Got me a nice 5 star review from Hampton Reviews. You can read it by clicking HERE. I’ll also paste the text after the jump.

This is a quiet book about a quiet corner of Maine.  The Coates family is mourning after the loss of the family matriarch. How does one carry on after the loss of a life mate?  However, what could have been a maudlin study of family disfunction at a time of stress is minimized by the currents beneath the quietness.  Every family has things that they don’t talk about and in this the Coates family is not alone.  The tensions between Jason, Robert, and Einar are brought to the surface as all of them try to cope with their own individual losses. Einar has lost his wife, and through one singularly thoughtless act, Jason’s has created problems in  not only his own marriage, but also has caused his brother Robert to lose his future wife as well. The winter setting of this book is appropriate as these men have frozen their emotions out. Their love and caring for each other is evident but not expressed; emotionally they are as frozen as the weather. The shocking turn of events between Jason and Robert is only a prelude to what will irrevocably change their lives, and the lives of those around them, forever.

This is a book that will stay with the reader for a long time after its end.  The imagery of fall and winter and of things ending and dying is central to this novel’s story, and sustains it to its very end.  The final act of self-sacrifice is redemption for some, and a cause of lasting pain and regret for others, but it could not have happened any other way for the author to stay true to his creation.

This is a well crafted and in its own way, quite wonderful book that I genuinely enjoyed.  It is thought provoking on many levels and I do recommend it.

Nothing about writing today; just an update on my motorcycle project. I started shaping the tank today…it doesn’t look like much yet, but once I get some bondo on this puppy, get it primed and painted, it’s going to look awesome!

I stripped all the paint off of the tank about a month ago using a wire wheel on my drill as well as an angle grinder with a flap disc. Then I took it to a radiator repair shop to get all the fumes out of the tank; I didn't want to blow myself up when using tools that throw sparks. There was a puncture in the tank, so the radiator repairman welded it for me...then I took the sucker home and drew a design on the side. Once the design was made, I made a template to transfer the design to the other side so both sides were identical.

Some of the tools I used. I actually didn't end up using the rubber mallet or the metal hammer. The white shaping hammer did the trick. You can see the template I made from tissue paper on the ground underneath the masking tape. The angle grinder worked well for exposing high spots once I banged away for a few minutes.

Another view of the tank after I shaped it with the hammer. You can see a few things in this photo: first, this is a rough job. It will need Bond-o and plenty of sanding before it's ready for priming and paint. Second, you can see the damage from the head badge that I tore off. This is where the hole happened, since I managed to pull off the metal along with the badge plate. The radiator repairman fixed it up nicely, but it will need some Bond-o love for sure.

This was a WIDE tank. These old Hondas were not known for their looks, that's for sure. Pounding in the sides serves two purposes: one, it provides a nice knee scoop for comfort; two, it makes the tank look less early-eighties-horrible. This came off a 1980 Honda CB750K.

One last look at the beast. It will need a lot of finishing, but it's really starting to come along.

Well, I had high hopes for 2012, and so far those hopes have come crashing down all around me.

One good thing has happened this month: my new short story collection, “Ten Bucks If You Hit One,” is now available. Check out the PAPERBACK VERSION HERE or download the KINDLE VERSION FOR JUST $0.99! 

The stories are mostly remnants of lives I have led or lives I could have led. They focus on mistakes, redemption, and the moments in life that leave a lasting impression. Some of them are pretty good, if I don’t say so myself. Pick up your copy and help a delusional writer believe he can make a living off this silly craft.

Here’s an excerpt from the title story, “Ten Bucks If You Hit One.” It’s a mostly true story about my relationship with my grandfather, who was essentially my hero growing up. To read the rest, go buy a copy! Help a brotha out!

TEN BUCKS IF YOU HIT ONE

My grandfather had curved fingers. Old. Arthritic. His name was Ignazio, though his friends and most of his family called him Muzzy. While in the Air Force, playing baseball as a catcher, he inherited two ‘badges of honor,’ so to speak: a crop of ten bruised, broken and bent fingers, and the nickname, ‘Muzzy,’ which developed quite logically, really. Catchers wore masks that looked like muzzles. My grandfather was a catcher. My grandfather was Muzzy.

If nothing else, Waterbury, Connecticut is and always has been a baseball town. Smith Avenue, where I lived, stood poised halfway up from the floor of the Naugatuck Valley, and from my driveway at number 20 Smith Avenue, I could hear the shouts and cheers of the crowds down the street at Municipal Stadium every night. On the fourth of July, my family would sit on the flat roof of the house and watch the fireworks that pierced the sky from the outfield at the baseball diamond. The stadium may as well have been another family member, more personal than the smell of wet grass or the sweet itch of mosquito bites. If I couldn’t see the stadium, I could hear it. If I couldn’t hear it, I would think about it and wonder when I’d be old enough to play in it, run out to first base and field ground balls or take a crack at a fast ball and try to drive it over the right field fence. Someday for sure, I’d always think.

Muzzy groomed me to be a Yankee fan from the moment I was old enough to grip a baseball. There were simply no alternatives. You were a Yankee fan or you just weren’t a baseball fan at all. So I became a Yankee fan. In my family, to be a Yankee fan was as natural as getting up in the morning. There were few other current events happening in the world that interested us, and even to our deaths, the Yanks were the only thing that mattered aside from family and friends.  My Uncle Mike put this theory to practice, in fact. He had been watching a game one night in the T.V. room when he suddenly felt worn out and tired. “I’m going to bed,” he said to my Aunt Lucy. “Let me know how the Yanks do.”

Mike went to bed and never woke up. But the Yanks won.

While most kids were lost in the mystique of more ‘exciting’ sports stars like Michael Jordan, I became fixated on Yankees’ Captain Don Mattingly. Donnie Baseball posters adorned my bedroom walls. The Yankees and Mattingly were, to me, all that mattered. When I’d watch the game on T.V. and Mattingly would come to bat, I’d hold my breath and hope he’d hit a home run. If he did, I could count on the phone ringing not long after. It would be Muzzy. “Mattingly hit one!” He’d say, to which I’d reply, “I saw it. It was huge! Right center!”

The conversation would always end the same way. “Ten bucks if you hit one,” Muzzy would say to me, and I would shoot back, “Just be sure you’re there to see it.”

Spring would come late every year—or too late, at least, for me, who had nothing on his mind but the baseball diamond. I would spend my afternoons trying to convince my brother to have a catch with me, or I would get home after school and immediately head to the back yard, tossing the baseball against the wall of the neighbor’s garage, fielding the bounce and occasionally diving spectacularly, saving the imaginary game constantly running in my head. More often than not, I’d toss that ball until the sun went down or until the massive cluster of bushes behind me swallowed my last good ball. You could climb into that bush, but you’d never find what you were looking for until a year or so later, when you would climb in there to get the dog untangled from the branches and come out with four or five baseballs in hand.

Then spring would come, the snow would clear, and my classmates and I would take to the still-muddy fields around Waterbury to practice for the parochial league baseball season. Eighth grade was a good year for me. I was a terror in the league, the kind of batter that made the outfielders back up ten steps and the infielders punch their gloves nervously until the pitch was thrown. Yes, it was a good year…but I still hadn’t gotten what I really wanted.  I was on a mission. I wanted ten bucks from Muzzy. I wanted a home run.

This existential crisis means I recently applied for a job in a bike shop. Looks like I’m going to get it, too. I won’t whine about it, I promise, but I want you all to know that I am doing this under duress. Unlike millions of other unemployed Americans, I do not qualify for unemployment benefits. Go figure.

Working in a shop is not and never has been the worst thing in the world. I’ve met a good lot of my friends through shops…would not have gotten the chance to write for Drunkcyclist had I not been a wrench at AZ Bikes when Big Jonny wandered in one day sometime around three in the afternoon. We started drinking beers right then…the shop closed sometime around 7, I think. I can’t remember, really. I was drunk by then.  Don’t worry: I’m actually a better wrench when I’m not sober. A year or two later, Gnome asked me if I’d write for this website, since I had the best qualifications you can have: I was both a cyclist and a drunkard. I said hell yes. Now I’m your problem.

Anyway, my point is I can think of worse things to do than turn a wrench. When I was teaching high school English, my hands got soft. I gained twenty pounds. I never had grease ground into my calluses anymore because my calluses were gone. I went into the bike shop (AZ Bikes, Flag Bike Revolution…ya know, the usual suspects) and got nostalgic about it, listening to Tool while I trued yet another cheap steel wheel or fought with the innards of another Manitou fork.

The best time, by the way, to be in any bike shop worth its salt is around six or seven, as long as you have beers in your hands. That’s the key: beers and a good attitude. Closing time is usually around that time. Just relax and stay out of the way as the mechanics and salespeople take care of those last few customers. Hide the beers and stay chill. Once that door is closed, you’ll make a lot of friends because anyone who was worked in a shop knows how badly a beer is needed when your hands are sore from pulling on cables and turning spoke wrenches. The first beers should always go to the mechanics. Give ‘em that much and they’ll give a lot back.

The title of this post is taken from a great move called “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.” Toward the beginning of the movie, the main character introduces himself and says, “I’m Dito and I’m going to leave everyone in this movie.” I feel like I do that all the time with bike shops. There I am, and there I go. But then I’m back again, always changed, always different (In the movie, the character starts out as Shia Labeouf and ends up as Robert Downey, Jr…a good upgrade, if you ask me. I’m not usually that fortunate).

Weird thing, though: every time I come back, the shops are always still there. I bring a beer and say to the mechanics, “first ones are for you.” Next thing I know, I’m on the receiving end of those beers because I’m wrenching again. Is it so bad? No, not really. It’s not what I expected from my life, but it’s just not bad at all. Sometimes even these wander in:

I’ve been thinking for the last eight years about opening my own shop.

Maybe it’s time. Who knows. Sometimes it’s hard to recognize a good mechanic…even if that mechanic is yourself.

I had every intention of sticking to my guns about this blog. Why bother? What was it doing for me? Had I really gotten any sales out of it? Had it worked as a marketing tool?

And therein lies my A-HA! moment.

Since releasing “Confusing the Seasons,” I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to provide good content, how to reach a readership, how to market and sell, market and sell, market and sell…what I failed to do was write, or create, for enjoyment. What’s the point of writing if it’s not for the writer, too? In the modern publishing arena, writers are often led to believe that writing belongs solely to the reader, and it is the writer’s responsibility to pitch it, sell it, or otherwise give it away so people will read, tell others, make the book “go viral” (a term I am learning to loathe), and so on.

Well, I did that. It resulted in modest sales at best, and for those sales I am grateful.

But I was not getting personal satisfaction from all of this marketing nonsense.

So I’ll stop. There’s no reason I need to stop blogging in order to do that…I just need to re-focus and let the blog be for me, too. I won’t force myself to post once a month, or once a week, or once a day. I’ll post when I want to post. If people read it, great. If not, well, I read it. I liked it. Felt good to do it. So why not keep on keepin’ on?

I won’t just write about writing, either. How boring is that, especially for people who aren’t writers? Instead, I’ll branch out. Some topics you’re likely to hear from me:

1) I am rebuilding a 1980 Honda CB750 from the ground up. That excites me right now. It gives me pleasure to think about it, talk about it, and do it. So I’ll talk about it, dammit!

2) I got laid off from my full time writing gig, which means I’m unemployed. Maybe I’ll venture into the dreaded political/economic arena with my silly, only-three-quarters-educated opinions.

3) I am a photographer, and I enjoy the process. I love the photography world, and I’ve got a few really interesting shoots coming up. Maybe I’ll share some of my photos.

4) I’ve been flirting with the idea of a few multimedia projects for another website I write for (drunkcyclist.com…NSFW!). Maybe I’ll throw out some ideas on the ol’ blog here and see what y’all think…if any of you are actually reading.

5) My wife and I recently moved to Colorado, and I’m dying to explore. Maybe I’ll just talk about adventures, real or imagined, like the motorcycle and bicycle tours I want to do through the U.S. and through Europe.

See? This blog isn’t an asshole, like I’d led you all to believe. It can be a good thing. It can be a fun thing. Most importantly, it can be for me. I am not a slave to the industry, so why continue the same practices that made me so?

Alright. Enough of that. I’ve got a job hunt to get underway, as well as some very important lazing around to do.

As you may have noticed, I haven’t written on my blog in a while. I’m not going to make excuses: I just didn’t want to. You want to know why?

Because blogging doesn’t improve my life.

It doesn’t further my career.

It doesn’t sell books.

If you’re a writer, or artist, or entrepreneur, you’ve probably read countless articles about how important it is to have an online presence. Tweet, they say. Facebook, they say. Blog, blog, blog. Provide content. That’s what I did in 2011: I provided content.

Lots of it.

For free.

But I’m not  going to do that anymore. Think about if we asked engineers to post their new designs online. What if we asked dentists to perform a cavity fill for free every few days, just to stay in the public’s eye. How about if we told car mechanics to install mufflers two or three times a week for free? Would they do it? Hell fucking no.

And why?

Because they are smart enough to not work for free.

For some reason, artists haven’t gotten it through their heads that providing content for free cheapens that content. People will expect it for free, and I fear there’s no going back on that. Think about newspapers that have transitioned to websites, providing content for free, only to find that they now can’t put up a paywall without readerships freaking out.

It’s really great that Amanda Hocking made millions by pricing her books at $0.99. Hell, if I thought I could pull that off, I’d do it. But honestly, how long can we, as writers or artists, support ourselves if the art is continually cheapened—AND WE ARE THE MAIN CULPRITS?

Look, we’re not going to make millions. Most of us will be lucky to make enough off of writing and art to pay some of our bills. I know that very well, because I have been barely getting by for years as a writer. That does not mean we should give ourselves away. American society will have us believe that artists are expendable. They will tell you that liberal arts degree was a bad idea because, hey, there’s no jobs, what did you expect? Art class was always a blow class in high school anyway, so you should have just gotten an engineering degree, right?

Wrong, and fuck you for saying so.

We’re all born with certain talents. We all develop certain talents as we develop. Just because I was talented in writing and not math does not make me less of a person. It does not make my work any less valuable. I fear our society will only realize that centuries later, when the texts and the e-mails and the Tweets are all gone, and there’s no record of who or what we were as a society. Hard drives crash. Books have a pesky tendency to survive. Then what will be say? How will we be remembered?

This sounds bad, I know. There’s a reason why. This is my sign-off from the blog. I won’t be blogging after this, because I don’t find blogging to be valuable. I feel like it’s a contribution toward temporary media, toward the perpetuation of the cheapening of a craft that I happen to love. Others do not feel this way, and they will continue to blog, and to them, I say good for you. I’m glad you have found a passion.

But my writing is worth more than that, and I refuse to give it away. I refuse to participate in the destruction of a craft. I’m done.

The manuscript for “Men Waiting For Sleep” is currently in rewrites. I will release this as a novel. But then, sadly, I think I’m done.

When you call out into the world that you have something to say, and then you say it, and the world moves on and ignores you, perhaps this is a sign. I’ve written five novels. I’ve written countless short stories. I’ve even got screenplays and poems and essays and ramblings. What have I got to show for it?

A webpage.

A blog.

And a lot of bills.

I will focus on the things that improve my life. I’m confident writing will be one of those things, but I will not blog anymore. I will not cheapen my craft. Thanks for reading, if you’ve read at all. I sincerely doubt you have. This blog post is mostly for me…if you read it, well, sorry to have dragged you into this. Sometimes when people shout, it’s just not worth listening to anyway.

–$13.50+ shipping gets you a SIGNED copy of Confusing the Seasons!

–$6.50 +shipping gets you a SIGNED copy of By Flood Waters!

–$13.50+ shipping gets you a Brown Tie Publishing T-shirt!

–$18+ shipping gets you BOTH Confusing the Seasons and By Flood Waters, signed!

–$18+ shipping gets you a SIGNED copy of By Flood Waters, plus a Brown Tie Publishing T-shirt!

–$21+shipping gets you a SIGNED copy of Confusing the Seasons, plus a Brown Tie Publishing T-shirt!

–$35+ shipping gets you a Brown Tie Publishing T-shirt and Hat!

Not bad! Send me an e-mail to let me know what you want, and I will send you a total ASAP.

Happy Holidays, everyone. Here’s to hoping for good books under the stocking this year.

First off, just want to remind you that CONFUSING THE SEASONS is still on sale at Amazon…would make a great Christmas gift. Hard copies are only $13.50, and the Kindle version is only $0.99!

Second, my poetry collection, BY FLOOD WATERS, is available for a digital download on Amazon for $0.99. More importantly, the hard copy version will be available within the next week for just $6.50!

This is my most exciting announcement for the moment: my collection of short stories, “Ten Bucks if You Hit One,” will be out in January! I saw the artwork for the cover today, and it looks great! I’ll have more details about this one very soon.

As far as “Men Waiting For Sleep,” progress is being made slowly and surely. The beta readers have been getting back to me with some positive feedback and plenty of suggestions for improving the story. Expect to see this one out before summer.

More to come! Stay tuned…

I hadn’t even really looked at the site in a while until tonight. It strikes me as a bit outdated now in terms of design, but man, the content is really fantastic. And it’s just sitting there…waiting to be read. A freebie, so to speak. It’s amazing to me in this age of the internet that so much amazing content can be available at no charge, and people rarely see it at all. A lot of that amazement goes back to my disappointment that the arts have been so devalued, but I don’t want to digress into that just now. Instead, I want to share with you a few of my favorites from the site, and invite you to peruse through Waterlogged August yourself.

1) January in a Jar  by Erin Morgan (click on the title to read the entire poem)

Photo by Landon Michaelson

come in,

2) Fun House by Isaac Melum

Photo by Rudi Silbermann

3) The Truth About Commitment by M.D. Dury

Photo by Jolene Monheim

Whether he’ll admit it or not, Dury is a storyteller. He writes poetry only, but I see prose all over his work. He’s the kind of writer who will find a thread and pull, until everything is unraveled in your hands. I always feel fortunate when I meet someone who is in love with language, and Dury definitely is.

4) Tommy Knows It First by Dan Cavallari

Photo by Joseph M. Arthur

On a hot day in May, we stand
In a semi-circle in front of
A factory wall that has the words
JERK-OFF spray painted on it
In massive, messy, sprawling letters.

Yeah, I know it’s tacky to choose a poem of my own, but I like this one a lot, and Waterlogged August was such a personal adventure for me that I’d be remiss if I didn’t include something of my own. Honestly, I rarely know (or understand) who I am as a writer. I write in fits and starts. I jump genres. I play with form, with language, sometimes successfully, usually unsuccessfully. As a barometer for my own writing, I am completely unreliable, but I can tell you this: I’m fascinated by words, by stories, by characters. I think that shows through, more than anything else.

5) Tenant by Heather Hodges

An entire ocean

Lodged quiet

Cupped to you

A tenant polite

To be swayed before tea could be taken

I don’t know Heather, have never met her, but I was taken by her work because it was so quiet. The serenity of it made me read it over and over again, because while it was serene and quiet, it was never at ease. An undercurrent, perhaps, but more likely a pulse. She was not paired with a photographer on this project; she was on her own, so the visual nature of her poems really carried the weight of the project well. There’s a warm-blanket comfort to her poems, but that blanket is always just a bit scratchy, reminding you it’s there.

Here’s the thing. It took me almost three years to write the first 45,000 words of “Men Waiting For Sleep.”

It took me two months to write the last 45,000.

It’s done. Dear god, it’s done. The first draft of my fifth novel is complete, and it is now in the hands of my beta readers. And to be completely honest, I don’t give a damn if it’s good or not. It was the most amazingly difficult project I’ve ever completed, and I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t even sure I was going to finish it. In fact, at one point, I was sure I was done being a writer. People tend to think writers have this magical gift to sit down and follow their writing through to the end, because the final product is all people ever see. PEOPLE don’t know about the unfinished manuscripts. PEOPLE don’t know about the nights staring at a blinking cursor, the hours in which you can’t make that goddamn thing move regardless of how clever you feel, of how hard you work. Entire months went by and I couldn’t make that cursor move.

That’s why the blog has been quiet lately. I finally got that fucker to move.

Once it got going, I didn’t want it to stop.

I had to stop writing everything else. I had to stop taking photos, had to stop riding bikes, had to stop drinking beers and hanging out with friends and petting the dog. I had to write. I had to FUCKING WRITE. I had to sit down and see what happened next, because I don’t make the characters move. I just watch them and see. What. Happens.

The last two months have been exhilarating in that sense, even if they’ve been difficult and infuriating. This novel has been a representation of every challenge I’ve had over the last three years, every failure, every missed opportunity, every self doubt. Can you see why it wouldn’t matter if the book was good or not? It’s finished! What else matters? People will like it, people won’t.  But I finished. I finished. I finished.  Can’t say that enough because that’s all that matters.

I’m glad I don’t get asked for advice very often, because I’m far too blunt. I can’t tell you much about language, about plot, about characterization. I can’t tell you how to get published, how to become the next JK Rowling or John Irving or (god forbid) Stephanie Meyer. I can’t tell you how to get past that one goddamn sentence, the one that has gotten you hung up for weeks.

But I can tell you this:

Put the pen to the paper…and fucking push.

The first draft is done, and I am thankful.