John Bruening: At Any Given Moment
John Bruening is, in his own words, at any given moment a writer, editor, publisher, artist, marketer, creator, dad, and husband.
He has been a professional writer and editor since the 1980s in a variety of disciplines: journalism, magazine editing, marketing, advertising and small-press book editing. He has won two awards for feature writing (2000 and 2011) from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is a co-founder and editor for Ohio-based Flinch Books, and the editor-in-chief of ARC Magazine, a quarterly publication covering the welding and fabrication culture.
Tell us a bit about your latest work…
This past April, Jim Beard and I published OCCUPIED PULP on our Flinch Books imprint. (For those who may not be familiar with Flinch, we publish novels and anthologies that span a variety of genres – adventure, mystery, horror, occult, and more – and it’s all written and packaged in the spirit of classic pulp fiction.) OCCUPIED PULP is a collection of short stories set in Allied-occupied Europe and Japan in the months immediately following the end of World War II – a time and place where the map of half the world was being redrawn and a whole new global balance of power was taking shape. The war was over, but old scores were still being settled and the geopolitical intrigue was getting into high gear. We have a great lineup of writers in this book: Will Murray, Patricia Gilliam, Bobby Nash, William Patrick Maynard and Justin Bell. In addition to co-editing the book, I also contributed a story of my own called “Searching for Benito.” Everyone on this project was on their A-game – not just the writers but also the cover artist (Adam Shaw) and the designer (Maggie Ryel). The end result is something we’re very proud of.
Just a few weeks prior to OCCUPIED PULP, Mechanoid Press issued WAR FOR MONSTER EARTH, the third and final installment in the Monster Earth trilogy originally developed several years ago by James Palmer and Jim Beard. I contributed a story to this anthology called “Titans of Tropic Fire,” which takes place in the Amazon jungle of South America. Anyone who’s been following my work for the last few years will know that stories about radioactive, fire-breathing kaiju in an apocalyptic battle for global domination is way outside of my wheelhouse. On top of that, my story had to fit into the context of a larger story arc established by an editor and five other contributing writers, so that was additionally challenging. But it felt good to stretch myself a little bit, and I think I pulled it off well enough not to embarrass myself. (Then again, the book has yet to receive many reviews, so it may be too early to tell).
Read more:
https://seanhtaylor.blogspot.com/2021/07/john-bruening-at-any-given-moment.html
