Book Release - The Trainee

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zzr_The Trainee Collage Cover 1.jpg

It's 1982. Rodney Pepper, a socially inept college drop-out, is thoroughly dissatisfied that his knowledge of life has been derived from television and misinterpretations of 20th century literature. Fixated on the belief that suffering will lead to Wisdom, he decides that New Orleans is the perfect destination to immerse himself in despair and abject misery. Barely off the bus, Rodney is accosted by a man claiming to be his long lost Uncle who thrusts upon him an unexpected and unwelcome pirate legacy. As he looks for work and moves between dilapidated downtown rooming houses, he is preyed upon by underworld agents and bears witness to archaic tortures. Mayhem and skullduggery, both imagined and real, follow him at every turn. Can he decipher a dead man's code and locate what lies hidden before he himself is buried?

Available to buy in paperback, epub, epub3, and Kindle.

Click here to read the first three chapters.

For non-UK paperback orders: Amazon is cheaper, click here to buy.

The New Pulp Mentality

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The New Pulp Mentality

The pulp genre has reemerged. While a modern emulation of the pulp voice is compelling, the idea of a mass-market book sold cheaply once again is more so. What might be sacrificed in its more hurried composition is gained in accessibility.

Some suggest that expanding markets for independently published books heralds the collapse of literary civilization. Indeed, there are so many people wanting to be writers out there as well as a deluge of degree programs titivating their appetites (for a fee), that the editor's slush piles need to be shoveled not read these days.

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Two Big Little Books

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Two Big Little Books

We've created a new category: books which have inspired or interested us. The reading inclinations and interests of Rowan differ from me. I doubt she would choose a book written by a poet. This is fine. The descriptions will be short and intended as suggestions for a reading list. Below are mentioned two short books written by well-known poets on subject matter for which they had a passionate relationship. 

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Are Quotation Marks Irrelevant?

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Are Quotation Marks Irrelevant?

I removed Bolaño’s Last Evenings on Earth from our kitchen bookshelf to investigate how he handled quotation marks. Kafka's short stories had been sitting right beside his, but I've been having shoulder problems so Bolaño's book was a lesser stretch. I initially read his collection six or seven years ago and had forgotten the grammar was less conventional and perhaps less representative. I began reading at a random page.

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Letting Your Hero Do Their Thing.

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Letting Your Hero Do Their Thing.

On this matter of a hero's fall, I recall sitting in the second row of a packed Public Theater screening room one Saturday evening, watching Bukowski being interviewed. At one point, while drunk, he kicked his fiancé several times and kicked her hard. All of a sudden this writer hero of mine was a nasty shit, and I left feeling confused. The author, on camera, had reacted to what he considered a personal affront but hadn’t acted as I imagined he would. He behaved like members of my own family might.

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SmartEdit and the Redundant Adverb

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SmartEdit and the Redundant Adverb

I am currently applying SmartEdit to the content of my second novel in Microsoft Word and am happy with it. Today, I discovered I had used the adverb "only" sixty-seven times. That's right. Embarrassing. 'Exactly" came in a distant second with twenty-four repetitions and 'usually,' a not so shabby third, at eighteen. Granted, the narrator's voice in this book, set in the rural south, is that of an eleven-year-old boy; yet, I very much wish for him to be trusted as an astute if not vigilant observer and reporter of what he hears and sees. Hence, I have taken his sixty-seven "onlys" to heart.

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