New iHero story from yours truly! The first in at least ten years!

If you missed any of the earlier notices, iHero Entertainment has found new life at www.superherofiction.com. That's where new stories in the fan-favorite and award-winning fiction zine (both e-zine and magazine) will be debuting for the foreseeable future. It already features tales by iHero creator Frank Fradella and staff writer Matt Hiebert, and now I've published my first new iHero story to the site -- "Glissando." 

It's right here: http://www.superherofiction.com/superhero-fiction/glissando-by-sean-taylor-an-ihero-entertainment-tale/

Here's a taste. 

(Language warning for those who care about such things.)

What a fucking job. Pushing a fucking plastic cart around and picking up dog shit and trash for eight hours a day when he should be headlining at least the lower rent bars in the downtown piss holes of the big cities down here in the Southeast. Latex gloves and dog shit. What a fucking job.

He was a fucking rock and roll guitarist. Born and bred. And gifted beyond the ken of mortal men and all that shit.

No. Seriously. Gifted. Gif-fucking-ted. Like a superhero for the rock and roll set. As stupid as it sounds.

“Not all people who are born with super-normal powers can fly or pick up tanks, son,” his dad, a two-bit prick he had called Thomas and never Dad had told him enough times to make it into a mantra. “Some of us have to find more subtle uses for our abilities.”

“Yes, Thomas,” he had said at the time, not really caring. He had been too busy dreaming of costumes and colors.

Thomas Hadensmith was dead now, of course, died a few weeks after he ran off on Tommy and his mom with a little redheaded saxophone player from Memphis. The old man had called her Belle, for Memphis Belle, and he laughed like it was the funniest fucking joke in the world every time he told it. Even when he told it on the day he left.

Read the full story: http://www.superherofiction.com/superhero-fiction/glissando-by-sean-taylor-an-ihero-entertainment-tale/

Derrick Ferguson Kicked the Willy Bobo With Me...

Here's another off the bucket list. I kicked Derrick Ferguson right in the Bobo. Wait... That didn't come out right...

Derrick Ferguson: Who is Sean Taylor?

Sean Taylor: He’s just a man whose circumstances got beyond his control, beyond his control. I’m Kilroy. Okay, maybe not. ...

DF: What do you do to keep the creditors away?

ST: I’ve been everything from a corporate media strategist to a local newspaper editor, and I’ve written comics and short stories and even a novel thus far, but for the day job at the moment, I edit for several places as a freelancers/contractor to keep the bills paid. It’s a dirty job, as they say, but someone’s got to love it.

DF: How long have you been writing and what have you learned about yourself through your writing?

ST: My first magazine article was in 1991, a marketing article about doing a summer reading display for a bookstores to highlight summer book sales. It was a hit, and I kept doing it. My first short story was publishing in 1995 in O’ Georgia: A Collection of Georgia’s Newest and Most Promising Writers, and I caught the bug and haven’t stopped yet.

What have I learned? Well, I’ve learned how to survive close to the poverty line, that’s for sure. Writing and editing is one of those comes and goes industries, and in an economy as volatile as the U.S. one has been during the years I’ve been a writer and editor, it’s bounced up and down several time. But what I learned from all that is that writing is something I make time to do whether or not it’s paying the bills. It’s more a calling than a career choice.

Read the full interview: https://fergusonink.com/2018/05/08/kickin-the-willy-bobo-with-sean-taylor/

[Link] I do believe in -isms

by Dale Glaser

I signed a contract today to have a short story published as a standalone electronic unit. This is my first foray into that particular distribution model, so I’m really intrigued to see how it all goes. Many more details and reflections about the story will come as it gets closer to release, but for now the only hint I will offer is this: it’s an original superhero story, another first for me in terms of semi-pro publishing, which is nothing short of remarkable considering the sheer percentage of my life for which I’ve been obsessed with superheroes and comic books. Somewhere north of 90%, at least.

Since I’m not going to talk much more about the story itself here, I thought I’d take the opportunity to dissect a couple of questions of terminology. What exactly is a superhero? What, for that matter, is a hero?

Let’s start with the second part first. It’s a little easier to get a handle on the concept of heroism because it’s a real thing in the real world; superheroes are idealized fictional constructs, but there are living, breathing heroes all around us. And yet attempting to define heroism can be surprisingly controversial! Still, semantic arguments that reveal more about the arguer’s worldview than the objective truth aside, the basic nature of heroism is fairly simple and straightforward. A hero risks or sacrifices some aspect of himself or herself for the benefit of someone else.

Note there’s nothing in there about nobility or respectability, and whether or not we should all aspire to living that way. Of course people, myself included, tend in casual conversation to use hero and idol interchangeably sometimes. If you look up to someone, and want to be like them, you call them a personal hero. And that could very well include someone who is perfectly described by my definition above. But it could also include someone who has accomplished something you want to accomplish. A kid playing guitar could point to Jimi Hendrix as a hero, or I could say Stephen King is mine, but that’s a bit outside of what we’re talking about here.

It may be a fair question to ask how much a person has to risk and how much they have to help someone before they can rightfully be called a hero. When we say that soldiers or police officers or firefighters are the real heroes, we’re acknowledging that getting shot at or running into a burning building unquestionably puts their physical safety, and quite possibly their very life, on the line. Nobody can give more than that. And by and large those same people are doing what they do in order to save someone else from an untimely demise. Very little gets as much instant, unchallenged respect as saving lives.

Read the full article: https://dalewglaser.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/i-do-believe-in-isms/