finding the literature vol. 10

spotlighting Substack fiction

Whenever you start adding a lot of Notes to a post it quickly gets too long for email. View this in your web browser for best reading.

Welcome to finding the literature!

It was only a few weeks ago I put one of these bad boys out. I told you I had more! The quickest turnaround on FTL ever.

(I’m gonna have to take a longer break before the next one though. I need to like…write my own shit.)

The great thing about having so many of these discoveries in the bank is I get to go back and see what these writers have been posting in the meantime, and the quality of their intervening posts confirms what I initially thought—these folks got it.

And by ‘it’ I mean innately human, heartfelt, and real writing.

There was a tiny (I see it as tiny because it was only a single comment and I am not on Discord) bit of ‘controversy’ with a fellow fiction curation team over at Ficstack in their debut a couple weeks ago. I have to say, I really like what they’re doing over there, it’s such a great idea to build a team of curators like that and such a fiction database. Doesn’t hurt that I got featured.

But apparently an account which explicitly used A.I. was also featured, and because I just had to weigh in I was asked by A.P. Murphy—a contributing member to the Substack fiction community for a while now and someone who will surely be featured on FTL someday—for my stance on A.I. in my own curation and my thoughts on it.

I do annoyingly feel the need to clarify my stance, since I am someone who does ‘curate’ Substack fiction (although, I prefer to use the word recommend), so here it is:

PNP will not knowingly feature A.I. authors or authors using A.I. to write their stories.

This is an aesthetic choice. On my Substack, it’s about highlighting human writers who put in the time and energy to make something great—and currently, A.I. generally doesn’t do that.

If someone in this FTL or FTLs in the past have managed to dupe me and it turns out you’re A.I., well, good for you, we are all doomed and I am not such a discerning eye as I thought, I guess.

Anyways…

Without further ado—here’s vol. 10—

Carla Miles is a find I’m proud of. I don’t know much about them other than apparently they survived cancer (woohoo!) And I’m glad they did, because they are posting some good stuff, short fiction at just the right Substack length.

I’m struck by how Carla teases out whole stories from innocuous moments: a note found in the park; a woman pouring concrete in her basement; a coast guard patrol by the Golden Gate bridge. Each one goes in a slightly different direction than you’d expect, always bluntly told and with a satisfying resolution.

Colton Merris is a big advocate for submitting stories to magazines rather than perhaps posting them to Substack, which is somewhat the antithesis of my whole thing here. But he’s got me coming around on maybe trying it someday. If you want to believe his bio, he’s had stories published in all sorts of cool places, so it’s at least working out for him. And you should believe the bio, because his stuff is really good.

I really hope we continue to see more lit-mag published writers like Colton enter the Substack fiction world, even if they are not always posting fiction. From what I’ve read of him, Colton is good for some slightly twisted fiction, which isn’t usually my thing, but it’s not quite horror either. There is definitely some Palahniuk in it, which isn’t to my usual taste, but I can’t deny Colton is a great writer and, as he’s said to me himself, a fellow child of Carver.

Full disclosure: he was nice enough to read and review my novel, the big T, and apparently came away not totally hating it.

Anthony Marigold is another who doesn’t frequently post fiction, who believes fiction belongs (mostly) somewhere other than Substack. Maybe it does, but it can be on Substack too, especially when writers like him are posting it. He recently posted some rare fiction that was a two-parter. I’m known to have issues sticking with stories greater than one post in length, but I made sure to put my eyes on the sequel of this one when it came out.

There’s something in the themes of Anthony’s work that make me feel like we’re cut from a similar cloth—or maybe cut into the same shape, but different fabric. I see a lot of myself in his character ‘Dev’ from this story; or, perhaps, my old self.

Anthony has also joined the sort of Lit Stack trend of establishing a lit mag, but this is one that will have a physical edition as well. Quite the undertaking! Please support; the success of this thing is a success for fiction Substack.

I found Barbara Jaye Wilson by way of recent featuree Elizabeth Lamont, whose opinion on writing I tend to very much trust (and not just because she sings my praises!!!). You’ll note she also likes the aforementioned Carla Miles’ work.

Much like in this Note, I can only think to describe Barbara’s writing as…weird. In the best way possible. In a sort of, maybe, Will Boucher sort of way. I recently read one in which she writes from the POV of a pair of shoes. No kidding.

Another New Yorker (among the many on Substack!), Barbara Jaye nonetheless provides a fresh perspective and posts a lot of interesting photographs of the city and other visual art on Notes as well, so worth a follow as well as a subscribe. They post very regularly so I haven’t had time to read all their strangeness, but here’s hoping it continues.

You can’t really get through reading fiction on Substack without stubbing your toe on some horror. I mean that in the best way. And Judith Ashcraft is out here writing about confused old men whacking what they think is a pinata.

I feel like Judith’s sentences set the pace, which is so crucial for building tension in horror. It’s all about tempo, ramping up to a crescendo. She also does some sci-fi/horror mashup, like her serial which—as far as I can tell from the first chapter—is about a kidnapper who can smell emotions. Yoinks.

Judith, as I understand it, is out of a job as of recently and we are the happy benefactors of the time they now have to produce more of their fiction! If you can, become a paid subscriber.

Obligatory ‘I wrote a novel’ plug—you can either buy it here for straight-up $20 OR preferably become a paid annual subscriber for $30 here and I’ll send you a code to get it for free at checkout. Look at this beauty! The writing inside is okay too. Lots of people saying this. Thank you for your attention.

That’s a wrap on vol. 10! I’ll leave you with this: