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Home 05/26/08 - NEW STORY IN STARFISH POETRYStarfish Poetry 7 came out yesterday and I'm very happy to say my story, "Plant the Seed," is featured in the issue. This is a great surrealist journal - every issue I've ever read has been filled with great writing from a lot of people whose work I believe in and is of actual quality, no gimmicks. And this is the last issue with Robert Chrysler, a great surrealist writer himself (and who will have some work featured in the upcoming Raw Dog anthology I edited, Avant-Garde for the New Millennium), as editor, so be sure to check it out! Not sure what Starfish will look like without Rob though I'm sure it will continue to be a real fresh source for surrealist texts, no matter what. Rob's done a great job in his reign and finished with a bang, including in his last issue work from Dischargers like D.D. Wildblood, murmurists, and Lazare, (the first two of which will also be featured in the RD anthology with Rob), and tons of other tremendously fresh poets and prose writers. Starfish does things very differently - if you are interested in quality modern surrealism I suggest for your own sake checking it out. I was hoping for some work from Kek-W and Mike Philbin too, but alas, not in this issue - I highly recommend digging through issue 6 (where their work can be found) and the rest of the archives once you've finished with the current one. You can read issue 7 for free online here. Lately been going through some turbulent times with my writing which've been producing crazy results, some very good and some not worth a second glance. The good stuff is all some of my best stuff, though, and I'm coming upon new things and new directions... writing is so exciting! No matter what that excitement is the only reason I'll ever be doing this. I promise right now I'll never consider the dollar in pursuit of my art - it makes me sick when I hear about artists trading their dreams for dollars. And hopefully soon the results of my mindsprawls will be wrapped up and ready to give to all of you. And also working on a book with KNEN, which I may have referred to earlier as Stencil Words but which we've lately been calling These Walls Don't Hold Out Space, and which should be published with Crossing Chaos, D.W. Green's exciitng new press, in July 2009. If you haven't seen Crossing Chaos, do so, it's mandatory - I truly believe Green's press is going to be one of the most important things going on in modern experimental literature, much like James Chapman has been holding things down with Fugue State Press. We need presses like Crossing Chaos. Visit them here. Starting the third draft of Walls soon! And working and working and in two weeks leaving for Paris... 04/21/08 - THIS CITY IS ALIVE EXCERPT ONLINEAll is quiet... been busy on some new stuff, some stories, even some poetry, that's starting to take me in a new and very exciting direction... the anthology is gettin' real close to full and every time I make a new selection I get a whole new level of excitement about the thing... I think it's going to be very important, I think it's going to open a lot of people's eyes... I've tried to gather as many important writers as I could together in one place and have had a lot of success doing it... and if you have been thinking about submitting but haven't yet, hurry and shoot me an e-mail at delarocha59@yahoo.com before it's too late... Just put up Chapter 3 from our art-novella, which you can view here. This is a section that I was very fond of when I first wrote it and still feel a lot. It's not my favorite section of the book but I couldn't include anything much later without it spoiling some parts of it, so this will have to do. In it, Nail, Chevy, Mesa, and the Captain find themselves on some sort of hallucinatory ghost ship and... well, you'll see how it unwinds from there. In other news, Jase and I have been receiving some very kind words from critics lately. Jeff Burk, reviewer for The Dream People and other publications, wrote about us on his review blog, Literary Strange Digest, and Kek-W wrote about us in his notorious Kid Shirt blog. Check both of them out and spread the word to help support DIY art! Feeling sick and tired, so that's all for now. I have a story called "Plant the Seed" coming out very soon in issue 7 of Starfish Poetry that's worth keeping a lookout for. I'm particularly proud of this one, I've been kicking it around for about a year and finally it found a home in this wonderful journal edited by Robert Chrysler. Good night... 04/01/08 - INTERVIEW IN THE NEW ISSUE OF THE DREAM PEOPLED. Harlan Wilson just released another issue of his fantastic online journal of bizarro texts, The Dream People. This ones got fiction from Cameron Pierce, Brandi Wells, Kevin Sweeny, Tom Bradley, and Kevin L. Donihe, as well as my good pal from Discharge, Kek-W. It's also got an interview with Jase and me about This City is Alive, so check it out! There's tragically few journals publishing this kind of fiction today, so we gotta support the few that are. Visit The Dream People here. 03/02/08 - ROLLING WITH DISCHARGEIt's been a while since I've said anything... but I'm doing great, how are you? I've been staying very busy with the Raw Dog anthology, Avant-Garde for the New Millennium, and working hard on rewrites of a couple different books. Trying to save up enough money to get to Paris in a couple months, to let the coals in my head cool down... but besides this I've been invited to participate in a great art blog called Discharge, which I'm very excited about, and feel compelled to share with all of you. Never before has so much great, innovative art been available for free! I've been friends with some of the people in it for a while, too, but it's been a great place to discover new voices and appreciate different sorts of literature and visual arts. My good friend Jase Daniels is keeping very busy, posting some new crazy experimental work every day it seems. Take this watercolor of his - which is definitively "Jase" in style, but also very different than his other more computer-based stuff - called "Birdbath Head":
Kek-W, another good friend of mine, and a great surrealist writer (and also a wonderful "noise" musician - check out his project Ice Bird Spiral) frequents this place with quick bursts of experimental prose and imagery. I don't want to start naming names, because if I were to name everyone who's moved me on this blog it would take a very long time, but some of my favorites (and most frequent contributors) are Jaie Miller, and Robert Chrysler from Starfish Poetry, and, of course, Cocaine Jesus, who, at his best, is one of the freshest poets writing today. Here's a poem by him from Discharge called "Varese" that I'm in love with (after reading it I couldn't help mentioning it whenever possible for at least a week): seashell in silver concrete. I got KNEN - who I'm busy working with on a new book called Stencil Words - involved too. She's been one of my favorite visual artists for a while now. Check out one of her paintings, also (of course) from Discharge:
Well, I'm very proud to be one of the artists working on Discharge, because I really do think it's one of the greatest things around, whether or not it included me. It's all very free-form and I think that proves that the best art comes from the completely unrestrained part of the self. I would recommend you begin looking into this blog, make it a part of your daily routine. It's definitely updated enough that you'll always find something new to appreciate - almost 200 posts in February alone and even more the month before. Sometimes the art flows so fast you have trouble keeping up. All this reminds me that I haven't posted anything there in a little while. Better get on it! And by the way, I am still looking for submissions for Avant-Garde for the New Millennium, so if you're an experimental writer and you haven't already gotten in touch with me, please do. I've been getting a lot of excellent submissions but most of them just aren't what I'm looking for - although the ones that are blow my mind... wanna tell you all about them but feel like I shouldn't, at least until the collection comes closer to completion... ;-) 01/27/08 - SUBMISSIONS NEEDED!So I just got confirmation from John Edward Lawson - author of books like Last Burn In Hell, The Troublesome Amputee, and Discouraging at Best - that I am going to be editing an anthology for Raw Dog Screaming Press to feature all the best avant-garde and experimental writing being made today; a collection the most innovative work happening right now, Avant-Garde for the New Millennium, to be released early 2009. The book's turning out to be great with the work I've received already and now I want to open the doors to all submissions. SO! Please send me your best, most avant-garde work at delarocha59@yahoo.com, or snail mail it to: Forrest Armstrong I'm looking for stories around 1,000-5,000 words, and I'll consider poetry, too - send up to five of these at a time. Spread the word! I want to see submissions from everybody who believes they are pushing the limits of literature right now! I hope to hear from you all soon... 01/13/08 - LIQUID PARISFirst of all, I hope you had a happy new year! My gift to you is the story, "Liquid Paris," included in issue 7 of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens. Issue 7 is available for free as an online .pdf and features flash fiction by writers like John Edward Lawson, D. Harlan Wilson, Cameron Pierce and Andersen Prunty, as well as a handful of other great surrealists and absurdists. And my buddy Jase Daniels did the cover art, which is wonderful - slowly, he is taking the surreal scene by force through his visual work. Check the issue out! Why not; it's free... By the way, anybody who has read This City is Alive has already seen "Liquid Paris," but the version included in Bust is quite different - it went through a series of drafts that focused mainly on the language and feels, to me, stronger than it did in the novella. Things are going great with that, by the way - This City is Alive generated a fair amount of interest in the scene, and Jase and I recently did an interview with John Lawson that's scheduled to appear in the next issue of The Dream People. I think Jase's art, an excerpt, and a review of the book are all supposed to appear as well, so keep it in mind! The next issue of The Dream People comes out in April. I've been very busy working on new novels and novellas lately. I just finished a second draft of my first full-length novel, which I've been refering to as Flowers in the Dirt for now (I love the name but Paul McCartney's already got it). I describe the novel breifly in the back of This City is Alive but it's changed dramatically since then - a lot of things have gone into it and just as much has been taken out... some of the characters won't see it through to it's publication and two of the main characters have been fused into one... it's been tremendously exciting to work on and I can't wait for the day when I can present it to all of you. I've also been working on another project, called Stencil Words, (again, only a working title) with graffiti artist KNEN. Very experimental in form - I want to say more about it but won't until it comes closer to completion. I will say that it's a very real meditation on reality... And I'm trying to schedule some dates to read... if anybody knows of anything going on anywhere near Boston, or any good places to look into, let me know. Contact me anytime at delarocha59@yahoo.com. I appreciate it! Now - get out there and do something. Write, paint, play music, take pictures, share the way you feel about the world. Read - there's so many great writers writing today. If I may give you a list of some particularly good ones: Steve Aylett, James Chapman, John Edward Lawson, D.W. Green, Carlton Mellick III, Jim Chaffee, Eckhard Gerdes, Harold Jaffe; and there's literally hundreds of others. Let me know if there's anybody I should look into, too. I'm always looking for further proof that we (all writers, everywhere, as a whole) are pushing boundaries further, possibly, than they have ever been pushed before. Like they say in Waking Life, there is no more exciting a time to be living than NOW - 12/19/07 - THIS CITY IS ALIVE OUT NOW!The book Jase and I have been putting together for over a year now is finally here! Haven't been this excited in awhile. It looks great, over a year of hard work compiling this thing through cybernetic correspondance and now we have the final product, This City is Alive, ready to order. I'm doing a special promotional offer for the holidays; if you order the book by Friday (this Friday; the 21st), I will get it to you by Christmas Eve, even if at my own expense. I can't promise the Christmas Eve deal for international orders, but I'll do my best. The book includes the title novella - featuring text by myself and beautiful full-color illustrations by Jase Daniels, as well as a few of my shorter pieces (and even one article about the drug featured in the book - protoplasmic flash - written by the two main characters). There's even a gallery of Jase's work at the end. Proceed to the This City is Alive page if you are interested in purchasing a copy now, in time for the holidays. And check out what Kid Shirt had to say about out book. A very nice write-up... More updates coming soon... 12/02/07 - COMING SOON...Welcome to ForrestArmstrong.com! The imminent release of This City is Alive, the illustrated novella I have been working on for the past year with Jase Daniels, called for the creation of this site. So I have built a nucleas, a grand console that you can trace every tendril in my head back to, a quiet sky over trembling mountains and lucid rivers of plasma and nimbus clouds that dropped out of space... More to come, I promise. Until then, check out the stories that I have online (many of which are going to be available in This City is Alive alongside the title novella). And check out Jase's work - - guarenteed to reprogram your head machinery after the first painting... |
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