Rock and a Hard Place Issue Two: Winter/Spring 2020
Published March 16, 2020
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Out of the crawfish boil and into the fire.
Drop the sandwich and step away.
Booze, meth, heroin, guns, and sex don’t mix
(Did you really need that explained to you?).
Karaoke kills.
And there’s more, because Rock and a Hard Place is back with Issue Two, the further chronicles of bad decisions and desperate people.
Rock and a Hard Place is the magazine that expands noir beyond crime fiction to a view of the world. The authors in these pages take on life as it’s lived on the margins, where one mistake is both one too many and inevitable.
Enter if you dare.
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
(In order of appearance of work)
PAUL GADSBY’s previous works include the noir thriller Back Door to Hell, published by Fahrenheit Press in 2019, and Chasing the Game, a fictional depiction of the mysterious real-life theft of the Jules Rimet Trophy in 1960s London, published by Matador in 2014. He has also had short stories published in several journals and anthologies, including Fahrenheit’s Noirville collection in 2018. Having spent many years working as a sports and trade journalist, Paul’s current day job is as a copywriter for a national UK brand, and he writes his fiction around that. He is on Twitter @PaulJGadsby while his personal website/blog can be found at: http://www.paulgadsbyauthor.co.uk/
CINDY ROSMUS looks like a Mob Wife and talks like Anybodys from West Side Story. She’s been published in the usual places, including: Shotgun Honey; Hardboiled; Horror, Sleaze, Trash; and Flash Fiction Offensive. She’s also the editor/art director of the webzine, Yellow Mama.
JACQUELINE FREIMOR won MWA’s Golden Mysteries short story competition in 1995 and has been writing ever since. Her stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Blue Murder, among others, and her latest is forthcoming in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. She has just finished her first novel.
J.D. GRAVES is an author and playwright whose work has been produced at the 2016 New York International Fringe Festival and 2007 FronteraFest in Austin. His short fiction can be found, or is forthcoming in, Black Mask 4, Mystery Weekly 2019, Pulp Modern: Tech Noir, Switchblade 11, Tough, Breaking Bizarro, Broadswords and Blasters, etc. He currently serves as the Editor-in- Chief of neopulp genre rag EconoClash Review and is working on his first novel. He lives in the woods with his wife and kids.
DIE BOOTH lives in Chester, UK and enjoys painting pictures and exploring dark places. Die’s prize-winning work has featured in publications including The Fiction Desk, Firewords, Shoreline of Infinity and The Cheshire Prize for Literature anthologies, and his latest single-author collection of short stories, My Glass is Runn, is out now. 365 Lies—a collection of one flash fiction for every day of the year, with all proceeds going to the MNDA, and Die’s debut novel Spirit Houses are also available online. He is the current chair of Chester Writers and his latest project is a single-author collection of own-voices short stories featuring transgender protagonists. He can be found online at http://diebooth.wordpress.com/.
JESSE RAWLINS typically writes crime, mysteries and humor. You’ll usually find her stories on the wrong side of the tracks including Canada’s Red Fez, Poland’s Punk Noir Magazine and American crime zine Shotgun Honey. Her murderous band of writing cohorts keep Jesse on her “Heels.” Care to say “hello?” You can visit Jess on Facebook as well as on her website. https://www.facebook.com/jesse.rawlins.583 https://jesseheelsrawlins.blogspot.com/
JEREMY BROYLES earned his B.A. from Doane College—now University—in 2001, his M.A. from Northern Arizona University in 2008, and his M.F.A. from Wichita State University in 2011. His published work includes a novella titled What Becomes of Ours through ELJ Publications and numerous short stories in such journals as The MacGuffin, Santa Clara Review, and Pembroke Magazine amongst many others.
ALLAN LEVERONE is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty-two novels and five novellas, including his latest, Chasing China White, released in September 2019. A former Derringer Award winner for excellence in short mystery fiction, Allan lives in Londonderry, NH with his wife of more than thirty-five years, three adult children and three beautiful grandchildren. Learn more at AllanLeverone.com, on Facebook, or Twitter @AllanLeverone.
ANALISA MIRELES lives in Phoenix, Arizona and is currently pursuing a degree in Creative Writing. She likes to describe herself as “cool and pretty with an endearing negative attitude and good taste in cats.”
PRESTON LANG is a native of New York and almost entirely a product of its public school system. His short work has been published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Thuglit, and The Best American Mystery Stories 2019. He’s also published four novels with Down and Out Press and writes a regular column for WebMd.com.
STEVE CARR, who lives in Richmond, Virginia, has had over 350 short stories published internationally in print and online magazines, literary journals, reviews and anthologies since June, 2016. Five collections of his short stories, Sand, Rain, Heat, The Tales of Talker Knock and 50 Short Stories: The Very Best of Steve Carr, have been published. His paranormal/horror novel Redbird was released in November, 2019. His plays have been produced in several states in the U.S. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice. His Twitter is @carrsteven960. His website is https://www.stevecarr960.com/ He is on Facebook: https://www .facebook.com/steven.carr.35977
MARK WESTMORELAND is a Georgia native living in Oklahoma. He likes to drink Woodford Reserve, hangout at the movies on the weekends, and has broken a thing or two during Georgia games. His fiction has been published at Shotgun Honey, Out of the Gutter, Spelk, and other places online.
STEPHEN O’CONNOR is a writer from Lowell, MA, where much of his work is set. He is the author of the short story collection Smokestack Lightning, and the novels The Spy in the City of Books and The Witch at Rivermouth. His work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Aethlon, The Amsterdam Review and elsewhere.
CONTRIBUTING VISUAL ARTISTS
(In order of appearance of work)
JEFFREY NOKES is a retiree from the corporate world. He now spends his time as a ceramics artist, master gardener and amateur photographer. He refuses to use apps and only occasionally uses his cell phone.
A bit about BRITTANY GOODING: she snorts when she laughs, and she tends to listen to the same song constantly for a week before starting on a new one. brittany has one blue and one green eye; they turn grey when it rains. she believes grey should always be spelled with an “e” never an “a.” she adores the look of lowercase letters and the sibilant sound of subtle alliteration. she has many scars and welcomes you to ask where they come from, as she wants to know about yours. brittany believes we are called to be rescuers, to hold our palms over the gaping wounds of broken people. she believes eyes speak and hearts are made to be broken, but they learn to love again. she believes love should be bigger than intolerance, and she trusts in the wonder of being barefoot. brittany believes children can talk to angels and adults have simply forgotten how.
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.
PETER ROZOVSKY lives in Philadelphia, works in New York, and shoots photos everywhere. He created Noir at the Bar and the Detectives Beyond Borders blog, and his writing has appeared in Maxim Jakubowski's Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction, Barry Forshaw's Nordic Noir, Sunshine Noir and elsewhere. His photography has appeared on the cover of crime novels and collections by Domenic Stansberry, Reed Farrel Coleman, Charlie Stella, Ed Gorman and others, and in Down and Out: The Magazine and Retreats From Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon.
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.
HEATHER WARBURTON is a graduate of The Richard Stockton College of NJ with a degree in visual arts and a concentration on photography. After graduation she worked for several magazines and design companies, until she chose to open her own photo studio, Heather Warburton Photography (HeatherShootsU.com). She produces both fine art and commercial images, often specializing in surrealist portraits and black and whites, and she has shown work in various group shows and competitions across Southern New Jersey. Heather recently started an independent media company, New Jersey Revolution Radio, which features artists and activists who are working to change the world for the better.
C.F. CARTER is a magazine publisher, author, and amateur photographer. His award-winning images have appeared in juried exhibitions across Canada.