Line Zero

The latest issue of Line Zero contains my short story, "Such a Lovely Girl." What better way to support indie publications (and spread the word about up-and-coming writers) than buying a copy of the magazine?

It's got a number of stories, poems, articles, and some truly spectacular photography. What more do you need?

Preorders are up now, and the issue is due to be shipped mid-March.

Thank you, readers of this blog, for supporting me in my own writing endeavors!

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame

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I'm just going to say it: Toad gets the shaft.

Many of us place The Wind in the Willows in some idyllic brain-nook, even those of us (like me, until now) who have never read it. Part of this designation must be the title, which just sounds romantic. Perfect. Lovely.

Free.

Who better to embody freedom than the Toad? (Not even the J. Thaddeus of Disney fame, but the real Toad himself.) He is the only main character in the book willing to live his life. He embraces those aspects of existence that we wish we would tackle more often: He takes risks. He goes for the adventure even when it's beyond reason. He lets the wind blow through his hair (okay, no one ever said Mr. Grahame was anatomically accurate in his descriptions).

If you like your children's books with morals and "upstanding exemplars," how about this: Toad refuses to bow to peer pressure. He thrives on individuality and resists conformity. He proves entirely resourceful, particularly when he thinks on his feet.

Toad is what we want to be, and what we want our children to be.

What does Mr. Grahame do with this fantastic character? First of all, he refuses to acknowledge that The Wind in the Willows is Toad's story. Toad is his best character, the only one with any plot arc of any worth and consistency, and yet he gets relegated to every other chapter. But then, oh, then the offense grows much worse. Mr. Grahame decides he must grind Toad into a pulp. He cannot have such frivolity, such carefree nature, such abandon running amok through his idyllic landscape, through his neighborhood-association world.

No. Toad must be taught a lesson. Toad must be broken. Toad must learn that civility and decorum are more valuable than expression.

We're meant to finish the book believing that Toad is a changed Toad. That Toad is a repentant Toad. That Toad will never again gallivant in a motor-car or even walk farther than the end of his own driveway.

Poop poop, I say! I haven't believed Toad every other time he reforms. I'm not going to believe him this time, either! And nor should I! A spirit like Toad's requires more than enforced stuffiness to come tumbling down! More than so-called friends dictating his standard of living! Those chains shall contain Toad as well as prison did -- which is to say, Toad will break free!

The Toads of the world always find a way. Poop poop!

A Thoroughly Good Blue

The short version is: I'm part of a group of writers putting out an anthology of our writing this spring. It's called A Thoroughly Good Blue, it's going to be an excellent collection of writing, and it features a story by yours truly!

The longer version is: Stay tuned for how to get your eyes on A Thoroughly Good Blue, and you can read "In the Haus of Broken Toys," along with fifteen other short stories, poetry collections, and novel excerpts.

The book will be available in a limited print run, as well as an e-book for those of you who prefer gadgety reading.

The anthology has a Wordpress blog site (http://athoroughlygoodblue.wordpress.com/), a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Thoroughly-Good-Blue/101616019959053), a Twitter account (@A_Good_Blue), and hopefully some upcoming podcasts, videos, and the like.

We're excited, and we appreciate the support of everyone who reads up-and-coming writers anywhere in the world!

The Orphaned Land, by V.B. Price

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When V. B. Price calls New Mexico an orphaned land, he's hardly kidding -- to its residents, the state often feels ignored or disregarded by the rest of the country, and in my experience that feeling is wrong only because much of the rest of the country doesn't even know it's there.

But Price isn't talking about how the rest of the country views New Mexico. At least, not directly. What he looks at is how many of New Mexico's current environmental issues are rooted in and fueled by its standing as a wasteland desert state, and he takes a heartfelt journalistic look into the problems and concerns facing the region in both an immediate and a long-view context.

This book is the first of its kind, in that no one before Price had so thoroughly gone spelunking into the interactions between modern humans and the New Mexican environment. While it asks for a common-sense approach to providing responsible stewardship to the land -- after all, what we do to our environments we ultimately do to ourselves -- The Orphaned Land is far from a crazed conservationist plea. Price has the science, the history, the sociology, and the politics worked out in his telling. He brings us up to speed on what's happening in New Mexico's environs, and he does it well.

What next, though? Price doesn't make it easy for us. He's done his work, writing a history for New Mexico so that the state may avoid repeating it. The prevention is up to everyone else; no one man can tackle it alone. And the call is not just for New Mexicans, because what happens in the Land of Enchantment will affect the rest of the world, and vice versa, in that lovely interconnected way our planet has of weaving us all together.

Really, I can't say enough about how thorough Price's research is, and how compelling his prose is. He's a master, and his poet's touch dances with his journalist background throughout the book. Whatever your environmental views, this book will get you thinking. It's already influenced my own writing in two separate projects -- neither of which you would expect to be influenced by an environmental history of America's forgotten state. For me, few accomplishments are higher than a book revving up the thinking motor. So thank you, Señor Price.

Triss, by Brian Jacques

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Gah, what a simple treat voices can be.

Think about it: You're reading a book, and it consists of printed words perceived visually on a page or a screen. There's no audio component (unless you're in recorded book zone), and yet a good writer is supposed to convey the sense of voice. The trick is pretty impressively magical, when it's pulled off.

Most of the time, it's not pulled off. Not really. You might make up a voice to go with the characters' speech, and the voice probably matches what you know about the character (gender, age, location, yadda yadda). But how often do the characters truly speak differently? Distinctly?

Brian Jacques might go a bit overboard with voices in Triss and the other Redwall books -- but hot damn, they're fun to read. You're never uncertain whether a Hare or a Guosim Shrew or a Ferret is speaking. And for the same reason your favorite movies and television shows are fun to imitate -- how long can you talk about Austin Powers or the Muppets without trying to sound like them? -- you get these voices stuck in your head.

And with them, the characters. And once a character is in your head, you really begin to care about that character's story. Isn't that a big part of what the joy of reading is all about?

Street Knowledge, by King Adz

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A shift in perspective is seldom a negative experience.

My thoughts about graffiti have been shifting for the past several months as I research a potential story idea, and sure enough, the broadening of my knowledge has proven positive. For years, I had the same reaction to graffiti that I think most people have -- it's a blight on any cityscape, and disrespectful of both the property owner and the community. For me, I lumped together as graffiti anything I saw spray-painted on walls and other surfaces that was not desired by the owners of these surfaces. And then I didn't give the whole idea much more consideration.

Some of what I thought in the past, I still agree with. In vastly over-simplified terms, I don't think people should paint their names (or even draw pictures) on personal property -- that is, homes and other private spaces owned by an individual or a family. And I think that if people are going to paint their names in the public viewing space, they could at least do something to make it either beautiful or (even better) thought-provoking, rather than treating a can of spray-paint as a surrogate penis used to pee on everything in sight.

But my perspectives have been broadened in other ways. First of all, what I lumped together as "graffiti" is, as most encompassing terms are, wildly lacking in the nuance of the different styles of street art. And that term is perhaps the key -- some spray-can folks are out to vandalize, while other people's motivation is the creation of art. The beautification of public space, the recapturing of public visual space (seriously, just think about how many times a day your eyes take in entirely unbidden advertising -- would your life not be better off taking in some form of art instead, whether or not you personally liked the style?), the stimulation of the mind, a raising of social consciousness: all of these are various and different goals of street art, and even so I'm leaving out a whole range of reasons.

The reasons for public art are as diverse as the materials used -- to say that all street art is spray-painted is like saying Renaissance art was all done with a paintbrush. Would I have ever thought of cross-stitched civil disobedience, or vinyl-printed billboard hijacking, or clothing fashion, or even vendored food as street art? Not before reading Street Knowledge, one heck of an introductory encyclopedic look at the world-wide realm of street culture.

I'm not suggesting you should change your own opinions of what you call graffiti. But there's much more to the artistic side of the act than Banksy (though that guy deserves the recognition he gets). Would learning a bit more about the culture of street art harm you in any way? Even if your mind remains unbudged, at least you'd have good solid backing for your beliefs. I'm pretty sure that's simply called an education.

Even the street artists wouldn't want you to agree with them. They'd want you to think about what they're doing. That's about as civil a disobedience as I've ever heard of.

Chronicles: Volume One, by Bob Dylan

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Every serious artist, as far as I can tell, perceives a need to conquer the elements of the craft from the masters who came before. I think that, on some level, most of these same artists hope to create some element that is entirely new to the craft, or to extend an already existing element beyond any previously known bounds, or to combine two elements which were prior strangers.

Like him or not, you'd be hard pressed to claim that Bob Dylan didn't accomplish any one of these feats as a songwriter; hell, you'd be hard pressed to prove that he didn't accomplish all of them. He's been part of the western social conscience for so many decades now that up-and-coming artists in any field might feel daunted looking at his accomplishments and thinking, That guy has done so much, and I could never hope to match him for creativity, production, innovation, or fame.

Which is why my favorite part of Chronicles was when Dylan waxed prosaic (the guy's a pretty great prose writer, too) on starting to write songs. (All quotes from page 51.)

He starts off with curiosity, the siren which I would argue sings to all folks crazy enough to be artists: "Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain." But even Bob Dylan's muse doesn't simply transmit music through him like a radio antenna: "It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy."

He's driven in his craft both by ambition and by his singular experiences: "You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen." But he realizes that all the drive and desire and curiosity in the world isn't enough, for then comes the careful practice and application of the art: "You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular. The chilling precision that these old-timers used in coming up with their songs was no small thing."

While I noodle about on the guitar, I'm no songwriter. But as an author, I take both great solace and deep inspiration from knowing that one of the greatest songwriters of the last hundred years went through -- and possibly still goes through -- the same challenges that my peers and I face. Dylan's hurdles take him off a pedestal and place him in a very human sphere. He may be more talented than I am, and he's certainly more accomplished, but ultimately he's just another human with a desire to create Something Beautiful. Just like me, and maybe just like you, too.