In his yearly Bibliophile Stalker Awards, Charles Tan gives Sybil’s Garage No. 6 an honorable mention for “Best Single-Issue Magazine.” In addition, Rich Horton says of Sybil’s Garage on his blog: “I saw one issue of Sybil’s Garage this year … the sixth overall issue of this magazine, and the second I’ve seen. The editor is Matthew Kressel. It’s a stylishly put together magazine, There’s plenty of poetry, art, and nonfiction in addition to the stories. There were 16 stories, all short, two short-shorts, for a bit under 50,000 words of fiction. My …

A few updates this morning: For those who haven’t heard, Sybil’s Garage will be opening to submissions for our 7th issue on January 15th.  Guidelines here. The World-Fantasy award winning anthology Paper Cities is now only $12 for the holidays.  Get it now. Altered Fluid, my writers group, will be appearing on Jim Freund’s Hour of the Wolf on January 16th.  We will be critiquing a story by the talented writer and amateur lepidopterist Paul Berger. I’ve been toying with the idea of changing the trim size of Sybil’s Garage from 7″ x 8.5″ …

I finished Hal Duncan’s Escape from Hell! last night.  A homeless man, a murderer, a junkie whore, and a gay man wake up on a ferry boat after dying.  But this boat is no dingy, nor a wooden raft with crooked Charon at the helm.  No, they find themselves on a New York-style commuter ferry with other confused passengers, and the city of the dead they are shuffling towards looks an awful lot like a blasted-out Manhattan.  Duncan’s hell is a police state, where cowardly cops inflict pain to …

I’ve watched all five episodes of Stargate Universe so far.  The show has bad acting, bad characterizations, racist, sexist, & stereotypical characters, and bad writing.  So why the hell am I watching?  Because it has its moments.  Like the scene where they aerobrake against a blue gas giant.  The observation deck is one of the most beautiful science fictional renderings I have yet seen on TV.  And Eli, the bumbling MIT dropout, though I’ve seen a thousand characters like him before, is redeemed by his on-screen schtick and charm. The show …

When I originally read L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, two things struck me about the magical kingdom, its breadth – that there were always new characters, communities, and challenges around the bend – and that I very much wanted to go there. Now I’m far away from those bountiful days of childhood, but I’m pleased to report that Shadows of the Emerald City, JW Schnarr’s 19-story anthology about the dark side of Oz, offers a sense of Oz’s continuing expansiveness as well as a satisfying number of characters that yearn to be part of the enchanted land.