The Literary Party Blog

#1!

The Alien Buddha Gets Isolated & Weird has debuted at #1 on Amazon's Absurdist Fiction list! Congrats to all!

The Alien Buddha Gets Isolated & Weird

The Alien Buddha Gets Isolated and Weird is Out Now!

This behemoth of unhinged madness clocks in at just over 400 pages and features 29 fiendish works of fiction and poetry from 20 stark-raving wordsmiths.

Also in this collection:

• A full reprint of A Comet Passing by Vanessa Napolitano. Set during the approach of comet Hale-Bopp in 1997, it peels back layers of longing and desperation in a world where faith is a hoax and salvation is death.

• Last Sunrise on Titan by Clarabelle Miray Fields. A doomed starman dies in his failing ship, haunted by memories of the wife who was always right about his fatal fuckery.

• James Schwartz’s The Oil Eaters: A Queer Dystopian Clifi Story. A drifter hustles, seduces, and survives across truck stops, swamps, and late-stage capitalism.

• The Unicorn Murders by Kathryn Lee Hamilton. A woman confronting her imprisoned father about his abuse uncovers a chilling family secret.

• Dana Knott’s Appeasing the Alligator Gods. A coked-up Florida man haunted by gators.

• Severed by Steff Sirois. A girl obsessed with her dad’s preserved severed finger spirals after cutting off her own. From her new collection Mary’s Hand is Ants.

• Jack Preston King’s Or Memories Draped by the Tyrannical Spider. Memory reimagined as a parasitic, malevolent force.

• Kay Hanifen’s 48 Hours. A woman trapped in a shifting cave fights to survive against the dark unknown.

And that’s just scratching the surface. Get your copy now and dive into the madness.

ICYMI:

BEATLIFE MAGAZINE - POEM OF THE WEEK

WHISPERS OF THE SEASONS - A CONTEMPORARY HAIKU ANTHOLOGY

"AMISH ROAD TRIP" A SHORT STORY

#librarycardsignupmonth

Time to remind everyone that September is #librarycardsignupmonth! Photos of my childhood library in Michigan (with a hitching rail in the back for horse and buggies!), Hilo Public Library where I spent hours in that beautiful courtyard and my favorite library in Detroit. Support your local library!

The Alien Buddha Gets Isolated and Weird

Whispers of the Seasons – A Contemporary Haiku Anthology

Whispers of the Seasons – A Contemporary Haiku Anthology (Fresh Words) is now available in paperback and ebook formats! Includes my seventeen syllables - I'm in my Haiku Era!

BeatLife Magazine Poem

BeatLife The Official Magazine of the National Beat Poetry Foundation, Inc has published my Sleepcast Poem as their Poem of the Week!

The New Verse News: "Empty Horizons"

My takeaway is the Amish communities need access to mental health care and resources, in today's New Verse News.

Alien Buddha Press Summer Sale!

Photos by George L. Blosser

Colorado Springs, CO. 2025

Photos by George L. Blosser

The Alien Buddha Loves You Too 🧡

A defiant maiden offered as a sacrifice to the three tyrant kings survives deadly trials with Sleep and War in Allister Nelson’s Mr. Crowley.

In Kathryn Lee Hamilton’s Pieces of Fortune, the narrator cruises in a Lamborghini with a bumper sticker declaring: I’m sorry I haven’t been to church lately; I’ve been busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian; the cookie has spoken.

In Isis Phoenix’s ball-crushing tale of erotic justice, a dominatrix turns a dirtbag lobbyist’s humiliation into a brutal ballet.

From Lemmy Winegardner, Melody Blackford is Going to Kill Me; they’re foster siblings, no blood relation whatsoever, so it’s fine. Totally fucked, but fine.

Poetry from E.D. Watson, Linda M. Crate, Sanjeev Sethi, Robert J.W., Jackie Chou, Steph Patterson, Rachel Turney, David Estringel, James Schwartz, and many more.

Sixteen stories spanning 169 pages, plus over 100 pages of poetry from more than 30 poets.

In this 281-page collection, love hurts. It stinks. It’s a river. It’s a battlefield. It’s often kind of gross, and it makes people do some truly diabolical things. Inside: graphic depictions of sex, murder, assault, revenge, yearning, and bodily fluids.

The Alien Buddha Loves You Too is available here!

Chief of War

Have you seen Chief of War yet? I cannot recommend it enough!

ICYMI: THE PROPHECY (poem)

Big Sky Beatnik

Garden of the Gods

Abdul El-Sayed for Senate

The #MISen primary is important - please consider supporting the candidate fighting for #MedicareForAll and doesn't take corporate PAC money!

Learn more abdulforsenate.com

Rainbow Family Gathering 2025

Happy Motor City Pride 2025! 🌈

Pride 2025 Poetry! 🏳️‍🌈

Happy Pride Month! Check out my Pride 2025 poetry showcase here!

Alien Buddha Zine #75 Now Available!

ALIEN BUDDHA ZINE #75 — The Milestone Edition is HERE.

Read an EXCERPT.

This 210-page landmark issue features over 40 writers from Alien Buddha Press’ 9-year history, with new work and previews from Meredith Brown, Jon Wesick, and Julian Thumm.

Inside you'll find voices like:

Heath Brougher, Juleigh Howard-Hobson, Kaci Skiles Laws, Kelsie Stark, Whitnee Coy, Beth Gulley, Alise Versella, Tanya Rakh, Amy Solo, Yuan Changming, Donny Winter, Alex Carrigan, A. R. Tivadar, Tom Folske, M. Kelly Peach, Linda M. Crate, Collin J. Rae, James Dorr, J.I.B., Swetha Amit, Taylor Dibbert, Thasia Anne, Grace Daly, Aishwariya Laxmi, Samantha Slaven, Andrew K. Arnett, Ryan Derby, Ashwini Gangal, Richard LeDue, John Stickney, James Benger, James Schwartz, Adele Evershed, Joseph Cassis, Benjamin Drevlow, Melissa Anne Tolentino, Scott Thomas Outlar, Jared Morningstar, aviva lilith, Madi Huffman, and Gretchen Filart.

Grab your copy now.

Amish Road Trip by James Schwartz

A double feature from Alien Buddha Press: SUMMER SUCKS!!!

In "Amish Road Trip" by James Schwartz — a glitter-soaked city stripper takes a detour into the corn-fed closet of his past, then gets road head and regret in equal measure.

Then in John A. DeLaughter’s "The Specters Beyond the Surf" — a town’s buried biotech horrors bubble back to the surface.

Both are featured in this 261-page collection packed with 26 short stories and 10 poems spanning horror, drama, and comedy.

Pop-up Poetry Reading!

Pop-up poetry reading tonight at Lightshow Bobs aka The Shop! I love all the talent and creativity in Detroit, thank you for a wonderful evening!

Pride Poetry June 1st! 🏳️‍🌈

Hey blog readers, thanks for visiting! I just checked the blog stats - wow! A lot of visitors from around the world! A few 2025 updates on my books:

Congrats to The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America (Kindle 2011) for recently charting on Amazon's Gay Poetry Top 100 Bestseller list! I'll be dropping Pride poetry June 1st, stay tuned!

My short story Amish Road Trip is now available via the new Alien Buddha Press anthology Summer Sucks!

A year ago Alien Buddha Press published my "greatest hits" collection Some Are and Most Aren't and It's Always Been Like That: Selected Poems 2004-2024 which was a trip down memory lane! My new book Big Island Beatnik is another look back, to my Hawaii era through poetics and photography:

"The writings in Big Island Beatnik depict intoxicating vistas of discovery as Schwartz explores his surroundings through a lens of psychogeography, its influence on his search for spiritual context to his experiences. I am left with a feeling of haunting elegy, and yet Schwartz speaks not only of elegiac loss but of re-birth, replenishment and continuation, with exhilarating portrayals of volcanoes and skies and seas that are themselves living entities."

- u.v.ray, Author of Speed Trials 94.

Lastly, you can find my Detroit themed poetry and photography in Alien Buddha Zine #75 coming soon!

Big Island Beatnik Book Club 🌋 📚

Aloha from Detroit! Check out my Big Island Beatnik Book Club, full reading list via Fevers of the Mind!

Big Island Beatnik: Poetry & Photography from the Lower East Rift Zone (Alien Buddha Press) by James Schwartz

Summer Sucks!!!

My short story AMISH ROAD TRIP is included in Alien Buddha Press' anthology Summer Sucks!!! now available!

A collection of short stories and poetry exploring the dark side of summertime.

On a sweltering Arizona drive to scatter her late husband’s ashes at her brother’s roadside memorial, a grieving woman finds the angel statue commemorating him destroyed. At a rundown summer camp for troubled teens, three ex-cons working as cleaners battle exhaustion, drug use, and brutal heat, until a terrifying vision in the outhouse suggests something sinister festers beneath the camp’s filthy surface. On the morning of their tenth anniversary, a man’s wife leaves him and their dog dies from a caffeine overdose, leaving him spiraling. A disabled teen escapes his oppressive religious upbringing, stumbles through addiction, abuse, and moral failure, and accidentally becomes a viral hero—then a serial killer—after beating a violent maniac with a brass Buddha statue. After a grisly cycling accident outside a Colorado convenience store, a strung-out former EMT fixates on the smear of brains.

Content Warning: Oppressive heat, relentless dread, and the kind of discomfort that lingers long after the sun sets. Some stories may scorch a little too deep. Tread carefully. Summer Sucks!!!

26 short stories and 10 poems, spanning 261 pages of horror, drama, and comedy.

Read a preview here!

"Big Island Beatnik" Now Available! 🌋

Happy pub day to Big Island Beatnik: Poetry & Photography from the Lower East Rift Zone (Alien Buddha Press), now available via Amazon!

Read an excerpt here.

"The sweetest winds play

On this rugged coastline

Preserved in time today

As I offer my prayers here too…"

James Schwartz returns to Alien Buddha Press with Big Island Beatnik, his fifth release following Motor City Mix (2022), Sunset in Rome (2022), Long Lost Friend (2023), and Some Are and Most Aren't and It's Always Been Like That: Selected Poems 2004-2024 (2024). This collection drifts between poetry and photography, capturing the Lower East Rift Zone in all its burning, blooming, ever-shifting beauty.

Schwartz is a poet of movement—across landscapes, through memory, into transformation. Volcanoes churn, dolphins rise, crystal bowls ring. In sacred spaces and humid diners, in ash-covered beaches and moonlit bodies, he finds divinity, always. The rhythm is hypnotic, the vision uncontainable. Sit with these pages. Breathe. The Pacific is impossibly azure. The lava still flows.

FOREWORD by Rev. Dr. Raymont Anderson - Founding Minister and Spiritual Director of The Center for Spiritually Integrated Arts