Brief Notes
 March 2006

“Ho-boys,” by James Cooley, set in Northeast, brings back the bygone days of the Great Depression, when adolescent boys often took to the rails as hobos, or hoboys, to escape their families and look for adventure.  “Ten Takes,” by Sue Ferguson takes the reader through the twists and turns of an unrequited romance begun in a coffee shop.  Then, in true On The Road style, Danusha Goska takes us on a journey -- not through 1940s and ’50s America and Mexico but through Eastern Europe and Turkey during the last gasps of the Communist Era in “Leaving Poland, Summer 1989.”

Two of the stories have a historical bent.  “The Last Word,” by Warren Bull, brings us to the battlefront at Antietam during the American Civil War.  Peggy Hormann’s mother and daughter characters revive local history as they explore their family’s past in Leavenworth, Kan.

Our poetry section features four imaginative musings from Annette Rasmussen, a modern day nod to antiquity by Joel Van Valin and evocative haiku by Peggy Hormann.  All great stuff.

We hope you enjoy these first selections.

Contributors Notes

Warren Bull is the author of the novel, Abraham Lincoln for the Defense (PublishAmerica, 2003); the short story, “Beecher’s Bibles,” in the anthology, Manhattan Mysteries (KS Publishing, 2005); and the non-fiction article, “Kansas City Trivia,” in Kansas City Voices (November, 2005).

Jim Cooley, a.k.a. coolstoi@kc.rr.com, is a D/D and TV-free ex-smoking HWP Gemini DWPM who wears glasses, a hat and lives in Westport, where neither streets nor citizens run at right angles.  He’s spent years making the world safe for Dial Tone and has published many short stories and poems.  His favorite color is sky blue.

Susan Ferguson is an independent writer, manuscript editor and publication designer in Kansas City, Mo.  Her short stories have been published in New Letters, The Mochila Review, Sunrust, Chrysalis Reader and Deadmule.com.

Danusha V. Goska is a writer living in New Jersey.  Her book Love Me More is available at amazon.com.  She can be contacted at calamitygene@hotmail.com.

Peggy Hormann has been writing technical documentation for several years, which pays the bills.  In her spare time she has written a series of short stories for her grandchildren, as well as other short stories and several haiku.  Her work has been published in Potpourri and Kansas City Voices.  Her plan upon retirement is to work on a pre-Civil War novel based on her wonderful ancestors, like Marguerite.

Annette Rasmussen a.k.a. Annie Razz has had poems and stories published in the Kansas City Star, Caring Concepts, Holiday House, and the Chiron Review.  Most recently, her book, Fantastical Tales for The Heroine’s Quest was just published by PublishAmerica.  Ms. Rasmussen lives in the Historic Northeast section of Kansas City, Missouri, across from a forest in a big, old house with her daughter, husband, a cat, a bird, and a very small Chihuahua.

Curtis Urness, Sr. lives in the Blue Valley neighborhood of Kansas City, not exactly in Northeast proper but close enough to be a suburb.  His fiction has appeared in Kansas City Voices, Monthly Short Stories, Mindprints, Whistling Shade, The Story Teller, and Number One.  He has also published numerous non-fiction articles in Kansas City area newspapers.

Joel Van Valin is the author of the fantasy novel The Flower of Clear Burning and the publisher of Whistling Shade literary journal.  He lives in Saint Paul and does indeed shop at JC Penney.

Funding for this project is provided by the
Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund

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