Category: Uncategorized

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READING BEN, AGAIN AND AGAIN

I met Ben Talbot when he somehow found me online, and asked me to edit a short story he had written. I read the short story, and it was, well, you know, my kinda fiction. It was funny, sly, and odd in the best possible way. It took me by surprise, and, as a person who has read thousands of books and probably hundreds of manuscripts, it is hard to write something that presents to me as fresh. Ben’s story did all of that.

Ben writes a blog.

When an author works with me I give advice on the whole “I’m an author” thing, and my advice is always that each author needs a website (the author’s personal shelf in the bookstore that is the WWW, where readers can find him/her/they), and then to communicate, even if it feels like whispering into the void, so people know about you, have a chance to get to know you, as an author and a human. Most folks don’t take my advice, and even I have trouble with my own advice, as I just don’t get the time I need to attend to my own blog, but Ben took my advice and is blogging… daily. 

Ben already had a website with a blog, but he has started making blogging a very regular part of his life, and that takes some stamina and commitment to one’s writing career. Ben has both.

Ben is also a person with a unique way of seeing the world in general, and I think that is his literary “blessing,” if you will, that makes his fiction so compelling when you read it. You can get a taste for it in his blog. If you wonder what the elusive thing called “talent” is, I guess I would say, loosely, it is the ability to do what other people can do (right? Like even I can play a little piano…) but to do it in an either especially skilled way, or with a unique interpretation, or a different way of “playing the instrument” that results in surprising and new ways of…. seeing, hearing, etc. 

Ben is releasing his first book in 2025, a collection of short stories that function as a novel, much like the classic, WINESBURG, OHIO, by Sherwood Anderson, that is actually labeled as a short story cycle. Ben’s collection is called Periscope City: Where the Lonely Go to Live Alone. Reading Ben’s blog will give you an idea of his style, and keep you up to date on when his book releases. It’s under construction with us now, and I’ll be certain to post when the pre-order is available.

I especially like today’s post by Ben. I left a comment on it that it’s like poetry, of a sort. It’s not so much what Ben has to say, as it is the way in which he says it.

Over two million books get released each year. The first step to being read, which the blogging has an opportunity to help with, is having people know that your book even exists. The second step is, once you get them reading, keep them hooked. And that’s where Ben’s writing shines, at least is does for me, a reader who has been bored way more often than hooked, by books sent my way to edit.

So take a look at today’s blog entry from Ben, and see if you see what I see in his style that I find so intriguing.

And if you’re working on your own book, ask yourself if you are willing to out yourself out there, over and over, whispering into the void, to try to find your readers.

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19 YEARS, 364 DAYS

Dave and me on top of the Empire State Building, 2003, about one year before we got married.
Dave and me in our Laszlo and Nadja phase, a brief, but important period in our lives.
Me and Dave in our Three Stooges phase, which has lasted now, oh, about 19 years and 364 days.

I guess I am about to be married for 20 years.

Hey Dave, I guess we made it. You so stupid.

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RIP DEAR, AMAZING, SENATOR FEINSTEIN

Congresswoman Pelosi joins UC San Francisco Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann and Senator Dianne Fienstein

I think politics are extremely important, because they determine what rights I have as a woman in the United States, and, over the past few years, I lost the right to my own body because of them. Which is really a sickening thought. I do not own me.
And now we lost Senator Feinstein, who worked tirelessly to get me control of my own body, and protect me from gun violence, and tried to help to keep me in control of my own body. With her in the photo is former UC Chancellor, Sue Desmond-Hellmann, and another hero of mine, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emeritus, and one heck of a fighter.

I know many people will use the occasion of Senator Feinstein’s passing to jump on the bandwagon that she was impaired in her last year of service. As a person who has always given my service to others, I know how hard it can be to stop doing this, even when it would benefit you to do so. I understand. And, maybe, in hangin on, she has brought us to a conversation we need to have about how long people keep going. As a very late bloomer, I’m not sure how I feel about that.

And, MOST CERTAINLY, the work she wanted to get done is not done: guns are still killing people and I have lost ownership of my body, so I can imagine she felt it difficult to stop fighting for those things.

Rest in peace, dear Senator Feinstein. I am so proud to share a name with you, so proud to have twice had you as my senator, and I am so deeply grateful for your service.

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NEIL YOUNG CONCERT TONIGHT! I AM SO EXCITED!

And to celebrate, let’s revisit this oldie but goody: IT SHOULD BE A LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 2

First of all, I already know it’s a long song. Go cry to your mama. I love it, and I want it even longer. I could float down the Mississippi on this and never care a wit about the world.

Go Neil go, just don’t stop so soon Man.

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POEM WITH ME: EASTER ADDITION ’23

T’was the night before Easter
and time to dye eggs
a holiday activity
for which my daughter always begs.
Because we’re just three
a dozen’s all I bought.
Not enough to share
both my daughter and I thought.
So I said she could do them,
each one and all,
and I would watch her,
and we’d have a ball.

She makes them precisely.
It takes her all night,
and so I’m not bored,
I decided to write.
I got out the words
to make me a poem,
and we both took our time
it was really slow goin’.

Now she has her eggs,
and I have some words.
They say Easter’s for bunnies;
I think it’s for the birds.

And now, without further ado, I present… my poem!

Of course, with magnetic poetry you’re limited to the words they give you, but, sometimes, just having a physical word there, in your hand, moves your brain.

This is my (final version of my ) poem, as I would type it out, and adding, in a few bits that I could not find magnetized:

The Persistence of My Memory

Hello remembered rain, flowering my vision
with your pattering
against a delicate purple
window of poetry called the past-
each yesterday
going easily slow,
always abundant,
full
filled
delicious, fluid with music.

But the photos-
the photos contrast,
look rough,
ugly,
taste weird.
No poetry of purple flowering,
just tarnished silver halide-
No rain pattering-
no sound on muck
mucky
gelatin emulsion.
And Kodak never lies.

Screw memory,
that drunk companion
not at all companionable,
& a week’s worth of wages
for an empty seat
lugged around forever, and forever again
tangling up the turnstiles,
a heavy, broken, ghost.

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POEM WITH ME

Wanna submit to the Horror Writers Association (HWA) for their horror book of poetry? If you are published in HALLOWEEN PARTY, you can. Gravelight PressDevil’s Party Press family, and we pay every author in HALLOWEEN PARTY $25 (and give each author a free copy of the anthology), and that $25 check is enough to qualify for membership in the HWA.

The HWA is currently soliciting for a volume of poetry. Why not submit?

Here’s a little horror ditty (I’m not saying it’s very pretty…).

Little Bo Weep (by D.Pearce)

Now I lay me down to sleep
and thinking ’bout dismembering sheep.
No hooves to leap
no baaaaahs to bleep
just nightmares in the meadow’s deep.
Like a tea with too much steep
the blood into the wool will seep.
I chopping chopping as she weeps
that simpering whimpering
dopey BoPeep.
Then I round the herd will creep
for bones and fuzz and tails to sweep
And when the sheep are in a heap
what will be the reap I reap?
At lastly long and blissful sleep.

Horror poetry. See? It’s easy. 😉

And fun!

C’mon, write a horror poem and submit!


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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 12: “Sun, sun, sun, here it comes.”

HA! I got you! You thought I was going to put up the Beatles version, didn’t you?

Well, there’s a reason I didn’t put that first, but I will put it below.

George, I never knew him, but he always struck me as soft and gentle, in the way that men are not supposed to be soft and gentle. And I think it was very hard for him, as it is for so many people in so many bands, not to be overshadowed by the other members. And I am a Beatle girl, until the age of 30 or so, there was no other band I would spend my limited record money on (aside from Wings, because I was desperately in love with Paul). So I love the Beatles version, but George was given so few slots in the band’s catalogue, so let’s begin with him here, and paired with another gentle great, Paul Simon. And BONUS, if you watch all the way through you get “Homeward Bound” too, one of my favorite S&G songs. I had S&G’s greatest hits (still do have it) because I stole it from my brother, so that was his record money, not mine, and I know I that I probably wore out “Homeward Bound” and “America.”

But this is about the great song, “Here Comes the Sun, ” which I have literally had on “Alexa” repeat since Dave took Sophie to school… so a few hours.

What do I like about it?

Well, it’s plinky might be the first thing I would say. It’s got great plinky guitar. I like plinky guitar; I am a big fan of it. Secondly, that plinky guitar acts like an extra voice: it follows the melody through the song, literally singing the main tune right along with George. I remember hearing that the Beatles had conflict over George wanting to (often) have the guitar follow the melody in the songs, as an extra voice. And the story went that Paul didn’t like it. I do not know if that is true, and Paul may be the sometimes most-hated Beatle, but the guy is a hugely successful songwriter, so there’s that. I think the plinky and the guitar acting like a voice works here, and ads to the gentleness of the song.

The second thing I like about “Here Comes the Sun” is that it is understated. If we assume it’s England, where the sun often hides, and it’s been a long cold lonely sunless period, then WOW! the sun is out!!!
But this is “Here comes the sun… do-do-do-do…,” and “…it’s alright.” It’s low-key, low energy, they way an introvert gets excited about things. Harrison was probably an introvert, and I feel that, and I feel that low-key excitement. It’s no less joyful for not being an explosion of confetti and balloons.

I chose this song today because yesterday I took my teen daughter into teen-daughter heaven, what you probably know of as a store called Claire’s. I have had some fun times finding little doo-dads (doo-dads, am I 100 years old?) at Claire’s, but the three or four times I have been there in 2023 I have been assaulted, every single damn time, by the same two songs, one a country western song, and one a pop song, both of which are guilty of crap formulaic song writing and being ear worms. I will not name the atrocities lest they attack you too. I sentence them to exile from the planet. And clearly neither song writer ever listened to George Harrison.

So, I am using George today, to lift my mood in a gentle “I might have a hangover” way, and also because George can be heard over and over and exterminate those earworms without becoming one himself, because George would never do that. George has mad skills. And I love George with ELO, on his own, with The Beatles, and really quite a lot with The Traveling Wilburys, a band that was much too short-lived.

And, on that note, I want to introduce you to another George song that I adore:

“Give Me Love” almost always brings me to the edge of tears, and not because of the lyrics. The music is sweet, and sad, and… oh I dunno. It’s just something.

It’s good to have gentleness in the craziness of life. George gave us gentleness.

Rest well George. Thanks for all the gentle sweetness.