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.
Stop by Authors Electric for my new post, but also for the other posts! The authors there are so engaging. They give you their time. Can you loan them your eyes?
If I could tell you how to say it I would say that you have to say it
Snacka… BALLS!
It sounds like sack-a-balls; you know it does.
Sophie is my daughter, and a funny person, and one of her first jokes was when she only had a few words. I think her first word was, “Up!” said as an absolute command. Sophie has pretty much been commanding from the moment in China when, taken off to a random hotel room by two complete, white, strangers, after being stripped of her peed-on, sweated-on clothes, cleaned-up and put in fresh new jammies, she grabbed the Baby Mum Mum from my fingers, bit into it, and was like, “All right people, you got more of these? Good. Let’s do this family thing bitches!”
Her second word was some version of, “Da-da,” and the word Mom, not Ma-Ma or anything like Mommy, just Mom, came about five years after. 😉
But her third word was, “Ball!” and every time she said the word ball it came with two things at the end: an exclamation point, and hysterical laughter, the kind little kids get where they hiccup with glee.
Because she so enjoyed the word ball, and we so enjoyed her laughing her little diapered tush off about it, we encouraged it. We told everybody that our seventeen-month-old daughter had a joke, and then we would say to Sophie, “Tell them your joke.”
And she would say, “Ball!” and crack up, and it was so cute, the gusto with which she said it, and the cracking up, that everyone laughed, even if some people didn’t get it.
I remember, once, a humorless person saying to me, “Wait, is there like another part, and that is the punchline?”
Nuh-uh. Nope. The punchline is my kid is funny as hell, and you are not interesting enough to “get” her. Am I right?
I guess you could say comedy is taught, but Sophie was just funny, and we just put some fertilizer on that. Maybe that’s why she busted out of China, a country not known for its humor.
As a teen, she has progressed to funnier, and sarcastic in just the right way, and irreverent, all characteristics of good comedians.
She’s also a teen.
And I’ll tell you now my one-liner about her being a teen that I have said to anyone who will listen, and, funny as it is (it is funny, trust me on this), hopefully this will be the last time I attempt to get miledge out of this old clunker:
“I know you’re a teenager,” I said to her, “because you smell bad and you’re mean.”
Sophie has always been so sweet, and kind, and even her teachers have sometimes said things like, “She is the nicest person I know.” I mean, it’s true, and…. You know, teachers don’t get out a lot.
She’s fourteen/fifteen now, and, I’m gonna say that, now, she’s not that sweet. Or she’s less sweet, in any case. And she don’t wanna be with me. Oh ho ho (shakes head) oh no. Or Dad. For more than a few minutes anyway. We hear racous laughter coming from her room, the kind she is almost hiccuping from, and it is shared with friends, live or in text, and not us.
I admit I am struggling a little with this phase of parenting.
And I see it on the faces of the other parents picking up at school: they look sad, desperate, dumped. And I see it on their kids faces: their faces change from absolute liveliness to dead-inside when they leave their friends and climb into the parental vehicle.
I think my only advantage is deciding, all those long-lost years ago, to teach Sophie that “Ball” was a joke, because it may be the only thing saving me: that she has a sense of humor, that she likes to laugh, that she likes stupid jokes.
This is the daughter who, back in our old house where we had one of those wonderful soaking tubs, would walk in on me in the steamy bath, strip down, get in, and cuddle. It was never an ask. It was, “Where’s Mom? In the tub? I’m getting in.”
I remember my mom making us walk in on her when she was in the bathtub, so she could give us chores or ask us questions. She laid there, in the shallow tub, washcloth over her nipples, and it was just… weird. Soooo awkward. Sophie walking in on me in the tub was never like that. She started as soon as she could walk, and she kept it up, though it was petering off, right up until we moved and the tub was gone. Plus, we had bubbles. I mean, c’mon, you’re gonna need some bubbles so it’s not “weird washcloth on nipples thing.”
Now Soph is fourteen/fifteen she still doesn’t seem to mind walking in on me getting dressed, but she really doesn’t want it the other-way-around. Which I think is normal, and I am more than fine with, and, honestly, I wish I could get a little privacy back on my end.
But, right up until she was about fourteen-point-twenty five, she would, pretty much, any time I was sitting down, crawl up onto my lap for a cuddle or a squeeze. With Dad too, but this isn’t about him, lol. He can cry his own damn tears.
Getting into our laps has stopped. I know she still loves us, and the love is very affectionate, but not physically so. The regular old hugs have stopped. If I want a hug before school, I ask for it before we leave the house, because once she is out of the car she doesn’t want to hug me. She wants to go see her buds. And if I try to get a hug, even in the most private moments at home, like before bed, sometimes I only get a side-hug, the worst hug in creation!
Growing Up, you bastard! How I hate you!
And so I look for small wins, wherever I can get them.
We cannot seem to spend time together well, the three of us, anymore. The lure of texting with friends is too much, and if we declare phone-free time, the enthusiasm is really low.
We still play board games well together, but just to eat dinner, talking, is a streeeeeetch.
She will still come to see the pets do cute things, and snap a photo to show her friends, but it’s quickly back into her room, which must always have the door closed.
I mean, what do I care? Her room’s a mess. I don’t want to look in there anyway. Go ahead and close your stupid door.
*sob*
I think I need more sugar in my coffee.
I probably need a cookie, desperately.
Or a whole sleeve of McVities. The chocolate ones. For digestion purposes only. Not at all because my life is less sweet.
…I’m starting to realize she’s going to leave me.
I need a minute.
I’m starting to realize she’s going to leave me, when she can pry herself free of my cold dead fingers.
I’m starting to realize she’s going to leave me, for real, in life, in a few years, but, if I can keep it together, not be too cloying, she may still like me and hang-out occasionally.
My husband and I are taking more walks together, because we need to, and not because our asses are widening because of all the McVities, so we need exercise. Because we need to have a reason to hold hands. Because we need to hold hands with someone, because the little hand we held is big now, and it doesn’t need to hold on. And we’re both sad about it, husband and me, but this isn’t about him. This is about me.
…And her.
As teen girls and moms do, we shop together, and we do it well, as long as I do what I am supposed to do: watch, encourage, be completely present as an audience, and not shop for anything myself: silent witness.
But I am used to being the center of her orbit as she is the center of mine. A nice little bianary system. I won’t go gently into my good irrelevance. And so I make attempts.
This week we were happily wandering Home Goods when I spotted, god love them, Tom’s Snackaballs. The package at our Home Goods only had Tom on it, not Luke too, as pictured up at the top of this post. Perhaps Luke was his father, and Tom jettisoned him. “Tom,” says Luke, “I am your father.”
“That can’t be!” says Tom, and drops into the cold vastness of space rather than be stuck with his parent.
And so I had to point them out to my daughter.
“Hungry?” I said, “How about some balls? Snackaballs!”
“What the hell?” she said, and graabbed the package and erupted in laughter.
We imagined we were Tom, creating the snack. “What are you going to call them, Tom?” asks a friend.
“Balls,” Tom proudly replies, “Snacka balls!”
And, being two bawdy women, we imagined Tom saying something like, “Everyone likes putting balls in their mouths.”
Eeeewww.
LOL
OMGosh, we laughed so much.
And because I am the worst, and don’t know how to or when to stop, and because I am already missing my child who will leave me one day which makes me desperate, I said, “Ewww. Why are they lemon-flavored? Zesty lemon. ZestyLemon SNACKABALLS! I bet testicles do taste like lemon, all sweaty and sour.”
I knew, as soon as I’d uttered it, it was a step too far.
And yet, my daughter lost it. She giggled and sputtered and laughed out loud and held her stomach and put her hand over her mouth to try to quiet herself even a little.
And, just like that, she was two years old and telling the whole world her great joke, “BALL!”
Later I walked past her room and heard her telling her friend the story. I don’t know if they were in a call, or talk to text, but the giggling was there.
Success.
Ribald humor saves the day.
I don’t think Sophie knows the word ribald. But it’s a pretty funny word, honestly. I mean, bald is just funny. There’s a certain something about it, like ball, that makes it funny. Ribald, pronouced ribbled, and not like bald or ball, is even funnier. I think I’m going to have to tell her about it, and we can work up a joke on it.
In the meantime, enjoy some delicious Snackaballs, won’t you? They’re lemon. And, just like childhood, their expiration date is fast approaching.
bsolutely delighted to extend a warm invitation to join us for a Current Words One-And-Done Session—an exclusive and enjoyable opportunity designed specifically for fiction and memoir writers to refine their skills in a highly supportive environment. And guess what? It comes at no cost to you!
Picture this: a virtual gathering hosted by Di and Dave (D&D), happening from 9-11 AM Pacific time on select Saturdays, and limited to just five participants. In an intimate Zoom setting, you’ll exclusively share your work with D&D along with the other participants. D&D will come prepared for a deep dive into your work, seeking out your distinctive patterns, challenges, and talents as an author.
Here’s the rundown on how to secure your spot: shoot us an email with a 450-550 word snippet of your writing at workshops@currentwords.com. Don’t forget to include your full name and the genre you’re working on (whether it’s short stories, long-form fiction, or memoir). Once you snag a spot, expect an email with exclusive instructions and the meeting URL. Prepare to join our small-group discussion via Zoom, where we’ll give your work the thoughtful attention it truly deserves.
Wondering why you should participate? Every writer has unique qualities—some that add zest to their writing, others that might slow it down. Have you ever pondered the role of an editor or what it’s like to be edited? Find answers to these questions, connect with a small group of fellow authors, and get a boost to your enthusiasm—all in a brief Saturday morning session.
Few things boost a writer’s productivity more than mingling with other authors. We’re eager to dive into your creative world, share in this enriching experience, and connect with our fellow wordsmiths.
Remember, this is completely free of charge! D&D have been extending a helping hand to fellow authors since their bi-monthly free workshop started at their home in 2017. We genuinely enjoy the company of other authors and can’t wait to explore your words, embarking on this exciting writing journey together.
To secure your spot, simply shoot an email to workshops@currentwords.com with 450-550 words of writing for our review.
We’ll then send you the first available date, followed by a Zoom link if you’re able to attend. Looking forward to seeing you at the virtual gathering!
Aside from doing my own writing, and teaching and tutoring, I’m in the publishing biz. And, during my six years doing that I have really been delving into this topic over and over, not even for myself, in all honesty, but for the truly very talented authors I have helped to publish who I think should be making a living from their writing, because most authors are not making a living from their writing.
And, the ones that are, are probably working their social-media butts off, and probably not fully making a living. They probably have gainfully employed spouses, with health benefits, and are making a contributing amount as an author, but not a rent-paying amount. That is my guess, for the “in general” group. There are always outliers. But, there are not very many of those.
So I offer you two articles to read which I find helpful as an author for keeping me grounded:
THIS ONE:
AND THIS ONE:
May you write a good novel and finish it, and may it find its readers.
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.
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.
Dianne Pearce Writes 