The collection will include stories, poems and essays from the diverse content of our first two years. The book will be available in ebook and paperback on Amazon and other retailers and will include the following writings–

Balance, Grace, and Humility, Sonia Lyris

Wake Up Dreaming, Stephanie Mabey

Dear Mr. Bradbury, John J. Walsh

This is How a Heart Breaks, Sarah Martinez

Cream Rises, Michael Dylan Welch

An Open Letter to My Father, Ken Davis

Spilling, Jennifer Brennock

The Importance of Shock Art, Andrew Arslan

Comic Books as an Editorial Medium, Stephen Moles

Solace Within the Shadows: The Power of Memoir, Sheila Hageman

Divine Lapse of Sense, Marc Polonsky

Tandem, Anna Wood

Into the Womb of Wombs, Christian Crocker

The Sexy Dance, Oline Eaton

Patty Revere, Tim Sallinger

Amidst Evil, Katie Flanagan

Petite Suite Amicale, Robert Wexelblatt

The Mountain’s Shouldering Whiteness, Gareth Spark

On Commonplace Ailments, Sarah Lucille Marchant

Flight, James Fowler

Liberty Lane, James Gapinski

Such a Lovely Girl, Zach Hively

The Red Marble, Ekaterina Tikhoniouk

Such a Good Man, Jason Fraticelli

Documentary, Caleb Krause

My Best Friend Poetry is an Awful Cook, Michael Patrick McSweeney

Shore, Jade Leone Blackwater

Rotting Fennel Bulb and Four Days Until, Samara Ferris

Aftermath, Elyse Brownell

Casualties of a Three-Day, Island-wide Outage: Peaches, Anorexia, Borders, Catherine E. Bailey

Double Exposure, Adrian R. Magnuson

Apiary, Catherine Warren

Daydream, Catherine Warren

Good Habits, Jim Davis

Paper Palace, Jami Kali

Mars, Lance Nizami

Grandpa Revisionism, John Grey

Remember She When, Charity Hestead

Tonight has been a Nightmare, Sarah Lucille Marchant

First, the Line Zero submission period is now open for the Spring issue. We’re looking for short stories, poetry and art submissions. Please check the submission page for more information.

Second, in lieu of the Winter Issue of Line Zero we’re publishing a compilation of the best of the first two years. Watch the blog for more information coming soon.

Review by Ken Davis

It’s August. I’m relaxing in a collapsible army-green camp chair on my deck. The arm rest is fixed with a mesh cup holder that perfectly fits a 12oz bottle of IPA, the only beer worth drinking. Mt. Si glares down at me from the northeast. Pleading. She wants my full attention. Screw her, I’m reading. I’m nervously bouncing my right leg up and down. The action in Cathedral of Dreams is driving the energy. It’s been a long time since fiction has affected me this way as I tend to read a lot of history and a myriad of other non-fiction topics. The title alone was enough to pique my interest as I am drawn to any subject matter dealing with the process of awakening.

Terry Persun’s fictional setting of Newcity is an architectural and social wonder. Imagine living in a place where there is 100% employment, where every need is taken care of, where there is no want and where conflict, even if it’s emotional, is illegal. The only way this can happen is if the entire population of Newcity is chipped into a system that lulls them. Computerized Utopia? Only if everyone stays asleep.

Keith works in the Office of Goods and Services and he is “waking up.” Dreams he can’t remember leave him with lingering dread. His chip alerts the Newcity Police. It’s happened before and Keith was taken into custody for mandatory treatment. But before he can be arrested and treated again, a vision, a boy with a bullet hole in his forehead, materializes to lead him out of Newcity. Once outside, he discovers other escapees who followed the boy as well.

Cathedral of Dreams challenges belief systems. It asks us to question what we think is true. To do this, the author liberates Keith from the dream state of Newcity only to trap him in another system of control, a system that wants to destroy Newcity by force. Ultimately it comes down to choice. Guided by visions, Keith and the other escapees have to decide which form of control best suits them. For some, a simple chip that keeps them unaware sounds like an easier life. Others prefer being controllers. Or is there yet another choice?

“There is no freedom…But what we also know is that we’d rather have the ability to choose for ourselves. And the others, the ones left behind, they deserve the same freedom.”

“Even if they didn’t ask for it?” Keith asked.

“We’ll liberate them,” Brent said.

“It may not make it better for them. Especially those who never asked to be liberated…”

Persun questions the notion that any society is obligated to liberate another and that there is a moral duty to do so through violence if necessary. Cathedral of Dreams is set in a futuristic dystopia, but like any good fantasy it reflects the time it is written in. Iraq comes to mind. Persun also presents a sub theme: dependency. Specifically, the desperate grip any metropolis has to keep its lifestyle intact by draining resources from others, similar to a drug addict stealing from his own family. (My own interpretation of this was that the author was really talking about the Industrialized World exploiting the Third World for its own selfish needs.)

Ultimately, the big question within Cathedral’s pages asks who is to decide what’s best. As Keith becomes more focused, as he awakens, he questions more and makes his own choices. Does liberation come from The State, from armed insurgency, or does it come from the individual? And what is the individual being liberated from? The dream state. Not a new theme, but a damn good story that nudges the reader to wonder if they are asleep and if their reality is truth or has it been invented for them. Next time the alarm clock goes off, ask yourself if you’re really awake.

Support Indie, buy Cathedral of Dreams now!

Art & Photography

Winner: Ben Trimbo (cover)

Editor’s Choice:

Doug Hallam

Eleanor Leonne Bennett

Literature

Winner: Polly Dugan, A Matter of Time

Editor’s Choice: Ekaterina Tikhoniouk, The Red Marble & Traci Moore, The Whiz-O-Rama

Poetry

Winner: John Grey, Grandpa Revisionism

Editor’s Choice: Terry Persun, Hunted & Charity Hestead, Remember She When

 Regular Contributors are responsible for:

• Writing one article per issue, topic must be approved by the journalistic content editor.
• Maintaining Line Zero’s dedication to quality by submitting the highest caliber work.
• Communicating with the journalistic content editor on topics for upcoming issues.
• Communicating with the journalistic content editor if unable to contribute to an upcoming issues.
• If time permits, coaching and working with new Line Zero contributors to help meet quality standards and writing goals.

Line Zero is an emerging, independent print journal dedicated to writing and the arts. Unlike any other publication of its kind, Line Zero features the hybrid content of a traditional literary journal and a collection of editorial essays on art, writing, music, publishing, photography, creative writing reference, book and tech reviews, and art events. Each quarterly issue features the writing of artists currently entrenched in the creative process and covers a range of experiences, featured photographic entries, a literary and poetry contest and art & music news.

Pink Fish Press Core Values

• We recognize that all writers are artists.
• We believe there are multitudes of talented voices unheard by the big publishing industry as independent writers struggle against an ocean of outdated practices.
• We strive to shatter the stigma of “poor quality work” attached to independent authors.
• We work to bring undiscovered and gifted writers to the forefront of popular culture.

We truly saw the best of the best of the indie artist in these entries.

Congratulations to all of the finalists, you will be published in the June issue of Line Zero. Winners and Editor’s Choice will be announced on 5/30.

Contest Rules:

-          The stories must be 300 words or less and follow the prompt.

-          Deadline is May 10th at 8:00pm Pacific Time

-          Submit stories to: flashfiction@linezero.org

THE PROMPT IS: FUTURE

I remember the day I discovered the power of memoir. It hit me in a rush of red maples that grew along 75th Street in Jackson heights, NY, where I lived. It was mid-afternoon in late summer before I began graduate school for my MFA in creative writing.

I was obsessively worrying about my mother who was ill with breast cancer as I pushed my daughter Genny in her stroller; I stopped to pick up a dropped baby doll and happened to look up. There the blossoming trees hovered above me, but they were not just trees, they were magic transporters back to my childhood, back to my green, suburban lawn, back to another time of life when my family was all together and healthy.

How accustomed I had become to rushing through life without stopping and looking around me. I had so much responsibility and worry. I did not even know what I was missing in my daily life—from simply enjoying the beauty of nature around me to the treasures of deeper reflections about my past that could be triggered by my physical surroundings.

When my sister and I were born, my grandfather planted us each a sapling in our backyard; my tree had grown into a magnificent red maple and Peggy’s green maple towered just above it. That tree was mine; it was me. As it grew, so did I. And it was always there, sturdy and strong, surrounded by backyard blue sky when I looked up.

Surrounded by that same blue sky as I knelt on the sidewalk, I felt hyperaware of my place in the world and time, but with a cry from Genny, I shook off my musings, stood up, and pushed back into the mind-numbing tedium of new motherhood.

This awareness of our present moments can launch us into the stories of our pasts at unexpected moments, but the technique can also be harvested, practiced, and used as we set out to consciously discover memories. The intertwined beauty of beginning our stories from where we are, from what we are doing, and then delving into the recollections and places these triggers can take us, is the special reward memoir affords us as writers.

Remembering my tree meant remembering playing kickball—the garbage can was always first base, Peggy’s tree was second base, and my red maple was third. Home base was different things all the time, but our trees always remained the same. We would play until we were sweaty and grass-stained and my mother’s voice would echo from the screened-in back porch: “Peggy! Sheila! Dinner!”

We would run inside, leaving the shade and protection behind us. And to remember that time is to remember my mother and all our wholeness even as we were mired in our myriad dysfunctions.

Even though we’d all moved away, I found comfort in knowing our trees still stood as I looked up at my Queens, NY, trees. I could feel it deep within. The sap that flowed through my childhood tree flowed through every red maple and through me.

As I began my graduate study of memoir I became even more alert to the world around me, to the people in my immediate sight and experience, and I used the things and people I saw in a whole new way (and I mean “used” in a totally healthy way, of course!).

I had been working on my memoir for ten years, thinking it was a coming-of-age story about how I had become a stripper. I had lines in my proposal like: My stilettos stepped tentatively onto a stage with spilled beer slithering through the cracks. For every bill that I clutched in my hand, another word was scribbled into my journal, where I tried to make sense of what I was witnessing, feeling, and becoming. I take you with me along the naked path I walked through the inspirational struggle of a girl becoming a woman in these very complicated years at the end of the Twentieth Century.

There was nothing inherently bad or wrong about what I had written so far. It was a straight forward story of a period of my life, an exploration of what I had experienced and learned. I’m thankful now that no publisher grabbed up my first attempt. There was something missing from my story; I discovered what when I stopped only looking at my past and began to get more aware of the present and more associative in my thinking.

As I brainstormed ideas in my memoir workshops, I found I was focused on all the trials and tribulations of the present—my mother’s illness and my own experience of being a new mother to a daughter. As I allowed myself to delve into my present day experiences I soon found a new window, a new angle of seeing what I had previously only seen in a surface way. Suddenly, my writing became more layered and intriguing not only to me, but to my readers.

By beginning in the present, but not staying there, I was able to discover new layers of meaning to my past experience. Having been a stripper was no longer a closed-off and singular experience, now there was an exploration of what my present experiences as a mother and a daughter had to do with my past. There were rich undertones of mother-daughter issues, body images, and illness and health in the female form.

Though I have now lost my mother, I have regained something of her by writing my memoir. I made a record of those days that I spent adrift in loss. The process of my mother’s dying forced upon me a kind of vision, a looking inward which was a gift at that horrible time. Through being present to my reality at the time, I was able to understand more deeply the meanings of my past experiences.

I was able to view, to experience, the decline of the female form in the present and explore what it was to have a female body. I felt the stigmas and desires and definitions we make through our bodies. I witnessed the illnesses of our society as represented in female form—physical and mental illness. I was able to examine more deeply the meanings that lie within the breasts. The body. How we hide ourselves by hiding our bodies. How our bodies express what we can’t, either through illness or through joy. And through grief.

Like the grief my stepfather Marc experienced after my mother’s death. I remember visiting Marc for the last time before he moved to Texas. We ate pizza with him at Paradise Pizza in Stratford. I could not tell his secret, but I feel like I should have seen the signs within his slumped body, his hollow eyes. He was drinking again.

Afterwards, we drove by my childhood house in Trumbull. There was a new shed in back. The pricker bush still sat atop the driveway. Two cars were parked in the driveway just like Mom and Dad used to. Close, but not touching.

And there, my red maple lifted above the house to see. As if standing on tiptoe to let me know it was still there. Still strong.
My husband Nick said, “Go knock on the door.”

But I was not so bold, or maybe I didn’t really want to see the changes on the inside. I wasn’t ready to see the change up close. I was still in the circling-around phase. Maybe I’ll write a letter to the owners of the house one day. Stop back without Genny. Just like I’ve always wanted to stop back at The Hideaway, the first strip club I ever danced in.

I wonder if I’ll ever actually do it. Step back inside. Go back and visit a world that’s closed to me now.

The first time I stripped: Stamford, CT; Industrial Park; buildings; roads and trucks; Madonna. The first President George Bush. Entering the Persian Gulf War. Should I be going there? Be doing something important with my life. I had just graduated high school. A feeling of there being an in-between time. Anti-war sentiment rising amongst youth—my wishing I could be part of it. What did I think I couldn’t be? I’d already boxed myself in…to youth and beauty and desire. A reverting to 60’s fashion. More free in clothes. Was it grunge time yet? A freedom to be who you were that didn’t exist in the 80’s while I was in high school. A feeling that I’d been born too early or too late. I was always too young or too old.

The immediate environment: from sun, warmth, to dark coolness. A darkness that sucked the life of the sun out. Cold air. Damp smell. Emptiness. Before customers arrived—it was just an empty shell of place, not what it really was. An empty bar. Base lights. A stark stage. Cheap looking. Crass. The skeletons of a fantasy world, behind the scenes. No beauty. Plain walls, bar, stools, stark folding metal chairs pushed haphazardly around bland L-shaped stage. Ugliness. Pool tables like coffins waiting to be lowered into the ground. Then, when the lights came on. I’d forgotten it was day out. Time ceased to exist.

I wonder if it’s still the same owner. Or if the same bartender still tells his junkie monkey story from Vietnam. Or if there’s still a cooler at the back of the bar with saran-wrapped ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch.

Or if anyone would still remember my name if I walked in the door with my duffel bag slung casually across my shoulder.

Even as I write now, I witness the choppiness of my life and how I remember experiences; I cannot write without this associative meandering. I made the choppiness a part of the structure of my memoir throughout. To help the reader understand what my experience of life as a woman is like.

How do I convey to you a story lived in the flesh? How do I show the body’s experience in words?

If I want you to know what it feels like to stand naked onstage—to feel vulnerable, ugly, alone, scared, wanted, desired, hated, sworn at, hit on, cold with hard nipples, beautiful, perfect, flawed, unloved, lusted after, rejected—then I must show you a fractured life, one that has no beginning or end in present or past, but a life that flows and sways much as I find my body doing today as a mother rocking my child, to the days I held my mother’s weak hand and squeezed, to the days I sold the erotic dances my body could create, and to the early days when my body simply rolled in the green grass below my blooming maple’s shadow.

Buy Sheila’s memoir, Stripping Down, now!

Winners will be announced on February 8.

Poetry, Literature and Photography & Art

The winners of the 24 hour Flash Fiction contest are:

Dan Coxon, Lani Smith, John J. Walsh IV and Alisa Gramann!

Participants will have 24 hours to write a short story at 300 words or less. Line Zero editors, Renda Dodge and Bailey Shoemaker Richards will judge the contest. Three winners will be chosen for publication in the February issue of Line Zero.

Contest Rules:

-          The stories must be 300 words or less and somehow (even obscurely) relate to the prompt.

-          Deadline is January 6th at 1:00pm Pacific Time

-          Submit stories to: flashfiction@linezero.org

Good luck!

Prompt: Affection