Rock and a Hard Place Issue Six: Summer 2021
Published August 13, 2021
Click here to Purchase
With a boss convict like this, who needs jailers?
The best fastball in Gaza might have to stay there.
In polyglot Budapest the language that counts is power.
What’s the difference between a duck?
With this issue Rock And A Hard Place becomes a six-pack. Pop a top and pound these tales of bad decisions and desperate people.
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
WILLIAM R. SOLDAN (@RustWriter1) is a fiction writer and poet from Youngstown, Ohio. He is the author of the poetry collection titled So Fast, So Close, as well as three collections of fiction: In Just the Right Light, Lost in the Furrows, and most recently, Houses Burning and Other Ruins, published with Shotgun Honey Books in May of 2021. His work has appeared in many print and online venues and was included in The Best American Mystery Stories 2017. He can be found online at williamrsoldan.com if you’d like to connect.
In 1995, JACQUELINE FREIMOR (@JFreimor) won first prize in the unpublished writers category of MWA’s 50th Anniversary Short Story Competition, and she's been writing ever since. Her most recent short story was published in the anthology When a Stranger Comes to Town, edited by Michael Koryta, and another is forthcoming in The Best Mystery Stories of 2021, edited by Lee Child. Her stories have also appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Red Herring Mystery Magazine, and Murderous Intent, among others, as well as in the e-zine Blue Murder and at akashicbooks.com. Jacqueline is a music teacher and freelance editor and lives in Westchester County, New York.
MATTHEW LYONS (@cannibalghosts) is the author of the novel The Night Will Find Us, as well as over three dozen short stories, appearing in the 2018 edition of Best American Short Stories (edited by Roxane Gay), Tor Nightfire's Come Join Us By The Fire (Season 2) and more. Born in Colorado, he lives in the Denver suburbs with his wife and their cat.
JOSHUA MURRAY is a graphic designer and drone pilot from Long Island, New York. His fiction has previously appeared in Shotgun Honey and Molotov Cocktail. His love for crime fiction and desperate characters can be traced back to his lifelong love affair with 60s and 70s crime movies and his dad’s obsession with Columbo reruns. Too lazy to do the research to write any sort of police procedural, Josh focuses most of his stories around small town crime and petty criminals, all wrapped up behind a white picket fence. What is it with writers and their cats? Josh and his wife Jess have two cats, Theo, the grumpy loner, and Niko, who is basically a puppy in a cat’s body and looks like Marty Feldman. Just one more thing, Josh will eventually finish editing his first novel one day when he has the energy; until then he’ll continue to do what he does every day—try to figure out how to make a living with writing and playing video games, so he can quit his job and get his soul back.
While editor and publisher of a weekly newspaper in rural Georgia, ROBERT BOOTH (@SageFutures) was awarded a first place in editorial writing by the Society of Professional Journalists. He later traveled extensively throughout the world, recruiting international students to study in the US. He holds a MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and currently resides in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada.
BARRY CHARMAN (@BarryCharman) is a writer living in North London. He has been published in various magazines, including Ambit, Firewords, The Ghastling and Popshot Quarterly. He has had poems published online and in print, most recently in The Literary Hatchet and The Linnet’s Wings. He has a blog at barrycharman.blogspot.co.uk
CLAUDE LALUMIÈRE (@cldllmr or claudepages.info) is the author of more than 100 stories. His books include Objects of Worship (2009) and Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment, which was a selection of the Great Books Marquee at Word on the Street Toronto 2017. His work has been translated into multiple languages and has been adapted for stage, screen, audio, and comics. Originally from Montreal, he now lives in Ottawa.
DUSTN WALKER (@dustinjaywalker) has worked as a dishwasher, a news reporter, and a tech marketer. But his passion is writing gritty crime and horror stories. He lives on Vancouver Island, Canada, with his wife and daughter. His fiction has been published here and there.
R. B. MINER is a New York City native, Army veteran, and occupational dilettante. He held several professional roles after his time in the service, and is currently acting as a real estate agent. He lives in Kansas City with his wife, daughter, and dog. He aspires to have only one more profession: writer.
CINDY ROSMUS is a Jersey girl who looks like a Mob Wife and talks like Anybodys from West Side Story. Her noir/horror/bizarro stories have been published in the coolest places, such as Shotgun Honey; Megazine; Dark Dossier; Horror, Sleaze, Trash; and Rock and a Hard Place. She is the editor/art director of Yellow Mama and the art director of Black Petals. She’s also a Gemini, a Christian, and an animal rights advocate.
JEFF SOLOWAY (@jeff_soloway) won the 2014 Robert L. Fish Award from the Mystery Writers of America and is the author of the Travel Writer mystery series for Penguin Random’s Alibi imprint. His short fiction has been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, various MWA anthologies, and elsewhere.
GABRIEL HART (@GabrielHart77) lives in Morongo Valley in California’s High Desert. He's the author of Palm Springs noir novelette A Return To Spring (2020, Mannison Press), the dispo-pocalyptic twin-novel Virgins In Reverse / The Intrusion (2019, Traveling Shoes Press), and his debut poetry collection Unsongs Vol. 1 (2021, Close To the Bone, U.K.). Other works can be found at ExPat Press, Shotgun Honey, Bristol Noir, Misery Tourism, Crime Poetry Weekly, and 3am Magazine. He's a monthly columnist for Lit Reactor and a regular contributor to Los Angeles Review of Books and EconoClash Review.
NICK KOLAKOWSKI (@nkolakowski) is the author of Absolute Unit, Love & Bullets, and other grim delights in the crime-fiction and horror genres. He lives and writes in New York City.
JEFF ESTERHOLM's (@jesterholm) short stories are forthcoming in Close to the Bone and Yellow Mama. His work has previously appeared in Akashic Books’ Mondays Are Murder, Beat to a Pulp, Crime Factory, Mysterical-E, Mystery Tribune, Pulp Modern Flash, Shotgun Honey, and Tough, as well as in Midwestern Gothic, Cheap Pop, Regarding Arts & Letters, Wisconsin People & Ideas, and Flash Fiction Italia. The Council for Wisconsin Writers and Wisconsin People & Ideas have recognized his work in years past. He, his wife, and their goldendoodle hellraiser live in Wisconsin, at the head of the Great Lakes.
SERENA JAYNE (@SJ_Writer) has worked as a research scientist, a fish stick slinger, a chat wrangler, and a race horse narc. Born under the sun sign of Leo, she is naturally a cat person. Her short fiction has appeared in the Arcanist, Space and Time Magazine, Unnerving Magazine, and other publications.
A J RUTGERS is a writer from Vernon, British Columbia, whose work “Farming” was recently published in the Canadian Arts Journal Jam & Sand. He is the winner of The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award—Fall of 2017 that was published in the 21st Century Ghost Stories Anthology in the UK (edited by Paul Guernsey) in August of 2018. His short story “The Loon Spirit Totem,” placed second in a Short Fiction writing contest in the online community “Becoming a Writer.”
MARK FELLIN lives in New York City. His fiction has appeared in Berkeley Fiction Review, Criminal Class Review, Daikaijuzine, Literally Stories, and The Realm Beyond.
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
(In order of appearance of work)
SCOTT CUMMING (@tummidge) never considered himself to be a writer until recently, but turns out he has some stuff to say. He has been published at The Daily Drunk, Punk Noir Magazine, Bristol Noir, Fevers of the Mind, Versification and Shotgun Honey.
R.D. SULLIVAN (@RDSullyWrites or govneh.com) is a writer of fiction, comedy and letters to the editor. She lives in Northern California with her family and four solidly mediocre dogs, where she runs a subcontracting business. Her work has been featured at Fireside Fiction Magazine, Shotgun Honey, and Tough, as well as appearing in various anthologies, including Killing Malmon, Murder-A-Go-Go’s and the Hamthology. She is also proud and ashamed of her most recent novella, Hotties and Bazingas and the Murder Cult Murders.
JACK BUTKOWSKI is ten years old. Even though his photography is featured in this issue of Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, he’s not allowed to read it until he’s much, much older. He enjoys Fortnite, Minecraft, and the Marvel Studios films. RHP is his second publication; he previously illustrated a children’s book, written by his twin sister, Ava, entitled Bongo and the Rainbow.
Some photos were used under Creative Commons licensing. Please support the artists by checking out their work on Instagram:
CHRISTIAN MIKHAEL (@christian.mikhael.design)
BARDIA BOOMER (@boomerbardia)
WILL PORADA