Karen Newman - Mistress of the Dark

An update: Karen's poetry book, "Toward Absolute Zero," has been nominated for a Stoker award. Congratulations to Karen and all other nominees. I thought it a good time to re-run my interview with Karen.

Today, we're talking with Karen L. Newman: poet, editor, evil mind. Karen has the perfect combination of talents to succeed in the strange and dark world of horror poetry. She has authored two poetry collections, Eeku and ChemICKals, in addition to over 150 of her poems and short stories have been published, both online or in print in places such as Dreams and Nightmares, Star*Line, Cthulhu Sex, Aoife's Kiss, and The Sword Review. She won the 2005 Mary Jane Barnes Award, been nominated for a Dwarf Star, and received two honorable mentions in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.

ChemICKals is available from Naked Snake Press.
EEKU is available from The Genre Mall.

Find Karen at MySpace and her website.

Karen is a busy lady. She's an editor at Sam's Dot Publishing for the poetry journal Illumen and Appalling Limericks. She's also an editor for Afterburn SF.

Marva: Thanks for dropping by, Karen. How is a nice girl like you involved in all this dark stuff?

Karen: I always liked horror movies as a child because of the wide range of emotions that were brought out. I feel "dark stuff" is easier to work with because of these emotional responses it evokes.

Marva: Your new collection, ChemICKals, is based on actual chemicals, with poems for several of the common household products, metals, gases, and drugs. Here's an example for the readers:

Oxygen

As emphysema ate her lungs,
Faye chain-smoked
while being
constantly connected
to an oxygen tank.

Thin and bedridden,
she huffed and puffed
until she lit herself up,
forming a human cigarette
that left a long cylindrical ash,
as the flaming tank
torpedoed the house.

Yup, that's not exactly romantic poetry. Tell us a little more about ChemICKals. What sparked (haha) the idea for the collection?

Karen: I have an MS in chemistry and I used my chemical knowledge to write the collection.

Marva: Well, that explains it. Going back in time, when did you start writing poetry and, more specifically, the dark poems and stories?

Karen: I wrote my first poem as a senior high school English assignment for entry in a local poetry contest. I won honorable mention for a poem entitled "The Prisoner", about a man awaiting execution. I wrote some poetry in college, but never tried to publish them. I quit writing until late 2003. My first sale was the poem "Atomic Mistress" in Scared Naked Magazine in March 2004.

Marva: I included some of your biographical information at the top of this post. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Home, family, pets?

Karen: I live in Kentucky and have two cats, Fluffy Buddy, a 14-year-old girl, and Tri-Paw, an 11-year-old boy with three legs. I write and edit full time. I started, sponsor, and judge the Speculative Poem Award for the Kentucky State Poetry Society Contest.

Marva: Here's the spot where I leave it entirely up to the interviewee to say anything you want to my blogreaders. 500 words or less. Go for it.

Karen: My current projects include a third poetry collection, Toward Absolute Zero, which contains over forty dark mainstream poems. I’m looking for a publisher for that. I’m working on a horror/science fiction novel, tentatively titled No More Lawn Mowers and set mostly in Kentucky. My short story "Red Leather Jeans" will appear in the next issue of Cthulhu Sex Magazine and I have poetry upcoming in Star*Line, The Written Word, and Beyond Centauri. On the editorial front, the next issue of Afterburn SF will go live around July 14 and contain eight action-packed science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories. I’m currently reading for the September issue. Please stop by. There are four great stories in the current issue and many others archived. I’m also reading for the spring 2008 issue of Illumen. Visit Sam’s Dot at http://www.samsdotpublishing.com/ for guidelines and to read and order their other fantastic magazines. Thanks for the interview, Marva, and to everyone for reading it.

Marva: Thanks for stopping by, Karen. See you on the dark side.

Bruce Boston - New Book!

For Bruce Boston fans fans, this is great! Just to let you know, Bruce has won multiple awards for both fiction and poetry. Masque of Dreams contains a full six novelettes and 17 short stories, in addition to poetry.

Check out his website here for his latest book, Masque of Dreams. Cool cover, eh?

296 pages $13.95

Wildside Press

ISBN-13: 978-1-4344091-1-9

March Spotlight on Books

Poetry is the flavor of the month. Check out Dianne Salerni's monthly Spotlight. March is for poetry! It is really, really hard to find publishers for poetry, so this month's selection highlights those works that are ignored by the agents and mainstream. Hey! If you're a poet, you're going to have a hard time find a publisher. That does NOT mean your poetry is unworthy. Check it out.

Some of the books for your reading pleasure are:

Mugging for the Camera by RJ Clarken

A Viking's Prayer by Aidan Lucid: This one sounds very interesting to me. Love the historicals!

Gems of Yesterday by Bee Lewis, edited by Erwin A Thompson

Organic Hotels by Matthew Abuelo

Sightlines by Janet Grace Riehl

Night Moves by Edgar Henry

Next month: Murder Most Foul! I can hardly wait. Detective, crime, neat stuff.

All past Spotlights are linked at the bottom of the page.

Poetry? Me?

I just received my copies of the Custer-Hawke Gazette in which a poem of mine appears. Very nicely set up, I've got a whole page to myself.

The Gazette is printed and sent out approximately four times a year, but some various problems held up the latest issue for a long, long time. I didn't mind waiting because I kind of like what they're doing.

The website is called Operation WWII Remembered. Their mission statement reads:

To perpetuate the stories of all those who participated in WWII or lived during the years 1933 to 1948; To preserve the artifacts and memorabilia of this same timeframe; To provide a consolidated source of research, first-person stories, and personal memoirs about this time and its people; To be an educational tool for all generations; To encourage and support the memorials and associations dedicated to these same efforts.

With films like Flags of Our Fathers and Saving Private Ryan, the younger generations have a chance to learn more about the soldiers who fought the battles of World War II. It's almost refreshing to have a war to remember where we were on the side of liberty. Things are much murkier these days.

If you have a friend or relative of the WWII era, you might consider asking them to tell you their stories. That's how I came to write my poem. Titled "Signin' Up," it describes how my own father and his buddy Red went on a road trip right after high school and ended up in Denver enlisting in the army just as WWII broke out. I'd share the poem with you, but Custer-Hawke has first electronic rights. Their intent is to archive the stories from the gazette on the website. When, and if, that occurs, I'll let you know.