Exterminating Angel Press

Creative Solutions for Practical Idealists.

Todblog

EAP Editor/Publisher Natters on About This and That.

From the bottom of my heart, seriously.

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Hi All,

It’s great to be back. A few words, and a few questions for the EAP community . . .

As a lot of you know, I’ve just finished successful treatment for throat cancer. I was lucky. It was gnarly, but effective, though I’m still feeling the after effects, so I’m a bit slowed down.

If you’re interested in the process, I wrote about it in this issue’s Jam Today blog. Unsurprisingly, the thing that hit me the most was how my dining habits were affected. Every day life with my family, including all of our creative activities, always having been the most important thing to me. A cancer diagnosis only underlined that and set it in bold.

These things bring on some personality changes. Normally I wouldn’t have as many long pieces in this online magazine, but for some reason, I felt it was the right time for them. So check out my (rather long) short story, The Magician’s Wife, with themes of longtime marriage, care of women for other women, and the reality of love. Also Bruce E.R. Thompson’s lovely Does Chat GBT Dream of Electric Sheep?, originally meant to go in the canceled winter issue, but that really fits the theme of Half Magic. Science started in magic, and it continues its trajectory. Often it seems to be the weirder half.

Also, I urge you to read Jonah Kruvant’s The Armor You Built, from his upcoming book. What the alien has to say in there is dead on. And what EAP is all about.

Speaking of what EAP is all about, my question for you is: How would you like to see EAP: The Magazine in the future? It’s always been meant to be a place for alternative content to noodle around and try itself out (see Tom Ball, see Jim Meirose if you have any doubts about that), and for content about being actually human and taking joy in that. Poetry, under the watchful and lyrical eye of poetry editor Marissa Bell Toffoli, has found a home here. You’ll see there’s a lot of poetry this issue, since we’re playing catch up with the canceled one. And why not? There’s a lot of poetry in life, if only humans could be convinced to look.

Any ideas? Any thoughts you’ve had in an idle moment about what you’d like EAP to be? If so, sling ‘em over. I’m in the midst of picking up the brightly colored pieces of my pre cancer life and fitting them together into a new pattern, so now’s the time.

Meanwhile, welcome back. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

On Beasts of All Kinds.

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Fairy tales are great for so many things, I couldn’t even begin. But one of the best is how they blend the human and the animal. Humans and animals, in fairy tales, are constantly in close communion, helping and hindering each other, even changing places, with startling results. ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ for an obvious […]

Beyond Physics.

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In my Snotty Saves the Day, from The History of Arcadia visionary fiction series, Arcadian physicist Devindra Vale points out that all the biological truths of human beings are found in fairy tales. Which naturally makes total sense. Story comes from the unconscious, which is a part of our biological make up. How then could […]

Everyone Needs to Make a Living, Nobody Needs to Make a Killing.

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I ran into an EAP contributor the other evening at the first Happy Hour for Ashland.news where I’m a board member. He asked how long EAP: The Magazine had been going—seemed quite shocked at hearing ‘since 2009’. He commented that it had never been, as he said, ‘monetized’, and this seemed to make him feel […]

Desire Paths R Us.

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Really, there can’t be a better introduction to the ALL OUT TO SEA issue of EAP: The Magazine than The Ship of Theseus by EAP resident philosopher Bruce E. R. Thompson. He writes about the spirit animating the renewable body. That’s what I think best to focus on as we head into a renewable year. […]

Pick Yourself Up.

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When you want to know what’s going on under the surface of the culture, just check out what its writers, poets, and artists are doing. Especially the ones flying under the radar: that’s where to look. You’ll see agitation now, and pain. David Bolton, “A Letter to Humanity.” Jim Meirose, “Last Words of a Deteriorating […]

Old Friends, Good and Bad.

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Let me start by looking at the old friends, good. My favorite piece this issue, Rue Matthiessen’s “There Was a Time,” is a beautiful paean to old friendship, to the joy and mourning that go with having and losing such a friend. I also love the short essays always faithfully contributed by David D. Horowitz, […]

Keeping My Head Above Water

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Anyone who knows me, knows I’m not just a Glass is Half Full kind of a person, but a Glass is Half Full and I Don’t Want to Hear Anything But How to Fill It To The Brim kind of a gal. But even I, these last couple of months, have felt my head disappearing […]

Circle Back.

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It’s another year, and a new chance to refresh our origins—rather than the present cultural activity of driving them into the ground. When does real life begin? As the old joke goes, when you ask a priest, a minister and a rabbi, the first says, “At conception.” The second, “At birth.” The rabbi, though, in […]

Visionary Future.

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When the Newport Public Library suggested I do a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, I was delighted. Of course. But I also had a secret hope for it. The present Emergency calls for as many of us who can to envision a way forward to a better world to get together and get […]