Horses Blow Up
Dog City & Other Stories
Richard Butner
First printing,
June 2004
$5
Order
here
or send a check or a money order using this
form.
No.8
in the limited edition Small Beer Press
chapbook series is Richard Butner's Horses
Blow Up Dog City & Other Stories. Butner's forte is 21st-century
man -- just a little lost, nothing major -- and his ongoing attempting
to come to grips with life, love, and the ultimate enigma: woman.
There's an immediacy to Butner's eye for pop culture, architectural
and emotionally-revealing details that places these stories in
the apartment next to yours, the (good) local diner (not the crappy
one), or maybe the bar around the corner.
Not everything's going to turn out right; not everyone's going
to do well. But if you follow the path Butner's laid out before
you, maybe you'll find the good bar, the good diner, know when
to listen, know when to fold.
Reviews
"Wry, caustic, calculated, impulsive....
Gems of gorgeous weirdness."
-- Asimovs
"Finely wrought fiction that earns its
effects. Evocative and passionate, meaningful and filled with
wonders."
-- SF Site
"Butner picks up the absurdities of high-speed
America and throws them back in its face, reveling in the wild,
wonderful mess he creates."
-- New
Pages
Contents
Ash
City Stomp (audio)
Horses Blow Up Dog City
The Rules of Gambling
Lo-Fi
Drifting
Advance Praise
"Butner's
meticulous prose lays a cool surface over some twisty terrain.
Understated and profound, deft and smooth, these stories sneak
up on you and then don't let go. Boxes within boxes, wheels
within wheels."
-- Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club
"If you let Richard Butner's sideways fiction
into your brain it will slice you to ribbons so quietly that
you won't even know why you're laughing, or crying. Don't say
I didn't warn you."
-- John Kessel, Good News From Outer Space
"In the work of writers who have truly
burrowed in, often I've a sense of there being not many stories
but one continuous, ongoing story, ever growing, ever increasing,
turning this way and that in shifting light -- which is how
I feel about Richard Butner's."
-- James Sallis, Cypress Grove
"Richard Butner writes gorgeous, heartfelt
stories that are completely his own, each propelled by an inner
logic that may or may not match consensus reality, each ringing
utterly true. He is unafraid of tough questions and even tougher
answers. His characters sweat, grieve, exult, and struggle for
understanding, and even when they terrify, they never fail to
touch me."
-- Lewis Shiner, Say Goodbye
About the author:
Richard
Butner loves you. This is his second
chapbook after Mind Snakes (illustrated by Michael Carter,
Barefoot Press & The Paper Plant). His stories have been
published in RE Arts & Letters, Say..., ...is this a
cat?, Problem Child, Scream, Mind Caviar, and the anthologies
Trampoline (Kelly
Link, ed), Crossroads: Southern Stories of the Fantastic
(F. Brett Cox and Andy Duncan, eds., Tor), Intersections
(John Kessel, Mark L. Van Name, and Richard Butner, eds.,
Tor), and When The Music's Over (Lewis Shiner, ed., Bantam
Spectra). He occasionally comments here.
Richard Butner read Thur.,
Sept. 16, 8.00 PM
Internationalist
Books
405 W Franklin St
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
919-942-1740
Some of the stories in Horses Blow Up Dog City
& Other Stories were previously published in the following
places:
"Ash City Stomp", Trampoline,
2003; "Horses Blow Up Dog City", Intersections,
1996; "Drifting", Say..., 2003.
"The Rules of Gambling" and "Lo-Fi" appear
here for the first time.
