Blog #49; the Readers' experience; the writers' craft

Hello! No new giveaways yet, but there should be one or two later in the month.  An especially big giveaway was for the short collection, PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF.  They were in big demand during the last giveaway.  There are six stories in this short book, and the stories are all less than ten pages.  I call them, "compact" because that is what they are.   I have always done better in the shorter prose narrative form, and I am stretching that ability to the maximum here.  The reader experiences, if I did it correctly, a forceful emotional impact.  I am especially fond of the story, "The End of Something," the title of which I lifted from Hemingway.  It captures, like no other story I have written, a certain time and experience of my life and what I feel about it today;  And I don't mind borrowing his title, and as he says, borrow from the best; he is a fine example of a short story master.  So is Raymond Carver, John Cheever, and so many others.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  Kate Chopin.  Alice Walker.  So many great short story writers in English.

I feel a special gratitude for this small collection because it marks a turning point in the development of my fiction.  More personal, more authentic, but at the same time more professionally controlled craft-wise.  

Meanwhile, if you choose to wait until towards the end of the month, you can get a digital copy for free.

Happy Autumn!