The holidays must be near, because the gift of Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• AVOID! I'd like to begin this entry with "Screw United Airlines," easily the worst airline going. They bring nothing but misery, and just don't give a fuck. I'd rather eat a piece of shit encrusted with pubic hair than to ever give United Airlines one cent of my money.

   
• Ware. Chris Ware is one of my favorite living artists. His work provides insight into the human condition in a way few people can match. This is his latest...

As if that wasn't gift enough, a "behind the scenes" exploration of the cover has been ANIMATED over at the New York Times website. Absolutely worth a watch. Click here immediately to experience it.

   
• Rescue. Speaking of cats... essential viewing...

Catfishing! Amazing that somebody probably abandoned the poor things out there.

   
• SvB. Oh gawd. The Superman vs. Batman film looks even worse than I imagined. Even worse than the pile of shit that was Man of Steel. How could DC have fucked this up so bad? Oh... Zack Snyder... that's right. Let's overdramatize the shit out of even the most mundane moments. People love that. Barf...

This makes Superman IV: Quest for Peace look like total genius... because at least that turd had Gene Hackman in it. Jesse Eisenberg's "Lex Luthor" is a fucking embarrassment. I can't help but wonder if this movie fucking tanks... as it rightfully should... what happens to the DC cinematic universe? Hopefully it gets flushed down the toilet so somebody who gives a shit about the comics can start over.

   
• Regerts. A kitten who regretted his life choice...

Does it GET cuter than this?

   
• Diamonds. Dayamn! No pressure...

And also... WAR AGAINST CHRISTMAS!!!

   
I'm spent. No more bullets for you.

Today's your lucky day! There's a brand-spanking-new (and FREE!) issue of Thrice Fiction out today!

As usual, I'll be discussing the artwork that went into our latest issue. This may or may not include spoilers for the stories, so I urge you to please read it before proceeding.

All done? Then... here... we... go...

Putting together the artwork for a non-profit magazine which relies solely on the generosity of its contributors is both a thrilling and frightening prospect. On one hand, you get to work with some amazingly talented people at the top of their game who regularly blow you away with their creativity and their kindness. On the other hand, people working for free can be an unreliable resource. And who can blame them? If a paying gig comes along that's going to take care of your rent and put food on your table, you drop everything and take the job. If you have an opportunity to do something that will advance your career as an artist, you drop everything and do it. Heck, even if it's something frivolous and fun that comes your way when the alternative is slaving away on something you're not getting paid for? Yeah, go for it. I get it. Honestly I do. And I try not to be upset when it happens, because that's just the way free work goes.

This month I had the grand ambition of letting our stable of "regulars" have an issue off. It's a busy summer for everybody, I've gotten plenty of new submissions for artwork, and it seemed a nice thing to do.

Except when all four of your new artists end up not working out. Then it's just plain folly.

Luckily for me, begging and pleading to Thrice Fiction staples Kyra, Katelin, and Chad were met with offers of help, or you'd be reading this is October. The fact that they not only took time out of their busy schedule to step up and bail me out... but that they did so at the last possible moment with a ridiculously short deadline is what I'm talking about when I say "amazingly talented people at the top of their game who regularly blow you away with their creativity and their kindness." Truly, from the bottom of my heart, thanks so much for your dedication to Thrice Fiction, which would be something entirely different if not for you.

And now for a look at the art that went into the first half of Issue No. 14...

This installment's cover was dreamed up by yours truly. It came about as I was reading an article about the increasingly horrific consequences of all the "space junk" humans are leaving in orbit with breakfast one morning. Then, as I was driving to work, I saw that somebody had tossed a sack of McDonald's garbage on the road, and it occurred to me that it's only a matter of time before that stuff like this ends up in orbit as well. Yadda yadda yadda... heeeere's our cover! Originally I used a photo of that same McDonald's garbage (which I stopped and picked up) for the elements on the cover. But it wasn't blowing my socks off, so I decided to use a metal Coke can instead of the McPaper Cup since it reflects light better... and a previous photo of McDonald's fries that was more interesting than what I got. The background image is a photo I shot out of an airplane which has been layered with a starry night photo I took in Africa. All thirteen parts of the finished illustration were independently textured, shaded, then composited Photoshop.

It turned out rather good, if I do say so myself. If nothing else, it has terrific visual impact and a good sense of "What the heck?!?" which is what I like for our covers in the hopes that it makes people curious enough to download the magazine.

And now, for a look at the first half of the art included in this issue, read onward in an extended entry...

Welcome to PART TWO of a discussion about the art that's running in the latest issue of THRICE Fiction Magazine!

If you haven't read PART ONE yet, you should do that first.

And if you haven't downloaded a FREE copy of our April 2015 issue... then you should definitely do that first because, WARNING... SPOILERS MAY ENSUE!

Putting together an issue of Thrice Fiction is no walk in the park. There's hours of work put into it from myself and others before it all comes together. Once all the art is in, I then get to assemble the Print PDF (for those wanting to purchase a printed copy at MagCloud), the Download PDFs (for those grabbing their FREE copy off our website), and the ePub/Kindle versions (for those who have an e-reader, also available FREE at our website). Then there's proofing, revising, and correcting... it goes on and on. Until it doesn't, then we're done.

There are times along the way where I ask myself "Is this really worth all the time and effort it takes to put this thing together?"

And then I take one look at the finished issue and the answer is always the same... yes, it most definitely is worth it. This issue was more difficult than usual, which made the finished magazine even more worth it.

And in four months we do it all again.

Now on with the second half of the art you'll find in our latest issue...

Lucky you! There's a brand-spanking-new (and FREE!) issue of Thrice Fiction out today!

As usual, I'll be discussing the artwork that went into our latest issue. This may or may not include spoilers for the stories, so I urge you to please read it before proceeding.

All done? Then off we go...

Our Editor at Large, RW, has long been lobbying to add some comics to Thrice Fiction. On the surface, this sounds easy. But finding the right comics to include in our pages is easier said than done. My first choice was the brilliant stuff that Reza Farazmand is doing over at Poorly Drawn Lines. Not only because I'm a huge fan... but because his work seemed the perfect "fit" for what we're doing.

Not that I expected he would say "yes," of course. Surely he has better things to do than hang out in our little lit mag, right? But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I worked up some samples of how his work would be presented in Thrice and dashed off an email.

Much to my surprise and delight, Reza not only agreed to let us re-print some of his strips... he also agreed to re-work a panel from one of my favorite Poorly Drawn Lines comics as our cover! And that's how Small Cat came to end up fronting Issue No. 13...

Glorious, is it not?

And now, for a look at the first half of the art included in this issue, read onward in an extended entry...

Hey! Did you know there's a brand new issue of THRICE Fiction out?

Well, there is... and it's totally FREE! Click here to download a copy!

As usual, I'll be discussing the artwork that went into our latest issue. This may or may not include spoilers for the stories, so I urge you to please read it before proceeding.

All done? Then off we go...

This issue's beautiful cover was created by Allen Forrest. The guy has created a lot of covers for lit mags, and we're very lucky to have him gracing ours...

I try to make sure there's artistic variety in our collection of cover art, and am rather embarrassed that we didn't have any impressionistic pieces yet. To have that oversight rectified with such a great painting is icing on the cake. Thanks so much, Allen!

And now, for a look at the first half of the art included in this issue, read onward in an extended entry...

Welcome to PART TWO of a discussion about the art that's running in the latest issue of THRICE Fiction Magazine!

If you haven't read PART ONE yet, you should do that first.

And if you haven't downloaded a FREE copy of our August 2014 issue... then you should definitely do that first because, WARNING... SPOILERS MAY ENSUE!

Okey dokey then.

I've said before that laying out an issue of THRICE Fiction is like trying to put a puzzle together where you don't have a box lid to see how it's supposed to end up looking when you're done. Not once have I just dumped all the stories into Adobe InDesign and said "Perfect! I'm done!" Not even close. I move things around over and over and over again... trying to come up with a "flow" between stories that makes for a cohesive reading experience from cover to cover. At least once every issue I'll wake up in the middle of the night and freak out because I suddenly realized I've got the page order all wrong. This issue took a little longer to figure out than most, but I was fairly confident in the layout when it was "finalized" back in June.

It didn't last, of course. Right before release I had a couple of discussions that convinced me I needed to move things around... again. Which wouldn't be a big deal if I wasn't so obsessive about having some symmetry between pages on a spread. Getting that sorted out takes a serious amount of time.

And even though it delayed our release by a few days, I think it was time well-spent. We hope you'll agree.

To read PART TWO of my ramblings about the art of THRICE Fiction Magazine No. 11, read onward in an extended entry!

Another summer. Another issue of THRICE Fiction Magazine!

As usual, I'll be discussing the artwork that went into our latest issue. This may or may not include spoilers for the stories, so I urge you to download your FREE copy of Issue No. 11 and give it a read before continuing.

Alright? Alright!

This time around we are very fortunate to feature another beautiful cover by Katelin Kinney...

Even though I do composite photo work like this for a living, Katelin has a way of making it seem like magic to me. I've stopped asking her how she constructs these images for us because the magic is more fun.

For a look at the first half of the art included in this issue, read onward in an extended entry...

And here we are again... this time with a look at the art appearing in the second half of THRICE Fiction Issue No. 10, you might want to go read Part One from last Saturday first (if you haven't already).

Oh, and if you haven't downloaded your FREE copy of our latest issue, that should be your first stop!

Alright? All right!

Last week when discussing the art from the first half of the book, I talked a little bit about the formats we offer for FREE downloads... and how we're wanting to expand into others. Here's the breakdown average from December's issue...

• PDF — 94%
• eBook — 4%
• Print — 1.5%
• Kindle — .5%

Anybody looking at this breakdown would say "Wow... why do you even bother with anything but PDF?"

The answer is because our "circulation" was around 2850 last issue and, as always when we release a new issue, it has climbed a bit. As of yesterday, we topped 3200. Which means 4% translates into 130 people who prefer to read THRICE via eBook. That's worth the 90 minutes it takes for me to create it. The Kindle version is automatically created from the eBook, so now we're up to around 150 people.

The print edition is just a higher resolution version of the PDF that takes 2 minutes to generate and 5 to upload to MagCloud. For the 30-50 people who want to have THRICE in print (including yours truly), I'll spend the seven minutes to make it happen.

And if we can expand our readership by adding an online version... an iPad version... or whatever else we can think of? We're going to do that too. Because as our downloads continue to blast past our every expectation, even small percentages are going to account for more people than R.W. and I ever dreamed would be reading in the first place. We're happy... nay, thrilled... to provide THRICE in whatever format people want to have it.

So look for our "Cerebral Implant" edition, coming 2025.

And now... back to the artwork for THRICE Fiction No. 10, which you can read about in an extended edition...

One of the things R.W. and I set out to do when we created THRICE Fiction was to make sure it was available in a variety of formats so people could read it however they wanted. Want to read a printed magazine? You can order a copy. Want to view it as a PDF? It's there. Want to read it on an eBook reader? We got that. Have a Kindle? We got that too. We've had all of it since Day One, and all the digital editions can be downloaded for FREE.

Like our brand new issue released today (featuring a stunning cover by Chris Walton)...

And we're not stopping there.

Our next outlet for THRICE will be an online edition. We want for people to be able to read every issue right on the THRICE Fiction website. There are many, many solutions for doing this, and I've looked at dozens of them. You can see a sample of one solution (from JooMag) here...

If you expand it to full-screen and have a decent-resolution display, it's pretty nice. I don't know if this is the route we'll take, but we'll get it figured out eventually.

Anyway...

Back to THRICE Fiction No. 10! For a look at the first half of the art included in this issue, click onward to an extended entry...

And... I'm back!

But before I continue with a look at the art appearing in the second half of THRICE Fiction Issue No. 9, you might want to go read Part One from yesterday first (if you haven't already).

Oh, and if you haven't downloaded your FREE copy of our latest issue, that should be your first stop!

Okay? Okay!

Now then... before I get started, I was going to talk a bit about what it means to be closing out three years and nine issues of THRICE Fiction. On our Facebook somewhere, I was joking about how "People said we wouldn't last... shame on them." But it was more than a joke. People were literally saying that we wouldn't last. Apparently there's past precedent: "New magazines rarely make it past a year... two years if they're lucky," they would say.

At the time, I didn't know why that would be. I guessed it was because the magazine ends up being more work than people realize. You start out strong with the best of intentions... but life gets in the way, and eventually the time between issues grow longer and longer until you realize you just don't want to do this any longer. Or maybe the people who quit started their magazine to get rich (ha ha) and the money never came. Maybe they didn't feel enough people were reading to make it worthwhile. Maybe the experience just wasn't what they expected. I dunno. And while I can't speak for our Editor, RW, I can say that it has never occurred to me to pack it in. I'm as enthusiastic about THRICE Fiction now as I was at the beginning. More so, even, because the response we've received has exceeded my wildest dreams.

So many thanks to all our contributors who have made us look so good these three years... and also to our readers who continue to download issues by the thousands. We're so very grateful, and there's more to come in Year Four!

Oh yeah...

The art for Issue No. 9... Part Two!

You can find that in an extended entry...