Fringe's Round Robin

Fringe Magazine (www.FringeMagazine.org) wants your help with our first ever Round Robin! We think you and your friends will make fabulous flash fiction writers, so give us your best shot at 26 sentences. Instructions are below. We'll be posting the results on our blog after June 15th.

1. Copy and paste the instructions and story into a fresh email/Facebook note.

2. Write the next sentence of the story below. Add your name to the byline at the bottom of the story. If you want to be emailed when your story gets posted, add your email address.

3. Tag one or more friends in the note, or forward the email to one or more buddies.

4. When the story comes to a natural end or reaches 26 sentences, email the finished product to FringeTheBlog@gmail.com by JUNE 15. We’ll give the pieces a light edit and post them, including author names, to the Fringe blog (www.thenounthatverbsyourworld.blogspot.com) under the tag “Round Robin.”

A few caveats: If a group of however many wants to tackle this, that’s fine – we don’t mind if people write more than one sentence, but do try to let the authorship to change with every sentence. You can try for something conventional, with a beginning, middle or end, or go crazy and experimental.

Story:

1. The first person to start the chain can choose from one of three initial sentences (or create your own!):

• "Alfred did not believe in voodoo, only in himself, and the power that a well-designed business card had over lesser beings"
  
• "Darcy Zicafoose, of the Washington Zicafooses, had a penchant for judo."
  
• "I was never young, but I remember being young in the same way that I cannot see color but I dream of it, lush and vivid, spreading before me like a banquet."
  

Authors: Lizzie Stark (FringetheBlog@gmail.com)



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The Birds & The Bees: Green Porno

Famed Blue Velvet actress, Isabella Rossellini stars, directs, and produces the online short film series, Green Porno—a show devoted the sex lives of insects and marine life. How did I miss this?!? Apparently, Rossellini always wanted to direct films but could only think up short stories that weren't long enough for the big screen. Her chance came when The Sundance Channel wanted to produce a series for the 3rd screen (i.e. ipod, internet). Rossellini's childhood dream was to write about animals, and The Sundance Channel said sound good, but make it flashy! And what better to catch people's attention than sex? Thus, Green Porno was born. Not only is the show hilarious and scientifically accurate, but it's incredibly artistic—almost all of the costumes are made out of paper and manipulated manually. Go to the website and watch them all! Here's her piece on the mating habits of bees. Enjoy!

Fringe Contributors Rock: Prose Edition

Here's the second of a series of semi-regular posts that will showcase the fine work of Fringe contributors past. Here's what the Fringe's prose writers have been up to:

• Feminism issue writerKIRSTIN CHEN has fiction up at Hobart and two pieces over at Juked.
  
• Issue 2 short short writer NATHAN LONG has a short story, "The Devil" up over at Failbetter.com.
• Enviro issue critic MOLLY GAUDRY has a whole passel of work up, available through links on her blog.
• Environment issue essayist ELIZABETH ENSLIN, has work up at In The Mist, the Oregon Literary Review, Fishtrap and on her dreamy blog.
• Nonfiction writer KELLY CALVERT will be driving her car around the US this summer in search of stories and vegetable oil to fuel her car. And she'll be blogging about it too.

And please remember: Fringe is still in the midst of a fundraising campaign for our web redesign. We're so close -- only $299 away from success. We need to raise the funds in the next 30, so please consider a $5 or $10 donation. It'd make a big difference to a small literary journal.

Art by Zehra Khan: "Diamond (both halves)" ink on paper.

Teh Internetz: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I don't often do book reviews for Fringe. I leave that to my colleagues who are down with the learnin'. But guys, as a hardcore interweb nerd, I cannot help but force my bookish opinions on you when it comes to Quirk Books' Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. If you've been living under a non-nerd rock, then maybe you haven't heard how awesome it is. The original text by Jane Austen is melded with added scenes and twists from Seth Grahame-Smith, who I am now stalking on Twitter (@sethgs).

What you might call an exercise in ridiculous pop culture trend-huffing is probably the best book ever made. Let me repeat that: THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVER MADE.

The book itself is pretty self-explanatory. I will leave other, more powerful bloggers to tell you what the reading experience is like. (Here's a hint: it's awesome, and also, there are ninjas.)

Fans of Jane Austen might balk at an old, beloved story being turned into mindless entertainment complete with explosions and Kill Bill-esque swordfights. But those fans can go to hell. You had your chance, Austen fans. You took the original story and turned it into a thousand and one incredibly boring movies with an unending stream of women with big hair playing Elizabeth and chiseled-jawed dudes playing Darcy. For the last few hundred years, we've done it your way. Now it's time to do it our way.

"Our way" is the internet's way, of course. One of the longest standing rules of the online world is that anything plus zombies is bound to be better. (Ninjas help too.)

Why do you think, months before this book even pubbed, geeks were already frothing at the mouth? Because we knew it couldn't lose.

Everything that makes Pride & Prejudice is still intact. The delicate play of relationships, the unspoken code of honor that doesn't seem to exist in our time, the pomp and circumstance of high society: it's all still there. But it's been augmented just a tad. The zombie threat does something magical here. Not only does it serve to help us through the duller scenes (I thought that ball would NEVER end!) but it steps in to inform the characterization. What had previously been merely Elizabeth's dry wit and keen intelligence is now fashioned into a killing machine. What was originally Darcy's aloofness and haughtiness is now the burden of a lone samurai warrior. These aren't parodies of Austen's characters; they have only grown to strange new heights.

The real brilliance is that the story begins well after the zombie threat has emerged, which gives our heroes ample time to adjust to life amid the undead. Being trained to kill zombies is the norm, and life can continue on despite the frequent attacks. So the original plot has plenty of space to develop with just a sprinkling of crazy violence throughout.

And, oh, did I mention there are ninjas?

Look, you're going to want to buy this book. The hope is that Quirk Books continues in this vein with other classic novels remixed with a little zombie. Can you imagine A Tale of Two Cities...and Zombies"? "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and oh wait, did I mention the zombies!?"

Time Suck: Shakespearean Insult Generator

Like Shakespeare? Feeling too high on yourself? Let the Shakespearean insult generator cut you down to size.

Fringe Contributors Rock: Art Edition

Here's the first of a series of semi-regular posts that will showcase the fine work of Fringe contributors past. We'll start out with the supa-fly visual art by some of Fringe's former artists:

• TM GRATKOWSKI has work up over at Art Slant, YouTube, and the Saatchi Gallery
• Feminism issue artist DAVID BARNES has a new website that highlights his work.
• PETER SCHWARTZ has some keen new photography over at Cella's Round Trip and Foliate Oak.
• ZEHRA KHAN, whose "Back Words" is pictured here, has been hard at work too -- we'll be posting some of her photos this week as we roll out more of the Fringe army's accomplishments.
• The funky and un-categorizable artist/audio collage maven MICHAEL K. MEYERS has a sweet homepage with a bunch of new publication credits.

And please remember: Fringe is still in the midst of a fundraising campaign for our web redesign. We're so close -- only $299 away from success. We need to raise the funds in the next 30, so please consider a $5 or $10 donation. It'd make a big difference to a small literary journal.

post-Soviet splendour

For an agonisingly long stretch of time I’ve been saving all my pennies in order to explore some of the former Eastern bloc. So, in light of my imminent departure I thought it might be fitting to drop a few photographical delights in place of my usual scribbling:

Richtung Berlin/A Soviet Legacy/41 Gymnasia, Angus Boulton

Russia, Andrew Moore

Motherland, Simon Roberts

Soviet Roadside Bus Stops, Christopher Herwig

And for those who can’t stand that sort of thing, I bring you... Absence of Water, courtesy of Gigi Cifali.

My apologies for not adding any fake commentary; I’m currently in the middle of pre-packing adventures (today it’s jotting down those essential phrases I’ll probably never use). So, just in case anyone out there gets their kicks from examining the linguistic nuances between Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian, here’s a phrase I’ll sadly never get to use, translated by Omniglot into all three tongues:

Мой паветраны човен поўны вуграмі

Моё судно на воздушной подушке полно угрей

Моє судно на повітряній подушці наповнене вуграми

Um, so yes... feel enlightened.