Craft Notes: Waste Not, Want Not

Years ago I took my first writing course, an undergraduate intro fiction offering taught by a high-strung, tenured loon whose own aspirations as a playwright had burned out along with his ability to comport himself civilly in social situations. His over-the-top insistence on a kind of Victorian propriety, combined with his inability to suppress his…

Housebreaking the Muse, a synopsis

The following is a synopsis of my novel in progress, Housebreaking the Muse. Watch for excerpts over the coming months. Housebreaking the Muse Housebreaking the Muse traces the unlikely intersection of Ray Burke, recent MA in comparative literature from a large university in Middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania; Jacques Rigaut, the French dadaist, poet, gigolo, drug…

Opening Passage of Green, My Backburner Golf Novel

Miff guided the Conculator down the flat, gently curving ribbon of I-95 through North Carolina toward South, stopping only to pee, fuel up, and grab a handful of fresh cigars from the barn-sized humidor at J.R.’s in Selma. When he’d left Pittsburgh, it was thirty-five degrees and sleeting. Here, in the Heart of Darkness, the sun shone on the windshield and offered him the warmth that always made him forgive Dixie its sins.