Rock and a Hard Place Issue Three: Spring/Summer 2020

Published July 18th, 2020
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The poor pay more, even when nature calls.
A vintage car is a cruel mistress.
Hookers don't get vacations - not the kind you come back from.
What won't a mother do when her son needs a heart?

Call this issue a hat trick of desperation. Rock and a Hard Place 3 continues the chronicles of people who might make one good decision if they could catch a single break.

In Rock and a Hard Place, the struggle never ends, and our attention never flags.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
(In order of appearance of work)

JEREMIAH KNIOLA resides in Chicago, where he studies English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and lives with his girlfriend and pets. His fiction has appeared in Hobart, Literary Orphans, Dogzplot, among other literary journals. You can find him writing in cafes on weekends. He wears glasses.

CLAUDE LALUMIÈRE is the author of more than 100 stories and five books, including Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment, which was a selection of the Great Books Marquee at Word on the Street Toronto 2017. Originally from Montreal, he now lives in Ottawa and is often spotted touring Spain and Italy, where his fiction is frequently translated. His work has also been translated into French, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Hungarian, and Romanian.

C.W. BLACKWELL was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California where he still lives today. His passion is to blend poetic narratives with pulp dialogue to create strange and rhythmic genre fiction. He writes mostly crime fiction, dark fiction and weird westerns.

JEN CONLEY is the author of the Anthony Award nominated short story collection, Cannibals: Stories from the Edge of the Pine Barrens and the Thriller Award nominated YA novel, Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry. She lives in Brick, New Jersey.

ALEXANDROS PLASATIS is an immigrant ethnographer who writes fiction in English, his second language. His work has appeared in US, UK, Canadian, and Indian magazines and anthologies. He lives in the UK and works with asylum seekers. www.alexandrosplasatis.com

RICHARD RISEMBERG was born into a Jewish-Italian household in Argentina, and brought to Los Angeles to escape the fascist regime of his homeland. He has lived there since, except for a digression to Paris in the turbulent Eighties. He attended Pepperdine University on a scholarship won in a writing competition, but left in his last year to work in jobs from gritty to glitzy, starting at a motorcycle shop and progressing through offices, retail, an independent design and manufacturing business, and most recently a stint managing an adult literacy program at a library branch in one of the poorest neighborhoods of the city. All has become source material for his writing.

L.R. CASAZZA is a grown-up with a day job who would rather be writing about the coming robot wars. She enjoys high-concept horror movies, old books, big cities and getting lost in the wilderness.

ROBB WHITE was born, raised, and still lives in Northeastern Ohio. He has published novels in the Thomas Haftmann series, a pair of noir novels, and 3 collections of short stories. White has been nominated for a Derringer award. “Inside Man,” a heist story, was selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2019. A recent novel is The Russian Heist.

ALISON GARSHA likes nothing more than to sit at an antique writing box with a pen and paper, thinking of new ways to make imaginary people suffer. She is obsessed with elephants, Ira Levin and learning languages. For up-to-date news and witty genre miscellanea, visit her website at www.alisongarsha.com.

TODD ROBINSON is the internationally award-winning author of the novels The Hard Bounce and Rough Trade. 

GABRIELLE NELSON is a poet, fiction writer, and horse wrangler. She graduated from the College of Idaho with a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing, and shin splints from running until she was ready to write. She lives in New Mexico with her horse, cat, and bird. When she is not writing or riding she like to explore New Mexico's landscapes and small town grocery stores. Her writings have been published by Rattle Magazine, The Boise Weekly, Fiction 101 Magazine, Stonecrop Magazine, and Writers in the Attic.

DONALD D. SHORE lives in Huntsville, Al. His stories have been published in Freedomfiction.com, The Western Online, and by Zombie Pirate Publishing. Follow him at Donalddshore/facebook.com.

TAMMY EULIANO is inspired by her day job as a physician, researcher and educator. A tenured professor at University of Florida, she’s received numerous teaching awards, ~100,000 views of her YouTube teaching videos, and was featured in a calendar of women inventors. Her short fiction has been recognized by Glimmer Train, Bards & Sages, Flame Tree Press, Flash Fiction Magazine, Crime Bake, and the Faulkner Society. Unlike most doctors, she dispenses medical advice for free—as long as the patient is fictional. Her blog https://teuliano.wordpress.com helps writers get the medical details right, because nothing ruins a scene quite like having a character on a ventilator carry on a conversation.

DAVID RACHELS has published short fiction in a variety of places, including both genre magazines (Thuglit, Switchblade, Mystery Tribune, etc.) and literary journals (North American Review, Potomac Review, Bombay Gin, etc.).

CONTRIBUTING VISUAL ARTISTS
(In order of appearance of work)

STEPHEN J. GOLDS was born in London, U.K, but has lived in Japan for most of his adult life. He enjoys spending time with his daughters, reading books, traveling, boxing and listening to old Soul LPs. His novel Say Goodbye When I’m Gone will be released by Red Dog Press in October 2020 and another novel Glamour Girl Gone will be released by Close to The Bone Press January 2021

ANDREW NOVAK is a journalist and news editor in Washington, DC. He likes to read. He likes to write. He likes to take pictures with his camera. His work has appeared in Fluland, Shotgun Honey, Out of the Gutter Online, Bizarro Central, CLASH Media, and the Lost Films anthology from Perpetual Motion Machine Press. 

DIANE KRAUTHAMER is a freelance photographer based in Washington, DC.

ROB TUCHER has operated Rob Tucher Photographic Documentation (PhotoDoc) as sole proprietor since 1979. He has worked in 48 out of 50 states and built a huge collection (literally hundreds of recordations) of archival B&W large-format images of historic structures, of subjects ranging from the White House to the Naval Hospital, Philadelphia to the Federal prison at the Portsmouth Naval Station in Maine. He remains a Jersey guy to the core.