Rock and a Hard Place Issue Ten: Summer 2023

Published June 9, 2023
Click here to Purchase

Don't Talk to the Cops.
A conscience can be a real bummer sometimes . . .
There's cash in comic books.
I mean, there's always Tomorrow. Right?

Rock and a Hard Place returns again with Issue 10, featuring more of the hard luck stories you love, from writers at the top of their craft.

RHP is the literary magazine that knows when it seems like the whole world is against you, it's because it's probably true.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
(In order of appearance of work)

DON LaPLANT is a writer, teacher, and librarian based in Cobleskill, New York. His short crime fiction has previously been published in Thuglit magazine and online in Mystery Tribune and the Akashic Books “Mondays Are Murder” series. His work as a playwright has been produced in professional, community, and academic theatres around the country and his award-winning play Two Body Problems was published in Southern Theatre magazine.

MIKE McHONE’s (@mike_mchone) work has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen, Mystery Tribune, Mystery Weekly, Guilty, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, and the Anthony Award-Nominated anthology Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression. Visit him online at www.mikemchone.com.

MEAGAN LUCAS (@mgnlcs) is the author of the award-winning novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs (2019) and the forthcoming collection, Here in the Dark (Shotgun Honey, July 2023). Meagan’s short work can be found in places like Santa Fe Writers’ Project, Still: The Journal, Bull Magazine, Pithead Chapel, and Dark Yonder. Meagan is Pushcart, Best of the Net, Derringer, and Canadian Crime Writers’ Award of Excellence nominated, won the 2017 Scythe Prize for Fiction, and Songbirds and Stray Dogs was North Carolina’s selection for the Library of Congress Center for the Book’s 2022 Route 1 Reads program. She teaches at Robert Morris University and is the Editor-in-Chief of Reckon Review. Born and raised on a small island in Northern Ontario, she now calls the mountains of North Carolina home.

VINCENT MARSHALL (@VinceMarshall93) is a journalist and a crime and horror writer. He lives with his family in Arkansas and can often be seen in a hoodie.

GABRIEL HART (@GabrielHart77) is an author and journalist from California's high desert. His "world-burning" fiction collection Fallout From Our Asphalt Hell and two poetry volumes Unsongs and Hymns From The Whipping Post are out now from Close to the Bone. Other works can be found in the GONE anthology (Red Dog Press), Shotgun Honey, Starlite Pulp, Punk Noir, Expat Press, and Hobart. His story “Crossing Alvarado” (from Rock and A Hard Place, issue 6) was nominated for Best American Mysteries and Suspense 2022. He is currently finishing his novel On High At Red Tide. Hart is a regular contributor at Lit Reactor, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Last Estate, and reports for local radio at Z1077.

NOLAN KNIGHT is the author of The Neon Lights Are Veins and Beneath the Black Palms. He is a fourth generation Angeleno whose short fiction has been featured in various publications including Akashic Books, Thuglit, Crimespree Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Tough and Needle. He is a former staff writer for Los Angeles’ Biggest Music Publication, the L.A. Record, and currently resides in Long Beach. His novel, Gallows Dome, a California Gothic/Blacktop Noir is set for publication by Down & Out Books on 6/12/23.

A writer living in North London, BARRY CHARMAN (@BarryCharman) has been published in various magazines, including Ambit, The Ghastling and Popshot Quarterly. He has a blog at barrycharman.blogspot.co.uk

A transplanted southerner, JERRY BLOOMFIELD (@JerryBloomfield) lives and writes from Canada’s Atlantic Ocean. He has been published at such places as Beat to a Pulp and the anthology Trouble No More. He can be found online in the usual places.

HEIDI HUNTER (@janies15) is pursuing her passion of writing short stories with mystery and horror themes. Her stories have appeared in anthologies such as Crime Travel and Peace, Love, and Crime: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the ‘60s and e-zines such as Mystery Tribune and Mysterical-E.

MARY THORSON (@marythorson6429) is from Milwaukee, WI. She received her undergraduate degree in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and her MFA at Pacific University’s low-residency program in Oregon. She has been previously published in Milwaukee Noir, Worcester Review, Tough, Apocalypse Confidential, & Ink Stains Anthology.

WAILANA KALAMA (@whylana) is a dark fiction writer from Hawaii. Her work has appeared in Pseudopod and Weird Little Worlds’ Mother: Tales of Love and Terror, and upcoming in Dark Matter INK’s Monstrous Futures and Monster Lairs.

MICHAEL A. GONZALES (@gonzomike) is a regular contributor to CrimeReads. A former writer-at-large for Vibe, The Source and Ebony, he has written essays for Essence, The Paris Review, The Village Voice, Wax Poetics, Longreads and Soulhead.com. Gonzales has written short fiction for Ellery Queen, The Oxford American, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, TaintTaintTaint.com, Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression edited by S.A. Cosby, Black Pulp, The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Get Up Offa That Thing: Crime Fiction Inspired by James Brown edited by Gary Phillips, Killens Review of Arts & Letters and Obsidian.

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
(In order of appearance of work)

AVA BUTKOWSKI is a 12-year-old entrepreneur, artist, photographer, and writer living in Central New Jersey. Though her photography appears in Issue 10 of Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, she will not be allowed to read this issue until she is much older (her dad cut the same deal with her twin brother Jack when he published a photo in Issue 6). She enjoys running track, gymnastics (particularly her local ninja gym), and video games. She has one other publication to her credit: a children’s book titled Bongo and the Rainbow, written by her, and illustrated by her brother.

S.A. COSBY (@blacklionking73) is an Anthony Award-winning writer from Southeastern Virginia. He is the author of several critically acclaimed books, including the New York Times bestseller Razorblade Tears and Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Blacktop Wasteland. His short fiction and novels have been recognized by NPR, The Guardian, and Library Journal, among others, and he has won the Thriller Award for Best Novel, Macavity Award for Best Mystery, and the Dashiell Hammett Prize. He served as guest editor of the Anthony-nominated anthology Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression, released from Rock and a Hard Place Press. His latest novel, All the Sinners Bleed, is out now from Flatiron Books. When not writing, he is an avid hiker and chess player.

A freelance journalist & photographer, SONALI ROY (@Swarvaani), wears several other hats including painter, 3-D art designer, music composer and creative writer. Besides, Roy is a passionate traveler and loves spending time with her canine friend, Fuchoo. Sonali is devoted to vegan diet.

PETER ROZOVSKY was a newspaper copy editor until the Philadelphia Inquirer threw its copy desks under the bus. He created Noir at the Bar in Philadelphia in 2006, founded the Detectives Beyond Borders blog, and has contributed cover photos, photo essays, written essays and introductions to numerous books and publications.