Our inaugural issue of BluntLong Quarterly is finally here. Is it late? Is anything really late if it’s here? And what is here?
As you know, SmokeLong has enjoyed a rad rep over the last 22 years for publishing killer narratives, all under 1000 words. Apparently, we’ve been “a little bitch” about the word count for so long. If a narrative was over by like 2 words, we’d reject it even if it was sick, and apparently that makes us “snobs” but whatever. Right?
So anyway, you know the name SmokeLong apparently—I’m enjoying the word apparently so much right now like it’s blowing my mind apparently—came from the Chinese for how long it should take someone to read a flash narrative. Like about a smoke long. And that’s cool I guess, but come on. And then, we were in LA at AWP, all sharing a vape and talking to the strangers who kept coming into our apartment, and someone said hey why not slow it down a little, then strangers piled on with why all this stress with the word count man? And then one of those delivery robots that brings you stuff blinked its cute doe eyes, handed the vape to me, and said hey man why not widen your horizons. Wow. After we stood there awhile blinking at all the horizons, Nubbin, the delivery robot, said we should start a new journal where all the stories are written stoned and call it BluntLong? Like still flash but calm down man deep breaths man and all that and just like whatever. So long story short (get it?) we now have another journal. A baby. Boom. #baddecisions
Our first issue, while not a themed issue, has a theme. Does that make sense? Apparently it does. Whatever. So it turns out that when you write flash stoned, everyone writes about trees. So there are lots of trees in BluntLong Quarterly Issue 1 though we weren’t going for the trees, just happened like skippity-doo. There’s “Dude, Look, a Tree” by Francis MaGrainer. This narrative clocks in at 1402 words and will put you right to sleep. Angela Kingport’s “What Happened to the Tree? It was Right Here.” re-examines truths about where trees are, have been, and will have gone by the time you finish reading. “Is That Me in the Tree?” by Sweet Dude does things with words that oh I don’t know. And there’s more.
So sit back, light up a blunt, close your eyes and read this ensemble of longer, mellower flash.
Peace Apparently
Christopher Allen
I love you because, well, you know.
