The following is a draft excerpt from my novel in progress, Housebreaking the Muse. Here, Ubu peeks into the state of mind of Jacques Rigaut, who has just received a letter informing him of the death his very close friend, Maxime Fraçois-Poncet, killed while serving at the front near Boudry. Plunged into the gritty nebulae…
Thoughts…
Lock up the night-soil men who prowl our secret alleys and cart away our ripest fruit. Kleptomaniacs all, they do their dirty work on our dime. They eavesdrop on confidences exchanged with our BFFs. They sell us offal, call it Ovaltine, then assure us it's a small world after all. Bored with larceny, they muster…
Craft Notes: Dialogue
Paul West asserts that dialogue in fiction is for the eye, a way of offering the reader a bit of a rest now and then, and little more. I've been accused eschewing dialogue in my own work. But such readers might want to reconsider: could be all my work is composed of a dialogue, with…
Thoughts …
While my stubborn, or stupid, or philatelic nature won't allow me to give up, I am fairly reconciled to the reality that my chosen form of creative expression becomes, year after year, ever more an oddity--like an American cricket team, but with fewer enthusiasts.
Jour d’Armistice
"Chanson de l'Horizon en Champagne" by Guillaume Apollinaire Deep into the writing of a novel haunted by Jacques Rigaut, who himself was forever haunted by his experience in The Great War, a war that claimed his close boyhood friend, Maxime François-Poncet, "Tué à l'ennemi," I'm posting by way of a Veteran's Day/Armistice Day/Day of Remembrance…
Ed Desautels' Maximum Fiction 