Category: Fiction
-
Fiction Review—Napawaupee County Blues
From the start, we know what crime lands ‘Cool Hand’ Luke on the county chain gang: cutting the heads off parking meters. He’s sent up for decapitation of authority, and all that follows bears the symbolic weight of his crime. Ted Prokash gives it to us another way. Napawaupee County Blues (Expat Press, 2018) describes life…
-
Transit Post—Frankfurt
Just so I have a post from Germany. We have a decent layover in Frankfurt, and although it’s zero three hundred at my point of origin—hence the cobwebs in my head—it’s 9:35 here and past noon at our final destination. Normal workaday hours to write and post! Marginally related to all this, I’ve been tracking…
-
Reader Wanted
Today I finished my fifth novel. Tomorrow, it will be a gift for my son on his eighth birthday. I await the sense of release, the great pocket of freedom that opens up when a large file is deleted. Last December a man walked into the SweetLife Cafe wearing nothing at all but his socks.…
-
Can He also Ride a Porcupine?
Two weeks ago (yes…) I visited my son’s class. I read to them from my current work in progress, a novel soon to be presented IHO Mohan’s eighth birthday. Before I finished the hands were up and all the mouths were saying ‘Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!’ They had plans for my principal foil, a character named…
-
Debut Fiction Review–Love Is the Punch Line
Kathleen Jones’ debut novel should be appearing tomorrow. It’s a spinning yo-yo of ups and downs in hysterical pursuit of middle-aged romance. Advance review: Outside observers might wonder what middle-aged romantics Josh Steinberg and Holly Brannigan see in each other, beyond the mirror image of their mutual loneliness. In Kathleen Jones’s debut novel, Love Is…
-
Introducing: Cowboy Herold
Sharing his thoughts on a fresh draft of my novel in progress, the contract illustrator proclaims: This whole thing is, like, so hilarious! Best of all, the 4th grader can barely utter consecutive syllables without breaking into fits of hysterics as he tries to describe the characters. His cheeks stretch too wide for speech at…
-
Opening Day
MLB opens today. With the game on my mind, I revisit how a small deformity of mine became an asset in fiction for the narrator—an all star pitcher—of my first published story. My thumb, badly slashed on New Years Eve by the broken neck of a champagne bottle, never healed properly. After surgery to reconnect…
-
How We Write
Writing is physical. Writing is athletic. Writing requires the same discipline of a dedicated athlete in pursuit of peak performance. I note this, not to be repetitive, but as a corollary to my series on Little League and the trajectory of sports in life for me. These things are one and the same: the first…
-
Stock Recovery Plan
So what if the stock market is on a rollercoaster this week? Grab some cheap thrills and laugh off your losses with a 15% savings on Patchworks, a hilarious office satire about the ordinary bureaucrats working hard for you in Washington DC. Price too steep? Check it out at the Fairfax County Public Library! Can one…
-
A Borrower Be
The patient wait is over. Patchworks is now available through the Fairfax County Public Library. Reserve your copy today. Can one intern save us from ourselves, when the government he works for keeps shutting itself down? Patchworks shares a pound of absurdity for every ounce of tragedy, winking in dismay at the circumstances of our…
Ben East Books 