“Welcome to our broken issue. We have broken trees and broken glass, a foundling and a changeling, a demon lover, a lost leader losing his head, and two trapped women smashing the lock(et). Our poets speak of cold breezes and blackened blossoms, lute strings and chains of gold, broken factories, bodies side by side and waiting, the chime of coins, ( Read more... )

For anyone who might have been trying to submit stories or poems to Not One of Us, only to have their emails bounce undelivered, here’s the scoop. Our former website, with its attached email, was sold out from under us on February 26. As you can imagine, this brought operations here pretty much to a standstill ( Read more... )

“No one knows for certain when our title song was written, but during World War II it became a (sort of) patriotic ode to allied soldiers, often sung with profane lyrics. Its relevance here is that we have one long story and four short ones, including one about a mountain. The cover art captures the long and the short of it. And we have animals: ( Read more... )

Here’s the standard account of my publications for the year.

Magazine issues and collections (editor and publisher)

Coping, January 2014.

Not One of Us #51, April 2014.

Not One of Us #52, October 2014.

Journal articlesRobert J. Blendon, John M. Benson, Mary T. Gorski, Kathleen J. Weldon, Debra J. Pérez, Frederick Mann, and Carolyn E. Miller ( Read more... )

“And now for something completely different, our alternative issue. We have a woman looking for an alternative to absence, a narrative of doubtful historicity, a restitching of history, a choice between staying and going, and a daughter whose history seems written into the fabric of reality; not to mention mushrooms and sleep-weed to take us to ( Read more... )

“We might have called this our ‘autumn issue,’ but here in the northern hemisphere that would have been a confusing name for an April publication. So instead we’ll say the theme is not dead yet. We have a woman defying her own personal death, a man living the puzzle of the not-quite-dead, and a washer cleansing all precious griefs; one who lives ( Read more... )

I recently rediscovered some photos I had taken while a group of us in eleventh grade made a silent film version of Bret Harte’s “The Boom in the ‘Calaveras Clarion.’” I had some of the photos reproduced electronically so I could share them ( Read more... )

“The world is full of things we have to cope with. In this volume, people face freezing cold and nothingness, disease, loneliness, and recent post-apocalypse, with a bug in the brain and lost on the wrong side of town. Characters cope whatever way they can: telling a comfort lie, collecting shoes of the dead, cherishing a moment of sunlight, taking ( Read more... )

Here’s the standard account of my publications for the year.

Magazine issues and collections (editor and publisher)

Lost and Lonely, January 2013.

Not One of Us #49, April 2013.

Not One of Us #50, October 2013.

Journal articlesMichael D. Botta, Robert J. Blendon, and John M. Benson. “Cost Effectiveness Decision-Making and US Public Opinion ( Read more... )

“We’re calling this one deep time, and not just because it’s our fiftieth issue. We have tree ferns and giant dragonflies, carboniferous in a carboy, cheerful gentlemen with a bone-bead bracelet, a mother who won’t let them take her son away, a monster chosen, and a last organic. Our poets give us a ninth wave and a kingless kingdom, a bone-built ( Read more... )