It’s nice to be able to post again after a necessary hiatus- sometimes we have to step away from things for a while and come back fresh. In the meantime, there have been some changes and new faces, which can be a good thing for a group.
One is Joseph Gant, who I crossed paths with a few weeks ago on our poetry open
mic show. He is the editor of Sex and Murder Magazine: “a magazine of extreme horror, dark fiction, and splatterpunk.” Now I admit that I have a soft spot for splatter, and while it can certainly be found on the web- Gant’s is a niche for the extreme. Horror writing is something that is done often but is not necessarily done well and some of the reason for that might well be the restrictive nature of horror publishers. Gant invites the writer to push the envelope, to bring on the twisted, and leave it at his door.
What scares me IS what disturbs me, upsets me, makes me squirm. I like a good zonbie story, but really- that’s not the stuff of my nightmares. Cannibals and Plagues? Now you’re talking discomfort. We’ll see what the next issue holds.
Disturbing things often have a way of surfacing, and they aren’t necessarily things that slice in the night. What about our own worries, mortality, thinking the damn “deep thoughts”, sobbing in the beer about a life of suck-hood, thinking about the point of things. These things preoccupy and disturb people constantly, the realization of our limits and our short petty lives can be a sort of horror in itself. These thoughts suck, and they nag, sometimes we can’t push this shit away. Maybe spiritual, maybe philosophical, maybe some theology- it all ends up in the wash. And these are the kinds of things they want to hear about at Divine Dirt Quarterly.
I had to ask Andrew Bowen about his site. Theo-lit? I mean, are we talking moral message stories, preachy themes? Charles Ingalls-style adversity, virtue commentary, affirmations of faith? But that’s not what they are about:
“I started the journal to give folks who write material that falls in the cracks and shadows between religious fiction and secular fiction. This is in part because I personally had a hard time finding such a market for my own fiction. Call it “theo-lit” if you like.
We look for work that displays the all too human struggle with spirituality. We don’t like easy answers. This struggle is real, it’s dirty, it’s bloody and it rarely ends in some dramatized awakening or tidy eureka. Real, gritty characters running face-first into the realities and elements of theology. That’s what rocks my world.” -Andrew Bowen
Lynn,
I think I know that Joseph Gant. He’s the freckle-faced kid that lives up the street, shakes apples off my tree at night.
You know if you don’t beat his ass and make an example you’ll have every punk this side of Ohio messing with your fruit. Just saying.
I like this column. Can’t wait to read more!