And you have until midnight tomorrow, or more specifically, 11:59 p.m., Sunday, November 24, 2024, (Bezos Standard Time, aka PST), to purchase a free Kindle version.
An aging white male forsakes humanity, changes his name to Sorrow, and begins identifying as an it, just as its white son learns his Black girlfriend is pregnant, and you begin a murderous rampage targeting interracial couples just like them...
And as Arthur Schopenhauer, that merry misanthrope, only happy when I’m not philosopher of old, reminds us:
It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.
Now, I am only the author of the tale so I cannot be sure, but if I were a betting man, which I’m not, but if I were, I would bet that Sorrow, our odd protagonist of our newly released tale, would agree with me that the quote above is true to the spirit of its journey. But alas we are sure to never know for sure since…
If Joyce, Faulkner, and Kafka were to collaborate…
The result would be Elizabeth Merry’s We All Die in the End.
Merry’s is some of the best writing I’ve read in a while. Like Faulkner, she creates a fictional world unto its own, Faulkner’s set as a struggling Mississippi town, Merry’s as a struggling seaside town in Ireland, both populated with struggling characters with thick dialects common to their region.
However, regarding dialect, where Faulkner reveals his characters’ through heavy (and at times disruptive) word alteration and accent marks, Merry reveals her characters’ distinctive brogue (seemingly) effortlessly and without hardly a notice through beautiful setting descriptions and strategic use of words uncommon to those not of her world.
The effect of her writing to me is powerful…
And surreal…
Kafkaesque.
Merry’s nineteen interwoven stories, or scenes as identified in the book, often misled me into letting my guard down – getting me lost in the cold ocean spray or in the delectable odors stewing from the stove or in the broguish din of the local pub – lulling me into thinking all’s well (how could it not be in such a quaint little town with waves pounding the shore like a mesmerizing lullaby) until it slowly dawns upon me that all is not well in Merry’s little corner of the world. In fact, not until it’s too late do I realize that just about everything beneath the quaint veneer she has laid for us is in fact quite dark and bleak, and at times… quite deadly.
We All Die in the End has left me with a haunting literary hangover.
And for that, I am grateful…
For, as rare as it is, it is that exact aftereffect I yearn for in every book I read.
Anyway, these kinds of posts are always a bit self indulgent, but if you’re like me (and god help you if you are), you too like to know how the sausage is made when it comes to an author’s creative process.
I’m both old and old school when it comes to writing. First drafts are were always done with pen and paper.
Mostly because I love the physical act of writing, the feel of pen in hand, the feel of ink flowing on the paper.
But also because if I try to write the first draft on the computer I never make it out of the first chapter seeing that I’m one of those edit-as-you-go guys. I have too many folders with forgotten novels with unfinished first drafts that I attempted to write on the computer.
Writing the first draft by hand allows for limited editing — a line through here, a line through there maybe — and because of this, I enjoy a more immersive, free flowing writing experience…
One that actually results in finished novels.
How ’bout that?
But there is a catch.
My handwriting is garbage.
Which means draft two is pure and absolute torture when it comes to typing it up into the computer. Oftentimes it takes longer to type up the second draft than it did writing out the first.
Which brings me to my novel approach to first drafts, an approach that saves me months in novel development…
Using this new technology (new to me; never been an Apple guy) I can still write out my first drafts longhand, but with the Nebo app, it automatically converts it to digital text.
The notebook contains a print copy of the screenplay (which I use as an outline for my novel). The cool sculpture/now paper weight is courtesy of my highly creative daughter. The iPad Pro 12 with Apple Pen attached shows the chapters of my latest WIP in the Nebo app.
A screenshot of the chapters in Nebo. One slight downside is that you can’t arrange the files (at least I haven’t been able to figure it out if you can) so they’re stored as they are created.
If you look at the top of the first paragraph (click on the image to enlarge), you’ll kind of see how it shows a highlight of my writing as converted text. It’s unbelievable in how well the app understanding my crappy handwriting, but if it doesn’t convert a word correctly, you can catch it in the highlight and go back and write it more clearly.
Of course you don’t get the same feel writing on the iPad as you do with pen and paper. The iPad screen is a bit slick so it takes some getting used to. I initially put a screen protector on it but that made it even slicker and it also screwed up the functions in Nebo to add and delete stuff.
The Apple Pen feels good in hand and works like a charm with zero lag between it and the tablet.
There’s another tablet I’m interested in checking out that is designed specifically for writing. It’s called reMarkable and the developers claim it will give you the feel of writing on paper. Sounds awesome. The best selling point to me for it is that it is a heck of a lot cheaper than the iPad Pro 12.
So, yeah… when it comes to drafting novels, that’s how I now roll.
Oh, and if you haven’t guessed by now, I’ll be announcing my latest novel soon…
Tales of steely but vulnerable women of color will melt your heart while lifting your spirits…
A fierce grandmother keeps her grandson from the clutches of Old Scratch in Devil Does Dallas.
An alien abduction transforms a large, miserable woman in Hazel Hogan.
A country girl meets a city girl on her birthday, and struggles to decide if the girl’s heart is dark or light in Bubble Bath Twelve.
And methodical Genie forms an unlikely relationship in Heaven’s Halfway House while in a coma.
Book Description from Amazon
I am in wholehearted concurrence with Amazon reviewer Neferet when they opine that “[Author Sean C. Wright’s GATHERING OF BUTTERFLIES] is a nice collection of interesting and clever short stories….”
Nice, indeed.
And I feel nicer as a human being for having read this diminutive collection of pithy and powerful (a redundancy I know, but one worth repeating) folksy parables; and I could tell without a doubt from reading them that the author herself is nice…
Really nice.
I just wish there had been more nice stories to appreciate — there are only four and the collection as a whole weighs in at just over a hundred pages.
Three of the stories are good, written light and fast with limited (but enough) character and setting development as one would expect to find in such folksy parables and morality tales.
However, one of the stories — Bubble Bath Twelve — is exceptional. I got so very and happily lost within that wonderful, beautiful tale and I regretted it when finally finding myself at its end. It compares easily with the best of anything William Faulkner has written, if the boozy, self-hating grouch were to have written such nice, lighthearted stories that didn’t stress the reader out with their unrelenting and migraine-inducing dialect.
Yeah, the story’s that good.
Outside of expanding this fine collection with more stories, I would recommend the author consider a more professional book cover. Personal preference, perhaps, but I think such fine writing deserves something a little better than its present adornment.
So, fantastic work by Ms. Wright, work that I highly recommend. I also recommend checking out her website. While it’s a little confusing to navigate, there the determined reader can find a treasure trove of her equally fun and interesting flash fiction, which, if you recall, is how all who gather here first became acquainted with her fine work.
I’d like to thank Ms. Cathy Geha of Cathy’s World for her review of The Good Kill. Cathy had, fortunately for me, come across the book at NetGalley.
Her’s is the forth review I’ve received from the site, which is pretty cool. It’s been downloaded from there over 50 times so hopefully we’ll see more than a few more as a time goes on. Fingers crossed.
Help me show my appreciation for Cathy’s review, and all the other many reviews she has prepared for us, by visiting her site and spending some time there with her.
I would like to sincerely thank Ms. Gina Rae Mitchell for taking the time to read The Good Kill and write such a fantastic review for it.
I could tell when first visiting Gina’s website packed full of book reviews, author interviews, and all kinds of other interesting information from gardening tips to tasty recipes that hers was a platform I would love to get my book profiled on. So, as you can imagine, I was very grateful when she responded in the affirmative to my review request.
And grateful I am indeed for throughout the entire time it took from my initial request to Gina posting the review today, it has been nothing but a pleasure to work and correspond with her.
Right from the beginning I signed up for her newsletter and I’m glad I did because it offers way more than just links to her latest book reviews. Had I not been on her list I would have never known to add apple cider vinegar to my bone broth to better soften the bones so my dogs/boys can better enjoy them without me having to worry about them choking on a shard!
There’s so much cool stuff on her site that you’re sure to be amazed when you head over there to read her review of my book.
So be on your way now to Gina’s site… and don’t forget to sign up for her newsletter!
BOOK | FICTION | LITERARY THE DISTANT SOUND OF VIOLENCE JASON GREENSIDES RATING: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Do we ever escape the decisions we make when we’re fifteen?
Nathan Dawes, the loser from school, an outsider, street philosopher and member of The Grove Runners gang, needs Ryan’s help to get Stephanie to fall for him. When Ryan’s lawnmower is stolen, Nathan sees this as his chance to enlist Ryan in his plan.
Although Ryan knows becoming friends with Nathan could lead to trouble, he reluctantly agrees to help.
Stephanie wants nothing to do with either of them. Besides, she’s more interested in the one guy in the world she really shouldn’t be.
As Nathan continues his pursuit of Stephanie, and Ryan gets mixed up with The Grove Runners, soon events overtake them all, haunting their lives for years to come.
Part coming of age, part mystery story, The Distant Sound of Violence is a heartbreaking tale of bad decisions and love gone wrong. It’s about choices that lead to violence, loss and tragedy.
THE DISTANT SOUND OF VIOLENCE by Jason Greensides is a hauntingly atmospheric tour de force with its stark and captivating descriptions of English life during the Nineties and beyond set in, on, and around the mean streets of London, its fully-fleshed characters as flawed and true-to-life as any character on a page can be, and its ringing dialogue that is at times achingly smart, witty, and/or sad, and that is always cut with just the right amount of a pleasingly rhythmic patios.
Not to say that I didn’t have some quibbles with this masterwork. At over 500 pages, I thought the narrator interjecting his personal story from time to time, while interesting enough to some extent, didn’t add enough value to the overall arc and purpose of the story to merit the lengthy interjections. Specifically, there is one part of the book where the narrator again interjects himself and becomes oddly obsessive in trying to track down and map out the locations of mysterious graffiti tags left by Nathan Dawes, our also oddly obsessive (but oddly obsessive with clear purpose) protagonist; where, in the end, all the time and effort spent in the narrator’s mapping of the tags served no revealing purpose that I can tell except to further highlight something that we already knew — that our protagonist is oddly obsessive to a life-wrecking fault.
But again, these are mere quibbles and ones not nearly severe enough to lower this grateful reader’s overall five-star ranking of this highly intriguing and highly recommended epic of a read.
