Cover: Eleanor Bennett

Blink Ink #9 is out and the Special Noir Issue, and we are busy prepping the next issue for January 2012. Blink Ink is a quarterly printed publication of short fiction, available by subscription and soon to be available for download on your kindle and other e-reader devices.

We are also proud to announce that we have unleashed our new postcard with the winning story ‘Silk Stockings” by Alexandra Isacson. If you want one, just shoot us a mailing address. Subscribers can look for it soon!

Thank you for your support, of Blink Ink and Full Of Crow, as 2011 comes to a close and a new year is at hand.

Doug and Lynn

If you are not a current subscriber, please consider getting in touch now while the subscription rates are low and include the special issue! Five issues, five bucks! When you consider postage, this is crazy! So now is the time to get in on it. You can mail in subscriptions and donations, and now you can use PayPal. Please make sure that you specify your mailing address in your instructions and provide an email address so that we can verify your information. You can also get a few of our back issues, if available, for the single issue rate.

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“Inevitable”
1) When Maya entered her twenties, a marriage proposal followed her home. She wasn’t ready; the boy’s side was eager. Maya wanted to get a masters degree in psychiatry. But words weren’t permitted in her house. The henna tattoo reflected the color that would define her life.

2) Soon after the wedding, she and her husband were moved to London. Nobody asked what Maya wanted. Their bags were packed and flight tickets booked. A new place and a new life would perhaps lessen his delusions, his family thought. Or maybe they didn’t want the responsibility either.

3) Despite a sick husband at home, Maya managed to survive. She joined the School of Psychiatry while working two jobs. She provided for them while he laughed at the whirling ceiling fan. He hid behind the couch, pulled his hair, and chewed his nails. Maya forgot to smile.

4) Eventually he slit his wrists and became a case study for Maya’s classmates. The more he screamed, the less she told the family about her husband’s condition. He was her responsibility, they reiterated. Not theirs or any mental institutions. Until such time he was alive, she had to serve him.

5) Scribbling a few words in her psychiatry journal, Maya stared at the ceiling fan in her home office. The fan, with its soothing air and Zen like music, brought tranquility to her patients. It could also embrace her husband’s limp body. Thinking of the possible end, Maya smiled.

Sweta Srivastava Vikram

blink|ink #5

Full Of Crow Press is proud to announce that Blink Ink Issue #5 is available! Subscribers and contributors will get their copies by mail. Cover and Photography by Kristin Fouquet, fiction edited by Doug Mathewson, produced by Lynn Alexander for Full Of Crow Press and Distribution. Stories by John Brooke, Julia Davies, Hugh Fox, John Greiner, Shubhan Gupta, Matthew Zanoni Muller, Fawn Neun, John Sheirer, Michael J. Solender, Sweta Srivastava Vikram, Townsend Walker, Joanna M. Weston, Jim Wittenberg, and Angel Zapata.

Submissions are open, on an ongoing basis. To submit by mail, please send fiction of approximately fifty words in the body of an email to Doug Mathewson, with “Blink Ink Submission” in the header: submissions@blink-ink.com.

If you would like information about subscriptions or our mailing list, please feel free to get in touch with us at any time. This is the current subscription form: SubscribeBlinkInk PDF.

We are also sponsoring a contest for our upcoming postcard campaign. One of the submissions will be selected to appear on our postcards, going out to subscribers and supporters around the world!

To get in touch with us:

dougmathewson@blink-ink.com

lynnalexander@blink-ink.com

Thank you for your support!

Blink Ink #4 features short fiction by: Jim Wittenberg, Trisha Castillo, Ivan Gabriel Rehorek, Rebecca L. Brown, Josh Olsen, Kathryn Megan Starks, Robert Masterson, Caroline Wallis, Rebecca Renner, Ethan Swage, Paul Beckman, Nicole E. Hirschi, Omri J. Luzon, J.J. Steinfeld.

“We’ll have two for you by 6pm . . . save a male left arm and a right foot. Someone will arrive at 8pm, you know what to do. The money is under the body.”

Jeanette Cheezum

I laughed, “Sounds biblical.”

“You’ll see,” she seethed.

And so I did when their skins turned red and seven banana-sized angels burst forth, summoning clouds of tiny locusts that flew over rivers of blood pouring off our kitchen-counter. Now Sinners and Saints alike beg my wife for mercy; I just want her to make the angels clean our kitchen.

Eric Sentell