ON ONESELF – by Nicolas D. Sampson Books lead to other books. Read one and you’re reminded of another. New publications refer to past ones, famous and obscure. Genres cross over, involving similar concepts, tropes, devices. Writers lift, pay tribute, re-imagine, claim as their own and take it a step further in their effort to tell gripping, original stories. Pick up the trail and we end up making extraordinary connections. Welcome to Connection Degree Three … What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami; White Noise by Don DeLillo; Altered States by Paddy Chayefsky: three mind-bending … Continue reading Connection Degree Three – Feb 2020

Stephen McQuiggan was the original author of the bible; he vowed never to write again after the publishers removed the dinosaurs and the spectacular alien abduction ending from the final edit. His other, lesser known, novels are A Pig’s View Of Heaven and Trip A Dwarf. OPEN 7 DAYS TIL MIDNIGHT. Shaw awoke drenched in that all too familiar feeling – it was going to be a slut of a day. He checked his emails and they were the usual round of petty squabbles and cancelled orders. There was no hot water. He stubbed his toe, shouting the anesthetising ‘Fuck!’ so loudly he … Continue reading Stephen McQuiggan

Kate Ennals is a prize-winning poet and writer and has published poems and short stories in a range of literary and on-line journals (Crannog, Skylight 47, Honest Ulsterman, The Moth, Anomaly, The International Lakeview Journal, Boyne Berries, North West Words, The Blue Nib, Dodging the Rain, The Ogham Stone, plus).In 2017, she won the Westport Arts Festival Poetry Competition. Her first collection of poetry At The Edge was published in 2015. Her second collection, Threads, was published in April 2018. She has lived in Ireland for 25 years and currently runs poetry and writing workshops in County Cavan. Kateruns At … Continue reading Kate Ennals

Mark Tarren is a poet and writer who lives on remote Norfolk Island in the South Pacific. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary journals including The New Verse News, The Blue Nib, Poets Reading The News, Street Light Press, Spillwords Press, Tuck Magazine and Impspired Magazine. He is currently working on a collection of poetry and a novel. Clouds Hill      for T.E. Lawrence When did things fall away from beneath your hand? Was it when love fell deeply from your brow towards the brass heaven?   When all things intimate were lost, cast away in your gold. … Continue reading Mark Tarren

Michael Lee Johnson lived 10 years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, DuPage County, Illinois.  Mr. Johnson published in more than 1072 new publications, his poems have appeared in 38 countries, he edits, publishes 10 poetry sites.  Michael Lee Johnson, has been nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards poetry 2015/1 Best of the Net 2016/2 Best of the Net 2017, 2 Best of the Net 2018.199 poetry videos are now on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos.  Editor-in-chief poetry anthology, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow … Continue reading Michael Lee Johnson

Vivien Jones lives on the north Solway shore in Scotland. She has two poetry collections and two short story collections in print, numerous inclusions in national and international anthologies, and has had work broadcast on Radio Scotland and Radio 4. In the last two years her focus has been on writing short plays (for which she won a national award) working with actors and directors to bring them to performance. She is one of three editors of Southlight literary magazine which is created in the south-west of Scotland where she lives. She is a Literature Ambassador for the Wigtown Book Festival Company, helping … Continue reading Vivien Jones

Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Chiron Review, McNeese Review, Adirondack Review, Weber, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Arkansas Review, Poem, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008). He has taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank. Alter Ego I make good grades in school so when we eat out on Friday nights and do some shopping, Father and Mother and I, I get my allowance–a quarter–after dessert. It will buy me two comic books at twelve cents each, and a penny … Continue reading Gale Acuff

Gerald Jatzek is a poet and musician from Vienna, Austria, who writes in German and English. He published books for children and adults, short stories, plays for radio and essays. 2001 he got the Austrian State Prize for Children’s Poetry. His books have been translated into Korean and Turkish, his poems have appeared in anthologies and literature  papers in Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Croatia, the Netherlands and the UK. He runs a facebook page on poetry in several languages at https://www.facebook.com/jatzekpoesie/ Bars They came together east of singing,   drowning their instruments in murmurs and smoke. … Continue reading Gerald Jatzek

Is there really that much difference between sports and the plight of writers everywhere? The idea of the musclebound athlete and the bookish writer are often shown to be worlds apart. But are they? Really? Probably a lot less than we think. Both exist because of a love of what they do, a talent for their field and the willingness to dedicated themselves to improving and mastering their craft. The similarities, however, don’t stop there, both fields are often chronically underfunded at grassroots level, reliant on grants and talented people giving up their time for free. Be that professional authors … Continue reading Worlds Apart or kindred spirits?

Jack Coey is a seventy-two year old grandfather of two who has experienced most of life’s events, and survived them not only, but without hurting anyone else which he would say was a good life. Writing satisfies him like nothing else and he works as a cashier to eat and writes to love.   Neptune Swims Finley put down the bottle. He heard the static from the radio before the music started. He was a teenager; it was June 5, 1944, and he was in Portsmouth, England.  Bridget was at the sink of the small, second floor flat washing an … Continue reading Jack Coey