Okay. I did it. Finally launched the ebook version of Happy Hour and Other Sorrows. I attempted to also launch the paperback but Amazon claimed the ISBN was assigned to another book which was BS but try arguing with Amazon on a Sunday night after a bit of wine (for courage) might have been involved.
Yes, those of you on the side of color were absolutely right. The mostly black and white doesn’t work. So I’ll be changing the cover as soon as our weather turns cool and rainy again. Today temps are set to hit the eighties (80s) and so as soon as I finish this post, I’ll be outside in the garden! But there’s no need to rush. This book contains no sex, no real violence, no zombies and very little bad language. It’ll never go anywhere! I’m just happy to be done with it after soooo many years and iterations.
In other news. I’m really excited to announce an upcoming interview with Bojana Stojcic regarding a book of flash fiction she wrote entitled Knives All Blade. Here’s a teaser:
She’s a fascinating writer/poetess who seems to have a handle on the flash fiction genre. I keep asking her more questions about the subject because, as long time followers know, I’ve got a real thing for short stories in all their various forms.
But not today – it’s glorious outside for at least one more day!
Many years ago I read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a long book with a seemingly endless cast of characters. Generations are born, procreate and die and everything they’ve created is eventually devoured by fast-growing vines, mosses and fungi. Sounds depressing, doesn’t it? It would have been if Marquez had focused only on the world we can see and the realities we can comprehend but he didn’t. He combined the mundane with the mythical which is one of the many definitions of magical realism.
I was curious to see what Netflix would do with Marquez’ masterpiece, primarily because magical realism is one of the least understood of the literary genres. So far, it’s fairly dark and heavy on the realism. But it’s put me in mind of a book published by my friend Duke in 2019.
Duke’s book is far shorter but just as memorable as One Hundred Years of Solitude and the ebook is only $2.99.
Below are some reviews:
In Malverde Days Dylan Thomas exits Milkwood through a vortex and crash lands in the tropical, surreal town of Malverde on the opposite side of the planet. Here too, like their Welsh counterparts, the locals are restless, haunted by dreams that they would nail down if only they possessed a nail gun. In this surreal montage of life in a town cursed by violence death is never far. The pretty young woman in the ice cream shop is shot through the head while making a strawberry sundae. “Citizens of Malverde, do not worry”‘ announces the newspaper the next day. “They are only killing themselves.” Then there is Alice “the only woman who ever tried to kill me with a can opener, so I mourn her in my own way.” This is Duke Miller at his most incomparably irreverent self. His view of humanity is as bleak as the future, but we may as well go out laughing, or at least smiling, and Malverde Days delivers these moments in hallucinogenic spades.
Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2019
Malverde Days will stop you in your tracks. “Wait! You need to re-read that part.” It’s heavy and yet translucent, letting in the light, illuminating those shadowy corners you feared as a child. And yet proposes that there are closets, dirt roads, alleys that end with your hand to your own throat. Duke’s words must be savored. Take it easy. Take it slow. But take it.
Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2019
Duke pulls no punches in this rich dense poetry. One piece made me cry. Another made me laugh out loud, something that words on a page rarely are able to do. Always his writing is worth returning to see how the words wash through your mind this time.
Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2019
Malverde Days is part prose, part poetry and follows a group of disparate souls as they live, love, work and die beside each other in a sometimes magical, sometimes deadly town which feels south of the border although the exact location seems unimportant. I read many of the chapters on the author’s blog as they were randomly posted. But when I saw the cover I just had to buy the paperback. It’s a good thing I did because in the final product Miller has pulled together a group of blog posts (or cuttings as he calls them) into a plot stream that flows well. He also added a few pieces not posted on the blog that help readers get to know the characters and their motivations. It’s not a long book but you will want to read it again and again just to delight in Mr. Miller’s musical use of words and gentle depictions of even the most retched of souls.
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2019
I have both Malverde Days and Neil Gaimin’s bestseller American Gods on my Kindle, and was switching between them. Just realized I haven’t even opened American Gods in a week, because Malverde is so much more interesting, engaging, and enjoyable.
Legend has it that my mother’s water broke while she was shooting the bull with her two younger brothers in my grandmother’s kitchen. Charley, the elder of the two boys, frantically called The Enforcer (aka Grandma), who was the head nurse at the hospital in the next town over and she ordered him to drive Mother to the hospital PDQ. But Charley couldn’t do it. Perhaps it was the sight of all that embryonic fluid on his mother’s kitchen floor or perhaps Charley had begun to celebrate the weekend a little early. And so fourteen year old Bobby took charge and drove my mother to the hospital.
Uncle Bob age fifteen. That’s Charley’s wife next to him – my Crazy Auntie Dottie.
I guess you could say, without my Uncle Bob’s calm in the time of crisis, I would have been born on the kitchen floor. And how did I thank him? I wrote a book about the time I spent with him in Germany in 1970.
My mother had a predilection for stretching the truth. Thus I landed in Europe believing my long lost uncle was some sort of a spy.
Uncle Bob in his late thirties discussing top secret spy stuff over a beer with his friend Bruce, also a top secret spy.
He quickly disabused me of that notion. Below is an excerpt from The Graduation Present.
“Gilberto, did you get a look at the knockers on Lou’s new secretary?” Uncle Bob asked the driver as we drove along.
“Molly, you mean Molly, right?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s her name. You know, the big ones are fun to cuddle but there is something to be said for frisky little titties. The French have a saying that the perfect size tit fits into a champagne glass. What do you think of that Gilberto? You like the little bitty titties?”
“Ah, Uncle Bob. I’m in the backseat,” I reminded him.
“So? You got a thing against tits?”
“I can’t believe I actually thought you were a spy.”
“Spies don’t like tits?”
By the time the book came out (it only took me four decades), my uncle had retired to Florida with his church-going, Texas-loving second wife. She took great umbrage at my portrayal of her husband and threw the book away before anyone in her family could read such rubbish. I doubt she read much beyond the frisky little titties scene which is a shame because the book is really about a silly, clueless girl in a complicated world.
Robert Ross Jameson, April 1, 1936 – December 4, 2024.
Hope there’s lots of peanut butter up there in heaven! And, thanks for the lift.
When the Sunday paper arrives, Joel grabs the funnies and I grab a section called“Insight” which includes commentaries, political endorsements, puzzles and “Life Tributes” (which, I guess, is a nicer way of saying “Obituaries”) I’m at the age where I do run into a name I recognize every now and then but more often I run into the names of people I wish I’d known.
For example, a writer by the N. Scott Momaday died last month. His name didn’t ring any bells and it should have. I mean, among his many honors he did win the Pulitzer Prize for his debut novelHouse Made of Dawn.
The title of this blog is from Momaday’s poem If I could ascend.
Something like a leaf lies here within me;/ it wavers almost not at all,/ and there is no light to see it by/ that it withers upon a black field./ If it could ascend the thousand years into my mouth,/I would make a word of it at last,/ and I would speak it into the silence of the sun.
And so I have another author to discover.
Besides Dr. Momaday, the world lost Simone whose “greatest legacy was the people she raised who are kind, caring and productive.” And the world lost Court Appointed Special Advocate, Artie, who was “quick witted and playful and adored children.” And Dolly whose “door was always open. Dolly’s kitchen was always open. Dolly’s heart was always open.” And Jim, whose “unconventional teaching tactics and personal touch inspired students to read with insight and write with purpose.” There are many more wonderful folks but I will end with Julio whose “generosity was boundless, helping all those that he met each day” and Lee who “loved to say he was swimming in a sea of friends and what a sea it was.” Ah, swimming in a sea of friends. Just that phrase tells you a lot about someone, doesn’t it?
It’s rare to glimpse the moon in the morning where I live, especially this time of year. If it’s not the fog hanging about, it’s the haze. But the other morning I arose just in time to see the sun bid the moon adieu in a clear blue sky.
Kind of a blurry image but I only had only seconds to catch the first rays reflecting off the the moon’s surface.
It’s the third day of the New Year and I should be making plans, right? On the first day we can be forgiven for dawdling about. On the second day, well, we’re getting over the first day but on the third day there just aren’t any excuses. Time to get motivated like these blokes from one of my favorite feel-good movies (which I watched in honor of the recent death of one of its stars, Tom Wilkinson.)
I was surprised to read that this low budget flick did far better both critically and financially than expected. A group of unemployed steel workers decide to become strippers. Only one of them knows anything about dancing; only one of them is particularly handsome (or “hung”); and none of them are what you’d call “buff.” I mean, really! Who wouldn’t want to cheer them on?
I’ve been working on a story about a family I once knew, which is probably why I’m having trouble getting motivated. It was a family that thrived on doing good deeds. They literally went to Mass every morning and fed, clothed, and sometimes even housed the transients loitering the streets of Reno Nevada. They rescued many lost and hopeless kids like me and always had a menagerie of pets, both domesticated and wild. On the surface, a wonderful family always joking and having fun.
But all Catholic tenets were indisputable. If you dared to doubt any of them, you were going to Hell. Even if you were as loving and giving as Jesus Christ himself, you had to accept all the tales in the New Testament as truth or you were going to Hell. As you can imagine, when the children became adults they all suffered from either schizophrenia or substance abuse. Not because they believed those stories but because they feared going to Hell if doubt crept into their minds. I see a lot of that fear in the world today and it’s frightening. Perhaps that’s why I’m entering 2024 on tip toes.
Saying nothing in particular 