April 17th, 2023 - Evensong

Dear TNY,

What a crock of fuckshit “Evensong” is.

I have a fun idea! Let’s roll around inside the head of a woman who has a basic bitch life, seemingly doesn’t express any emotions (I know it says she wanted to cry, but as the reader I don’t feel that, so it comes off sounding like she’s saying things to cover bases but there’s no feeling behind any of it), cheats on her husband with abandon, describes her lover in gross ways to us because…she wants to rub it in compared to her attractive but useless husband?...one doesn’t know, then she goes to church to sing songs not of her religion, and then walks home arm-in-arm with her hubby, him likely not knowing a goddamn thing about her cunny getting reamed out by the pudgy, cigar-smelling handyman.

Get the fuck out of town. Why does this get published? And before you get all huffy with me, jealousy and whatnot, know that I would not be proud of myself if this was a story I wrote or you published of mine. I wouldn’t let anyone read this if I wrote it. And you’re letting the world read it. What the actual fuck, man?

I can’t get over the voice in this story.  It’s so wooden and parochial, like the character is on the end of the author’s arm at a children’s puppet show, acting out lessons of how not to live a life for all the little kiddies in the audience.  The voice is just blank, man.  There’s nothing there.  And I don’t know when this story was set, but it feels like the 50’s and everyone was playing their role to a T, rendering the story even more boring. 

There’s not much more I can say.  Boring characters that can’t breathe life into a tried & true trope, a trope which is also cliché, and then it finishes with the classic TNY finish:  Nothing Fucking Happens.

Also, I saw a new slogan on your page today:  Great Stories Live Here.

Nope.  No sir or ma’am or whatever persuasion your mixed up little hearts can concoct (and I mean everyone has a mixed up heart, not singling any groups out, all people are confused and confusing), great stories do not live here (at least in the fiction).  Well, they don’t live here currently.  If you are insinuating that over the entirety of your run as a publication, do great stories live in your archives, then yes they do.  But the last 20 years have been a real kick in the literary arts crotch-ola.  So ditch the new slogan, fam.  Maybe get on board with something like:  Our Fiction Sucks Fetid Cocks Because We Are Ad Space For Book Publishers.  Or, you know, fetid anything, we don’t have to be sexist about the genitals. Doesn’t even have to be genitals.  Fetid, Pustulating, Disembodied Tonsilliths.  HIAYAAA as Uncle Roger would say.

Anyway, I’m out. 

Also, I feel compelled to write about my life each week but what’s weird is I think that’s become a habit that started when my depression was bleeding into these letters.  But I’m not depressed right now so some weeks I feel like it’s stretching to include bits of my life.  Just FYI.

Okay, maybe a little. I swam with turtles and a monk seal, I can sit on the bottom at 40’ no problem and let go.  And I might even have a job.  Not if they ever read this shit, though!  HAIYAA indeed!

Alright, leaving for real this time.

Snuggles.

Nick