I’m pleased that Plowshares‘ DeWitt Henry is featuring a number of my micro stories in Watertown Lit Squad’s Poets’ & Writers’ Sampler 2023.
Included are: Blue, Gray, Inner Child, Justice, Look Away, When Your Girlfriend Has Left You, and Wishing Well.
The Sampler’s cover image is my photograph, “Dancers.”
[Barb Ariel Cohen’s poems are also featured in Sampler: Cold Stand Down, And When the Light Is Past, Night Silhouettes, Fearless Path, Clouds, and Poise.]
The journal Cosmic Daffodil Journal has accepted my color photograph Boston Winterscape for publication in an upcoming edition.
[Cosmic Daffodil] is born out of love for art; poetry, fiction & non-fiction, short stories, paintings, sculptures, everything, and anything creative.”
It’s the birthday of science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, born in Butler, Missouri (1907). He wrote over 50 novels and collections of short stories over a span of four decades. He’s best known for his novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), a cult classic about a boy who is born during the first manned mission to Mars. He’s raised by Martians, then returns to Earth, starts a church, and preaches free love.
Heinlein began writing in the mid-1930s, while he was recovering from an accident from his days in the Navy. He started out writing novels for young adults, but they were so advanced that they were usually published outside the U.S. as novels for adults. Heinlein once said, “Kids want tough books, chewy books — not pap.”
He called his books “speculative fiction” rather than “science fiction,” in the tradition of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. He tried to write about events that could actually happen, taking into consideration everything we know about the natural laws of the universe. He wrote about things like atomic bombs, cloning, and gay marriage years before they became realities. Not all of his predictions came true, though. In 1952, he wrote an article called “Life in 2000 A.D.,” in which he predicted that we would have cures for cancer, the common cold, and tooth decay; there would be men who had visited all parts of the solar system; and new technology would make all existing houses obsolete.
Heinlein said: “Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.”
—The Writer’s Almanac via Zvi A. Sesling
Third Wednesday, a quarterly journal of literary and visual arts, has accepted my black and white photograph Space Dinosaur for publication in an upcoming issue.
The publication The Serulian has accepted my flash piece entitled Look Away for publication on August 15.
The Serulian is “an indie literary magazine from the shores of Istanbul and Hong Kong. We’re all about discovering the different sides of life […] We believe in finding magic in the mundane. That’s not to say that we’re not fans of the most unexpected, lovesick, pessimistic, hopeful, and outrageous stories around. We’re interested in learning about the peculiarities of life, the boring stuff that might shock us, or send us in fits of laughter. […]”
My photograph entitled “Late Afternoon Railroad” has been accepted by Chestnut Review for inclusion in its Summer issue.
CR: “Starting a literary magazine is never a wise idea, really. But we’re a little bit stubborn. A little bit picky in what we want. And if we don’t see it, then we want to create it (another great American value!) […] Artists who persist despite rejection, the intrusions of real life, the bills that must be paid, the jobs that must be done before any art can be created. That’s the best kind of stubbornness.”
Looks like I’m not the only person turning out science fiction based on Laika, the 1950s era Soviet space dog. I came across a short sci-fi horror movie this evening entitled “Laika:”
“Fleeing from a catastrophic accident aboard the International Space Station, a lone Cosmonaut faces a haunting spectre from his country’s past. But is it all just in his mind?”
By 
