The new issue of Change Seven Magazine is now out, and it includes three of my poems. "The Good Fresh Kind" is a look back at a lazy day on the job as a lawn-care laborer back in college before the full hammer of adulthood struck. "Death Row Escape" is a poem about how obsession and lust is a prison, and is a poem I held out of my collection Berlin to work on it some more, and I really like this final version. "It's Only Temporary" is a New York City poem, a love poem, a lonely poem, and still takes me back to that strange feeling you get in NYC of being so constantly surrounded by people yet feeling a million miles away from everyone. A deep thank you to the editors at Change Seven for including my work with so many other fine writers, including Emily Strauss, William Doreski, Seth Jani, Ilana Masad, and many others.
What Lies In Wait - Just $10 Through Halloween!
It's that time of year where the leaves turn, the air gets cooler, and the ghost stories come out to play. If you're into that kind of thing, stories about a tentacled beast who dwells beneath the surface of a picturesque lake, of a house full of the ghosts of everyone who ever lived within its walls, of an abandoned car on a lonely country road with bloody handprints on the windows, of a motel in the Texas desert whose temporary residents are hunted by an ancient evil, of ... well, you get the idea: monsters, ghosts, and the end of the world. I've got you covered with What Lies In Wait! From now until Halloween, it's just $10 for print or $1 for the Kindle version. I hope you enjoy!
My Top 3: John Steinbeck Books
I’ve long been a huge fan of John Steinbeck’s writing and his humanist, critical examinations of not just the American experience, but of what it is to be human, to struggle against greed and oppression, and most of all, with our own demons. The fact that Of Mice and Men doesn’t even make the top three here should say something, as that’s the book I read in my early teens that made me want to be a writer. It was the first book that hit me right in the gut and said—This is what you are supposed to be doing! The following three books helped shape my worldview in such a way that I’d say his ideals and passions are more important to who I am as a person than any other artist.
Read moreNew Poetry in Yellow Chair Review #4
My poem "Slaves of Some Strange God" now appears in Yellow Chair Review #4 alongside some excellent work by the likes of Alan Britt, Lisa M. Cole, Howie Good, Cathy Porter, Randi Ward, and many others. My thanks goes to Sarah Frances Moran and the staff over at Yellow Chair Review for accepting this poem, and I hope you enjoy it as well. Thanks for reading!
New Short Story "Long Road to Luckenbach" Now at Drunk Monkeys
Call "Long Road to Luckenbach" flash fiction, call it a short short, but whatever it is, it's now live over at Drunk Monkeys, and I'm really excited to be there. The story, inspired by hearing Waylon Jennings' song on a jukebox, is a quick and (hopefully) amusing tale about how quickly plans can go awry when they're made over shots of whiskey in Texas dive bars. The story has a little truthful backstory to it, but I'll let the reader decide what really happened and what's fiction. The names, however, have been changed to protect the guilty! I hope you enjoy.
My Top 3: Black Books Episodes
Any bookworm or literary type who likes an adult beverage every now and then and sometimes becomes annoyed with having to deal with other humans (or “time wasters”) when you’d rather be reading or writing will be absolutely delighted by Black Books—that is, if you haven’t yet discovered the show’s brilliance, and I hope you have. Irish comic Dylan Moran stars as Bernard Black with Bill Bailey as Manny and Tamsin Greig as Fran in this quirky British comedy about a bookshop and its morose, frustrated owner who wants nothing more than for customers (and staff) to leave him alone so he may drink wine and read books. It’s filmed with a live audience, as are many of Graham Linehan’s comedies (he also wrote Father Ted and The IT Crowd) but you get used to the laughter amongst all the sight gags, the pratfall humor, and literary quips. It’s one of my favorite comedies of all times, and these, at the moment, are my favorite three episodes.
Read moreHobo Camp Review: Now Reading Submissions for Two Upcoming Issues
Hobo Camp Review released its 23rd issue this summer with the theme of Highway Life, and David and I (your humble editors) are looking for new unpublished poetry, fiction, reviews, columns, travelogues, photographs, and art for two upcoming issues:
Autumn #24: No theme, but of course we like anything fall or Halloween related during that time of year, because we hobos are really just big kids. Due out in late September.
Winter #25: We aim to release a "western" themed issue in January. Whether you have something about outlaws and mountaineers, a travel piece about the southwest, a desert poem or a California story, something modern or something rustic and dusty, whatever you think might fall into "western," we'd love to take a look.
Submission guidelines for available at the site, and we appreciate you reviewing those before submitting. Thanks!
How Watching Twin Peaks Can Enhance Your Writing and Storytelling
Every other year or so I sit down and re-watch the bizarre television phenomena that was Twin Peaks, and it always revives my appreciation for David Lynch’s strange genius. It was as eerie and captivating as The X-Files and True Detective (eh, season one maybe) and for a season or so it had the intense following of Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, and despite some amusing 80s-styled haircuts and clothing, the show holds up. Created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, with a bevy of other writers to help—including Emmy nominee Harley Peyton, Saturn nominee Robert Engels, Barry Pullman, Tricia Brock, and others—the show became known for its blend of murder mystery tropes, soap opera camp, and spectacularly eerie dream sequences that included a dwarf talking backwards, flashing lights, a giant, white horses, and hip jazz numbers.
Most of all, Twin Peaks was (and remains) a storytelling playland where writers can discover all manner of tips and tricks for their own use. Here are some things that I found helpful with my own writing, and maybe they’ll help you too. Yes, many of these pertain to mystery, crime, noir, and horror stories, but you never know when you might be able to add elements of those genres into your own stories.
Read more