Under a Black Rainbow

I've had a strangely large number of conversations in the last two weeks about the nature of authenticity, itself a comment on truth as a whole.  Because so much of what life has thrown at us in recent years is composed of digital falsehoods pushing nonsense, linguistic labyrinths meant to confound, and a wholesale weaponization of language forcing ideologies to clash against each other...it can be hard to find the authenticity in life sometimes.  The internet was lauded early on as some great bastion of learning. It was also touted as a way to further connect people of differing backgrounds and ideas. Though presented as a kind of great technological, cosmopolitan symposium like those held in ancient Greece among statesmen and politicians and philosophers, it has become simply another great example of our idealism outshining the reality of what would actually happen. Rather than being a pure way of spreading truth and knowledge, we've basically polluted the digital ocean in t...

SEPTEMBER  (5 books | 1,175 pgs) 35.) Death My Own Way by Michael S.A. Graziano (Novella, 130 pgs) | 3/5 36.) The Goth House Experiment by S.J. Sindu (Stories, 209 pgs) | 3/5 37.) Uncertain Sons and Other Stories by Thomas Ha (Stories, 284 pgs) | 4/5 38.) Dead Inside by Chandler Morrison (Novel, 168 pgs) | 2/5 39.) Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware (Graphic Novel, 384 pgs) | 3/5 * Light month of reading, but I've been hyper focused on revising my resumes and cover letters, submitting to open work positions, and handling some family stuff in the background.  The only book I really enjoyed this month was Thomas Ha's Uncertain Sons and Other Stories . More sci-fi-leaning than I typically enjoy, but man that guy can worldbuild his ass off. Great collection of super punchy, vibrant places in some very similar wheres in some very similar whens, albeit VERY, VERY different. I'm shocked it's his first collection.  * Slight movements being made on the next ...

A few months ago, I noticed a new woman in the neighborhood. It's possible she's not new and that she only started appearing out in the street within the last several months.  Regardless, I live on a dead end street and I started seeing her on a daily basis. She plods down the middle of the road carrying this child like a giant, limp starfish. Based on the size of the child, I'm guessing they're anywhere from 8 to 10 years old, which seems a little older than should be carried by most parents.  Plus I've seen her out there in 100+ degree heat, stalking up and down the hot blacktop with the dead weight of this child strapped to her chest. She walks to the end of my street and then takes a right, heading down the longest street bisecting my neighborhood. Her walk is not a short one and it occurs multiple times a day.  The child is rarely ever moving much, if at all. My writing partner believes there is some kind of neglect at play, having seen the child in little othe...

The Gold Persimmon 274 pages $16.00 Order Your Copy HERE To be aboveboard, I've known Lindsay for a long, long time. We met back when I lived in San Francisco. She's always been a fantastic writer, but this is her debut novel. While I haven't finished it yet, her first chapter is some of the best and most interesting world-building I've seen in a long time.  The prose is fluid and moves across the page at a fantastic pace. The narrative is captivating and the characters even more so. I love that the cover so perfectly exemplifies the dual nature of the storylines without giving much of anything away, but with the more detailed version of the hotel displayed upside down to the reader.  From the first moment your eyes scan the cover, you know this book is unlike any other you'll read this year. You know you're about to be thrown into a world you've never seen before and run into characters that may end up haunting your days long after.  *     *     * Pub...

Kansas City Library, Downtown KCMO I've been having an interesting summer. Really, the last few years have been a long bit of a hard education in terms of how I approach my writing, how I *should* approach certain aspects of the writer's life, and learning the ins and outs of publishing in general. Getting Individual Stories Published My grad school program was great at offering up two end-of-semester talks about "Life after the MFA." Many of these were about finding an agent and how you find gainful employment with a writing degree, other kinds of work out there for writers, etc. All good things to know and many of the writers on the panel gave great information. I don't recall, however, a panel that ever discussed the nature of publishing stories. I may have missed that discussion or it never happened during my tenure. Regardless, I have an incredibly arduous process for this now that's taken me a couple years to perfect and implement. It work...

Author Adam "Bucho" Rodenberger will read excerpts and play special audio bits from his latest short story collection, "The Machinery of the Heart: Love Stories."  There will be time throughout the reading for questions and commentary.  Copies of both his current book and his previous book, "Scaring the Stars into Submission" will be available for sale through the fine folks at Subterranean Books.  The event is free and will be from 7pm-8pm.  To RSVP for the event, follow the invite link on Facebook HERE .  Subterranean Books is located at; 6275 Delmar Blvd.  St. Louis, MO. 63130 314-862-6100 (194)

I just released my second collection of stories and I've been trying to approach the marketing of it in a more nuanced and specific way. When I put out my first book, I think I was just happy to have it out and didn't bother trying to create ads for it until months later when sales started to falter. Had I been smarter, I would've started those earlier AND put the book up on several Amazon and Goodreads giveaway platforms to get the book in the hands of other readers who are currently outside my advertising reach (i.e., we are not Facebook friends and they probably don't read my blogs or know who the hell I am). With this second book, I was more on top of things, having several giveaways planned for both platforms, ads bought on Facebook and Amazon, and a general advertising campaign blast through my regular posts on FB and Instagram. To be clear: advertising on Facebook and Instagram is garbage. When I did both last time, I got some 50,000+ people engaging with t...