Nyarlathotep, I’m Breaking Up with You by Jason Henninger.

Ia, ia, ia, ia, ia! Ia, ia ia! (From Tor.com.)

Farmer’s Almanac by Christopher James Klingbeil. (From slushpilemag.)

This is potentially really exciting news for short fiction, a form that used to be hugely popular (F. Scott Fitzgerald was considered to have squandered his talent writing short fiction for ready cash). Personally, I think the price tag is wrong–it should be $0.99, like an iPhone app.

It could be a great little money-maker for magazines who have enough reputation to give the experiment their editorial imprimatur, not to mention market it to their subscribers. It’s a good thing for authors too, as one author points out:

had she sold it to a small academic journal, it would have had “limited distribution anyway.”

It’s unlikely that unknown authors will be able to break into the Kindle on their own… for now. But if this is the first step towards an iTunes-like distribution model for fiction, then it could be.

In any event, it’s another market for short fiction and that ain’t bad.

(From bookninja.)

Foes, by Lorrie Moore.

Lately I’ve been reading Joyland, an online literary journal that publishes high quality short fiction (on the internet! I know!). Here’s a recent story made up entirely of text salvaged from the purple prose spammers use to trick email filters. Clever.

Some People Swallow the Universe Like a Pill.

(From Tor)

The trouble: You want Thing A but are stuck with Thing B.

Shit, you say, turning Thing B around in your hands. Look at this thing, you say. It’s as dull as a bucket of dirt. It’s not half as interesting as a sculpture of a dog pissing on a dead man’s shoe in the rain, and you don’t have one of those. You don’t have Thing A, either.

I can relate. From the now defunct Backwards City Review.

One of my favorites:

God to Earth: “Cry more, noobs!”
- Marc Laidlaw

Litfarm out.

More submission details here.

Prizes are $250, $150, $100 and swell Geist gifts. Winners will be published in Geist, geist.com and selected stories will be published the thetyee.ca.

Gory details at the link above.