ring

January 31, 2024

The Severed Head

(Readers: this short piece of fiction was submitted to a beach noir competition)

Jaden and Ashley had nearly completed their romantic Cannon Beach weekend.

Fudge? Check.

Kites? Check.

Saltwater taffy? Check.

Glass blowing? Check.

Meaningless trinkets made by child slaves in Asia? Check.

McMansion rental that obliterated two charming cottages? Check.

Infused local IPAs? Check.

Oregon pinot noirs? Check.

Dank weed? Check. A soothing hybrid strain called Tom McCall.

Official session with magic mushrooms? Not yet, but coming soon.

Visit to the cozy independent bookstore? Check. (Didn’t buy anything.)

Hot sex? Why bother? Jaden and Ashley had their phones and tablets for all the sensual stimulation they needed.

Only one thing was missing from the weekend: a gift from the sea that would adorn their Portland town home, where they both worked remotely and didn’t have the slightest idea what the work was about. Something useless no doubt.

So far, on their beach walks, they’d struck out. No agates, shells or beaverwood. And the tide was too high to murder sea stars.

Right before departing, Jaden and Ashley took a final beach walk. They just knew the sea would deliver some kind of commodity! That’s the purpose of our oceans.

Something at the wrack line arrested their attention. They walked over to investigate. It was a crab ring! A huge commercial one with two red floats!

Thank you Poseidon!

Then Jaden and Ashley noticed the contents inside the ring: a severed head, an eyeless man with tattoos of Cyrillic letters about his face.

Wow! Weird! Decapitation is cool! They clapped and did a little jig on the sand.

Maybe the Haystack Rock cougar did it!

The couple took selfies and posted them to social media platforms. It blew up everywhere.

Jaden and Ashley had to have that crab ring for a wall decoration!

Untangling it from the kelp was easy enough, but how to get that head out?

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The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

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Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.