James Thomas

Modern loneliness and the absence of intimacy amongst London's millions are the ills suffered by the quirky yet deeply melancholic 30-something, Joseph Bogart. Weighed down with emotional baggage and feeling lost amidst a mass of failed relationships, Joseph uses his sharp wit and tragicomedy to fight the hopelessness gnawing at him. Through his trials, we discover if Joseph is able to find a successful way out of his life of 'quiet desperation'. A work of literary fiction that dives into the real complexity and nuance of mental health, especially in men. Depression, anxiety, grief, and hope are explored through a mixture of prose, wit, and unflinching honesty, in a story that will move you to laugh, cry, and reflect.

This is a very silly book. There are lots of jokes (I mean it; there are hundreds). Also: dozens of stories, poems, diagrams, lists, and cartoons. If you like laughing, oh boy, watch out, because of the aforementioned jokes. Except they're not really jokes. They're more like entries in a contest for the Stupidest Sentence Ever Written. James Thomas decided a few years ago that he wanted to write comedy for the rest of his life. Write for comedy films. Write stand-up. Write humor books. Write funny T-shirt slogans. Write comic strips. Write absurd text adventure games. Write tweets. Write gags for the undersides of rocks. So he declared himself the President of Twitter and enjoyed his new-found glory sitting hunched over a rock with a crayon, putting the finishing touches on this very weird book. Inside you'll find nuggets of comedy gold, including "How to Write a Sentence"; "Edgar Allan Poe Goes to a Music Festival"; and "Eleven Drafts of an Opening Paragraph." You'll also find Silver and Bronze winners of yet-to-be-determined microcomedy awards that you have to read to remember. And you can't miss the astonishing original illustrations of Dinosaurs of the Future (they're very big).

An addictive new collection of very short stories curated by Flash Fiction editor James Thomas and microfiction writer Robert Scotellaro. Comprised of 300 words or fewer, microfiction is difficult to write but delightful and absorbing to read. With a foreword from Robert Shapard, coeditor of the Norton flash and sudden fiction anthologies, an afterword by Christopher Merrill, coeditor of Flash Fiction International, an introduction from its venerable editors, and a star-studded table of contents, New Micro is a veritable who’s who of the increasingly popular world of microfiction. Authors include newcomers and established writers alike: Amy Hempel, John Edgar Wideman, Kim Addonizio, Richard Brautigan, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Stuart Dybek, Joyce Carol Oates, and James Tate among them. With 90 authors and 140 stories, New Micro offers a unique reading experience, a chorus of voices both fresh and familiar, real and surreal but always enlightening―distinctive and exceptional pieces of fiction that pulse and resonate, each with its own story to tell.