Rock and a Hard Place Issue Eleven: Summer 2024
Published July 12, 2023
Click here to Purchase
You realize you've kidnapped a baby . . . And you're the good guy
You thought you knew the story of Ken McElroy and Skidmore, MO
The world or your family. Choose
You've spent your life not getting involved, but now you're faking it for your life and hers
Rock and a Hard Place Magazine returns with issue 11, featuring more of the most breathtaking, sweltering, realest fiction around, featuring some of the world’s finest writers at their grimiest and most unforgiving
RHP is the literary magazine that knows that when you go 11 out of 10, you’re bound to get 86’d.
Check out the Editor’s Roundtable Discussion on Issue 11 over on YouTube!
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
(In order of appearance of work)
JOSHUA MURRAY has published numerous short stories and flash fiction with Rock and a Hard Place, Close to the Bone, Shotgun Honey, The Molotov Cocktail, and Dark Yonder. He’s currently trying to find a home for his debut novel, but until then he works as a colorblind graphic designer (shh—don’t tell his boss). When he’s not writing, he’s usually just playing video games (Slay the Spire, anyone?) or obsessively watching Professional Wrestling. He lives on Long Island with his wife and two cats . . . maybe three cats, once they can figure out if this little stray that keeps visiting them wants to have a forever home, or is just using them for free food.
COLIN BRIGHTWELL (@colin_ism) is a Kansas City, Missouri, native. His work has appeared in Reckon Review, Bull, Flyover Country Literary Magazine, past-ten, Guilty Crime Story Magazine, and Dark Yonder. His debut collection, Nothing Good Ever Happens in a Flyover State, is forthcoming from Cowboy Jamboree Press in 2025.
STEFEN STYRSKY’s fiction has appeared in Tough, Rock and a Hard Place, Orca, and Best Gay Stories 2017. He lives in Washington, DC.
MARY THORSON (@MaryThorson6429) lives and writes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She received her BA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her MFA from Pacific University in Oregon. Her stories have appeared in the Los Angeles Review, Milwaukee Noir, Worcester Review, Rock and a Hard Place, Tough, among others. Her work has been nominated for Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery, A Derringer, and a Pushcart Prize. She hangs out with her two daughters, husband, and dog when she isn’t teaching high school English, reading, or writing ghost stories. She is represented by Lori Galvin at Aevitas Creative.
JAY BECHTOL (@BechtolJay) likes to write, so he does. Recent stories have appeared in Penumbric, Sequestrum, and HellBound Books. His debut novel, The Great American Coward, is available from Golden Storyline Books. He can be found on-line at www.JayBechtol.com. He can be found in person in Homer, Alaska.
In 1995, JACQUELINE FREIMOR won first prize in the Unpublished Writers category of the MWA’s 50th Anniversary Short Story Competition, which included publication in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Since then, her stories have appeared in both print and online magazines and have been reprinted in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2021, The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022, and The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023. Her novella “The Case of the Bogus Cinderellas,” which won the 2022 Black Orchid Novella Award, was published in the July/August 2023 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.
A former New York City homicide detective, JASON ALLISON’s (@jasonallison76) work has won the Al Blanchard Award for Crime Fiction, been featured in Rock and a Hard Place, and included in two editions of New England’s Best Crime Stories. He lives now in Massachusetts with his wife and their Golden Retriever, and spends his days avoiding Patriots fans.
CHRISTINE BLACKWICKS lives in Seattle, Washington where she gets her inspiration from the creatures living in and around the Puget Sound and from the customers at the local wine shop where she works. She has her master’s degree from Harvard University in Creative Writing and has finished her first novel.
JANE HERTENSTEIN is a Pushcart nominee and the author of a middle-grade novel, Cloud of Witnesses and YA novel, Beyond Paradise. Her non-fiction Orphan Girl was widely reviewed and featured in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Book Section. Her work has been recognized by the New York Times. She has in her portfolio over 90 published stories both macro and micro: fiction, creative non-fiction, and blurred genre. She’s an alum of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference waitstaff, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Amanda Davis Award, Wesleyan Writers’ Conference. Jane is the recipient of multiple grants from the Illinois Arts Council and City of Chicago. Every year she rides her bike hundreds of miles and currently resides in the piney woods of Michigan. She teaches a workshop on Flash Memoir and can be found blogging at http://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/
ANTHONY NEIL SMITH (@prof_an_smith) is a novelist (Slow Bear, Yellow Medicine, The Drummer, many more), short story writer (Bull, Cowboy Jamboree, Reckon Review, Tough, many more), and professor (Southwest Minnesota State University). His work appears in Best American Mystery & Suspense 2023. A former editor with Mississippi Review Web and Plots with Guns, he now edits Revolution John. He like Mexican food, California wine, and Italian exploitation flicks.
JOHN WEAGLY’s (@JohnWeagly) work has been called “exuberant” – Chicago Tribune, “charming” – Chicago Reader and “appealingly quirky” – Chicago Sun-Times. Locus Magazine once compared his short fiction to the works of Ray Bradbury and Nina Kiriki Hoffman and called him “a new writer worth reading and following.” As a playwright, over one hundred of his plays have received productions by theaters on four continents. A collection of his short sci-fi/fantasy plays, Tiny Flights of Fantasy, has been taught at Columbia College. You can find more of his short stories in the collections The Undertow of Small Town Dreams and Dancing in the Knee-Deep Midnight.
CASEY WOOLFOLK (@ccwoolfolk) is a writer, runner, and pug enthusiast. A native of rural Kansas, he now resides in Colorado Springs where the mountains occasionally lure him out of his office. Connect with him on Bluesky @ccwoolfolk.bksy.social.
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
(In order of appearance of work)
JAMIE GILL is a singing mailman, unknown photographer and ex-chef, though he still cooks for his wife. His passions include family, this planet, music, literature, food, and photography. He refuses to wander this world with his eyes closed, and believes you will always find another perspective, if you look hard enough. More of his photography can be viewed on Instagram at @jamie_gill_photography.
LINDA B. ADAMS (@lindabwriter) is an urban explorer and photographer who seeks to tell stories of urban and rural decay via the camera lens. She believes in respecting the places she visits, leaving behind nothing but footprints and taking nothing but photographs. She’s particularly interested in capturing the influence and encroachment of nature on the built environment, while still portraying a sense of the lives lived and worked in those spaces. She also writes dark fiction. When she’s not writing or taking photographs, she works in the library at a small liberal arts college in upstate New York.
SONALI ROY (@Swarvaani) is a freelance writer taking interest in holistic approaches for maintaining good health both for humans and their nonhuman friends, business management, latest science discoveries, health & medicine, technology, robotics, archaeology, architecture, food & nutrition, history, astronomy, spirituality, unexplained, and art & culture. Besides, she's a passionate traveler & photographer, music composer, singer, painter, 3-D art designer, and practices yoga & meditation regularly. Devoted to vegan diet, she enjoys creative writing. Sonali is accompanied by the sweet memories of her 8-year-old canine friend Fuchoo, who left her forever last year.
ROGER CAMP is the author of three photography books including the award winning Butterflies in Flight (Thames & Hudson, 2002) and Heat (Charta, Milano, 2008). His work has appeared in numerous journals including The New England Review, Witness and the New York Quarterly. Represented by the Robin Rice Gallery, NYC, more of his work may be seen on Luminous-Lint.com.