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Hello readers and welcome back to a new series for the website, which as I stated previously began as an outgrowth of a file that’s been sitting in my Google Drive for months now so I thought I’d just break out some of the more important elements. That initial post was called “What’s a Reader For?” and was an attempt to look at all the sources we bring into account each day as we try to understand the world. In the age of the internet and social media I realize that could be an infinite amount so I’m going to break it down into the topics and sources I try to follow each week.
Last time I rounded up some of the most important sources I use to figure out what is going on in the world of books and literature. So what are some more important sites and newsletters to use? I’d be remiss if I didn’t kick off this “part two” list with a magazine I have come to enjoy over the last year(s) that has really been a great resource: Writer’s Digest. I have signed up for their email newsletters and get something interesting to my inbox every week. The magazine is chock full of handy tips for craft and also for those a little farther along in their publishing journey. They always interview an author for every issue and include agent spotlights as well. It’s just overall a great resource for writers at any stage in their career. (They also offer critique services as well as a shop for classes.) [ I should also note that my wife purchased me a subscription to another magazine years ago called Poets & Writers that was helpful though I did not get as much out of it; however I still follow them on Twitter. ] Up next I’ll mention a few more literary newsletters I try to get to each week. The Millions is a site that has been around for twenty years and publishes book previews, reviews, essays, question and answer sessions and all other kinds of writing that I have found to be very helpful over the years. (One of their writers, Ed Simon, helped me flesh out a post I wrote a few years back during the pandemic, and he’s one I would highly recommend.) Another newsletter I try to peruse each week is Arts & Letters Daily as they collect some of the best essays and articles published around the web and in journals. Another phenomenal creator (and the author of Steal Like an Artist among many other books) I follow is Austin Kleon, who each week posts ten things worth sharing to his email newsletter (he also posts regularly on the Tweet Machine). Another great newsletter is New Left Review’s Sidecar as they post essays and reviews that are highly worth your while. And a final newsletter/journal worth checking out is one I have stumbled across in the last few years, The New Atlantis, which tends to publish science-related essays but covers a lot more than that. Finally there are a few independent publishers out there that I try to follow as they have very interesting newsletters: OR Books, Haymarket Books, and of course our very own local and highly regarded Graywolf Press. Well once again this “part two” list is just scratching the surface of the many amazing websites, journals, magazines, and newsletters available that will help you understand the literary world and its various aspects while also honing your craft as a writer. And of course once again as with the previous entries in this series, feel free to add your own source lists in the comments. There may be one more part in the books/literature series (those places I follow via feedly) before I move onto another topic: environmental news. Stay tuned and stay informed!
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Hello readers and welcome to this latest entry in the Reading List. As mentioned previously, over the past years I have made it a goal to include more BIPOC authors on the list. To that end I decided to read Colson Whitehead’s impressive 1999 debut novel, The Intuitionist.
This was a phenomenal read for my reasons, but was made all the more amazing given that it was Whitehead’s first work (he would go on to win the Pulitizer for The Underground Railroad). The book centers around the Guild of Elevator Inspectors and the two classes therein, Empiricists (who use technical skill and ability to inspect whether elevators are working properly) and Intuitionists (who merely touch the sides of the elevators to intuit what is wrong with them). Lila Mae Watson, who is the first Black female inspector ever allowed into the Guild, falls firmly into the Intuitionist camp and is widely mistrusted by the other older men in the Guild. An elevator she recently inspected has what is termed a “catastrophic accident” and plunges many floors to the ground (fortunately nobody was on it). The book unwinds around Lila Mae’s attempts to figure out what happened, who possibly set her up, and the origins of the Intuitionists. Lila Mae runs into many Intuitionist characters who initially seem to be helpful but are in actuality notorious and trying to use her toward more devious ends as the Guild election comes up. I could go on about the plot some more but suffice it to say this book was magisterial in how it handles race relations. As stated, Lila Mae is the first and only Black female elevator inspector and is treated like garbage not only in the inspector universe but in the world at large (which is pretty obviously New York City in some time like the 1950’s but never named as such): being forced in her university days to live in a cramped room above a gymnasium, later having to find an apartment in a largely immigrant based neighborhood which after the accident gets rooted around in by two tough guys, going undercover during the “Funicular Follies” and viewing her co-workers watching and laughing at a blackface show, and generally being seen as inferior to the white people that make up the majority of the other characters in the book (she and other Black characters within the novel are repeatedly noted as being “colored”). Lila Mae figures into a mysterious mailing of notebooks from James Fulton, the founder of the Intuitionist school of thought (who she discovers was Black) and ends up spending much of the later half of the novel looking for his “black box” elevator, also known as the one that will bring forth the “second elevation.” There is a lot of elevator talk in this book and it’s clear that Whitehead did his research on them. The intrigue among the characters goes on for quite some time and kept me riveted to the page each time I sat with this book. The language used is quite smooth and flowing and Whitehead intimately knows how to turn a great phrase. I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone looking for a rip roaring investigative type story that also handles the topic of race with incredible perception and dedication. There is a pretty big character reveal at the end that I won’t give away but puts a shade on much of the plot that came beforehand. Also at the end we get a glimpse of where Lila Mae might be heading next on her Intuitionist journey. Again I would highly recommend this novel and I am eagerly awaiting the next one of Whitehead’s I get to devour. Thanks as always for joining me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome to this latest entry in the Reading List. As mentioned previously, over the past years I have made it a goal to include more female and BIPOC authors on the list. To that end I decided first up this year would be Toni Morrison’s landmark 1987 novel Beloved.
To start with I must say this was one of the best novels I’ve read in years and taught me a lot about the position of Black people in Civil War era society and how their lives were affected by (as written in the novel) “whitepeople” throughout their lives. The novel follows the main character Sethe as she escapes from slavery and gives birth to her daughter Denver on the way. But that is not the entire plot of the book as it jumps around quite a bit in time, which at first was a bit disorienting but by the time I finished it I realized why Morrison made the choices she did. There is a horrendous choice made by Sethe once she realizes she is going to be caught and brought back into the world of slavery that leads to her losing one of her own daughters, “Beloved” (so named because that was all she could afford on the tombstone). The child goes on to haunt the house where they stay after Sethe goes to jail for her act, causing her two sons to flee the home. However in an odd chance of fate Sethe is seemingly reunited with Beloved eighteen years after the incident and Sethe brings her into the home she has created with another former slave of “Sweet Home,” Paul D. Most of the story takes place at the home for escaped slaves that Sethe’s step-mother Baby Suggs founded but we also get to see the backstory of several of the characters and get an idea of how they escaped the plantation. Baby Suggs was a kind of preacher that assembled others to “the Clearing” where she gave messages and talked about what they had left. Sethe also had a husband at Sweet Home named Halle who did not make the escape. About halfway through the novel Paul D leaves after some unfortunate encounters with Beloved, and the novel shifts to a perspective of how Beloved takes over the household. Denver is forced to leave to reconnect with the society that had abandoned them in the wake of Sethe’s fateful choice many years ago. She finds work, and once she begins to gain the confidence of the other women in the city they gather up to cast out what has become a malevolent presence in the home. Sethe then has a flashback to her earlier life which leads to a brief outpouring of violence. Thankfully the person she attacks has been helping Black people for many years and lets her return to the home. There she reconnects to Paul D, who had his own journey to make with some other characters, namely “Stamp Paid.” It’s hard to describe this powerful, phenomenal work in so many words without wholeheartedly recommending it to anyone who is looking for an incredible story set in the Civil War era and afterward, a brutally unflinching look at how slavery affects the entire person and their past, and how escaping it is not so easy even after the fact. I would say I have not encountered a novel that explores these themes so deftly since reading Kindred a few years ago. I would highly recommend this novel for anyone (like me) who is looking to gain a better perspective beyond their usual one. Thank you for once again joining me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome back to a new series for the website, which as I stated previously began as an outgrowth of a file that’s been sitting in my Google Drive for months now so I thought I’d just break out some of the more important elements. That initial post was called “What’s a Reader For?” and was an attempt to look at all the sources we bring into account each day as we try to understand the world. In the age of the internet and social media I realize that could be an infinite amount so I’m going to break it down into the topics and sources I try to follow each week.
This series has already looked at various newsletters and website sources I use to follow what is happening on the local level in Minnesota and Minneapolis. Now I’m going to shift gears a bit and take a look at some subscriptions and email newsletters I use to keep up with the world of books and literature. I mentioned before I also use Twitter and feedly to keep up with some sites and may include that in the next post(s). First I should start local and mention that I have been a subscriber to the literary review Rain Taxi for a few years now, and it has been incredibly worthwhile. They send out four beautiful looking issues a year and each one is full of reviews of authors I have never heard of, generally gaining me a new understanding of books that have come out over that time. Another cool thing they do is offer online reviews on their website that are only available there. I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with their main editor Eric Lorberer a few years back to discover more about how the magazine functions. (They also host the Twin Cities Book Festival every year, and offer chapbooks and other items for sale on their site.) Next I thought I’d list some stalwarts of the online literary scene. And that begins with Electric Literature, a site that has been around for over a decade and features a ton of great literary essays in their newsletter each week. Of note also is their dedicated Literary Mag “Recommended Reading” which I have gotten into more over the last few years and is a great source to find new short story voices. Another phenomenal site is the Los Angeles Review of Books, which also has a print quarterly and sends out great content from their website with every newsletter. I have come across some of the best book reviews and essays I’ve ever read and saved to my Instapaper through this organization. A site that I have come across in the last few years that offers a contest every month to enter is called On the Premises. Their monthly newsletter rounds up their latest short story competition as well as some great writing advice. A great site that offers a newsletter rounding up important literary stories every week is LitHub (one of their original pieces helped fill out a post I did in the Writing Life series here on my blog). And to round out part one of these sources, Public Books is a most excellent online literary magazine that posts essays on a variety of topics (I have found their recent series “Hacking the Culture Industries” to be incredibly valuable). This list is just a beginning look at the many great book and literary websites out there for us writers to use as resources. But again as with the previous entries in this series feel free to post your own sources in the comments below. I’ll be back with part two (and possibly three) of this list in the coming months. Hello readers and welcome to the final entry in the 2022 Reading List (yes, I am aware it is now 2023). As mentioned in a previous entry, toward the end of last year I had been focusing on my backlog of “old white dude” authors since setting aside the Reading List in 2021. To that end I decided to read one more by picking up a collection I had heard about for years, the 2009 assembly of Italian postmodernist writer Italo Calvino’s short stories, The Complete Cosmicomics.
This was a very interesting collection of stories, all mostly centered around a scientific fact (some made out of date since many of these stories were published from the 60’s to the 80’s) and featuring almost always the same narrator Qfwfq as he tells the tale. While there were an abundance of varied and different tales within the collection I thought I’d start by mentioning some of my favorites. “A Sign in Space” features Qfwfq leaving a literal sign in space and being in competition with another strangely named character to leave better and better signs. This story was based on the fact of how often the sun revolves around the galaxy but is better understood (as the introduction to the collection puts it) as a rumination from Calvino both on the nature of signs themselves but also as a commentary toward his embarrassment over his earlier novel. The same theme of old replacing new can be found in “The Dinosaurs” in which the titular creature is supposed to have died out only to make a reappearance to the “New Ones” that have come to take his place. While the introduction delineates this story as a discursion on “the old writers who have failed to move ahead with the times and are still writing in the old, realist way” I found it to work as a fundamental allegory on immigration, with discussions of “Foreigners” and how they are not to be trusted. Finally I was amazed to read “The Light-Years” as a possible foreseeing of social media years before the fact, as the narrator witnesses someone hanging a sign “a hundred million light years away” that says “I Saw You.” The narrator struggles to discern what the act was that the other had seen, checking his diary and realizing it was something he’d rather have hidden. I thought the theme of this story could easily be applied to our current roving panopticon of surveillance that takes place online these days. These three were my favorite in the collection, but there were many more that drew my interest. Whether that involved people collecting debris from the Earth (“The Meteorites”), ruminations on time and space (“t zero,” “The Chase”), evolution (“The Aquatic Uncle”) or even another astonishing presaging of technology such as the internet and search engines (“World Memory”) there were tons of stories here that were fascinating and very much ahead of their time. I would highly recommend this full collection (others were published during the author’s lifetime but this one has all of the Cosmicomics together) for those looking for a far-out assemblage of science fiction-esque stories that, while ostensibly dealing with the scientific and astronomical realm ponder many more serious themes such as the nature of love and forms (“The Spiral”) and relationships (“The Night Driver”). Up next, for the first time since I have begun reading novels for my website I am actually not sure what I’m going to be getting to next. For at least the first half of the year I plan on staying with my previously set parameters of reading more contemporary female and BIPOC authors, but I have not yet selected one. Rest assured I will know within the week and will be posting the first entry in the 2023 Reading List soon. Since I will be doing this for the rest of my foreseeable future I have decided again not to do a “reflections” post this year and to just continue on with the various series I’ve started over the past years. As always, thanks for joining me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome to the seventh entry of this year’s Reading List. As mentioned in a previous entry, right now I am mainly focused on my backlog of “old white dude” authors since setting aside the Reading List last year. However, last time reading a “cozy” mystery got me in the mood to continue in the genre and so this time I picked up one I had been meaning to get to for ages: Harlan Coben’s 1995 first entry in his Myron Bolitar series, Deal Breaker.
I had been interested in Coben ever since reading an overview of his books in Harper’s some years ago and was lucky enough to find a paperback copy of Deal Breaker at the bookstore where I used to work. This was as hard boiled as books get, with a difference being that the main character is not just an investigator but a sports agent to boot. The story revolves around a missing woman named Kathy Culver and the clues that pop up that seem to point to her not being dead after all. The cast of characters in this novel were my favorite part and include Win Lockwood, Myron’s investigative partner and friend; Jessica, Kathy’s sister and Myron’s one time love interest; Esperanza, Myron’s assistant; Jake Courter, the detective investigating Kathy’s case; and Christian Steele, the star quarterback who was Kathy’s boyfriend before she went missing. The writing was tight and funny at multiple instances and Myron Bolitar is one of the great hard boiled investigators you’ll ever read. Just like in Death by Dumpling I was reminded of the lessons I learned way back in the first year of this reading experiment in The Cat Who Played Post Office. For one, keeping reader interest is a speciality of Coben as the chapters are short and each one is packed with enough information to keep the story moving. I’d also have to say I got tons of outright pleasure reading this book as the mystery was quite engrossing and kept me guessing until the end, when Myron runs a scam to draw the killer out. There are also subplots revolving around Myron’s sports agent woes and his tangles with the mob, who are involved with another agent. And the “hook” is definitely interesting as I had never read a story about a sports agent, let alone one who had such an interesting backstory (Myron was a former professional basketball player who got injured and then worked for the FBI). I would recommend this novel for anyone looking for a more modern hard-boiled mystery story as it is quite the roiling tale. And one does not have to know much if anything about sports to enjoy the book as that theme seems to be secondary to the drama of the mystery. Up next I am veering back into the experimental realm, taking on another collection I have sitting on my shelf that I have been waiting years to get to: Italo Calvino’s The Complete Cosmicomics. Thanks for following me along this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome to the sixth entry of this year’s Reading List. As mentioned in a previous entry I am mainly focused on my backlog of “old white dude” authors since setting aside the Reading List last year. However the last book I read was quite challenging and I needed a bit of a palate cleanser, so I decided to pivot to a type of genre I haven’t hit since way back in the first year of this whole reading experiment: the “cozy” mystery novel. To that end I picked up a recommendation from my wife, the first in a series (The Noodle Shop Mystery) entitled Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien that came out in 2018.
This was a breezy book and one I enjoyed coming back to each night and day that I read it. The story revolves around Lana Lee and her family’s noodle shop. It’s in the Asia Village, a sort of mall for Eastern-themed shops run by other Asian folks, some of whom become suspects in the mystery of who killed one of the two property managers who run the place, Thomas Feng. The book surrounds Lana and her roommate Megan as they attempt to figure out who swapped out the dumplings that Mr. Feng was deathly allergic to in order to kill him. The first suspect is the cook for the Ho-Lee Noodle House, but suspicion soon circles other characters who are involved in the Asia Village in one way or another. Another seemingly attempted murder heightens the suspense and Lana and Megan go to some lengths to try and figure out the secrets behind the mystery. As I stated, this was the first “cozy” mystery novel I’ve read since The Cat Who Played Post Office in 2016, and back when I was pulling lessons for writers from novels I’d say the same three from then hold here (keep reader interest, reading for pleasure, make sure your “hook” catches people). I found myself very interested in the mystery at all times as Lana is a great narrator, and it was also pleasurable to enter this world of characters each time I sat with the novel. The “hook” is also quite interesting as it showcases an Asian culture with which I wasn’t too familiar with but found to be quite detailed within the world of the book. While the language could be fairly rote at times (characters are always crossing their arms over their chests or putting their hands on their hips; cliched language unfortunately abounds) it didn’t matter to the overall story and I found myself wondering who the murderer was all the way to the final pages. I would recommend this novel to anyone searching for a new(-ish) mystery series that hooks one right away with great characters and settings and sets up potentially more in the future (this novel had the first two chapters of the next one excerpted at the end, and continued to draw my interest). Up next I decided to stick with the mystery genre and read another author whose book I’ve had sitting on my shelf for years: Harlan Coben and his initial 1995 Myron Bolitar novel Deal Breaker. Thanks as always for joining me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome back to the fifth entry of this year’s Reading List. As mentioned last time I am focused on my backlog of “old white dude” authors since setting aside the Reading List last year. To that end I got to a novel I’ve wanted to read for years, Malcolm Lowry’s 1947 book Under the Volcano. This was a very challenging read but worth it for a variety of reasons.
The book details one life in the day of Consul Geoffry Firmin in the town of Quauhnahuac, Mexico as he struggles with his roving alcoholism and the presence of his ex-wife Yvonne and his half brother Hugh. The day in question happens to be the Mexican holiday the Day of the Dead, and that theme weaves it way throughout the narrative as while very little happens there is an abundance of thematic, sensory and emotional elements throughout this difficult novel. In fact I have not read any such book like this since Mrs. Dalloway, another from roughly the same time period and a novel that takes place within a day’s time. The volcanoes alluded to in the title loom large over the Consul and his various perambulations through cantinas and bars throughout the novel and give a sort of elemental sheen to the writing as they are referenced multiple times. Some chapters are narrated by other characters in which we get to see their backstories (Hugh as a guitar player and sailor; Yvonne as an actress). The Consul is haunted by schizophrenia-esque voices that plague him over his drinking and we are bestowed an inside look at his deteriorating reality. Yvonne and Hugh go on a horse ride and later they all take a bus where they witness an Indian man who was assaulted and lies bloody on the ground. We are privy to the Consul’s reading of postcards from Yvonne and his interior monologues regretting his life decisions and drunkenness. As stated this book was quite a heavy lift on an emotional and symbolic level and I have to admit a lot of it went over my head as I was reading it. I caught the main thrust of the narrative but Lowry’s prose goes all over the map when it comes to allusions and other thematic elements that lead strongly in the character’s lives. That being said it was still a powerful read and one that will stick with me for some time even if I failed to absorb every bit of its nuance. Faustus apparently plays a big role as well as the number seven, which is branded on a horse. I would recommend this novel only to those seeking out a difficult yet rewarding read, one that probably pays out even more upon multiple re-readings. I found an interesting website that breaks down the various themes of the narrative that would be helpful to anyone wishing to fully understand this masterful book. Since this book took a long while to read and was fairly exhausting I decided up next I’m going to pivot to a type of genre I haven’t hit since the first year of this whole Reading List experiment - the “cozy” mystery novel. My wife recommended the first a book in a series she’s been reading (Noodle Shop Mystery): Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien. So stay tuned for a more lighthearted affair on the next stop. And as always, thanks for reading. Hello readers and welcome back to the fourth entry in this year’s Reading List. As mentioned, now that the fiction list is back (and committed to reading more contemporary female authors) I am trying to read more BIPOC authors. To that end I decided to read another recent novel published in 2020 by Gish Jen entitled The Resisters. This book was quite well written and had a lot of similarities to my own manuscript, including a dystopian theme and use of technological ideas such as artificial intelligence.
The major theme of the novel, however, would be baseball. The two main characters (Eleanor and Grant) have a child named Gwen who seems to be a prodigy at the sport from the moment she starts tossing toys out of her cradle. Her parents encourage her to pitch with another child of the “Surplus” as catcher and then they begin an underground baseball league. The “Netted” are the other half of the society in the novel and are those who work jobs (the “Surplus” have something along the lines of a universal basic income as many of them are “Unretrainables” like Grant, a former language teacher - Eleanor is a lawyer and can still file suits). Out of the baseball league comes an offer for Gwen to play for the Net U baseball team and possibly try out for the Olympics, which has just added baseball back as a sport. While Gwen initially drops out of school she does end up joining the olympic team and pitches an almost perfect game in the last one of the series. In the final few pages a major character dies in what I thought was an unexpected manner and casts a bit of a pall on how the book ends. This novel had yards to teach me about how to create a dystopian world filled with interesting characters and how to display the tech running the world in various ways. Every technology introduced has a sort of mashed up way of description, whether it’s AskAuntNettie (the AI running much of the nation of AutoAmerica), Ship’EmBack (what is alluded to as sending immigrants back to their home counties), AutoLyft (vehicles), PermaDerm (changing skin tone to become part of the “angelfair” Netted, as one of the characters does about halfway through) and many, many others. In fact it did get a little repetitive at times reading through all of these types of words and I did wish some of them were a little more fleshed out and described better. But overall I’d have to say this was a masterful way of showing our climate ravaged future and how it may break society down along lines of the Surplus and Netted. There were quite a few parallels to my manuscript (Surplus getting one chance to have a child, “marooned” and flooded places that can only be reached by boat, an AI overlord that controls society) which taught me new ways of pondering them even as I respected the difference in technique here. This was a great read, and I would definitely recommend it to those searching for a very interesting look at where our society might end up if we don’t get a handle on climate change and automation. Up next, I know I’ve promised to read more contemporary female and BIPOC authors, but I also have a major backlog of “old white dude” books from setting aside the Reading List last year. I plan on tackling them through the end of this year and then getting back into the other authors by 2023. So the next novel will be one I’ve wanted to read for years, Malcolm Lowry’s 1947 book Under the Volcano. Thanks as always for joining with me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome back to the third entry in this year’s Reading List. As mentioned, now that the fiction list is back (and committed to reading more contemporary female authors) I am trying to read more BIPOC authors. To that end I decided to read another recent book by a female author, the 2020 novel A Burning by Megha Majumdar. This was a well written book, centering on three main characters in modern-day India whose lives intersect in some important ways, despite none of them sharing much page time together.
The novel is divided into chapters (along with a few interludes) titled by the characters: Jivan, a young woman living in the Kolabagan slums with her family; Lovely the “hijra” (meaning essentially transgender) actress; and PT Sir the physical training instructor who goes on to become a political heavy-hitter. The novel begins with a terrorist attack on a train that is blamed on Jivan due to a Facebook post. The other characters’ lives are shown in great detail but it was Jivan’s portions that spoke to me the most. She spends almost the entirety of the novel in prison, and this resonated with me in the sense that I have also spent portions of the previous months in institutions where I could merely observe the outside world. This work deals with many important issues of contemporary India: its right-wing turn in politics, made emblematic by PT Sir joining with a party that ends up allowing and justifying some pretty horrific violence against Muslims, as well as how the hijra community in the character of Lovely tries to make it in a mostly uncaring world. The many themes of the novel include turning back upon those one knew in a previous life (both characters are called to testify at Jivan’s trial, but only one of them tries to exonerate her) as well as how the charges of “terrorism” can lead to a life being destroyed by a simple post online. The novel deals with the various classes of Indian life quite well, and I was struck by the multiple striving narratives and how they played out. The end result for one character is quite depressing but as with any good fiction, resolution is not always what the reader might hope it would be. I would definitely recommend this novel for anyone wondering about the modern day Indian state and its great economic upheavals, especially in the Modi era. I have to say I was not that familiar with the minutiae of the various classes, but understood it much better having read this novel. It is an uncompromising look at a place where the author’s parents still live and it resonates far beyond this part of the world. Up next I will be taking on one more contemporary female BIPOC author in Gish Jen’s (also published in 2020) novel The Resisters. Thanks for continuing on this reading journey with me. |
AuthorJohn Abraham is a published author and freelance journalist who lives in the Twin Cities with his wife Mary and their cat. He is writing a speculative dystopian novel and is seeking representation and a publisher. Archives
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