Category: Journal

  • Strange News!

    As everyone is no doubt aware, I have another novel coming out on May 3, called Strange News. The book is starting to appear at various online retailers for pre-orders now. It is available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book; if you don’t see it in your format yet, check back later. It’ll get there.

    About the book: I should tell you that Strange News is a fantasy, which is a genre that I haven’t attempted before (except in short stories).

    This is not what the publishers call “high” fantasy. Nobody waves a sword, or rides a horse to work. They don’t communicate via crystal balls or bowls of sparkly magic water. People in my book have cellphones and they take the bus. They have jobs, they have pets, they live in houses and apartments, not Hobbit-holes or castles. There are no elves, no orcs, no wizards with long beards and posh British accents. There’s just an ordinary guy with bad knees and a weakness for sweets who stumbles into something wild.

    Something that changes his world forever.

    Click here to see a list of available retailers, and a schedule of in-person events!

  • Midnight Snack

    Every so often I have a dream that was obviously intended for someone else. Last night’s tour of the unconscious mind was a case in point.

    My dream self popped up in a hole-in-the-wall greasy-spoon diner somewhere in New York City.

    The place was little more than a narrow closet: four or five two-tops running along one wall, a battered white enamel display case stocked with an assortment of plastic-wrapped mystery-meals, and a narrow aisle in between. At the back was the cash register and a doorway leading to the kitchen.

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  • Words that Kill

    In the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub shooting last weekend we’ve seen an outpouring of support and solidarity for the victims. Strangely, I find this almost as depressing as the event itself.

    Where was all this sympathy, this solidarity, when our poltitics, our media, and our social discourse were being hijacked by the Pat Robertsons, the Donald Trumps, the Tom Cottons, the Bill O’Reillys? We have created a society where attacks like this are not just tolerated but encouraged, every single day, and millions of people sit in front of blaring televisions and nod and thump the arm of the La-Z-Boy and mutter “Damn straight! You tell it!”.

    Or worse, they sit in mute disgust and do absolutely nothing.

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  • Sighting the target

    Like millions of other people sitting in front of their computers yesterday, my reaction to the sad story of Cecil the lion was both visceral and vehement. The impulse to react accordingly was irresistible: it was also wrong.

    The fifty-something American from Minnesota whose adventures launched such a firestorm was perfectly cast for the role of villain. He was a dentist, a job that arouses pretty negative feelings in many of us; better yet, he was obviously a wealthy dentist: How many of us can afford to walk away from our jobs for weeks at a stretch to go jaunting off around the globe (especially when we have dental bills to pay)? Most importantly, he was an avid sports hunter, not just of the local turkey and deer but of animals that most of us only dream of ever seeing in the flesh.

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  • Links

    It always amazes and amuses me to see how a whole nest of unconnected obsessions can manage to circle around and overlap when you least expect it.

    • “Orithyia”, 2015, by yours truly.

    I finished a painting a couple of days ago to which I gave the title “Orithyia”. The name refers to an incident in classical Greek myth in which Boreas, the god of the north wind, takes a shine to a woman (or possibly a nymph, depending on your source) named Orithyia. When his courtship — admittedly clumsy, as Boreas is the rough north wind, not the suave west wind — does not win her over, he simply carries her off in a whirlwind and has his way with her anyway.

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  • The Loudest Voice

    • Rafael Edward Cruz

    The ruler of the Aztec empire was called the “tlatoani”, which roughly translates to “the one who talks the loudest”. From the founding of Gran Tenochtitlan in 1325 to the final collapse in 1521, the Aztec civilization survived for a grand total of 196 years, during which time they had become so hated by all of their neighbors that even the rapacious Spanish invaders were embraced as the lesser of two evils.

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  • Beginning a Painting

    • Richard Diebenkorn: “Girl and Three Coffee Cups” 1957

    “Notes to myself on beginning a painting”
    by Richard Diebenkorn

    1. Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.
    2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued – except as a stimulus for further moves.
    3. DO search.
    4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.
    5. Don’t “discover” a subject – of any kind.
    6. Somehow don’t be bored but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.
    7. Mistakes can’t be erased but they move you from your present position.
    8. Keep thinking about Pollyanna.
    9. Tolerate chaos.
    10. Be careful only in a perverse way.

    * * *

  • Arrival from always, departure to forever

    In 1966, just as the war in Vietnam was hitting its stride, my father retired from the US Air Force.

    Packing up the wife and three small children (the oldest — me — having just completed the second grade) he returned to the town of his own childhood, a place in the Appalachian foothills of northern Alabama with the peculiar name of Boaz.

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  • Persistence

    • “Niobe” – mixed media, 7 x 9 inches (17.5 x 22.5 cm)

    Some time back I wrote a  journal post here in which I bemoaned the fact that a couple of pieces of artwork that I had just completed seemed to be falling flat with my usual public. In retrospect, I realize that I may have sounded petulant, and perhaps even just a tiny bit snobbish.

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  • Trial and Error

    • “The Triumph of the Nightingale” – mixed media, 7 x 14 in (17.5 x 35 cm).

    In spite of my head cold, trips to the vet, money woes, and general malaise over the last couple of weeks, I did manage to get two new pieces of artwork done.

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