river flowed, when there was water. A shadow rose out of the giant, jagged canyon as the sun lowered and his own shadow stretched toward the abyss as if he and his horse were caught by a massive black hole. As his shadow grew longer and thinner, a heavy, dark feeling came over him. For a moment Elliot thought it could be loneliness. It was easy to be lonely out in the high desert on the Utah-Arizona border at the end of an incinerating day. Breathing, strictly voluntary. Sandblasted, sun-burnt face. Hands swollen, cracked open, stinging wherever they weren’t calloused. Nothing left to sweat out, shivering in the evening wind. Under those conditions, one could admit he’s lonely. That’d be acceptable, maybe even admirable for a cowboy.

But Elliot knew he couldn’t call it loneliness. He saw Hedges at the line shack that morning, and would see Hedges there in the evening, just like the day before, the day before that, just like all summer long. He searched for a name for the feeling until his shadow stretched to a form no longer human. He closed his eyes just before it touched the darkness of the canyon. Whatever the feeling was, he would never call it fear.

From the darkness of his mind came the high-pitched bays of a calf.

Never fear.

The calf.

When he finally opened his eyes, most of the land before him was in shadow.

No calf. Only the soft whistle of wind.

He rode away. The deep wound in the land, its bottomless darkness sucking in all earth, sound, and light to certain annihilation, would be there for Hedges tomorrow.

Maybe even the lost calf, too. Elliot didn’t care. He’d go back to the rest of the herd and do nothing until dusk. Then he’d take the twilight ride back to the line shack.

Continue reading “The Better Cowboy” – Fiction by Todd Pate →

Interview With The FLAPPERHOUSE

November 21, 2013Flappertising, Flappricana, InterviewsCameron Suey, Jeff Laughlin, Todd PateJoseph P. O'Brien

Interviewer: 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.

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