Welcome to my blog for writing. Here is where you will find an archive of short stories and essays I have written. Many of those stories were published at a blog I have since taken down called Clintonaut. Many of those... Continue Reading →
I had nearly forgotten about the picture, had come so terribly close to letting it slip away from my memory forever. Weeks would go by before the amber-red flames would dance and roil in my mind’s eye once again.
One of the marketing tools used by publishers to promote books are book trailers. It's almost exactly what you think it is -- like a movie trailer, a minute or two, with maybe a voice-over, some graphics. I watched a few and decided that I'd like to make my own for Canebrake.
On Friday and then again on Saturday evening, I drove south to the Sarasota Contemporary Dance studio for the first installment of what turned out to be a fantastic collaboration. My friend and world-class cellist Natalie Helm came up with the idea: Bach Immersion Concerts, a one-of-a-kind exploration of Johann Sebastian Bach's Six Suites for Solo Cello. The idea is to present "a multi-sensory interactive live performance," and that's exactly what happened.
Read it when the anthology is published, and more important, read the work of the winners and support literary journals and magazines whenever you can.
He puts the cigarette in his mouth and lights it with a match, letting the match burn as he continues speaking, “I didn’t even give you a name, Inspector. What could you possibly arrest me for that I won’t deny by the time we walk out of this office?”
The Mercury pulled into the station with a sigh of the brakes and a dramatic release of white steam. Again, Ned Billows joined the men on the platform in low hats and denim shirts and set to moving sacks, pallets, and barrels to and fro. It was here that the small crew -- the engineer, the fireman, and Ned Billows the brakeman -- took their lunch. It was also the first time the crew of the Mercury saw the gunmen of the armored car.
The Great Northern had left Grand Forks before the dry, yellow prairie was touched with the sun’s first light. By mid-day, the whistle was crying long and loud as the train chuffed out of the weathered Sioux Falls station, heading southbound towards Wichita across the dismal plain.
“Whatever it is,” Jim says. “It can’t be bad enough for you to want to get it through who knows what the hell past the Black Line.”
Also want to urge you to see the documentary on Mister Rogers, if you have not already: Won't You Be My Neighbor? It really is something special, the best thing I've seen on the big screen in a long, long time.
benjamin j kirby 