Medium Chill: Issue 1

by Rhonda Baughman

“Is this a big chill moment?” Randa asked, concerned, with a hint of melancholy.“Nah,” Shane said. He burped. “This is just a medium chill.”* * * Welcome to 'MC', abbreviated for Medium Chill. We're an experimental, short fiction anthology of both new and veteran writers, representing a wide variety of cities throughout the US. In other words-we're everywhere.It's so nice to meet you.

MEDIUM CHILL began as a sophisticated literary journal but morphed into a collaborative underground 'zine full of short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and art from writers and artists from all over the globe. Some of them even have their own books—so if you're not a fan of one, go read another—this is an anthology.

Most likely, you'll notice some minor formatting errors and probably a few slips in grammar and mechanics, but nothing that will impede clarity; so just try to have some kind of orgasmic reading experience pondering the darkly honest works from writers who may be new to you. Writers work very hard, often for little reward or acknowledgement – so before you negatively review, ask yourself if you've done better. If yes – shoot an email and provide the link of your best effort to the MEDIUM CHILL we'll let you know if you're correct But if no, you should get on that then--get to steppin' on your best effort instead of offering negative reviews of others' works. The internet is full of snark and pessimism; that's nothing special—but your genuine insight and positive review just might be.

106 pages, Paperback

Published February 21, 2018

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I've known Dr. Rhonda Baughman, this collection's editor and author of three of its stories, since we were kids, so I'm undoubtedly biased in her favor. Still, I enjoyed reading this quite a bit. It's certainly indie literature and there are a few lapses full-time editors at big publishing houses might have flagged, but that's cool: my own creative writing has those same lapses. It's a fun collection of stories by various authors and of varying genres, and every story has something that makes it worth reading from mood or characterization to really well-realized suspense. To single out a few, I especially enjoyed Baughman's "Pretty Please", a workplace comedy of manners that ends in a pretty funny Melville allusion; Mark Hines's "Remembering for Mikey", a tale of stargazing with a brain-damaged hospital patient that is effective in its pathos; and Joe Mercer's "The Beast You Bring with You", a suspenseful work of haunted house horror with a lot to say about the damage families inflict on one another. Hines's "The Bloodiest Forty-Seven Acres in the U.S." is impressively descriptive in its retelling of a prison transport van descending into the depths of Joseph Conrad's version of an American prison, and many of the other stories are fun, disturbing and provocative. Again, I enjoyed this and look forward to future issues.

[Mike Hammer · Rating 4 out of 5]

great read
a nice compilation of stories, that range from gritty to funny to sexy and scary