New Story in Opium Magazine!

I have a story in Opium Magazine: The Mania Issue. Thanks to Alec Neidenthal and Todd Zuniga!

Here’s the info:
“Let’s do a fan-fiction issue.” That sentence–said by me, I think (maybe)–is what kicked off Opium9 nine months ago, when it was still an unformed idea flitting around the 550 terabytes of storage in our aging skulls. The editorial would’ve been a breeze, but trying to design an issue around fan fic? That proved much gustier on the gale meter. So we went to the root of fan fiction, of fandom: mania.

And that’s just plain fun to consider, when you think about it (which we did, obsessively, of course). Truth is, we were going to obsess over Opium9 anyway, the way we obsess over Everything Opium: every pleasant bend and tailored bewilderment of the stories in our print issues, the perfect pairings for the Literary Death Match lineups, the perfect YouTube pitch for Opium’s iPhone app (Quick Fix with ‘Jiggle Technology’ that will debut in late November). But the better part for us: the way that obsession, delirium and dementia rose from the stories we considered for this issue. Our in-house mantra is that we design towards a theme, but let the stories stand wherever they will. While Shya Scanlon’s curatorship of our fan-fiction section is a direct breach of our editorial echo, it was on purpose. But add up John Madera’s ‘How to Be Happy and Free,’ B.R Smith’s ‘Visitation,’ and a handful of others, and it’s inescapable: we couldn’t resist mania’s charms these last months. As you’ll see.

Mania, there’s really nothing quite like it!

Featuring…

Cover!
‘The Idea Man’ by Sean Landers

Stories!
‘Walking the Walk’ by Jonathan Baumbach, ‘Cheaters’ by Dawn Raffel, ‘Entrances with Hummingbird’ by Anne Ray, ‘A Man on the Inside’ by Aaron Garretson, ‘The Uncertainty Principle’ directed by Davin Malasarn, ‘Visitation’ B.R. Smith, ‘What’s This Life For?’ Melinda Hill, ‘How to Be Happy and Free’ by John Madera, ‘Ambition Towards Love’ by Catherine Sharpe, ‘Equity’ by Wendy Duren, and ‘High Life’ by Jamie Iredell

Fan-Fiction Explosion, curated by Shya Scanlon!
Ryan Boudinot, Ben Greenman, B.K. Evenson, Sean Carman, Nick Bredie, Matt Briggs, E. Loic Leuschner, Blake Butler, Matthew Simmons, and Lindsay Mound

250-word Bookmark Contest Finalists (Judged by Andrew Sean Greer)!

Je Banach, F.J. Bergmann, Kyle Davis, Lydia Fitzpatrick, Clark Hays, Kevin Leahy, Lisa A. Levy, Aimee Mepham, Sean Murphy, Brett Rosenblatt.

Poetry!
Dean Young, Erin Berkowitz, Kathleen Rooney, and Elisa Gabbert

Cartoons!
CM Evans, Graham Roumieu, Jessy Randall, and Ben Towle

Plus, an interview with Jonathon Keats!