Ben East Books

Tag: Writing

  • Time to Write

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    Ben East
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    Blog entries about writing I enjoy most treat the craft as work. Those I enjoy least lament a thing called writer’s block. For all those writers who suffer some form of blockage, I submit this photo from 2007. This neurotic-looking ledger of hours and minutes was my go-to mechanism for avoiding “the block.” I used it…

  • The Sandlot

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    Ben East
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    The first agent to show any interest in my writing offered to meet and discuss my manuscript after months of back and forth. During our conversation he shared an anecdote centered on the time his Little League team played at Shea Stadium. ‘How exciting!’ he and his teammates thought. ‘A Big League field in a Big…

  • Review–Pathologies

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    Ben East
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    If laughter is good medicine, William Walsh presents sick remedy in Pathologies. His short collection of diseased proceedings is more than the sum of its madness. Walsh is a gifted writer, by turns astounding with sharp phrases and surprising with brief, unpredictable arcs. One way to treat this is by engaging the peculiar brilliance of individual…

  • New Fiction @Revolution John

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    Ben East
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    Thanks to Sam Slaughter for posting my latest fiction at Revolution John. Warm yourself up with this  excerpt, then head on over and read the whole thing, a romp through patriotism, office life, and federal worker morale in the face of congressional dysfunction. In God We Trust (excerpt) Towards the head of the table Howard Graves…

  • Review–Old Sparky

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    Ben East
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    My copy of Old Sparky—The Electric Chair and the History of the Death Penalty arrived the day after a federal jury ended 14 hours of deliberation during which they concluded that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev deserved death for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon attack. This was no accident. I requested the copy as a means of examining…

  • Winning Big at the County Fair

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    Ben East
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    I could do without the county fair. I don’t like crowds. I’d rather not stand in line for pricey food known to cause obesity and heart attacks. I don’t care for the “Twirling Tots” act on center stage advertising just how little talent exists at the local dance school, and I think Mutts Gone Nutts…

  • Review–The Second Most Dangerous Job in America

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    Ben East
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    I revisited The Second Most Dangerous Job in America (Atticus Shorts, 2012) when I learned Steve Himmer was releasing his next book, Fram (ig Publishing), which came out in January this year. Any discussion of this short treat must focus on observable detail and rudimentary character. There’s little to be found by way of plot, but…

  • Beginnings and Endings

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    Ben East
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    You might inscribe the title of your novel a couple dozen times before it sticks. You might make it longer, shorter, TBD, Working Title, WIP, B.S., Nada, Whatever… whatever. And revert after all that to the original working title. Or not. But “The End”… this is a thing you only write once on a manuscript. Today was that…

  • TITLES—ARGH!

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    Ben East
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    One week to go before the deadline to submit your novel-length manuscript to the 2015 Leapfrog Press Fiction Contest. Get it done! The goal’s had me burning the midnight oil the past couple months, forcing me to put off a lot of other substantive posts. Among the big items I’d hoped to reflect on recently…

  • Crime Fiction: The Cost of Doing Business

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    Ben East
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    Jonathan Ashley crams a lot into The Cost of Doing Business, from ghetto shootouts with Tec-9s to sociological laments about middle class norms. It’s got elements of the tough-talking hood narrative, and the book is entertaining in places, but ultimately much of the action is muddled by drawn out sentences and the narrator’s distracted observations. What…