Rock and a Hard Place Issue Twelve: Fall 2024
Published November 11, 2024
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Beowulf for Dummies . . . and loan sharks.
When the gun is the hero, that’s noir.
Revenge is a dish best served with a smile.
When community service is more dangerous than doing time.
In Issue 12, Rock and a Hard Place goes international. We go for the horror. We even sneak in a little paranormal. But you can count on us—we never lose the noir.
Rock and a Hard Place is the literary magazine that knows that a dozen may be dirty, but 12 is just another way to say you’ve got two good graves . . . or three bad ones.
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
(In order of appearance of work)
CRAIG FRANCIS COATES’s short crime and mystery fiction has been published by Tough, All Due Respect, Manzano Mountain Review, and The Dark City. His short story "Donors" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Derringer Award. Find more at bleakfrancis.com.
DAVE HANGMAN is Spanish writer David Verdugo's pseudonym. He has published stories in the anthologies Superstition by Redwood Press and Cryptids from the Rock by Engen Books, and in Creepy Podcast, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Swords and Sorcery Magazine, Philosophy Now!, After Dinner Conversation, The Lorelei Signal, East of the Web, Space and Time Magazine, Twenty-two Twenty-eight, The Dirty Spoon, Hyphen Punk, Havok, The Sprawl Mag, History Through Fiction, Tales from the Moonlit Path, and Bright Flash Literary Review. His story "Eternal Fall" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2022. He has received four honorable mentions in L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future contests.
NILS GILBERTSON (Twitter / X: @NilsGilbertson) is a writer and attorney. He lives in Texas with his wife, son, and German shorthaired pointer. Nils’s short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Rock and a Hard Place, Cowboy Jamboree, and others. His work has also been published in a variety of anthologies, including Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir and Prohibition Peepers. His story “Lovely and Useless Things” was selected to appear in both The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024 and The Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2024. His story “Washed Up” was named a Distinguished Story in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022. You can find him online at nilsgilbertson.com.
NICK KOLAKOWSKI (Threads / IG: @nickkolakowski) is the author of several horror and crime novels, including Where the Bones Lie (Datura Books) and Love & Bullets (Shotgun Honey). His short stories and nonfiction essays have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including CrimeReads, Noir City (the magazine of the Film Noir Foundation), LitReactor, Shotgun Honey, Mystery Tribune, Rock and a Hard Place, and more. He lives and writes in New York City.
Born in Scotland, IVAN RICHARDSON (Twitter / X: @IvanRic19103369) studied Mechanical Engineering at Leicester University (UK). Ivan is also a member of Leicester Writers club which helped him perfect his writing skills. His other hobbies include martial arts where he holds a 4th degree black belt in Tae Kwon do. More of his work can be found on his Amazon Author Central page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/~/e/B09SVFJ8K8.
M. PALMER (Twitter / X: @MPalmer33) is a graduate of the Miami University writing program. His work has appeared in such places as Fantasy Magazine, Crossed Genres, the anthology Tattered Souls, and most recently, in the journals God’s Cruel Joke and Superpresent.
BOB ELLIS is a retired financial services exec. He has lived and worked on three continents and has swum in all the oceans of the world. He currently writes quirky short fiction from SW Florida.
S.A. SMITH studied creative writing with Ruth Doty at Drake University. She lives in the New Orleans area, where she is a member of the Company of Women Writing Dangerously. This is her first published story.
BARBARA DeMARCO-BARRETT (Substack: @Penonfire) is editor of/contributor to Palm Springs Noir (Akashic). Her first book, Pen on Fire, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. Her fiction has appeared in Kelp Journal (2023 Pushcart Prize nominee), Coolest American Stories, USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series, Inlandia, CrimeReads, and The Dark City Crime & Mystery Magazine. This is her second story included in Rock and a Hard Place. She is creator, executive producer, and host of the podcast, Writers on Writing. More at penonfire.com.
Born and raised in Harlem, writer MICHAEL A. GONZALES (Facebook: @michael.a.gonzales.180) has been a fan of crime fiction and movies since he was a boy. He currently writes about the genre for CrimeReads, where he also does true crime features and cultural reportage. His fiction has appeared in Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression edited by S.A. Cosby, Dead-End Jobs: A Hit Man Anthology edited by Andrew J. Rausch, The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Get Up Offa That Thing: Crime Fiction Inspired by James Brown edited by Gary Phillips, Killens Review of Arts & Letters, Obsidian Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, and Vautrin Magazine.
MELISSA WITCHER (she/ela; Substack: @atawdrymind) is a self-taught writer, collagist, muralist, and embroidery artist. She was born in Brazil, raised in the U.S. and has lived in São Paulo since 2011. Her rejections far outnumber her acceptances but her writing has appeared in The Bluebird Word, BULL, Five on the Fifth, The Citron Review, and The Razor. She is a volunteer reader for Cosmic Daffodil Journal and an editorial assistant for CRAFT.
MARK ROGERS is a writer and artist whose literary heroes include Charles Bukowski, Willy Vlautin, and Charles Portis. Rogers lives in Baja California, Mexico with his Sinaloa-born wife, Sofia. His award-winning travel journalism has brought him to 56 countries. His crime novels have been published in the U.S. and UK. Uppercut, his memoir of moving to Mexico, is published by Cowboy Jamboree Press. NeoText publishes his Tijuana Novels series and Gray Hunter series. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Mystery Tribune, BULL, Rock and a Hard Place, and Chiron Review.
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
(In order of appearance of work)
JAMIE GILL (Instagram: @jamie_gill_photography) 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.
LINDA B. ADAMS (Twitter / X: @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.
JIM THOMSEN (Threads / IG: @thomsenjim) is an editor, photographer and writer who lives in Kingston, Washington. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Noir City, Pulp Modern, Switchblade, Shotgun Honey and several other publications. He sees his "noir" photography as a subtle form of satire on the idea that noir is increasingly a matter of style rather than theme (he's strictly a theme guy), and that noir can be everywhere if you choose to see it as a visual-first concept.
ANITA DIME (Twitter / X: @AnitaDime) is the self-published author of Five Mibs and a Martini, a short story collection. She is a linocut artist, photographer, and sound designer, contributing frequently to the podcast Coffee Contrails.