Joel's Writing Studio "What we need is imagination, but imagination is a terrible straitjacket." - Richard Feynman Right then, you have somehow or other stumbled upon the writing studio of Joel Van Valin, novelist and lit journal publisher extraordinaire. To begin with a few pleasantries, let me say that I live in St. Paul with my wife Jennifer, work as a technical writer, know all the constellations and have an inexplicable fondness for The Kinks. There, that should break the ice. My publishing credits include a novel, The Flower of Clear Burning, as well as short fiction and poetry published in various obscure venues. My main hobby is Whistling Shade, a literary newspaper that contains stories, poetry, literary essays and many other topping things. So welcome to the studio. I've put some stories and poetry below. Feel free to kick back on the sofa and grab something to read. Heck, have a beer if you want. About Whistling Shade       About The Flower of Clear Burning       Published Work
Latest from the Front Lines I'm looking for a home for my last novel, The Grand Dissolute, a speculative mystery/thriller about a young man who discovers his girlfriend is a time traveler from the 29th century. It takes place in St. Paul, mostly, though we traipse to another planet (Tarrymore) in the future and some different locales on Earth in the past. My mother will never understand this one... The Rochester Post-Bulletin recently published a travel poem I wrote about the Root River. A newspaper publishing poetry ... what a radical concept! I also have a couple of poems appearing in the latest issue of Free Verse - one of them about the I35 bridge collapse (which I was damn close to being personally involved in).		Studio Contents Poetry Stars in the Rain Bluebells Red Tree Song Fiction Torech the Shipwright
About Whistling Shade So why did I start this odd little magazine? Well, I'll tell you the truth - I'm not the dean of an English department, I don't have "connections" with The Loft or the New Yorker, and I'm not an eccentric millionaire. And no, I'm not some sort of "writer in residence" at Iowa City. I'm just an ordinary guy; I live with my wife, hike with dogs, drink beer. I do have a degree in English from the 'U', if that makes you feel better. The basic reason I started Whistling Shade is ... no one else had. I thought it rather strange that in a metro area of 2 million, vibrant with theaters and cafes and bookstores and a major university, no one had thought to start a popular literary newspaper. So I figured, heck, I can do that. It turns out that Whistling Shade is quite unique—even larger towns like San Francisco and New York do not, apparently, have their own freely distributed literary newspaper (if you find one, let me know!). Whistling Shade is supported by the rather nice salary I get for being a technical writer at a local software company, PBS. The software we write is for newspapers, so I've learned a lot about the newspaper industry there. And also about the technical aspects of formatting and printing publications. So, presto, the idea just came to me to put all of this to a good use and start a literary magazine. Oh, and if you're curious as to how I came up with a wacky title like "Whistling Shade", see the editorial to the first issue.
About The Flower of Clear Burning Lovers of fantasy that like heroic battles and plenty of action inside a believable plot will want to read THE FLOWER OF CLEAR BURNING. Joel Val Valin is a gifted storyteller who will appeal to fans of Patricia Briggs and Candace Sans. - Harriet Clausner, TheBestReviews.com The Flower Of Clear Burning is confidently recommended as being an adventurous and highly entertaining novel of courage and determination. Midwest Book Review You get a taste of what it was like to be men and women from that era in times of plague and war. - Patricia McGrew, Timeless Tales I wrote The Flower in 1996, more or less just to entertain myself while I did research on a far more serious novel, As You Came from the Holy Land. But, in one of those little ironies the seem to pervade the life of young writers, The Flower of Clear Burning was accepted by a publisher (the first one I sent it to) while As You Came from the Holy Land is yet to find a home. The main characters of The Flower are three witches—Valla, Theresa, and Hanoli. They're not quite like the witches of MacBeth, as two of them are right sexy, and they're all pretty good ladies at heart. In fact they're going on a dangerous quest, through the dark forest east of their town of Hillkirk, in order to find a legendary flower. The flower is said to have the power to cure the plague that is slowly making its way up the coast. Oh, and if that's not enough, there's an invasion by some barbarians in the east brewing. A handful of other characters also get mixed up in all this ... there's Theresa's cheap merchant husband, Clarance; a foreign doctor named Marshall of Heith (Hanoli's sweet on him); a noble forest knight named Carlbear and his lover, a mysterious sorceress; Jeb, a roguish prince; and a drunken gypsy named Razi. The Flower of Clear Burning was published in 2002. Unfortunately the original publisher, NovelBooks Inc., went bankrupt, and so the novel is no longer in print. You can however still read the book by downloading an electronic version from Fictionwise.com.		Excerpt Chapter 1 from The Flower of Clear Burning
Published Work Below is a list of stuff I've published so far. "Root River Pilgrimage", Rochester Post-Bulletin. "The Bride Passed By", "Crossing Over", "The White Forest", Free Verse. "Tell Me Where All Past Yeares Are", Downgo Sun. Cafe Rammarico, Coffee Stories, selected stories from the Café Diem Fiction Contest 2005. (First prize.) Disobedience, Dislocate, Summer 2005. Dislocate is a print journal published by the Creative Writing program at the University of Minnesota. The Keys, The Copperfield Review, Summer 2004. This historical fiction e-zine is my favorite place to while away a lunch break! The Man with the Beautiful Wife, Small Spiral Notebook, Spring 2004. This is a New York-based lit journal that also has print editions. "Dream of a Street in Heaven", Half Drunk Muse, Spring 2004. This little e-zine is packed with some great poetry! "Lines for a Real Estate Agent" was one of the editors "select six" on the poetry page over at Jacobyte Books. "Red Tree Song", "Bluebells", and the short story "Horse and Rider", Muse Apprentice Guild, Spring 2003. Here's a challenge - see if you can find my poems in this volumnous issue! The Gingerbread House, Urban Pioneer, April 2003. A story that pokes fun at genre fiction. Martin Slackmeyer and Television, The Writers Hood, March 2003. My humorous sketch about an anti-television fanatic. "A Spell for Lighter Rain",canwehaveourballback.com, issue 16, February 2003. This rather odd site is chalk full of good poems. Four of my poems appeared in the Poets-in-Tents Literary Journal of Community Poets. "House Painter", Gumball Poetry, Fall 2002. These guys also publish their poems rolled up in capsules in special "gumball poetry" machines. Just when you thought the world couldn't get any stranger ... "Leaving England" and "Girl Walking in the Wind", Kota Press, September 2002. This is a splendid site devoted to themes of loss and healing. Literature Today - A View from the Trenches, Urban Pioneer, September 2002. My broadside against big publishing. Pig's Eye, Bygone Days, July 2002. Story about fur trappers in Minnesota in the 1830s. The Golden Age, Alien Worlds #27, June 2002. Pulp sci-fi, "visitor from Earth worshipped as a god" sort of thing. Resurrection, Fifth Di, April 2002. Speculative story involving a Revolutionary War veteran and time travel. Really! The Rescue at St. Bridget's Cove, Alien Worlds #22, February 2002. Rescuers are sent to find survivors of a small ship that crashed on a distant moon.

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