Blood & Over-ripe Tomatoes August 20, 2008 - December 31, 2008

Reading and Deliberating

Details

I have decided to publish a compilation that will be titled

Blood & Over-ripe Tomatoes

I envision a blood red paperback that is about 200 pages that contains short stories and poems that are drawn together by the commonality of the base emotions, hatred, revenge, jealousy, grief, suicide, rage, and anger. My target audience for this book will be people over the age of consent so please feel free to express yourself with language and situations that would be considered adult.

I have chosen this dark theme for this first compilation because I believe that these base emotions have a universal appeal, who hasn�t had a broken heart, or imagined shooting someone in heavy traffic, who hasn�t entertained fantasies of the burying someone in their backyard.

For the women: Have you ever been punched in the mouth? For the Men: Have you ever wanted to punch her?

Oh sure for the most part we all behave and act civilly but I think under the niceness and flower gardens in our personality based front lawns, lay worms and grubs, lower than that lay creepy crawly things of all shapes and sizes and lower than that lays the magma and molten rock of our core.

The world, as you know is a place of shadows, and sharks, and misery, and to me it seems like everyone is standing in line to write about love and happily ever after. I want this book to go outside that box, ever wanted to shake a screaming toddler? Ever needed cash so bad that you would be willing to do anything for it? Ever turned a trick? Ever stolen? Ever betrayed a loved one or been betrayed? Ever cheated, or been cheated on?

I challenge all of you to dig deep and bring it to me.

The advantages to the contributors will simply be a writing credit in the book. I am a poor man and will not even be able to give away free contributor copies. I plan to self publish this book and it will be available for sale on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and a website that I will build.

I will provide space for all contributors to provide a very brief synopsis of their selves and personalities.

I will require the rights for a one time publication, but the piece will still remain the property of the writer.

p.s.

The thing about writing, or even reading for that matter is that I always have to shovel through so much coal before I can find a diamond, I am my own worst critic and believe that most of my stuff isn�t the greatest even though it�s better than lots of things that I have read.

The point is my ego needs the boost of being published and since I lack the patience and tenacity to get it done the long way I am going to do it this way.

This book will not be about me or contain a majority of my work. I plan to be just another Contributor. Everything that is submitted will not be published as I, or we, all need to showcase only the best. Please tell your friends and let�s make something that causes a persons mouth to get dry and their palms to sweat.

My goal for this book is simply to have the reader remember and reflect upon it after they have read it.

Please send short stories and poems that are of a malevolent nature to [email protected], if your piece or pieces are chosen I will need you to sign a notarized release and mail it to me before the book can be printed.

Also if the piece is on the Writers Caf� or somewhere else drop me a link.

I will not promise you fame, fortune, and wealth, but I do believe that with enough hard work we can publish and sell a book that we can all be proud of.

Although this is my brainchild I can use all of the help I can get. I hope someone or 5 or six someones will see the merit in this project and help me out with the loads of work that is ahead of us all.

J. Swaney

[email protected]