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Turns Ten. Turns Us In.
The kid set us up, big time. He gets a bat and balls and batting glove, bowling and pizza and chocolate cake, and this is how he repays us? All week long we put little signs around the house noting his tenth birthday. Ten of them to be exact. Or, make that 12 or 13,… Read more
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Review–Memoir from Paraguay
Latest review posted at Peace Corps Worldwide, home for Peace Corps-affiliated writers who publish stories from around the world. Mark Salvatore writes simple, declarative sentences. His Peace Corps memoir, Shade of the Paraiso, is stripped to fact and detail, observation and truth. Even its replication of time — passing slowly at first, building inexorably over months,… Read more
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Levity with Brevity
My copy of Flash Nonfiction Funny cometh! I hope the wait’s as brief as the material—rib-tickling bites of 750 words or less compiled by editors Tom Hazuka and Dinty W. Moore (yes). As the book makes its way to my doorstep, I’m looking at the anthology’s 71 contributors (including myself) and the first name to… Read more
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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… Read more
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The NRA’s Chosen People
As I watched Charlton Heston lead the chosen people out of Egypt last night I wondered: in a remake of The Ten Commandments, would Ted Nugent play Moses? Nugent, whose awful music from the 1970s apparently qualifies him to talk down to us about such weighty matters as constitutional law, seems to be the NRA’s… Read more
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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… Read more
Ben East Books 