Diversions take us off course. They’re a winding path meant to pull attention and draw us further away from our goals. When people use the word ‘diversion’ to describe someone’s passion, they mean that it’s a trifle, a small distraction of little importance.
Many of us will never be able to make writing a full-time gig. It’s a hard fact, but a true one. Writing becomes the second (or third) job that we fit into our week. A distraction from our Wall Street, Devil Wears Prada, Working Girl, aspirations.
Diversions are a source of joy and passion. They can energize you and make that workday a little more bearable. Diversions should skim alongside your goals, becoming a smooth section of road that you can dip into when the pavement gets too bumpy. Let it shelter you and ease your path.
The stories that we’ve collected for this issue all feature diversions that knock characters off course. At times the diversions are benign, something that allows them to draw some comfort, other times the diversions are lethal, a distraction that leads to death.
“The Honey Cure” by Robert Francis is a story about a sweet diversion that takes a newly married couple off the beaten path
“If You Require Assistance” by Chloie Piveral, a women carrying a rebellious secret draws comfort and distraction from a computer guidance system
“Roy Reschedules with Death” by Karen Heslop, as a family tries to accept the inevitable, death itself proves to be a distraction
“Flying with the Dead” by Sabrina Vourvoulias is a reprint covering the commitments made to family and work as an ICE agent tries to divert attention from their community
“A Provenance of Hunger” by Emma Miller is a story about the effect a single book can have on the world for centuries
“Station Rain” by Erik Burdett and “Sides of Glass” by John Grey, are poems focusing on the distractions of life and death
“Not What This is Really About” is a powerful personal essay by Amy Robinson about how diversions can provide solace and escape when life takes a dive
Interview with cover artist Sharlyn Artieda about how she works
Take a final look at your social media, turn off the Netflix, find a new diversion within our fourth issue.
Apparition Literary Magazine is funded by the editors and by your kind donations. If you’d like to support us, you can follow us on Facebook or Twitter and please consider donating and/or subscribing via our website. For 2019, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve increased our pay rate for short stories to $0.03 per word and poetry to $15 flat rate.
Thank you for reading,
Rebecca Bennett
Associate Editor
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Rebecca Bennett Owner/Senior Editor and Cover Art DirectorAs the sole Canadian, Rebecca spends too much time hiding her ‘eh’s and adding proper vowels to words. Her short stories and poetry have been published in Strange Horizons, Bourbon Penn, Luna Station Quarterly and other literary locales. You can follow her occasional tweets at @_rebeccab
