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

••••

» Literature

The Camp moves into the Literary House

Posted on October 20, 2008 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Publication Annoucements | 1 Comment

The second annual issue of The Literary House Review has just been released. Why should you care? My story, “The Camp,” appears within. That’s why. Never mind that the publication contains 232 pages of genre and non-genre, commercial and literary fiction, along with poems enough to erect a mansion – albeit one inconveniently susceptible to moisture (guess what paper, you make a better art medium than a wall!). Never mind that The Review is available to buy here or here and is archived at New York Public Library, Rockefeller Library at Brown University, RI, and at the University of Wisconsin Madison Library (those are monocle-level smart houses, people). Buy it for “The Camp.”

Now for the author notes:

As so many stories begin, “The Camp” was a self-inflicted dare. The concept of “The Camp” is seeded in a desire to explore the horrid through a lens subjectively aimed toward beauty. I told myself that I should write about the hidden beauty in something ugly. How’s The Holocaust for ugly? But truthfully, The Holocaust could have been any tragedy as far as “The Camp” goes (though I would have had to change the title). I wasn’t looking to explore Nazi sympathy; I was simply after finding the pleasant within the unpleasant.

Read “The Camp” here for free!

Snake Girl at 3:AM

Posted on October 19, 2008 by Caleb J Ross Posted in Publication Annoucements | 2 Comments

I’ve been clicking over to 3:AM Magazine for quite a while now. I can’t remember where I first heard about it (probably from Dogmatika, where I hear about most every great thing in the underground lit scene), so I can’t place praise with full accuracy. However, I can pass on the good word. And what better way to do so than via the news of my own story, “Snake Girl at Scab,” getting some page space.

Some author notes on the story:

During my first visit to Portland, Oregon (USA), some locals took us to an event called First Thursdays, a neighborhood art gallery orgy (artgy, if you will) with booths, food, music, and lives to be changed. Most cities have these types of events, but due to a strange encounter involving an emotionless girl carrying a snake, this artgy impacted more than normal.

The snake girl depicted in this story is accurately described, with absolutely no fiction license taken. When she approached us at First Thursdays, pink lipstick, barefooted, snake in hand, and arm outstretched with requests for money, I was stunned. Granted this is isn’t the strangest thing to have ever happed to me, not by a long shot, but the combination of unfamiliar territory with such a displaced character stayed with me. I want to do more with the snake girl. I’m sure she will turn up in future projects.

Also, “Snake Girl at Scab” is, in a way, my own sort of scab, patching over a weakness that had been slowly compromising my stories for a while. At the time I wrote this story I had been writing a lot of grotesque stories, forcing visceral imagery and dark situations where perhaps they didn’t belong. Luckily, I’ve aborted these stories so they will never see print. “Snake Girl at Scab” was my way of reconnecting with tried-and-true storytelling.

Click the link above. Read the story. Then stick around for a bit and check out the rest of the site. I’m serious when I say that 3:AM is an asylum for some of the best underground writers around.

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