I’m so excited. After years of failing to complete a book of prose, during the final two months of 2022 I finished the first draft of a novel.

This is a goal I set for myself at the beginning of the year, and I consider it a small miracle that I was able to see it through to completion, with so little time to spare. When I saw the NaNoWriMo posts begin online from others who were trying to write their first books, it spurred me to dedicate my efforts with my full attention.

I began my novel draft on November 3, and I finished it on December 23, just in time for it to be a Christmas gift to myself. The first draft was 42,000 words.

This morning, I completed work on re-writes and initial edits. The second draft is 52,000 words. I’ve sent drafts to beta readers to gain insights on what works and doesn’t work. Responses from the first draft were highly positive, and I feel that the second draft is a vast improvement in nearly every aspect. I look forward to hearing from readers on what they think.

The novel is a work of dystopian sci-fi, in the tradition of I Am Legend, Fahrenheit 451, and The Handmaid’s Tale. I’ve tried to marry my key influences into one cohesive style of prose that is not only readable, but compelling. I think this book succeeds in those goals, and at least one reader commented that it was “really original” and a “page-turner.”

Below is the cover I designed for the book. Be looking for it to come out this year. I can’t wait for you to read this.

Please check out my newest poem, “Shame,” which I published yesterday on Medium.

I think it’s pretty good. I know, I know, my own opinion is worthless. But maybe you’ll agree anyway?

Also, I reviewed the latest Ryan Adams album, “Chris,” which has for some reason stopped showing up in Google search results. I find that odd, since like no one else has reviewed it at all. If that interests you, please check it out.

As always, I appreciate any support you give through sharing my work and of course, reading it.

Thank you.

Just a note to say that my full-length collection of political poetry has now been released.

POLITRIX: political poems, is a collection that puts most of my poems about social issues into one cohesive volume. While I did not want to just combine my other three political books into this one, some of the better poems from those works did make the cut in this mostly new and unseen collection. These poems deal with issues such as the Trump presidency, gun control, immigration, climate change, racism, censorship, and more.

Over 120 pages of new poetry for you to read and enjoy.

This is the last poetry collection I had in the hopper, and I have no plans to release any more. For the foreseeable future, my focus will be entirely on my fiction.

As always, thanks for your support.

My new poetry collection, Canon Fodder, has been out now for a few weeks. Kudos if you’ve picked one up. It currently has three reviews on Amazon, five star rating. Thanks to the reviewers!

I must say, I expected to have more reviews by now, considering how many advance copies I sent out, but such is life.

I have deleted all my social media presence. I do not think I will return. The absence of that toxicity from my life has already been a tremendous boon for my productivity and my overall mentality. You should consider eliminating it from your life as well. I believe you will find it rewarding.

When I say rewarding, I’m not joking. In the few weeks since I’ve deleted my social media platforms, I’ve published two new books, and have another on the way.

The first one I did is a collection of social commentary essays, largely refuting the notion set forward by a bestselling one called “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck,” in which I suggest the popularity of such a philosophy is turning society into a bunch of narcissistic crybabies. My book is called Choosing to Give All the F*cks: More Empathy, Less Apathy for a Better World, and it is up now on Amazon. It contains several of the essays I’ve written over the last two years on Medium, and a substantial portion of brand new work that I wrote especially for the book.

The next new book I put out is a collection of work that I posted on Instagram, combining satirical poetry with artful photographs. It’s a small collection, as I did not pursue that medium for very long, but I think it’s pretty cool. For this book, called NOT ART, I had to make a full color photo book, with high quality paper, so that the photographs would all retain their attention to detail. If you’re interested in such a project, it would make quite the conversation starter for your coffee table maybe. Check it out.

Lastly, one project that I tackled this week was revamping a majority of the book covers of my old books. I realized, looking them over one day, that I had significantly improved as a designer of books since I started publishing stuff over eight years ago. Many of my old books, their covers just sucked. I either was too lazy, or just didn’t care, to notice. I decided to publish new versions of those books, with much better covers, and hopefully you will agree it has been a heck of an improvement.

My first poetry collection, Father Figures, now has one of my favorite covers of all of my works. It’s a real family photo, taken of me as a baby with my mom and biological father. I also updated the Kindle versions of books like this one, which were quite bad, because I honestly had no idea how to produce a good Kindle book up until quite recently. Sorry to anyone who had downloaded one of these glitchy, and not properly formatted Kindle versions. If you update your download of it, it should be fixed now.

Below, I will just post the new covers of the other collections I updated.

CORONA:

Second Amendment Pastoral:

THIEVES:

GRIEF:

The Ghosts of Silence:

life:death:love:theft:

SCOWL:

And lastly, I have a new collection that will be out soon, comprising the majority of the political poetry I have written over the years. It will be called POLITRIX. This one is still in development, but should be done within the month.

That’s all I have to report at the moment. I hope you like the new updated look of most of my books. If you bought an old one, and would like a new version, feel free to contact me via email (you can use the Contact Me page on here for that if you don’t have my email) and we will see what we can do.

In the meantime, thanks for supporting my work. And be on the lookout for future projects. I fully intend to have written a fiction novel this year. And it’s going to be great.

Taters!

My new poetry collection, Canon Fodder: Poems Inspired by Classic Literature, is now available for pre-order on Kindle. It will be live along with the paperback and hardcover versions on January 1, 2021. I am very excited for this book to be in the world, and I hope those who enjoy reading poetry and literary fiction, will give the book a chance.

In the meantime, several more of the pieces from this book have found homes in publications.

Two pieces were published with Outcast Press!

Three poems were published with A Thin Slice of Anxiety!

One poem found its home with The Dead Mule of Southern Literature!

Two pieces were published with Misery Tourism!

And finally, two pieces were posted with ExPat Press!

There are also two more poems coinciding release with Slipstream Press in January that I do not have the link for as of yet. I extend my humble thanks to the editors of these journals for giving them a place to exist outside of my own imagination.

I also published my favorite piece from the collection, and my favorite poem I have ever written, on Medium. I could not get anyone to take it for publication, probably because it is ten pages long.

The early reviews and responses I have received from the beta readers of this collection have been extremely positive, as have been responses to the work I have put out at the various publications. I hope that this means the collection will be as positively received by everyone else who happens to check it out.

If you want more information about the book, please click the link at the top of this post and read the description to see if it might be of interest to you.

 

Thanks as always for allowing my voice to live in your head for these briefest of moments.

Very happy to announce a couple new publications.

Punk Noir Magazine published a set of five of my recent poems.

My poem, “A Writer Dreams of America,” appeared in The Dead Mule of Southern Literature this month. This poem was based upon a reading of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. It will most likely be the opening poem of my new manuscript.

The new manuscript has really started taking shape. It’s now titled Canon Fodder : poems inspired by classic literature, and it will most likely be released early next year. For my info on the project, I published this piece on Medium talking about how it started and how it developed.

I’m hoping to get some more of the pieces published, but I am having some difficulty finding homes for them. If you are interested in the poems, feel free to contact me.

For Champ

When you love a dog,
you want it to live forever
because you know
just how close
tomorrow is.

You bring that puppy
into your life,
home from the pound
and its harsh chemical smell,
its harsh reverberant chatter
of barks echoing
through tile, concrete, chainlink.

He sleeps like a warm pillow,
nose whistling,
head at rest on your thigh.
Look how big his paws are!
Look how his lip gets stuck
under his bottom tooth, so cute!

When he’s bounding up the steps,
when he’s chasing his tail,
sitting with his head cocked
watching you eat pizza,
tearing a tennis ball to shreds
and leaving bits of bright green
fuzz caught in the carpet,
you love him.

You love him while you tell him no
a thousand times,
while you wipe his puke up
for the thousandth time,
while you bag his poop
hot in your hand
under the thin pink plastic
just so the neighbors won’t complain,

when even the cloying scent
of dog becomes a comfort
in the cushions of your couch,
your bedsheets, your mattress.
You even love the sight of his shedding,
stray fibers everywhere,
on your car seats,
on every shirt you pull from the drawer.

You don’t care.
You love that dog,
he’s your family,
he’s the son that can never disappoint you,
that can never default on his loan,
can never call from a payphone
asking for bail money.

He will never stop loving you
because you had to say no,
and he will never stop
being happy
just to see you
walk through the door.

There’s not an ounce of hate in a dog,
not one single ounce
of vindictiveness or spite.
But there is loyalty.
There is joy.
And yes, there is humanity,

which is why it hurts
just so fucking much
to let go
when tomorrow comes,

because no matter the number
of days you get
walking the sun lit trails
of the in-between,
it always will seem
like time fell just short
of being enough.

April is starting off well. I have had three new poems appear in issue ten of ImpSpired Magazine, based out of the UK. Thanks to the editor Steve Cawte.

I participated in a special promotion for National Poetry Month sponsored by the Film Shooter’s Collective, where a poem is paired with the work of a photographer for each day of the month. My poem appeared on day three, and here it is.

And this morning, another new poem appears at The Rusty Truck. Thanks to the editor Scot D. Young.

All these pieces of part of my ongoing project, responding to classic works of literature. I hope they will all eventually make it into a full length manuscript.

Thanks for checking them out. Let me know what you think.

I have recently had two poems published with reputable journals, and I have some more on the way. I have been slowly making progress on a new manuscript of poems, in which I’ve been reading through classic works of literature that I never took time to engage with in the past, and I write poems that respond to and communicate with those novels. It’s a fun project for me, and I am learning a lot, while also reading some of the best novels ever written.

At any rate, one of the poems from that project is here, published with As It Ought To Be Magazine. It’s a poem that was written in response to the Ernest Hemingway novel The Sun Also Rises.

The other published piece, was with a UK based journal called The Lake. They’ve published me before. They graciously reprinted a poem from my collection Corona, titled Fathoms of Mourning.

Thanks to the editors of both of these journals. And keep checking back for future updates, as I continue to get more of these poems out into the world.