Urbantasm
A magical teen-noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan.
Impure Lichigan
Sword and Sorcery from the Great Lakes Realm.
Other Novels and Short Stories
Anthology Publications
““Seeing Green,” a short story,” Flint Fictionology Substack (paid) (28 March, 2024)
““Well, that’s boring,”” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (15 March, 2024)
“Fearful Ruminations, Episode 2,” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (4 March, 2024)
“Coconuts, Candles, and Accidental Gardens,” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (16 February, 2024)
“A Fine Place to Be,” Flint Fictionology Substack (paid) (31 October, 2023)
“Four Updates and an Essay,” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (14 October, 2023)
“The Beauty of the DIY Residency” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (11 September, 2023)
“Zero Gravity, a short story,” Flint Fictionology Substack (paid) (16 July, 2023)
“My Midwestern Fleetwood Mac,” Belt Magazine (15 July, 2023)
“Get out. Go in.” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (6 July, 2023)
“Lights, Camera, Adaptation!” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (10 May, 2023)
“Flowers, a short story,” Flint Fictionology Substack (paid) (4 May, 2023)
“Competing Advice on How to Write,” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (23 April, 2023)
“How to Save an Arts Journal?” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (24 March, 2023)
“Rant #1: The Hidden Cost of Compromise,” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (11 March, 2023)
“Fearful Ruminations, Episode 1,” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (4 March, 2023)
“The World Famous Waterfront,” Flint Fictionology Substack (paid) (17 February, 2023)
“Advice on Writing from Frankenstein’s Monster,” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (9 February, 2023)
“A Fictionologist’s Bucket List,” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (2 February, 2023)
“Let’s Go Looking for Magic,” Flint Fictionology Substack (free) (27 january, 2023)
“26 Miles on Foot in Flint, Connor Coyne’s Walk Is Both Ancient and Intimate,” East Village Magazine (7 July, 2020)
“The Moral Power of Rust Belt Labor,” Belt Magazine (25 October, 2019)
“One Question,” Hypertext Magazine (14 October, 2019)
“Enjoying Your Michigan Cottage Garden from January to December,” The Creatively Green Write at Home Mom (4 October, 2019)
“How to Tell and Show Like a Champ,” I Smell Sheep (30 September, 2019)
“When You’re Praying, Don’t Fuck Around,” The Open End (26 March, 2019)
“One Question,” Hypertext Magazine (9 September, 2018)
“The State of Michigan has stopped providing free bottled water to Flint residents; Here’s why that’s unconscionable,” Belt Magazine (15 April, 2018)
“A Flint resident on the good, the bad, and the complicated in Netflix’s gritty new docu-drama, ‘Flint Town’,” Belt Magazine (15 March, 2018)
“Rightsizing Thanksgiving in the Rust Belt,” Belt Magazine (22 November, 2017)
“Eventime and Nightwalks: A Philosophy of To-Do Lists,” Moomers Journal of Moomers Studies, 15 (December 2017)
“I live in Flint. All the justice in the world won’t undo the damage done here,” Vox.com (15 June, 2017)
“Village Life: Midnight run leads to handcuffs and a jolt about privilege,” East Village Magazine (6 January, 2017)
“The Flint Water Crisis is not over,” Vox.com (21 December, 2016)
“The Problems with Breakfast,” Moomers Journal of Moomers Studies, 13 (December 2016)
“Bathtime,” Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology, edited by Scott Atkinson / Belt Publishing (19 April, 2016)
“Flint, Michigan’s water crisis: what the national media got wrong” Vox.com (20 January, 2016)
“My Life in the Gothic Funk Movement,” Moomers Journal of Moomers Studies, 11 (December 2015)
“Flint After Emergency Manager Discussed,” East Village Magazine, 53, no. 3 (April 2015)
“Spencer’s Art House prompts Carriage Town discord,” East Village Magazine, 53, no. 2 (March 2015)
“Field Research with Connor Coyne,” Flint Expatriates (27 November 2014)
“Ghost ship sails Gilkey Creek,” East Village Magazine, 52, no. 8 (August 2014)
“Essay: Flint Needs Revenue Solution,” East Village Magazine, online (12 July 2014)
“Essay: We are mysterious animals,” East Village Magazine, online (3 July 2014)
“Untitled,” Coauthor with Desiree Duell, Mark’s Hat: Anthology of Experimental Writing from Flint, Michigan in 2014 A.D. (July 2014)
“Central Park getting new LED streetlights,” East Village Magazine, 52, no. 6 (June 2014)
“How to Spend the Best Years of Your Life Inventing a Fictitious City in Eight Easy Steps,” Moomers Journal of Moomers Studies, 6 (May 2014)
“Essay: Following the river to find my place,” East Village Magazine, online (24 March 2014)
“Central Park discusses lighting,” East Village Magazine, 52, no. 3 (March 2014)
“My Remarkable Home, Its Beautiful People,” East Village Magazine, 52, no. 1 (January 2014)
“Orbituary,” Moomers Journal of Moomers Studies, 5 (December 2013)
“Group Discusses Blighted Houses,” East Village Magazine, 51, no. 7 (July 2013)
“Central Park Group Discusses Safety, Grants,” East Village Magazine, 51, no. 5 (May 2013)
“Opinion: Some questions about Flint Farmers’ Market move,” East Village Magazine, 51, no. 4 (April 2013)
“Party,” Qua Literary and Fine Arts Magazine (U of M – Flint) (Fall 2011)
“Flint’s Illegal Occupation,” Broadside, 18 (2011)
“In Flint,” Broadside, 17 (2011)
“OOOOO,” Moria Poetry Zine, 12, no. 3 (Winter 2010)
“The Babysitter,” Broadside, 10 (2010)
“Dash Against Darkness,” Santa Clara Review, 96, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2009)
“Target store on target for fall 2010, despite lawsuit,” Chi·Town Daily News (Chicago, IL) (May 12, 2009)
“The Next Pressing Political Discussion,” Broadside, 1 (2009)
“Burroughs vs. Bergamot,” Saturnine Detractor, 2 no. 2 (2004)
Director, The Gothic Funk Press
Chicago, IL and Flint, MI 2010 – Present
Individual Projects:
Flint Adult Writers Workshop (2023-Present),
Flint Teen Writers Workshop (2016-Present),
Paramanu Pentaquark (2015-Present),
Planning Committee, Flint Festival of Writers (2017-2020),
Flint Order of Orpheus (2015-2017)
Flint Area Scavenger Hunt (2012, 2016)
Literary Collaborator, Buckham Fine Arts Project
Flint, MI (2023-Present)
Facilitator / Moderator, Writing Workshops Detroit
Detroit, MI 2019-2020
Guest Artist, Flint Youth Theatre
Flint, MI 2012 – 2016
Artist-in-Residence, National Endowment for the Arts “Our Town” Grant; Intersect 7
Flint, MI 2013
Cofounder / Coordinator, The Gothic Funk Nation
Chicago, IL 2004 – 2010
Individual Projects:
Editor-in-Chief, The Paramanu Pentaquark, The Gothic Funk Nation
Chicago, IL 2009 – 2010
Event Organizer, Tuesday Funk, The Gothic Funk Nation
Chicago, IL 2008 – 2010
Sponsor, National Address, The Gothic Funk Nation
Chicago, IL 2008 – 2010
Editorial Staff, LIT Magazine, the New School Literary Magazine
New York, NY 2006 – 2007
Writing Tutor, The New School, University Writing Center
New York, NY 2006
Judge, Team Captain, Participant, University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, University of Chicago
Chicago, IL 1998 – 2005
Literary Assistant, The Ojai Playwrights Conference
Ojai, CA 2003 – 2004
Artistic Director, The Nocturnal Theater Company
Chicago, IL 2002 – 2004
Workshop Director, Wanderlust Arts Ensemble
Chicago, IL 2002
Director, Playwright, Actor, University Theater, University of Chicago
Chicago, IL 1997 – 2002
Student Mentor, University of Chicago
Chicago, IL 1999 – 2000
Director, The Black Box Underground
Flint, MI 1998 – 1999
Guest Artist Assistant, Flint Youth Theatre
Flint, MI 1997 – 1999
Tutor, Neighborhood Schools Program, Chicago Public Schools
Chicago, IL 1997 – 1998
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PLEASE EMAIL CONNOR@CONNORCOYNE.COM
OR FILL OUT THE CONTACT FORM.
TITLE DETAILS
Urbantasm, Book One: The Dying City
Urbantasm: The Dying City is a magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan.
Thirteen-year-old John Bridge’s plans include hooking up with an eighth-grade girl and becoming one of the most popular kids at Radcliffe Junior High, but when he steals a pair of strange blue sunglasses from a homeless person, it drops him into the middle of a gang war overwhelming the once-great Rust Belt town of Akawe.
John doesn’t understand why the sunglasses are such a big deal, but everything, it seems, is on the table. Perhaps he accidentally offended the Chalks, a white supremacist gang trying to expand across the city. Maybe the feud involves his friend Selby, whose father died under mysterious circumstances. It could even have something to do with O-Sugar, a homegrown drug with the seeming ability to distort space. On the night before school began, a group of teenagers took O-Sugar and leapt to their deaths from an abandoned hospital.
John struggles to untangle these mysteries while adjusting to his new school, even as his parents confront looming unemployment and as his city fractures and burns.
Buy now. For more information, visit the Urbantasm website.
Urbantasm, Book Two: The Empty Room
Urbantasm: The Empty Room is the second book in the magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan.
John Bridge is only two months into junior high and his previously boring life has already been turned upside-down. His best friend has gone missing, his father has been laid-off from the factory, and John keeps looking over his shoulder for a mysterious adversary: a man with a knife and some perfect blue sunglasses.
As if all this wasn’t bad enough, John must now confront his complicated feelings for a classmate who has helped him out of one scrape after another, although he knows little about who she is and what she wants. What does it mean to want somebody? How can you want them if you don’t understand them? Does anybody understand anyone, ever? These are hard questions made harder in the struggling city of Akawe, where the factories are closing, the schools are crumbling, and even the streetlights can’t be kept on all night.
John and his friends are only thirteen, but they are fighting for their lives and futures. Will they save Akawe, will they escape, or are they doomed? They might find their answers in an empty room… in a city with ten thousand abandoned houses, there will be plenty to choose from.
Buy now.
For more information, visit the Urbantasm website.
Urbantasm, Book Three: The Darkest Road
Urbantasm: The Darkest Road is the third book in the magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan.
Junior high was hard. John Bridge has made and lost friends, experienced and forsaken love, and discovered his true passions. But after his harrowing experience on the roof of an abandoned hospital, John has decided to leave the past behind and plan for the future. Now he has new friends, a new girlfriend, and an exciting new goal: to get into college in Chicago and leave his hometown of Akawe forever.
But Akawe might not want to let John go. The city is full of ghosts called “urbantasms,” and they remind John of questions that he cannot easily escape: What happened to his abducted classmate Cora Braille? How does the Chalks street gang keep replenishing its stock of O-Sugar, a drug with seemingly magical properties? And why is his ex-girlfriend Lucy suddenly dating a gangbanger? Does it have anything to do with a man with a knife or some mysterious blue sunglasses?
John has a feeling that the dreadful answers to these questions might take him to a place that he does not want to go: a dark road in a forgotten corner of his dying city. Possibly the darkest road of all.
Buy now.
For more information, visit the Urbantasm website.
Urbantasm, Book Four: The Spring Storm
Urbantasm: The Spring Storm is the fourth and final book in the magical teen noir serial novel inspired by the author’s experiences growing up in and around Flint, Michigan.
The stage has been set. The chessboard awaits. Against a background of love and friendship, of hard-won grades and groundbreaking plays, John and his friends are ready to claim their lives, their futures, and their city. They have identified their adversary: a mysterious man who calls himself “God” and manipulates the Chalks street gang through the influence of his children. John has also unlocked the secret of O-Sugar, an otherwordly drug with the ability to distort space. But God wields a powerful influence throughout the city of Akawe, and nobody seems to understand his true motives or intentions.
As the ice and frost of a long and unrelenting winter finally crack under cold, torrential rains, frozen things begin to stir again. The brutal murder of one of John’s friends and the abrupt disappearance of another signals that the moment of action has arrived. Who will survive this dying city, and how will the experience change the survivors? Akawe has been unstable for decades. A bit of lift and heat and moisture is all it needs to build a spring storm.
Buy now.
For more information, visit the Urbantasm website.
Impure Lichigan, Book 1: Don't Drink the Water in Firestone
“On a spell-bitten night, at the waning of the year, when the mums were in bloom and rotting apples spiced the air, Shalm set out to fetch a flagon of mead from the Lantern.”
So begins a great adventure, and a great friendship as well: Shalm, a sullen hay baler / corn desheather / warrior, fleeing deadly secrets from her past seeks a mysterious penance: a single drink of mead.
It will be harder than she imagines. The Lich of Lichigan and his servants have forced the city of Firestone to drink poisoned waters. Now, the desperate residents have consumed every potable drop of cider, wine, beer, and yes, mead. In her honey-driven quest, Shalm stumbles upon Jayn, a mischievous scrollmaster who speaks of a legend: a silver sieve that can purify the most polluted waters.
This is a treasure that could be traded for the finest mead in the realm (and maybe help the poor people of Firestone along the way); but the Sieve has been lost, and Firestone is full of enemies, from jealous magistrates to murderous managers to vast terrors without name and beyond time. Shalm and Jayn have but one night to seize the Sieve and claim their reward… but much may happen before dawn.
Impure Lichigan, Book 2: Something's Rotten in Nasty Hatchet
“In the realm of Lichigan, near the village of Nasty Hatchet, in deeps woods there rests a rock.”
Shalm has little affection for the remote frontier village of Nasty Hatchet, but it has become her sanctuary in need. Ever since she arrived, hungry and in the company of a young boy named Alders, the suspicious town has been a haven for the reclusive warrior. Beyond the villagers’ prying, her concerns include securing enough food to last the winter and dissuading Alders from hunting expeditions with their charismatic landlord.
That all changes when a monster breaches the walls of the town by daylight, ravaging livestock and threatening the villagers. Some local youth have gone missing, and an enchanted rock deep in the forest may be part of the mystery as well. Plied with promises of safety and prosperity, Shalm reluctantly sends her seeming son off to safety, and joins the local sorcerer on a quest to discover what is rotten in Nasty Hatchet.
Hollywood, a novella
Anxious Ophelia steps off the elevated train in the big city, hoping to start a new life with her summer hookup, far from her dissolving family and all of the traumas of industrial Rockville. Over the course of the next few hours Ophelia will lose her roommate, her money, and eventually, her sense of sanity when she sees a mile-long shark out on the lake, unwitnessed by anyone else, but obviously there, because if it wasn’t how did she get so soaked?
Ophelia cannot go back to who she was before sighting the beast, and the friends and opportunities she discovers all proceed from what and how she acts on that first, fierce, drunken night. Author Connor Coyne has created a new American myth for readers who enjoy a bit of madness in their weird fiction.
Buy now. Learn more.
Atlas: Short Stories
Two twins born to an ex-autoworker and a forest spirit seek their place in the world. An aging widower sets out on a journey through time and space to reunite with his wife. An eccentric billionaire destroys human civilization by causing the earth to rotate from north to south. In this collection of thirteen essays and short stories and thirty pieces of flash fiction, Flint-based author Connor Coyne explores the surreal, the macabre, and, above all, the poignant transience of life in a world that seems to change before our very eyes.
The whole collection is bookended by meditations on one of Flint and Michigan’s most enduring gifts to the larger world: the Flint-Style Coney Island. The title and cover are an homage to the Atlas Coney Island Restaurant, itself a longtime Flint institution. General Motors may not be making nearly as many cars there as it used to be, but there is no better place to eat encased meats topped with more meat. Atlas features selections written between 2006 and 2015.
Some selections have been previously published in journals including the Santa Clara Review, Moria Poetry Zine, the Moomers Journal of Moomers Studies, and elsewhere.
Shattering Glass
Just when the whole world has written off the city of Arkaic, Michigan, billionaire A. Olan puts up funds for a new university in an abandoned psychiatric hospital. There, strange engines turn human memories into electrical power.
Join students Samo, Monty, Ezzie, and Dunya as they study, work, flirt, explore, and battle powers of ancient evil. Will they survive their first year of college?
"Item 123, 2001: We Were Survivors" from
We Made Uranium!: And Other True Stories from the University of Chicago's Extraordinary Scavenger Hunt, edited by Leila Sales
The University of Chicago’s annual Scavenger Hunt (or “Scav”) is one of the most storied college traditions in America. Every year, teams of hundreds of competitors scramble over four days to complete roughly 350 challenges. The tasks range from moments of silliness to 1,000-mile road trips, and they call on participants to fully embrace the absurd. For students it is a rite of passage, and for the surrounding community it is a chance to glimpse the lighter side of a notoriously serious university.
We Made Uranium! shares the stories behind Scav, told by participants and judges from the hunt’s more than thirty-year history. The twenty-three essays range from the shockingly successful (a genuine, if minuscule, nuclear reaction created in a dorm room) to the endearing failures (it’s hard to build a carwash for a train), and all the chicken hypnotisms and permanent tattoos in between. Taken together, they show how a scavenger hunt once meant for blowing off steam before finals has grown into one of the most outrageous annual traditions at any university. The tales told here are absurd, uplifting, hilarious, and thought-provoking—and they are all one hundred percent true.
"Bathtime" from
Voices from the Rust Belt, edited by Anne Trubek
The essays in Voices from the Rust Belt “address segregated schools, rural childhoods, suburban ennui, lead poisoning, opiate addiction, and job loss. They reflect upon happy childhoods, successful community ventures, warm refuges for outsiders, and hidden oases of natural beauty. But mainly they are stories drawn from uniquely personal experiences: A girl has her bike stolen. A social worker in Pittsburgh makes calls on clients. A journalist from Buffalo moves away, and misses home…. A father gives his daughter a bath in the lead-contaminated water of Flint, Michigan” (from the introduction).