Welcome to the final issue of Empty Sink Publishing.

Adam, Suanne and I are proud of everything we’ve done here at Empty Sink. We’ve published scores of excellent work from poets, authors, and artists from around the world. Putting out this magazine has been a labor of love for all of us, and it is with bittersweet sentiment that we bid it farewell.

On the other hand, none of us can imagine a life without Empty Sink, and we all feel like there’s still more for us to do. We knew that we needed to refocus our efforts. We also knew that we were done with the magazine format.

What we kept coming back to was the idea of publishing short stories. Both Suanne and I are passionate about the form and enjoy working with authors to edit their pieces. And with the advent of a wireless world and people using cell phones as reading devices, we know that short fiction is accessible in a way it never has been before.

We toyed with several different ideas, but in the end, we decided to abandon the magazine format in favor of publishing one quality piece of short fiction per month. This will allow us to focus our efforts on working exclusively with one author at a time to edit and publish their fiction.

We’re very excited about what the future holds and look forward to sinking our teeth into this new endeavor. More to come soon as we prepare to accept submissions again. Our goal is to have our first story out in April, so stay tuned to our Facebook and Twitter feeds for updates about everything Empty Sink. Even better, sign up for our newsletter and get updates before anyone else!

In the meantime, and without further ado, we bring you the final issue of Empty Sink Publishing, the magazine. As a farewell surprise, we’ve welcomed back many of our favorite authors, poets and artists for this issue. And finally, a thank you to all our readers. We hope you’ve enjoyed this magazine as much as we’ve enjoyed publishing it, and look forward to seeing you with more stories in 2017!

E. Branden Hart, Executive Editor, December 18, 2016

CONTENTS OF ISSUE 18:

FICTION

Kim Farleigh — Freedom

Paul Lewellan — Ms. Primrose’s Perfect Feet

Franco Strong — Sussurros de Recurrencia

Jesse Lynn Rucilez — Epicenter

James Hanna — Sam the Poontang Man

Lewis Carter — The Constant Crypt Guard: A Retrospective Epiphany in Three Parts

Darryl Graff — The Apartment

 
REALITY

William C. Crawford — The 18 Minute Rule Throws Jimmy Pro For A Loop In Gotham City

Suanne Schafer — Interview with author Orna Glick

Adam Dubbin — Interview with artist Vakseen

 
POETRY

Kurt Newton — Three Poems

James B. Nicola — Four Poems

Charlie O’Hay — Two Poems

William Doreski — Four Poems

John Grey — Three Poems

 
VISUAL

W. Jack Savage — Five Images

Clint Van Inman — The Other Clint

Michelle Dalton — Five Images

Vakseen — Six Images

Jim Pollock — Seven Images

James Devlin — Alternate Take Number Five