Are you full yet?

As if last week didn’t have enough fooooooooood in it, it’s time for Instant Noodles.

Instant Noodles is our online literary magazine. Free to read, and free to submit to. The magazine used to be my own private project, with a “little” help from Dave on most of the covers. I believe I did photos for the first and third one, and then Dave did his usual great job making them look nice. For the other covers I believe I have pretty much presented a vision to Dave, and he has created them. He’s pretty good at that art thing.

Let’s take a look at the holiday covers over the years.

The first one is a still life I set up, and includes a lot of my favorite things: a photo of my beloved grandmother, looking sassy, as she was, butter, a fancy glass (I love glasses!), and part of my small collection of vintage New Years Eve noise makers, for the theme of “Hot, Buttered Holidays.” The holidays often have joy, but sometimes also have stress, sadness, etc., so I have always wanted the end-of-year issue to be light-hearted, hence the silly themes of the covers and the issues, as you will see.

Highlights! The issue had wonderful pieces: a really funny story by Nancy North Walker. D. E. Hardy won an award (Best of the Net) for “Basic Holiday Math.” And Alan Bern gave the issue a great photo with “Late Night.” It was the people I’d published in Instant Noodles whom I initially invited to join Old Scratch Press, and Alan Bern was one of the people who said yes.

The second year we went with the theme of “Ho, Oh, No, You Didn’t!” and we also gave the issue over to authors from our Solstice anthology, because we moved that year, and the authors were so kind and patient about the disruption in the schedule that we “gave” the issue to them (if they wanted to submit) rather than opening it up to the public. It is a really memorable collections of works. I direct you to The Christmas Surprise, by R. David Fulcher, of Old Scratch Press among many other endeavors, and the lovely poem, “Holy Illusions,” by Virginia Watts, who has just released a new collection..

To “cover” the idea of folks doing things during the holidays they might regret later, we went for the light lift of… booze. I took the weight to try and “invent” a libation. Someone had to take one, or two, for the team. Ha! I don’t actually drink alcohol usually, but I was obsessed with amareno cherries and ginger beer that year. I don’t remember what happened after that. 😉

For the next year we went with the theme of “Cooold Turkey.” And Dave came through with one of the silliest covers ever.

As your favorite editor I would have to caution you away from using those extra Os in cold, but as a silly person… perfect! And that turkey has won The Big Apple for sure that New Year’s Eve. I don’t know how Dave managed to make a headless thing look so happy!

We added sound that year, and you can listen to “We Do This Every Year,” by Rebecca Brothers, or “Turkey or Potato Pancakes,” by Nadja Maril, also of Old Scratch Press. Nadja writes often about food, as you can see in this post.

Last year we did a play on the word noodles, as suggested by Robert Fleming of Old Scratch Press, to come up with, “Holiday Noods,” and I asked Dave for something akin to naked people wearing barrels as clothing, only the barrels were soup cups. As you can see, he did much better:

I love that he both found and added on the Sears Portrait Studio designation. So funny. You can hear Hugh Findlay read, “Rose Bowl Parade,” or see Joan Mazza’s mama frying sausages for Christmas.

Which brings us to this year. The theme for this year’s holiday/end-of-year issue is “Gravy,” and was chosen, like all of the submissions were this time, by the Old Scratch Press team.

I asked Dave to make me “The Peanuts gang skating on the lake, only the lake is made of gravy.”

How did he do?

Perfectly, right? There’s something… very creepy about that brown lake, and funny.

Well, silly is always the vibe I’m going for.

I’m not going to recommend any from this issue because it’s brand new, and you can take a look and see for yourself which gravy-themed piece would take the prize if you were giving it. It really means a lot to authors and artists to earn a publication, and I so appreciate them trusting us with their work. It is an especially funny issue, and I hope you’ll use a little of your scrolling time to give it a read, or listen, or look!

Happy holiday season to all , and happy 5 years to Instant Noodles!