Fiction Acceptance

We would like to inform you that we've accepted two of your short-shorts, "Walk it off bear" and "A bear had committed suicide," for publication in the Winter 20112 issue of The Cafe Irreal, which will go online on February 1.

I'm tickled ink.

Have appeared in a previous issue but it was some years ago.

When I was scanning the current mags of interest, I was pleased to see this is one of those rare online journals who has kept it going for many years and had the quality of the writing not suffer as a result.

And they even pay writers. How rare is that?

I love flash fiction and the mutated hybrid forms of poetry and prose, the unclassifiables.

And Cafe Irreal has always kept its attention focused in that interesting zone towards which the oddly-weighted leaves that come off the tall tree of literature sail.

Thank You, Greg and Alice.

It's funny: when I think of the title Cafe Irreal I immediately think of a Peter Milton etching I like.

I never discussed whose definition of the irreal the editors espouse. (I'm assuming their own is the best answer.)

But I've always liked that designation for a certain type of work that doesn't function after the manner of surrealism at all but that still calls reality into question. These can be things like optical illusions or the verbal equivalents of optical illusions in fiction, poetry, novels, whatever. The irreal thing doesn't give you any of the obvious, up-front distortions of reality that surrealism does. Rather, it's the way in which components of the picture or the piece of writing interrelate to one another which creates an imposibility which may be (or become) somehow synonymous with the challenge of beauty.

The new issue goes up February 1st, but for now I'll link over at left to the most recent issue (and then change the link when the new one goes up).