Meridian is working its way towards publication. Teddi Black and I are working on the cover. I can't say for sure when, but you should be able to get the book from Amazon within a month. An old-time song called Forget Me Not appears throughout the novel. If you would like to listen to it, you can do so at the link below. You will need Real Player, which is available for download for free.
Forget Me Not
Keep current with the author of Heroes, Smoke, Exile, City of the Dead, Harvest, and Meridian all now available on Amazon, Create Space, and Smashwords.
Friday, May 22, 2015
Friday, May 15, 2015
Old Documents Come To Light--Update
Back in January of this year, I promised to make public the ancillary files I created while writing my novels. It took a while, but I finally got around to it. If you want to know more about my process of writing these books, you can click the link below. You can look at the character sketches and timelines and other files for each novel. This includes Meridian, which I have not even published yet. It does not include Home, which I won't have out until this fall.
Happy reading. Let me know if you find anything notable or interesting.
Click Here For The Documents
Happy reading. Let me know if you find anything notable or interesting.
Click Here For The Documents
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Theodore Dreiser
I am not sure if anyone reads much anymore. I am even less certain that people read classics of American literature. This is notably true for long, complicated novels. Which means there is a very good chance that nobody is reading the novels of Theodore Dreiser. That is a pity.
For whatever reason, literary titans go in and out of favor. Some never achieve a great deal of fame. I think that prominent in that group is Dreiser. He wrote at least two book that are among the greatest of all American novels: Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925). You may be generally aware of American Tragedy because it was the basis of the movie A Place in the Sun (1951). As wonderful as that film is, the book is even better. Notably, both Carrie and Tragedy feature men who find themselves in impossible positions with a woman in their lives. In each case, the role of fate is central to what happens. In Carrie, it is the safe swinging shut after Hurstwood takes the money. In Tragedy, is it the tipping of the boat on the lake where Clyde Griffiths took the pregnant Roberta. Both Hurstwood and Griffiths are overcome by the absurd, by random chance. In that sense, I think that Dreiser anticipated some of the literature of the later 20th Century that focuses on how random acts in a chaotic world can cause significant events to unfold. See if you don't hear echoes of Tragedy in The Stranger by Albert Camus.
Even if you are not persuaded by my literary arguments, you should still read Dreiser. His novels are damn good stories if nothing else. The scenes at the end of Tragedy where Griffiths' mother is trying to save him from execution are extraordinary. So, too, are the scenes of Hurstwood after he has come to ruin in New York. If you seek out these two novels, be sure to get the restored versions. Dreiser's editors had to impose a lot of cuts to get the books onto shelves. These forced edits did not serve the stories. Read them in the original if you can. Dreiser was a huge influence on me. I see evidence of his style and technique in almost everything I wrote. Check him out. I think you will be very glad you did.
For whatever reason, literary titans go in and out of favor. Some never achieve a great deal of fame. I think that prominent in that group is Dreiser. He wrote at least two book that are among the greatest of all American novels: Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925). You may be generally aware of American Tragedy because it was the basis of the movie A Place in the Sun (1951). As wonderful as that film is, the book is even better. Notably, both Carrie and Tragedy feature men who find themselves in impossible positions with a woman in their lives. In each case, the role of fate is central to what happens. In Carrie, it is the safe swinging shut after Hurstwood takes the money. In Tragedy, is it the tipping of the boat on the lake where Clyde Griffiths took the pregnant Roberta. Both Hurstwood and Griffiths are overcome by the absurd, by random chance. In that sense, I think that Dreiser anticipated some of the literature of the later 20th Century that focuses on how random acts in a chaotic world can cause significant events to unfold. See if you don't hear echoes of Tragedy in The Stranger by Albert Camus.
Even if you are not persuaded by my literary arguments, you should still read Dreiser. His novels are damn good stories if nothing else. The scenes at the end of Tragedy where Griffiths' mother is trying to save him from execution are extraordinary. So, too, are the scenes of Hurstwood after he has come to ruin in New York. If you seek out these two novels, be sure to get the restored versions. Dreiser's editors had to impose a lot of cuts to get the books onto shelves. These forced edits did not serve the stories. Read them in the original if you can. Dreiser was a huge influence on me. I see evidence of his style and technique in almost everything I wrote. Check him out. I think you will be very glad you did.
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