As a Machine and Parts: a novella (12/2011)


Mitchell, a twenty-something Cougar Cub with Marsha, his midlife girlfriend, wakes each morning, living an ever-thinning line between human and machine. As his literal condition progresses he looses his capacity for human emotion, and potentially with it, Marsha.  As a Machine and Parts is a story of Mitchell’s struggle to discover which assembly line he belongs Read more

I Didn't Mean to be Kevin: a novel (1/2012)


Jackson Jacoby is a motherless twenty-two year old boy with only the support of his crazy ex-military Uncle Marve and a kindred motherless peer named Creg. Creg holds fast to the hope of one day reuniting with his mother while Jackson maintains that his own life is so much better off without all the baggage that comes along with being somebody’s Read more

Charactered Pieces: stories


With Charactered Pieces, Caleb J. Ross presents a varied world of familial discord, one where a dead fetus evokes more compassion than its mother (“Charactered Pieces”);  where two brothers offer the destruction of a family legacy as a birthday gift for their aging father (“My Family’s Rule”); where one brother’s love of Holocaust documentaries pushes his family through the aftermath of his assumed suicide (“The Read more

Stranger Will: a novel


In this novel of impending fatherhood, an idealistic teacher recruits a pliant protégé to join her group of Strangers – a devout collection of kindred minds who have dedicated their lives to cultivating a unique idea of perfection. But joining is easier than Read more

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» fiction

dodge some cars, read some fiction

Posted on January 6, 2008 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Publication Annoucements | Leave a comment

No Record Press has just posted my story, “Car Dodging.” More importantly, the editor for No Record Press, Miles Newbold Clark, has written a fantastic novel called None of This Will Do. Now What? which I called, in my Depraved Press review, “one of the best novels of 2007.” I know what you are thinking – favors, right? – but know that I didn’t even know about None of This Will Do. Now What? until Mr. Clark notified me that my story would appear at No Record.

So, read None of This Will Do. Now What?, first. Then, if you have time and energy enough after taking in that true work of art, head over to No Record Press to read my story, “Car Dodging.”

Here’s the author notes on the story:

Easily one of the most polarizing intros I’ve ever written. I love this intro, and though it might be admittedly shock-driven, it still serves the greater story. A lot of people find this opening sexist. Those people probably stopped reading after the opening, and therefore, have no business commenting.

This story is based on an actual game my friends a I played during our Junior High-ish years. There wasn’t a point system, and there was more furious drivers, but nonetheless the “real” game carried all the absurdity of the “story” game.

Also, an early incarnation of this story won the Kay Alden Memorial Scholarship from Emporia State University. By that time I had stopped going car dodging, which is good because, though the scholarship money was quite helpful during my minimum wage college years it definitely wouldn’t have paid for the repair of a cracked skull.

No Record Press

No Record Press publishes the annual Red Anthology, which as been called by the Utne reader “wholly uninhibited–a refreshing change of pace”

those of a life remembered

Posted on March 12, 2007 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Media | Leave a comment

The interview is a rare opportunity to experience the inner workings of a person. Unless that person likes to call himself a writer, then the interview is just old news to those who’ve read his stories. Fiction can be the ultimate autobiography, though a structured and controlled autobiography it is. Fiction is makeup.So what’s a writer to do when he wants to wash away the mascara? He answers some questions in an attempt to categorize his life, similar to the desires of the protagonist in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea:

I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered.

And like this protagonist the writer understands that “You might as well try and catch time by the tail.”
Oxyfication LinkJason Kane and Justin Holt, both writers themselves, were kind enough to pretend I had interesting things to say, to pretend I had a some thoughts worth organizing. I won’t try claim that this interview forced impromptu responses (I had plenty of time to think), but it is a bit further from fiction than I am used to.

 

Click the Oxy icon to read interview

 

under the influence

Posted on August 4, 2006 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Publication Annoucements | Leave a comment

Any form of expression is arguably one committed “under the influence.” What we eat, what we say, how we walk—hell, human beings simply walking is really just a biological influence. But historically, for writers, one of the most iconic influences of all time is Absinthe—The Green Muse; a devastating liquor. Everyone from Ernest Hemmingway (his short story “Hills Like White Elephants” comes to mind) to Joey Goebel (with his novel Torture the Artist) has capitalized on the image of Absinthe. What better way to weave my own way into this cultural icon than by way of a lit mag called The Green Muse, with “Refill,” a story about a man governed by substance? I suppose a better way would have been for me to actually use the word “Absinthe” somewhere in the story. But I didn’t.

 

One of my writing heroes, Denis Johnson, has a few pertinent words on the topic of writing under the influence (of drugs and alcohol):

“I think it’s silly for anyone to think you could write under the influence, but if they’d like to think that, I’d like to keep the legend alive. Maybe I was under the influence when I wrote Jesus’ Son and I just didn’t know it.”

Green Muse Review Banner

The Green Muse is a monthly journal publishing work both online and in print. They are a young journal so be sure to support them (and me) by purchasing a copy of the print journal here.

a guilty conscious

Posted on June 2, 2006 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Publication Annoucements | Leave a comment

Online literary magazines seemed to me for the longest time some form of blasphemy. Not much compares to the tactile and aesthetic appeal of a printed, bound journal. Maybe that sounds a little creepy, but I’m a creepy guy.

So when writer and friend Christopher Dwyer posted over at Write Club about this online lit-mag called Dogmatika I wasn’t exactly crushing keys to get over there. But call me a convert.Dogmatika was the eye opener. It stands as not only the first online lit-mag that I read with regularity, but also the first I loved so much that I felt compelled to submit my own fiction. Head over to Dogmatika now to read my short-short, “Petty Injuries.”

Maybe I was a literary snob. Maybe I yearned too much for the prestige that comes with a printed journal. Maybe I was too focused on the canvas, not the art. I think Albert Camus is correct, that “a guilty conscious needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.”Despite the form, the work needs to get out there.*

 

*Though I would say that many theorists, the late Jacques Derrida being one of them, might point out the impossibility of separating message from forum, that they are part of the same end. I agree. But that keeps me from being able to use the Camus quote, and I really like Camus’s work. And yes, I used the quote out of context. What are you going to do, dig up Camus’s corpse and tattle? You are? Can you get me a postcard or something?

Dogmatika Banner Call it the month of Write Club. Four of us have stories in Dogmatika this month. The aforementioned Christopher Dwyer’s Parabola Jason Kane’s “Letter From Point Pleasant“ and Mark Lazer’s “Three Times Dead“ all share page space in June.

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