On The Road, Jack Kerouac
Annotation: Imagery Reading Jack Kerouac’s On The Road is exhausting. The seemingly never-ending physical and emotional settings of road trip adventures and life-bending experiences feature the alter ego personas of Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac), the narrator, and his buddy Dean Moriarity (Neal Cassady). The book relates the mindset of the author’s “Beat” generation protagonists in the post-World War II 1950s; the era of folks like Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx in the book) – think acid trips and poetry, and William S. Burroughs – think heroin-addled, creative person, prolifically writing paranoid fiction that profoundly influenced the 1960s counterculture. As the[...]
Moby Dick
You Don’t Say Weekly, Falmouth, MA: Book Review It’s a Wavy Day on the Bounty Main It is unbelievable the author Moby Dick lives on Cape Cod. For good reason, the exact location of the writer is undisclosed. Study the cover image or read Wavy Day, and you will see the logic behind the precaution. In addition to this perfect-storm collection of pornographic, salty-sea stories, Dick has other forgettable books like Shiver Me Timbers, Brrrrr, Yo, Ho, Ho and a Bottle of Dumb, Harpoon Fever and, nobody’s favorite, Davey Jones’ Locket. Prestigious awards for his contributions to the writing[...]
To Self-Publish or Not
That is the Question
Well, you have written your novel, collection of stories, or a sheath of poems. Now what? Do you want to keep saying to friends and anyone that you are “writing a book?” Is it starting to annoy you as well as them? Now that you have decided you’re done, do you print a copy for all your relatives and call it quits? Do you publish? If you want to go through the rigors of publishing, have a concrete plan. Pie in the sky is just that. What is your objective – cover publishing costs, make money, impress your partner or[...]
What I’ve Read Lately
“Not since Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek have I felt so involved as a reader….This is a beautifully written, un-put-downable book about language, love, and being alive…” – Gillian Clarke, former National Poet of Wales Written by Pam Petro, learn more about her here. "Oblivion is a deeply intelligent and strikingly honest exploration of what ultimately drives a writer to write, and the cold loneliness of the journey, and how literary success in one’s lifetime is, at best, a fickle proposition. I will tell every writer I know, struggling or successful, to read this book."[...]
Hope: Tomorrow Starts Today
"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope." Martin Luther King, Jr. For several hundred years, tragedies of historical significance against brown-skinned people found no print in history books, were seldom mentioned in newspapers, and were hushed by white community leaders and the Chamber of Commerce—labeled as bad for business. As I probed resources ten years ago while crafting bits in 2010 for Tulsa’s literary newspaper, This Land Press, I happened on horrifying accounts of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. This new awareness penetrated my soul. Are you kidding? Why did this happen? I have lived in[...]
The New Territory: Top Regional Literary Publication
As a writer who benefits from essays published by literary magazines, I appreciate their sacrifice to support my nonsense and others. One in particular caught my fancy a decade ago—The New Territory. New Territory began its long-form print magazine in 2016, hellbent on publishing narrative writing, creative writing, photography, and art that creates a sense of place for Lower Midwesterners, i.e., Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The magazine's creator, Tina Casagrand, also throws in a sprinkling of Iowa dirt, which I appreciate as a Sioux City, Iowa boy at heart. How did my love affair with New Territory (NT) begin,[...]
Annotation: Imagery Reading Jack Kerouac’s On The Road is exhausting. The seemingly never-ending physical and emotional settings of road trip adventures and life-bending experiences feature the alter ego personas[...]
You Don’t Say Weekly, Falmouth, MA: Book Review It’s a Wavy Day on the Bounty Main It is unbelievable the author Moby Dick lives on Cape Cod. For good[...]
Well, you have written your novel, collection of stories, or a sheath of poems. Now what? Do you want to keep saying to friends and anyone that you are “writing[...]
“Not since Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek have I felt so involved as a reader….This is a beautifully written, un-put-downable book about language, love, and being alive…” – Gillian Clarke, former[...]
"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope." Martin Luther King, Jr. For several hundred years, tragedies of historical significance against brown-skinned people found no print in history[...]
As a writer who benefits from essays published by literary magazines, I appreciate their sacrifice to support my nonsense and others. One in particular caught my fancy a decade ago—The[...]