An excerpt from my novel Crash Shadow: A Tale of Two Addicts, available on Amazon.com. Yuri, a junky who is new to Twelve Step, gets a visit from his new Narcotics Anonymous friend Zata at his place of work, a dark and dank warehouse in Oakland’s industrial section. He wasn’t sure why he had …
Static and Hearse – An Excerpt from my novel-in-progress What the Hell Ever Happened to Yuri Rozhenko?
This is an excerpt from my novel What the Hell Ever Happened to Yuri Rozhenko? This work is the sequel to my novel Crash Shadow: A Tale of Two Addicts. In this excerpt, Skye ruminates on the couple letting her stay at their house in Portland Oregon as part of her West Coast road trip. …
Wanted: One Steady Job in a Problematic Industry
Looking for work is a major drag. It’s a job in itself. I have tossed around my resume’ left and right, trying to find that rock solid forty hour a week job with bennies and stability. As it is, I make my living as a professional nerd by hustling contracts and short term jobs, usually …
That Book Promotion Business, Again!
Before I took the self publishing route I did the query thing, sending query letters to agent after literary agent and once in a while hitting up those few publishers who didn’t require agent submissions. Like so many writers all I really did was collect a big pile of rejections. And I was puzzled by …
A Curious Absence of Nostalgia – The Death of Cafe’ Hell
Recently a Berkeley mainstay announced its closing, a large cafe’ in Downtown Berkeley called Au Coquelet. Me and my friends frequently referred to it as “Cafe Hell”. Au Coquelet Cafe is a big part of my personal history. When I attended Berkeley High School myself and my friends would go to Au Coquelet to drink …
Book Stats: A Rundown of my Four Novels and one WIP!
You can find all four of my published novels here! Longest book: Crash Shadow (424 pages) Shortest book: Gutter Folklore. (137 pages) Crash Shadow is really two books about two characters whose stories run parallel to each other, which is why it’s so long. Gutter Folklore is really a collection of short stories strung together, …
What the Hell are You Doing? – When Your Book’s Characters Come Alive
“…don’t pretend you know more about your characters than they do, because you don’t.” – Anne Lamott “So I told you about Annie Rage an’ my band, an’ you wont tell me about your artwork, so you gotta draw me a picture.” He took the paper and pen. “What do you want me to draw?” …
When Horny Lesbian Clickbait Fails – Adventures in Book Promotion
The hardest part of writing is not writing books and short stories and blog posts, it’s trying to promote them. This is a sentiment that many writers agree with. Much of it has to do with the market. There are a lot of writers out there and tons of books, so it’s difficult to get …
Rock and Roll Melancholy – An Interview with Author and Poet Kim Acrylic
Kim Acrylic, author of the novel Rock n’ Roll Melancholy and a collection of poetry The Myth Behind All Truth, is a writer and a poet who writes prose in a style that oscillates between Stephanie Kuehnert and Hunter S Thompson. Her poetry relies heavily on metaphor while seeping itself into reality in a way …
When you used to be poor – Living in a Comfortable World after Poverty
I used to be poor. And I mean dirt poor: Wondering where my next meal was coming from, wearing clothes until they were falling apart, and living in slumlord housing with leaking pipes and faulty wiring. I have used food banks before, and I even went to a food line for poor and homeless people …