WORDS
This is where you will find short stories, personal essays, and guest posts. Family and friends and the ordinary business of life are the inspiration for this section.
Short Fiction – Charlotte Marie (The Snake, A Sequel)
Before reading this sequel, read Part I Short Fiction - Charlotte Marie Part I Zihuatanejo. Right out of the movie. A beach, a boat. No redemption. A good place to hide or to live if it comes to that.Things went south for Max Perkins after the election. Hell hath...
Short Fiction – Charlotte Marie
The stock market rose steadily during the summer. The country was awash with cash. The economy didn’t want the cash so speculators sopped it up. A few people became very rich. Max Perkins was not one of them.Perkins was an ordinary man. He was not a player...
The Last Town On Earth: A Recent Novel on the 1918 Pandemic
It is the autumn of 1918 and a world war and an influenza epidemic rage outside the isolated utopian logging community of Commonwealth, Wash. In an eerily familiar climate of fear, rumor and patriotic hysteria, the town enacts a strict quarantine, posting guards at...
The 1918 Pandemic As Seen By John O’Hara
Think in the Morning continues our look into the literary memories of the 1918 Pandemic. Our first read was Pale Horse, Pale Rider. Katherine Anne Porter gave us an unforgettable memory of the impact of the Spanish flu and the Great War on a young couple whose paths...
Book Review: The Lady With Balls by Alice Combs
Midwest Book Review just published an abridged version of our book review on Alice Combs’ The Lady With Balls. The full review is below. I don’t want a mirror telling me I’m the fairest in all the land; I want another intelligent adult’s honest opinion. Alice...
The 1918 Pandemic And Willa Cather’s One Of Ours
Previously Discussed Literature On The 1918 PandemicKatherine Anne Porter: Pale Horse, Pale RiderWilliam Maxwell: They Came Like Swallows This grey wall, unshaken, mighty, was the end of the long preparation, as it was the end of the sea. It was the reason for...
William Maxwell’s They Came Like Swallows
To deal with pandemics, read about them. That’s my advice.The 1918 pandemic did not inspire much literature of its own. World War I sucked up all the paper and ink with such greats as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet On The Western Front (1928) and Hemingway’s...
Some Personal Thoughts On Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet
“Cruelty to animals will get you punished, but cruelty to humans will get you promoted.” (as one of Brit's friends said to her at the immigrant detention center where she worked in Ali Smith's SPRING) In a previous blog I explored Ali Smith’s Autumn, the first of...
Guest Post: Origami Place by Hayden Jones
Origami Placeby Hayden Jones In the origami place,origami pelicans soar through the sky.In the origami place,stars shine bright.In the origami place,origami boats sail through the ocean.In the origami place,you can stop and smell the origami tulips.In the origami...
Persimmons and Mezcal
The cold, the winter, the holidays—lazy. What better time to honor others in the blogosphere than when you are too lazy to write your own blog. This blog was inspired by an Instagram post from my friends at Mezcalistas, Baking with Mezcal. Today’s experiment in...
Bacalao, Christmas, Zhuatanejo and Behind the Locked Door
In the acknowledgements to my novel Behind the Locked Door I write: This book had a long gestation period. The idea first occurred to me in 1972, and I began to research in earnest in December of 2010. I first put pen to paper in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, in January...
Behind The Locked Door – 3 – Quotes and Details
Previously:Behind the Locked Door - 1Behind the Locked Door - 2 - Book Notes As we wait for the final steps in the publication of Behind The Locked Door, we offer these quotations from the book. There are no pictures in the book but we have paired the quotations...