I love to write. I’m a lifelong, rabid fan of the English language: the clever and concise, poetic and pithy, sardonic and satiric. The world is enriched by gorgeous, descriptive text that exceeds expectations, transports beyond the familiar, stimulates the mind, and speaks to the heart. Lingo to entertain, educate, enlighten, and encourage.
This my aim, thus my pen.
See below a description of, and access to Ex Post Facto, a novel.
Read a sample and/or purchase.
My second novel, Yankee Meet Yankee, is complete, publication forthcoming.
Soft-boiled detective fiction., magic realism, existential crisis. Yankee is dispatched to find a missing singular object in a city of stories.
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Ex Post Facto is a darkly (or at least dimly) comic novel of doubt, witness, seclusion, connection, community, friendship, the finality of choice, and the enigma of Fruit Pie the Magician.
Multiple eras intersect on a single plot of ground, the Midwestern town of Northwood, where 19th-Century agraria, contemporary suburb, corporate technocracy, and borderless urbana all become stitched together. The world, of course, is imperfect, and Northwood is no exception, a little town built over a wound in time.
On a Saturday morning in October, less than a month before the 2010 mid-terms, Stella Lykins nurses a headache of overindulgence, and witnesses a thin stranger appear and disappear in her kitchen, right between the table and the stove. In July of 1882 in an otherwise empty pasture, young farmer Jacob Burdon encounters a woman seated at a table. In January 2138, Doctors Rabenhorst and Gujarat labor to actualize an idea conceived by visionary recluse Albinius Boole. The doctors struggle with phenomenon inexplicable, a time-jumping fugitive, his pursuant, and unwittingly launch a week of confusion and chaos for Northwood's former residents of two centuries.
Ex Post Facto is a tale told in the guise of paranormal memoir, historical pastoral, sci-fi farce, hero's journey, and theatre-of-the-unlikely,
YANKEE MEET YANKEE
Publication imminent. Yankee Meet Yankee owes debts: chiefly to Raymond Chandler’s witty, hardboiled detective fiction, and Kurt Vonnegut’s sardonic satire.
Commissioned by a strange recluse called “the Swede,” Yankee travels to Mythic City in search of a singular relic. He soon finds himself embroiled in a contest to lay hold of this otherworldly object, unable to trust anyone. An existential crisis in a city of stories, dreams, myth, paranoia, and a talking cat.
NON-EPICS
contraction
[Written to a friend, confused when I objected to his calling my hometown (Cincinnati) “the ’Nati.”]
Hey Homey,
Were i to expand, (as per your request),
i would at my best (quite rhapsodic, quixotic),
or else at my least (quite the beast, quite neurotic),
to unfold for your ear a brief lecture.
Fear me not; cast your lot on the barrel head here,
and between us, i trust, we shall find (as we must)
under clouds (or o'er beer),
something 'tween absolutes and conjecture.
Could it widen the wide of the great Great Divide,
(which division's a glacial collision), indeed?
Could i wade the tirade of a borough's revolt
at the name it gets called in some free-take-one screed?
Might my language expand (and thus crap up the land)
and my lexicon swell with the charge?
(Nay, i blush at the thought) but will do as i ought,
and make every attempt to enlarge.
Thus:
When the name of some town is cut short
(or trimmed down),
and those living therein chance to hear it,
the bemused residents—otherwise, quite content—
though enchanted they be, yet are
slow to endear it. For a 'sider who's 'out,'
there can be little doubt of a townie's great overreaction.
But a man who calls “home” some hilled section of loam,
and dares call it “my town”
(who could possibly frown?)
when objection he makes,
or some mild offense takes,
at his city .... nicknam'd a contraction?
the icarus hit
the icarus hit slouches
mouth flexed, awkward, uncertain
as though enduring unto his face’s convex plain
the installation of a smile
as frets at the old fender factory
were driven sideways into wood
nickle barbs grind, chew through grain
wedged in by a precise intentioned violence
fret and neck as one as if thus sprouted
from slow growth german forest
tight-ringed maple adorned with steel
a bent fret on the face of
the icarus hit
the icarus hit ignores the international news of
insurgence sanctions campaign tribunal
bombings shootings bombings shootings
the icarus hit swings by the liquor store
on his way home from the gym
two sang som, two soda, lime, cigarettes
greets the grinning parking lot attendant
glass bottles clank in cloth bag, obvious
mouth fret flexed, rigid, impermeable, static
the icarus hit beholds a photo
smiling man posing with catfish
the conquered quarry, quietly feeding
snagged and dragged surfaceward
thrashes against its own hooked mouth
confused incensed
away away away
metal barb sideways
beneath its jaw
and through
unshakeable horrible
the icarus hit shudders
at the fish’s plight, violent end
dearth of mourners
the icarus hit exhales sharply
at the news of his father’s demise
expected incipient unavoidable irrevocable inevitable
the icarus hit stares
into a half mug of black coffee
envisions his own last breath, practices
its halting stuttering inhalation
and smooth release
—fin.
each preceding breath a rehearsal
for that one, the one
that counts
having bitten off more than he can chew
as they say
the icarus hit has come down
with life
a chronic case thereof
the prognosis i’m afraid is terminal
the tests the scans the bloodwork
all tell a like tale
a matter of weeks, months perhaps
who knows
nothing to be done i’m afraid
the icarus hit goes about
ordering and finalizing his affairs
the icarus hit swirls ice
in the plastic cup, sips gin
stares through the pinholed oval window
do ground crew duties include
applying ceiling wax …
or surfboard wax …
as protection ‘gainst the sun’s heat?
the icarus hit is reminded to lock
his tray table in the upright position
collect his feathers
and prepare to disembark