Recently in Inter Bella Category

Sorry for the unannounced intermission! A few EARTHSHATTERING events have taken place since our last information proclamation.

• Tmesis's own Kevin Wright got married several months ago; he and his wife have just moved into their new home - cheers!
• We have pushed our writing efforts beyond Chapter 2 of Inter Bella, and are going to pull together the entirety of Act I before releasing it.
• I'd like to have the Fiction section of the site up by next Saturday (2/14/09). We have some stories we'd like to show you!

Further news to come as we make things happen.

Ray

What? We're updating!?

It has been a while, but I have a bit of impressive news. We have formally (in other words, sitting in a Barnes & Noble coffee shop, mochaccino floor stains sticking to our shoes) inducted Tmesis-pal Mike Sova as our new staff serial writer. Celebration ensued with light banter, pats on the back, and processed potato crisps. We'll post more on this development in a later update.

We are now ready to begin looking at our printed magazine format - we'll be doing that in tandem with finishing up our website work.

The world is a peach.

-Ray

A couple of announcements:

Our stories are ready to be published! Unfortunately, our website is not - not yet, anyway. While our serials are ready to go, we're in the process of creating images to go along with them.

There is the ideal that we don't need images, that the stories should speak to themselves, but we thought we'd add another dimension of depth to reduce tunnel-vision reading.

The setback in all this is that we don't have an artist/illustrator. What we've done so far is looking pretty good, but we can certainly use some help. If you're an illustrator and you're interested contributing to our project, please give us a ring: ray(dot)wong(at)tmesismag(dot)com

In other news, Kevin Wright is now grinding the gears over at Pearson Books. It's the company that has probably published half the school text books you've ever owned. Also, Dan Dominguez is engaged to be married (possibly twice, I hear)! AND, he recently made a brief sojourn to Comic-Con, which I hope he'll blog about soon.

-Ray

Far be it from me to talk about myself. But I'm going to anyway, since our other writers seem a bit shy about... well, shy about writing. Writing here, specifically...

I don't blame them though; it's just that I'm in the habit of journaling online (that is to say that I was until I became obsessed with finishing the current rewrite of my Inter Bella chapter), so it comes naturally to me. Unfortunately, given the deadline I've set for myself, I've been neglecting these updates, but I'm changing my daily regimen to fix that.

So, who am I and what do I write about?

I grew up in NJ, in a time when its nickname hadn't yet become the Chinese Breeding Ground State. As many of you can imagine or have actually experienced, being a kid and not knowing where you're supposed to stand socially can be a bit of an awkward thing. Could I go to the tire park to play with my friends, or was I supposed to spend some quality time with myself sitting quietly in the living room (it's a Chinese-American thing) - you know, quandaries like that would arise. But before I go off telling you my whole life story, I'll bring you around and tell you how this all applies to why I publish.

There are always things underlying what we see every day; the kinds of stuff that can only be read by the off-tone of someone's voice or a common mannerism that gives off a certain vibe about a person. These details source from something, and I've spent much of my life (most of the time inadvertently) trying to understand what the something is. Every case is different, of course, but it can usually be tracked back to an upbringing - causes for why a person becomes who he or she is. But it's not that simple; after you've factor in someone's past, you realize that they are, inexplicably, not the sum of their parts, but the transcendence of their parts. These issues and ideas, about individuals and who they are (and who I am in the grand scheme of the diaspora), fascinate me. As a result, I make it my business to tell their stories and to likewise fascinate others. That's a bit of who I am and why I publish. Now, I'll tell you a bit about my stories.

It's been both a struggle and a pleasure to write my part of Inter Bella and my Solo story. The latter is called Twilight Crossing, and it's a project I began for my Senior Seminar class at Kean University (one of the fastest growing schools on the East Coast, by the way, with great English concentrations, like writing, teaching and so on). The story follows a little girl, but is really about the place that she's found herself in. A mysterious place without a name and with very little reason. (No, it's not Long Island.) She doesn't remember her past - no one in this place does - and her only source of comfort and sanity comes from a blue eyed raven (the narrator) who has a special affinity for her. It'll be a dark/fun story, not necessarily for kids.

For Inter Bella, I'll be writing the part of Renate, a former New Yorker who got stuck in the pull of the 1930s depression, but is now visiting her never-before-met grandmother in Austria. Renate's got a pretty turbulent past, but things have gotten a lot more turbulent since she received a mysterious letter at her Brooklyn home. I can't say exactly what was in the letter, but it's bound to take her on an odyssey, one that will test the limits of her developing mental state. Come back and find out what happens!

Well, that's it for the final installment of Our Stories and We, but you'll find out a lot more about us when we get rolling with the About page. I'll catch ya next time.

-Ray

What can I say about Perry Pitetic? Not much, really, owing to the fact that he comes and goes like an apparition, constantly morphing and changing course with his frequent twists of creative thought. (Contrary to popular belief, he is not merely a figment of my imagination.) There has apparently been only one witness to his corporeal state: He, himself! So good luck in trying to track him down. Fortunately, he's given some insight into who he is with the scandalous release of this self-portrait.

While I can't characterize his personality or nature, I can tell you that his voyeuristic tales will have you plastered to your neighbors' lounge windows for more of the same. Daring, stimulating, engrossing and, most of all, odd, you can expect them to defy the beaten path of dark fiction. Truth be told, they remind me of Hitchcock's work, and the original B&W Twilight Zones.

His Solo stories, which will be a series of separate short stories, will show you just what I'm talking about. The first of the series will be Four Awkward Guests, which will center around a group of... that's right: four awkward guests; vibrant characters that vivify the meaning of strange. Well, add an annual dinner party to which each of these characters have been mysteriously invited, and you've got yourself a hootenanny of premeditated silence and thorny twitching. That is, until someone decides to open their mouth.

Mr. Pitetic is also contributing to Inter Bella, our 1930s alternate-period thriller. His main character is, in a manner of speaking, dirty, though in a clean and wholesome way. While Germany and the Central Powers prosper after the stalemate of World War I, the rest of the world suffers from economic depression, and Henry Woodward is caught right in the thick of the Dust Bowl desolation. While he and his remaining family try to make ends meet, men like Roderick Endicott have him pinned. (Quite literally, as the story will show.) What will poor ol' Henry do when he's reached the end of his rope? Tune in to find out!

Come back next time when I'll have written a little something about myself and my stories. It'll be grand. (Like the canyon, minus the gaping hole.)

-Ray

While we scramble to get all our literature and web pages in order, I thought I'd take a little bit of time to talk about our stories and where we're coming from with them. In order to do that, I guess I'd have to start with a little bit of who we are.

It's long been the idea that college English majors are destined to become teachers of the fine arts (which, make no mistake, is one hell of an admirable profession), but the three of us had passions that took us away from the classroom. We had interests, not just in writing, but in the entire editorial process, starting with the early conception of literary ideas and ending with purified end product - a book, short story or what have you - that's meant to be the articulate window into the author's mind. So, we were just crazy enough to enter the world of publishing.

Our focus has been on artisanship, which is to say that we think of publishing as both an art (which requires some taste and intuition) and a craft (which encourages us to build upon experience and practice.) The same applies to the way in which we approach writing; but before I begin to sound too much like I know what I'm talking about, let me just add that we're somewhat new at all this, so, in reality, we're just trying to make our way through the pitch dark with one hand following the wall.

Now about our stories... We each like to think that we're adding a unique flavor to the Tmesis Magazine mix while keeping with the theme of fictional drama and intrigue. Let's take Kevin Wright's stories to begin with.

I'd say Kevin is a very matter-of-fact writer, but I always seem to pull away some unspoken message from his stories. Maybe it's just me, but it definitely adds to the experience.

His Solo story is currently entitled Face in the Crowd. I don't want to give too much away, but I'll note that it explores the duality of oneself and manifests the hardships that make life such a big fight for the finish. Of course, with Kevin's writing, there's always that unexpected twist you're not quite ready for when it suddenly comes at you.

We've been talking about this story for a while now, and I knew it would make a great addition to the magazine, but I'll let you all decide for yourselves once we publish it.

Kevin's also writing a part for Inter Bella, which is our collaborative writing project. While I can't reveal too much of the story itself, I can say a few things about the setting and his lead character, Roderick Endicott. Just by the sound of his name, you know that he's marked by an air of importance. (Or maybe just hoity-toitiness.) But he's got secrets. Oh... does he have secrets.

In the alternate history world of Inter Bella, he's one of the greatest tycoons to spring up in New York during the 1920s depression. You might be asking yourself how he could have profited during a depression. Well, use your imagination. Tycoons live complicated lives - more complicated that we might give them credit for. While Endicott is on the brink of historic success, there are things a-brewin', just waiting to reach that tipping point.

Sorry, but that's all I'm going to reveal about ol' Roderick - you'll have come back later to learn more. As we move along, we'll eventually have an about page exclusively for these stories and characters, but I'll continue to give these little glimpses into what we've got going.

Tune in later for a little taste of Perry Pitetic. (That is, if he doesn't beat me to the punch.)

-Ray