The Town Drunk

The June 2009 Issue is now online. This month we feature:

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The Bastard Saga by Abby Rustad

Bast is the Chosen One, commissioned by a doomed wizard to save the world from Rackshalok, Prince of Demons and Lord of the Underworld. But what's in it for Bast?

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Enjoy!

Just wanted to let you all know that there will be a June issue. It's almost ready -- just running a little behind schedule.

My husband was struck by a car recently while riding his bike. He's recovering, but I'm still contending with the aftermath. In any event, I'll be back in touch soon...

I regret to report that we won't be able to put together a May issue after all. Again, I am really the only bottleneck here, as I continue to deal with some challenging family issues; this past week was particularly difficult for me. Things should start getting better from here on out, though, at least for a little while. I will do my best to get caught up by the end of the month and have a brand new issue out the first of June.

Thank you for your continued patience -- I really apologize for the delay.

I just wanted to let you all know that the May issue is running a little behind schedule. This is my fault, since I haven't been able to devote the necessary time to editing over the past few weeks. My mother's health has begun to deteriorate, and that's shaken up the family quite a bit; I recently had to travel on the spur of the moment. Needless to say, it's been hard to concentrate on other matters.

Over the next couple of weeks, though, I'm hoping to catch up completely. I know some of you authors have been waiting a long time to hear from us; rest assured that we will be in touch soon.

Thank you for your patience and support!

We are closing to submissions for the time being, as previously announced. I'm not sure when we will reopen, but I'm thinking probably after the Fourth of July weekend. We certainly have enough to keep us busy until then!

Thank you all for your continued support!

Attention authors: We will be closing to submissions this Friday, April 17. We're a bit backlogged right now, and the slush readers need a break. I'm not sure when we will reopen, but I will let you all know. Thanks!

The April 2009 Issue is now online. This month we feature:

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Finnegan's Pig by Libbie Grant Ricks

Finnegan was a short and crabbed kind of feller who always wore a fancy felt hat and a tweed coat because he thought it made him look real sophisticated. He never put his hands into the earth if he could help it, on account of that fancy coat of his. Finnegan always had some excuse why he couldn’t help with the shearin’ of his neighbor’s sheep or the bringin’ in of the fall harvest. “My coat’ll stain,” he’d say, “and where will I get another one in Saskatoon?”

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Enjoy!

The March 2009 Issue is now online. This month we feature:

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A Natural History of the Pancake Badger by Matthew Bey

The pancake badger looked nothing at all like a badger. A multitude of segmented legs surrounded a disc-shaped body about the size of a bicycle tire... When it growled, its entire body split open like a clam shell, revealing one of the most powerful jaws ever discovered in a galaxy of fauna. It reminded Mike of a chattering teeth wind-up toy. It also reminded Mike of a rabid bulldog, his garbage disposal, the sound a city bus makes, a bandsaw, and his ex-boss at the Field Museum.

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Enjoy!

Our Reprint Query page is back up. Thank you for bearing with us, and let us know if you have any more trouble.

Our Contact Us page is once again operational. I will work on getting the Reprint Query page up and running later this evening. Thank you all for your patience!

For some reason, our "Contact Us" and reprint query pages are not working right now. Our web hosting service must've done something clever to cause this. Please be patient while we work on a solution. FYI, you can still submit stories -- just not questions, queries, etc.

Sorry about this!

The February 2009 Issue is now online. This month we feature:

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The God of Laundry by Tim W. Burke

Cleanliness really is next to godliness.

The Liberation of Roscoe White by LaShawn M. Wanak

What would aliens want with an ol’ black man? Plenty, as it turns out...

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Enjoy!

The Town Drunk is once again open to submissions. Please visit our Guidelines page for details. Also, please report any problems by commenting here or contacting us via the website.

We look forward to seeing your work!

The January 2009 Issue is now online. This month we feature:

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Super Hero, Uncensored by KJ Kabza

The diary of a disgruntled super hero reveals his efforts to turn his fortunes around.

Ragnarok Has Been Postponed by Margaret Ronald

Will the world end with a bang or a whimper? Told by one of Odin’s ravens, this story deftly weaves humor through intense drama as Norse mythology unfolds in the modern world.

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Enjoy!

The Town Drunk is back online, but it has a new home:

http://www.towndrunkmag.com

I've been thinking about changing the magazine's domain for a while now, but due to an unfortunate confluence of events, I've had to make the switch more suddenly than I'd planned. Please let me know if there are any broken links or other weirdness.

I need a drink. :(

The Town Drunk is currently unavailable due to unforeseen technical difficulties. I also cannot receive e-mail on my TTD account right now. I am working with our service provider to resolve the issue, and I will let you know when we're back up. Thanks!

To our fans and authors, I do apologize for my long absence from this blog. I also apologize for the delay in resuming publication. I and I alone am the bottleneck here, but I'm hopeful that will not be the case much longer.

These last few months have been tough on me personally, just as the entire year has been. In addition to my husband's ongoing illness, I am grappling with health problems of my own, and though they're not as serious, they can occasionally be debilitating. My husband and I have both seen a lot of doctors and filled a lot of prescriptions lately, and we've had to make some big lifestyle changes. And of course, we have not been immune to the financial crisis facing the entire planet, especially with the uptick in our medical bills.

But this is no excuse. The Town Drunk's authors and readers deserve better. And now that things are improving for me on a personal level, I am going to do my best to re-engage both.

I will be reaching out this weekend to all the authors still waiting on a submission response from us. If you are an author with an outstanding submission, and you do not have an e-mail from me in your Inbox by Monday morning, please query. I suspect that some of our correspondence still gets snagged in spam filters.

To our readers, I promise that we will resume publication ASAP. I can't commit to an exact date for our next issue yet, but I will let you know as soon I as know.

Also, I hope to reopen the magazine to submissions in January 2009.

Thank you all for your patience and your continued support.

The Town Drunk is now closed to submissions until further notice.

Also, we will resume publication a month later than planned, in October.

If you're a writer still waiting on a response from us -- and I know some of you have been waiting a while! -- rest assured that you will hear from us soon. We're starting to catch up on our backlog.

Cheers!

I am planning to temporarily close The Town Drunk to submissions on August 31. We have quite a backlog right now, and in any event I want to be able to focus my energy over the next several weeks on resuming publication. I'm not sure yet when we will reopen to submissions, but hopefully it will be well before the end of the year.

Thanks for your continued support!

As much as I hate to do this, I've decided to put The Town Drunk on hiatus for a few months. I've had a lot of personal, professional, and financial challenges this year, and as a result I've fallen woefully behind on my work for the magazine. In addition, our inventory of quality stories is a little low right now. I think the magazine's readers and authors deserve my best efforts, and I haven't been able to provide that over the last several months.

This hiatus will give me some breathing room and relieve the stress of at least some of my deadlines. Working with a calmer mind at a more deliberate pace, I believe I will be able to catch up on the magazine while improving quality and communication.

I will put a notice up on the website sometime tomorrow. I will also let the authors of upcoming stories know what's going on and drop Ralan a line.

For the time being, The Town Drunk will remain open to submissions. Look for a terrific comeback issue in September!