Toxic Reality coming soon!

My second collection of short fiction, Toxic Reality, will be a reality within weeks. Joy Sillesen of StonyHill Productions is currently designing the cover and layout, and I'm going through the final edit and selection process,. killing my children with wild abandon. (Read Sandra Seamans' blog on the process she's going through prepping her as-yet-unnamed collection for Snubnose Press here.)

Late one night a few months ago I'd been toying with the idea of writing a title story for the collection and I came up with the story below. Well, not really a story so much as a splat of words that after a good night's sleep I realized should never, ever see print. But it kind of amused me to collect my anxieties in one big rant, so I'm posting it here.  Complete with the groovy font-playing that seemed such a great idea at one in the morning.

Acid rain  

A

Bees dying

Cancer clusters

    C

Deforestation

E-coli

          E

Famine

Genital mutilation

Hole in the ozone

Icebergs melting

    I

John Galliano

Kabul

Love Canal

             L

Mercury poisoning

Norwegian extremists

Oceans dying

   O

Pandemics

Quadriplegia

Radioactive breast milk

        R

Superbugs

Terrorism

   T

Urban blight

Vanishing species

Whale stranding

Xenophobia

                        X

Yeast infections

      Y

Zero-sum mentality

Autism on the rise

BP oil spill

Capital punishment

Ethnic cleansing

Fukishima meltdown

Greenhouse gases

Habitat destruction

Improvised Explosive Devices

                          I

Job losses

Kudzu vine

Lyme Disease

Malaria

Neutron bombs

Overpopulation

Piracy

Q Fever

Road rage

Sun damage

Traffic jams

     T

Upside-down mortgages

Vehicular homicide

War

Xenodermia

Yellow fever

Zombie apocalypse

ACEIL ORTZYIT

TOXIC REALITY