Out of the Gutter is back with its eighth issue, this one featuring the most popular stories from its new online incarnation, Out of the Gutter Online (www.outofthegutteronline.com), as well as a special digital age-themed section with all new material, and a bonus story by David Corbett!
As usual, the hard-hitting fiction is divided into flash fiction, which will take about five minutes to read, and longer stories that fall in the ten to fifteen-minute range, making this the perfect collection to take with you whenever you have a limited amount of time to kill and need some cheap, fast thrills.
Yes, I have a story in this collection. So ignore that. I'm writing about the other ones. The ones that surround me, make me feel humbled just by being included with them. The good stuff is in here, folks. From CS DeWildt's absurd humanity to Isaac Kikrman's beautiful ugliness, it's in here. Mike Monson's understated sadness in "Hot Cups," Andrew Hilbert's ridiculousness in "Two Cowboys..." David James Keaton's nonfiction piece "The Dish Farm" is wild. WILD. The dude writes about transcribing porn for the hearing impaired and all the trouble that actually follows mistyping MOANING CONTINUES. The--again, nonfiction--story is killer by itself, but the way DJK tells it doubles its coolness. That one holds its own against the entire book. Chris Leek, Les Edgerton, Jen Conley, this slim volume is a who's who of today's noir/crime market. Kudos to Matthew Louis, Joe Clifford, Tom Pitts and Court Merrigan for their efforts here. They pay off.
This anthology of flash fiction and short stories is perfect for the noir lover without a lot of time on his or her hands. The flash fiction features stories about 5 minutes in length and the short stories about 15 minutes in length. Featured are some of the shining lights of noir. If you don’t have a a lot of time to spend this is perfect for you.
stories that are raw, gritty gripping tightly packed presents waiting to be unwrapped. I'm so glad I did. I enjoyed every story, that's as rare as finding an honest politician, yet I did. I have found new authors and a new series I can go back, read the first seven volumes. Please, do yourself a favor, check out this series.
Full disclosure, a guy named Todd Mohr, who may be living an interesting life while I think I'm sleeping or maybe is just a victim of my names odd spelling has a story in this one. Since it is a flash fiction piece that takes up less than a grand worth of words I feel o.k. posting a review of the rest, which is uniformly fucking awesome.
There is not a dud in this collection of hardboiled pulp fiction, standouts for me include Daddy's Girl, Family Dynamics, Hot Cups, Tourettes, and Cheated.
As for that dude Todd Mohr, well I didn't read it(mostly because I can't read anything either my doppleganger or myself wrote without seeing something I want to change.)but one of our wives did sum it up by saying "Why would anyone want to read that?"