Jim Kelley is a full-time carpenter in the great state of Ohio, where he co-owns a small exterior deck & siding company. He’s a former semi-pro football player for the Columbus Sharks, Swarm, and Phantoms, and is happily married. Jim shares his house with his wife, six cats, and a hyper rot/beagle mix dog.

His short story, titled Sex and Rot in the Afterlife, will appear in the first issue of The Ashen Eye. The following is a short excerpt taken from it:

On a stack of elbow macaroni boxes, I saw Tina laying on her back. Her blouse was open and her milky white breasts almost glowed in the dimness. Her skirt—the denim number she teased me with earlier—was hiked up around her thighs. Worst of all, her knees draped across someone’s shoulders, and her hands pulled feverishly at the somebody’s hair.

Evan would rip me limb from limb if I attacked him.

Some of Jim Kelley’s short stories have appeared in “+The Horror Library+” and “The World of Myth” ezines under the pen name Kelly James. Also, he’s the book review columnist for The World of Myth.

To visit Jim Kelley’s MySpace page, please click here.

Ben Eads, whose Dark Fiction Spotlight podcast has been mentioned here before, has been kind enough to mention us in an episode of his podcast. It’s solely devoted to presses that publish dark fiction. The highly informative episode features a treasure-trove of information for readers and writers alike. So, if you’re looking for a good read or a place to submit your fiction, have a listen.

You can find the podcast on Ben’s MySpace page or download the mp3 directly right here.

Poet Greg Schwartz fixes copiers by day and writes horror by night. His poetry has appeared in publications such as Talebones, Black Petals, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, and Tales of the Talisman. A chapbook of his horror poetry, titled “Bits and Pieces”, was released last summer by Spec House of Poetry. Whenever he has the time, Greg reviews books and magazines for Whispers of Wickedness, and he’s also the staff cartoonist for Shadow Poetry’s SP Quill Magazine.

One of Greg’s works will be featured in upcoming premiere issue of The Ashen Eye. To provide you with a taste of his work beforehand, here’s a poem titled Bats.

Lorne Dixon lives and writes somewhere off an Exit of Route 78 in residential New Jersey. He grew up on a diet of yellow-spined paperbacks, black and white monster movies, and the thunder lizard backbeat of rock n’ roll.

The following is an excerpt from Lorne’s short story titled King James Version (Abridged), which is scheduled to be published in the upcoming issue of The Ashen Eye.

Lucy The Waitress looked up from the game of solitaire spread out on the table closest to the bar. She pulled her cigarette out of her mouth and blew out a plume of thick smoke. She stared at Matthias, transfixed.

It only took a quick motion. Both collar bones crushed inwards, fragmenting and cutting through flesh and muscle until they met in her throat, cutting off her oxygen supply. Easy work for two strong thumbs. She spun off the table, trying to gasp, hands wrapped around her neck, failing to pry her bones out of her throat.

Lorne’s short fiction has appeared, or is scheduled to appear, in, “+The Horror Library+ Volume 2” (Cutting Block Press), “Bad-Ass Faeries” (Marietta), “The Book Of Dark Wisdom” Magazine (2008, Elder Signs), “Strange Stories Of Sand And Sea” (2008, Fine Tooth Press), “Traps” (2008, DarkHart Press), “Lilith Unbound” (2008, Popcorn Press), “Dark Distortions” (2008, Scotopia), “Bound For Evil: Curious Tales Of Books Gone Bad” (2008, Dead Letters Press), “Tales Of Moreauvia” Magazine, “Bad-Ass Faeries 2: Just Plain Bad” (2008, Marietta), and “Darkness On The Edge: Dark Stories Inspired By The Music Of Bruce Springsteen” (early 2009, PS Press UK).

Visit Lorne Dixon’s blog

Slowly the first deadline approaches. You still have until the end of march to send in your work, if you want to have a chance of being included in the premiere issue. Everything that is submitted after that will automatically be considered for the second issue of The Ashen Eye.

We’ve received a staggering amount of submissions, but unfortunately can only publish so many of them per issue. Because we don’t want to outright reject all submissions that didn’t get accepted in a given period, we’ve decided to give a number of submissions a second chance. If your work did not get accepted or rejected during the reading period for a particular issue, your submission will automatically move up and be considered for the next one.

We will of course notify the respective authors when this applies and they can choose to either wait and be considered for the next issue or retract their submission if they don’t wish to wait.

To keep everyone up to date on what’s happening, here’s the count so far:

Fiction: 8 works accepted – 2 to 7 slots remaining depending on length.
Poetry: 6 works accepted – 4 to 6 slots remaining depending on length.

We’ve also found our feature/cover artist of the premiere issue. When everything has been made official we will, as usual, gradually announce and feature information about the contributors on our website.

A big thanks to everyone that already has submitted. Without you, small presses like ours wouldn’t exist. Keep it up!

We were contacted by Ben Eads, the creator of the dark fiction spotlight podcast, and asked if we would like to be interviewed. Of course we wouldn’t let a chance like that get away from us! Ben interviewed Bas de Jong, our very own editor in chief, during a lengthy and interesting online session.

Ben’s an incredibly enthusiastic podcaster and fan of dark fiction. We were honored to be involved in the dark fiction spotlight’s first audio interview.

Have a listen to the final result at Ben’s MySpace page and don’t forget to keep an eye on his podcasts.