matttompkinswritesfiction

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SOME NAMES TO CONSIDER FOR YOUR NEW BAKERY

A Woman Sconed, Rise & Scone, The French Sconection, Sconecticut, SCONUS, In Bread We Crust, All A-Bread!, Blackbread’s Ghost, Apex Breadator, Made Your Bread Now Rye In It, Grain Expectations, A Salt & Buttery, The Yeast Coast, Flours for Algernon, Muffin Much — You?, Our Butter Angels, Just Loafin’ Around, Loaf-Fidelity, Focacciaboutit, Baguetteaboutit, Kneads Must, Quinoa Phoenix, Lydia Millet, Teff Crowd, The Loaf Song of J. Alfred Proof-rack, Ciabatta Boy, Ms. Spelt

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To keep up with goings on about town, follow the Odsburg tourism bureau on twitter.

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Odsburg is an eclectic collection of surreal stories and discovered documents from the small, strange town of Odsburg, Washington, curated for you by Wallace Jenkins-Ross, the world’s first and only socio-anthropo-lingui-lore-ologist.

Order a copy and read more at Ooligan Press.

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Failures is a hand-stitched, three-story chapbook of flawed protagonists failing preposterously. Get it here from Monday Night Press.

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Souvenirs and Other Stories, from Conium Press, is now available as an ebook! Get it here.

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Some names to consider for your new barbershop or salon

Shear Nonsense, Shear Madness, Shear Mania, Shear Insanity, Shear and Shear Alike, The Shearing Circle, Three Muske-Shears, Un-barber-lievable!, Scissor-riffic!, Scissor-licious!, Scissor-perfluous!, Scissory Loves Company, A Cut Above, Upper Cuts, Cuttin’ a Rug, The Chopping Block, The Chop Shop, The Lock Shop, Lock-ness Masters, Cut-ness Ever-do’s, Totally Clips of the Hair-t, Head-ward Clipper Hands, Much Hair-Do About Nothing, Am-hair-ica, The U.S. Hair Force, Hair Male, Hairy Shearer, Hair-isson Af-Ford-able, Hairy Cutter and the Sorcerer’s Comb, SuperDuperCuts

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“Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything.”

-Robert Rubin

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Available now! From Conium Press.

Get your copy here. Or here. Or here. Or here.

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We’re all waves, right?

So, why is it so easy to forget we’re part of the ocean?

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“That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.”

-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

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Stress dreams from impending fatherhood

The doctor cuts the umbilical cord and hands you your baby: she’s pink and shiny and crying. You take her in your arms and smile down at her lovingly. The nurse turns to you and says, You’re doing it wrong.

Your baby is fussing. You pat her back gently. Both of her arms fall off.

Your baby has multiplied: she is now three separate, smaller, mini-babies. You cradle them lovingly. Then someone tosses you a bowling pin and a flaming baton. Circus music plays. You begin juggling.

You turn away, just for a second, and when you turn back your baby has toddled to the edge of the Grand Canyon.

You turn away, just for a second, and when you turn back your baby has toddled to the edge of Letchworth Gorge, the “Grand Canyon of the East.”

You turn away, just for a second, and when you turn back your baby has toddled on-board a spaceship. You hear a static-crackle voice say Three...Two...One...

Your baby is resting safe in your arms, wrapped snug in a swaddling blanket. She starts to cry. When you unwrap the blanket to comfort her, the baby is not inside. Inside the blanket is an olive loaf and a wireless speaker playing crying noises. Where, then, is your baby? Where is your baby?

Where is your baby?

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Semavore: 

an animal that feeds on nautical signal flags

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One-Hit Wonders

Glass Baseball Bat. Hollow Chocolate Mallet. Papier Mâché Sledgehammer. Peppermint Nightstick. Porcelain Wrecking Ball. Wax Gavel.

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An illustrated e-book of fictitious science. From tNY Press. 

Get it here for a buck.

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We are all, large and small, unthinkably vulnerable--such complex and delicate structures. In a way, isn’t it a wonder that anything holds together, even briefly?

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Unlikely Namesakes

Picabo Street Street, Mary-Kay Place Place, Jack LaLanne Lane, Frank McCourt Court, Sally Field Field, James Woods Woods, Hal Forrest Forest, Eugene Levy Levee, Byron O. House House, Anthony Michael Hall Hall

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Where is the line between authenticity and being JUST TOO REAL?