Blog #108; Free giveaway of Swimming Among the Olympians (digital version) for the next three days; some thoughts on the literary genres

 

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As you can see from the title of this blog, starting 1/30/24, for the next three days, I am giving away a collection of stories with a nonfiction memoir included.  Many of you have already bought or read this collection, but I am offering it for free for all who are interested.

Today, I would like to vent my spleen about narrow-minded thinking in the creative world.  But first, sometimes a bit of stereotyping can be useful.  If a reader or viewer is looking for a cozy mystery, they generally know where to look.  Same with Sci-Fi, Sword and Sorcery, etc.  The same basic guidelines to good writing apply in all genres of fiction.  (See some of my earlier blogs regarding Aristotle and others' thoughts regarding conflict, plotting, character development, motivation and the like.)  But what I have found very recently is a genre beyond fiction that I haven't explored much in my writing life.  Poetry.  I have always been interested in writing poetry, but was never quite sure if I would be any good at it.  Most of the poetry I have written before now has been personal and unrelatable outside my private life's context.  But recently I heard from Irreantum that they would like to publish one of my poems, and suddenly a door opened where there wasn't one before.  My whole adult life (in grad school, teaching college, etc.) I always thought creating and publishing poetry was a particularly insider's game.  A kind of  mysterious academic club whose secret password would always elude me.  That is why this first poetry acceptance means so much to me.  I feel I am free to explore another genre, an ancient and noble craft.

I like the attention to language and detail poetry involves.  I love playing with words, with imagery, with meaning, with sound quality.  I am learning.  It is quite an adventure...

Blog #107; The New Year, Many Promises to Keep

I start the New Year with many irons in the fire, as usual.  Ideas for essays.  Short fiction.  The foremost and most important one is the soon to be finished manuscript for A Contrite Spirit.  This is a novel that stretches the boundaries of what a “spiritual novel” is, and challenges preconceived notions about Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, and the struggle between them for the human soul.  Readers of my last novel, In Love and War, will recognize a backdrop of vicious combat from which a saner, more compassionate understanding between the two sides comes about.  Please know that violence doesn’t have to lead  to understanding (most likely it leads to just the opposite) but I believe we human beings have a responsibility to try to fashion meaning out of that which destroys meaning in the traditional sense of the word.

 

The main character, Hyrum, is an everyman who endures Hell on Earth and his spiritual healing is the focus of most of the book.  As his family grows and prospers so too does Hyrum’s spirit.  But then another war comes, this time consuming not only him but his children’s lives.  How will Hyrum and his family survive? 

 

There is madness, both of combat and of mental illness, a disease of the soul.  There is haunting borne of guilt and transgression and a redemption as these things are overcome.