My next novel, Sound Effect Infinity, will release early this spring. I’ve been busy prepping it for print publishing by Flat Branch Press over the past few weeks. A special edition hardcover will have a soft launch in February. If you’re interested in ordering a copy, drop me a line, sign up to the right for our mailing list, or follow me on Instagram or Facebook.
In the mean time, I’m dropping a brief scene below, and not from the early sections of
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There are a number of scenes in my novel Old Music for New People that make me cry whenever I read them. I began writing that book in or around 2013. It is an understatement to say I re-wrote and revised that story dozens of times. So many scenes are emblazoned in my objective editing brain (such as it is). You’d think by now I would be somewhat immune/bored or at least distant from those scenes. But I’m not. Maybe it’s because the story is about the summer of 2013–a much sweeter, more innocent time for all of us on planet earth.
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Most people would love to have any of numerous magical powers. The most logical ones for this day and age are probably telepathy and psycho-time travel (also known as chronovoyance). Remote viewing and telekinesis are up there, too.
Specialized telekinesis talents, like the ability to control clock speeds, have been amply documented during the 20th century in several places around the world, most notably Israel, South Africa, and the French Cola Islands.
By 2010, other powers had been almost fully ruined by superhero movies. We know now that if people assume things are myths or just movie magic–like flying, super strength, invisibility–even time travel and thought control–people lose the ability to figure out whether they can actually do those things. And some people have always been able to whether they know it or not.
The elimination of anything super human from the possibility of imagination is a purely 21st century phenomenon. There is no telling how this is effecting cultural evolution. It may as well be the reason that so many people are caught up in silly (and imbecilic) conspiracy theories. That’s all most people have left.
I just learned that the folks at Adelaide Literary Magazine published my story “Like They’re Waiting” at their site back in January. It’s a very short piece of flash fiction, but one of my favorite projects from the past few years even though it’s a bit confrontational for the reader. I came to it partially inspired by real life events. Also, perhaps, I was a bit touched in the head by all the time we all spent in that first two years living on Planet Covid.
Besides having a comprehensive online publishing presence, Adelaide Literary Magazine is a print-based operation publishing a monthly journal of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, book reviews, and interviews. They also run a small press imprint called Adelaide Books that is more prolific than any other micro-type operation I’ve encountered.
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I was so happy to see my story, “Animals with Nowhere to Go”, published this month (January) at Jerry Jazz Musician. I wrote “Animals” specifically to enter the Jerry Jazz 55th short fiction contest last fall. Even though it only wound up short-listed (go to “Chromesthesia “ here to read the wonderful winning story by Shannan Brady) it is an honor to see my work alongside so many other great creative people’s.
I discovered Jerry Jazz about fifteen years ago while researching material for my novel Notes on the Golden Country (still a few years to go before it’s out). At the time, I was writing a rather freeform essay on the effect that Ralph Ellison’s work had on American literature. You can read that brief essay here. JJM is a wonderful repository for all things Ralph Waldo Ellison. I’d found my people.
I am a writer who has a tendency to connect his fiction and essays to musical questions and mysteries. I often go find the Jerry Jazz Musician website whenever I’m feeling beat up and ragged out from projects I’m working on. It’s a great source of inspiration for jazz culture lovers on all sorts of levels with poetry, essays, fiction, photos, videos, and book reviews on everyone from John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk to James Baldwin and jazz chronicler Gary Giddins.
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My new story “MANY WAYS TO FIND OUT” was featured at the BULL magazine website earlier this week. Bull specializes in quality fiction (and some essays) directed in varying ways at the complexity and dynamics of masculinity here in 2017.
There’s a theory out there that men don’t like to read “serious fiction.” I think a lot of men just don’t like to read crappy stories that have little to do with them. I might be wrong. Who knows?
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I’ve published two stories to the Kindle site at Amazon.com in the past week. They can both be found at the following Kindle links:
What Goes Inside is currently listed as #57 on the list of free literary fiction offerings. Her Miniature is listed as #77. I’m hoping folks will download both as much as possible today and tomorrow while they’re free. However, if you really want to make my day, wait until Monday and download them for the Amazon price of $2.99.
Let me know if they’re worth it, too.
I admit that these stories are quite provocative and a bit nasty and even nihilistic. They are part of a larger manuscript, all dealing with the love thing as it affects those of us heading into middle age. Julia Davenport is an amplification of a lot of stuff I’m reading and hearing about these days. Many women are as full of wanderlust as men.
Some of the stories I’ve heard over the past 6-8 years are quite interesting–and heartbreaking. They inform some of Julia Davenport’s life. If anything, she seems to me to represent a very deep and very strong aspect of women that I notice here in the 2000s. I am so amazed by the strength and character of the women I know and see everyday. There is a fearless, strong, warrior queen in these women. They may be moms and wives, ex-wives, girl friends, even grandmoms, but they have that thing in them.
I think of that thing as a piece of Diana. Diana is the Goddess of the Hunt, the Moon, and Birth. If they were to fully tap into their inner Diana, men wouldn’t stand a chance (in many different ways). At the same time, though, the profoundly noble spirit of Diana is right there at the edge of the cliff. The same kind of spirit is in some men (Apollo). Note I say “some” men. The book that best points to that spirit is Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Need I say more?
The book cover you see in this post is something just finished yesterday. My third story in what I think of as “The Julia Cycle” is ready to post to Kindle. However, I’m waiting, wondering if anyone might want to read it. Let me know if it’s time to post it.
This will likely be the last post of these in this format. I am shooting to have the full cycle of eight (8) stories compiled into novel format and posted to Amazon sometime in the spring. Keep a look out. Let me know your thoughts on everything Julia Davenport. She’s kind of a mess, but aren’t we all?
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Happy Reading.
