Ben East Books

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  • Sea Never Dry on Second Award List

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    Ben East
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    Leapfrog Press announced their fiction contest results for 2014.  My manuscript for Sea Never Dry was named a semifinalist.    Thick with spies and fetish priests, Internet fraudsters and the  orphans turning a buck on Ghana’s e-waste ash heaps, Sea Never Dry centers on the conflict between Western development efforts and lucrative criminal activity in the developing world.  Read More Congrats to the…

  • Shortlisted for International Book Prize

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    Ben East
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    The Dundee International Book Prize announced their short list for 2014.  Sea Never Dry, my novel about dirty cops and drug trafficking in West Africa, made the list.  Thick with spies and fetish priests, Internet fraudsters and the Ghanaian orphans turning a buck on Accra’s e-waste ash heaps, Sea Never Dry centers on the conflict between Western development efforts and…

  • ONE DEAD COP

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    Ben East
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    Taillights cut a pool of red in the dark where three African heavies in police uniform manned the makeshift roadblock.  A fourth figure loomed over the driver-side door two cars up.  The cops held their rifles clumsily.  Probably they were cops, Raines thought. Criminals in the West African Republic handled weapons better than the police…

  • Prohibition

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    Ben East
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    The idea is to write a story in 100 words flat. The boys weren’t allowed to have guns.  But they wanted to play gangster, so Howard cut rifles out of cardboard. “We want pistols,” 5-year-old Mickey said. “And Uzis,” said Danny, age 3. Howard, who watched many movies with pistols and Uzis while the boys’…

  • GREEN

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    Ben East
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    When the Peace Corps recruiter called to offer Pete Seward a position teaching English in Malawi Seward asked, “Where’s that?” “Africa.” Seward thought about that.  Where the application had asked for geographical preferences, Seward had written: “Anywhere in the Pacific.  Definitely not Africa.”  So he reminded the recruiter of this. “I do see that.  But,…

  • THIS IS HOW WE TWEET

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    Ben East
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      Assistant Secretary Crickshaw wants to tweet. His request (order) reaches us in Electronic Media via the staff aides in the front office, setting in motion a whole series of actions that repeat the actions of the day before and the day before that, all the way back to the day we first tweeted, which…

  • ONE DEAD COP

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    by

    Ben East
    in

    Taillights cut a pool of red in the dark where three African heavies in police uniform manned the makeshift roadblock.  A fourth figure loomed over the driver-side door two cars up.  The cops held their rifles clumsily.  Probably they were cops, Raines thought. Criminals in the West African Republic handled weapons better than the police…

  • GUTS

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    Ben East
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    George craves the syringe with an addict’s distress. I have one thumb on the plunger. I put the other in his mouth. The plastic syringe tip curves along my crooked thumb between George’s lips. I press the plunger carefully and let the milk flow.The ruddy face of Senator Teflon–that’s my name for him–fills the television. He…

  • Heaven Is Coming Home, Part II

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    Ben East
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    …David’s richly textured writing reads like romantic poetry.  Yet there is a clarity to the telling born of steady revelation in sign and image.  The narrator, like an expert kite handler, works his string in concert with the wind to lead the colors of his craft across our minds’ eye.   As our protagonist Rovin,…

  • Do You Read?

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    Ben East
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    I wish more people were reading books. Here’s what I’m reading: Heaven Is Coming Home, by David Suarez Gomez.