"Love is in the Ether" by Laurence Dumortier, ONE STORY, 30 March 2007, edited by Hannah Tinti; ten vignettes: BULLET #1, 2004, edited by Keith Jeffery: Short Story Wednesday

 from the FictionMags Index:

Bullet [#1, 2004] ed. Keith Jeffrey (Digitalent Ltd., £2.50, 18pp, 4″ x 8″) []

• 1 · Take Over · Milky Wilberforce · vi
• 3 · Redemption Vodka · Ross Bradley · vi
• 5 · Night Moves · John Call · vi
• 7 · Being Dead · Tony Lagosh · vi
• 9 · Death by Fermentation · Breanda Cross · vi
• 11 · East River Park · Jared Louche · vi
• 13 · Dealing with Flaws · Allan Guthrie · vi
• 15 · A Prayer for the Prey · Laird Long · vi
• 17 · Dangerbirds · Neil Campbell · vi
• 18 · Anniversary · Jason DeBoer · vi reprinted from Eleven Bulls [an e-litmag founded in 2001, since folded with no archive I can find]

One Story [Issue #90, Volume 5 No. 18, 30 March 2007] ed. Hannah Tinti ($2.50); this issue's page at One Story

My first thought, quickly abandoned, was to call this entry one about MicroMags (or even MicroMagas), but doubt Voltaire nor anyone else would enjoy that much. But Bullet (in its brief, UK Arts Council-supported run, with TLS reviewer and fiction-writer Keith Jeffrey as editor of all seven issues 2004-2006) and One Story (which keeps plugging along, edited since its 2002 debut by occasional crime-fiction writer Hannah Tinti) have both been intentionally Quick Reads, one devoted to crime fiction vignettes, the other to, oddly enough, one short story per issue.

Tinti's selection for this issue wins the quality stakes in comparison, though several of the vignettes in the first Bullet are quite good (and others not so much). Ms. Laurence Dumortier, PhD, could seem at first a good candidate to be writing under a pseudonym, but if her byline is one, it's one she uses even in her classrooms, so likely not...she notes she primarily teaches personal essay and other nonfiction writing, and fiction-writing is slow going for her. The first line in "Love is in the Ether" is "1. After your son dies, this is what you remember." Beatrice Worth Longfellow speaks of what she didn't get to do in her life, but how that wasn't too thoroughly upsetting till the younger of her two children, just off to university, is killed while exiting a cab as a drunk driver plows into the taxi. Suddenly, obscured voids and unmet desires become a lot more important, the pain of being reminded of the lost son (her slightly older daughter remains a key part of her life but she grows more distant from her husband), and general flow of her life is about as disrupted as one might suspect...and the slow healing comes, eventually, as well. Well-written, and it not unkindly doesn't have the protagonist ever use her son's nor her daughter's names, though her husband and others are named. 

Bullet, as one can note above, hoped to offer "high voltage" stories, and the general tenor was to seek "rock'n'roll" grittiness in each short tale...sadly, the more imbued with punk and other rock music references a given brief story might contain, the more forced it usually seems. An obvious question is How many pseudonyms are in evidence here, beyond the rather unlikely "Milky Wilberforce", particularly given how few contributors to this first issue have ever published again, at least in another magazine or anthology aside from future issues of Bullet that the FictionMags Index has tracked, before, during or since. The lead-off story, by "Wilberforce", is probably the low-point in the issue, and I have to wonder if Milky is the editor or a close friend; "Take Over" is careful to drop a Ramones reference or two in the not terribly compelling nor fleshed-out account of a corrupt takeover of a failing business, but it's full of Attitude. Ross Bradley's "Redemption Vodka" is rather better in its account of a youngish man drinking himself to death as he mourns his murdered sister, and what eventually happens after the prime suspect is freed on a technicality. The vagueness of some of this very short item seems less forced, not least given the state the protagonist is in. John Call's "Night Moves" is a reasonably good, but in no way exceptional, caper story with the slightest sort of twist in the end. Tony Lagosh's "Being Dead" makes a better stab, if still a pretty obvious one, at incorporating music into its brief narrative, as the protag listens to a tape of nearly 30-year-old punk and punkish songs (ca. 2004) as he goes about some grim business...more clever than "Take Over", at least. Breanda Cross's "Death by Fermentation", (possibly) the only story in this issue from a woman contributor, is the funniest of the stories, not quite a complete parody of tough private detective fiction featuring lesbian sleuth Wannabe Bond (most of the humor is a bit more sophisticated than that). Jared "Louche" Hendrickson self-mythologizes much as a singer for the band Chemlab, who supposedly spent some years working on Wall Street after leaving that band, would tend to, in the other contender, "East River Park", for worst story in the issue albeit with a few amusing details, though not helped by no one catching that he wrote "phase" when he meant "faze".  

Allan Guthrie is easily the best-known cf writer in the issue, with the decent caper vignette "Dealing with Flaws"...one could say that what feels like a Dortmunder story at first, among Donald Westlake's two sustained series, turns into more of a Parker caper, with the wit turning grimmer. Laird Long, perhaps the second-most published cf writer in the issue, offers in "A Prayer for the Prey" a more traditional if very grim sort of biter-bit story, also pretty good, if not quite memorably so.  Neil Campbell's "Dangerbirds" is also a little less mythologizing than a roseate memory of past self-abuse (and less self-abuse eventually), but is sufficiently breathless and believable about a young punk rock fan's adventures, touring with a new band he befriends. I can see why Nicholas Royle thinks he's a writer to watch, and worth having here despite not really being crime fiction at all. Jason DeBoer's "Anniversary" closes the issue, a Very brief reprint. from a now folded and vanished e-zine, that is essentially a grim joke, and OK enough in that context.

So...glad to have finally read these issues, sitting in the enormous 

TBR stacks for some years. Please see Patti Abbott's blog 

for today's far less delayed Short Story Reviews...