On boots and bars and motorbikes...

Holing up  for the holidays?  Can't say I blame you. Just way too much in states of transition right now, especially since it seems to be taking the slow walk  around the world right now. Too many people I know who spent the season alone. Several for the first time. In their present situation, anyway We've lost too many this year...  I know its coming.             I can feel it.             Prickles on                 golden hairs                      long lost ghosts of my phantasmal              fortune.  Time to                     fortify, fluidly.                                                                                       Nuff said.                                                                       To borrow                                                                                        a phrase:                                                                            Most nuff…                                      

Jamey Johnson: High Cost of Living From YouTube

Although I knew it would be coming soon, I can't tell you how big a kick it was finding this in my Inbox when I got back to my house yesterday. September was a rough month for me. For several reasons. Not least of which was losing Gramma and a new job within the exact same week. So, this was welcome news indeed, something I kinda needed after some true head-spinners these last few weeks...  This interview was actually put together months ago (back when my website launched in January 2018, to be precise). I figured it was lost months ago already. Until I got word from them last month, which was good because I just didn't have it in me for another Try, Try Again moment. Not then. Not with everything else. But I'll be damned if another job didn't walk up out of nowhere, one I started the exact same day this published. And other than a bit sunburnt, I can't complain in the least. It was even kinda fun. So, here's hoping for some hellova lot better weeks in st

Just got word from an editor at a literary magazine out of South Carolina that they'd like publish another piece I wrote. They'd like to place it in their upcoming October edition. This current offer is with an online magazine called Amarillo Bay , (so named to reflect the hometown locations the magazine's founders, one from the Texas Panhandle and the other from San Francisco, back in 1999). It's published the Department of English at the University of South Carolina, Aiken, S.C., and as best I can tell, it's another one of those exposure-only type publications, no monetary perks involved. I've got the same piece in with a possible four other publishers, some of them actual paying contests and paid submission sites. This is where multiple submissions will give you an ulcer if you start thinking on it too hard. The piece that caught their eye is one of the more experimental pieces I wrote for my book I'm calling "Lubbock 1974," about what sc

Quite a day on the writing front! Today I got word that a new poem would be publishing soon in Typishly, an online literary publication. I'll add more about this when things are a bit more confirmed and definite. I also saw that a Q&A guest blog I did a few months back for this fellow from Australia I met in a writers groups online ran today. It's admittedly long-winded, but most definitely not anthing I expected. Thanks for the opportunity, Clancy!

Somewhere between teaching summer school college classes, working on book edits, wrapping up my electrical classes and otherwise riding life bareback, trying hard to hang on, I almost forgot about it.  You might recall, perhaps, me mentioning a few weeks back that three publications had chosen to publish things I wrote- -Bluestem (from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Ill.), with my story "Mr. Man Candy" (which I'll be publishing here soon, in its entirety with audio); the new Havik anthology Rise (from Las Positas College in Livermore, Calif.) ran my poems "Hap. Haz.Ard" and "Hipster Jesus," the latter even claiming a surprise second place win in the school's poetry contest along with a $75 cash prize (but that's another story for another day). And finally, there was Alchemy from Portland (Ore.) Community College, which published two more of my poems, "My Little Girl," shown above, and "Why You (dis)sin?&q

I don't even want to admit to how many rejections I'd accrued since mid-February when I started hearing back from the various submissions I'd sent along to various literary magazines, journals and contests all over the globe. I was actually getting as many as seven and eight nos each day.  So when the letter finally came late this evening saying one of the pieces I submitted was actually going to print, I was even sure what to do next. I'd gotten so accustomed to the Dear BoB letters, we're so happy you chose us to send your work, but what the hell were you on when you wrote this. We sure as hell ain't printing, but we thank you for giving as good laugh, just the same... What? Isn't that form letter they send everyone? No actually, most have very nice in telling your work is going to live its life on your hard drive. You'd be damned impressed just how many different ways somebody can tell you your stuff sucks, and never once say as much.

WOW! Women On Writing Contests: Flash Fiction and Essay Contest

Of all the pictures that could possibly be taken of a dude all dandied up for a wedding (a wedding he actually had to stand up for at the church, no less), I suppose it's only fitting that the only shots of him from said event involved some sort of mayhem... Considering I had a limited window in which to get everything done, I tagged the windows and strapped on some cans--not much else--and neither proved as simple as they may seem. That particular model of vehicle was notably lacking any ready spots to lash anything to--no hitch, no bumper, not even any brackets underneath. This I know from crawling underneath said vehicle and pawing around like a blind man. I finally found some roughly 3/4 holes in the wheel of spare tire that was mounted down there. And since they made me feel up the underside of the car for a good five minutes (and because it better hid said noisemakers), I made sure to tie said rattle cans at the farthest point forward down there. Not once feeling the s

Once again, as a courtesy to friends and family not particularly fond of my blue language from time to time, I must once again beg your forgiveness and rate this with R. For the rest of you, though (let's hum a few bars and give that first bunch a chance to log out: Hmmm, hmm HMMMM hmmm hmm ) . . . Alright. Is that all of them? Here we go then. One bad day can always get worse… It could have happened to anyone, anyplace, at any time. It happened to be a Tuesday for Doug, not long after he handed a raft of shit to his neighbor, Bob, that should've come with paddles. “What the hell do you mean, you called the law?” “I mean I called the police to report your dang dog,” Bob says. “That beast kept me up all hours barking last night. No one should have to put up with that kind of racket.” “He was barking at your damn car, which you drove through my fucking fence, you moron.” “Oh, we’re back to that are we?” “Hell yeah, I’m back to that,” Doug says, taking a c

You met my dog, Hico, in my last installment. We were talking about how you could pick up on all sorts of things from a dog's bark, if you learned how to listen. And as promised, allow me to introduce said possum. (Don't get too attached to him.) And here's where we left off: There’s the choppy, the-puppies-are-missing bark, usually in concert with some other hound (or hounds), clear across town. You can almost make out each dot and dash of their canine Morse code, passing on their messages in a sort of doggy dictation. Then there’s the throatier, stouter “BA-ruff!” she slings at most passersby. It’s the this-is-my-yard-so-you-best-keep-walking bark. Works like a charm, most days, especially when you toss in that tremendous leap of hers. Few and far between are those who loiter on my block. Finally, you’ve got the break-out-straight-jacket, aliens-have-landed, ninjas-are-on-the-roof bark. It’s about five parts wolf pack, three parts Rottweiler and two parts get-your-ass

I doubt it'll do much. Why waste your time? It's better left to the coming darkness. That's what voices resonating in my head tell me. You ever heard them? I do all the time... Sure, those prizes sure look good--$1,000 here, $3,000 there, and always, there's the ever-elusive and perfunctory word so cherished by the wannabe world of aspirants--Publication. With a capital P. So I try today, as I have for the last few days now, entering a few words in the contests those writer magazines all the time advertise. Of course, that ever-elusive "Publication" I so long for? Most of it's in crap even I've never heard of, much less any of my biker buddies. Won't even know if they run it, to be perfectly honest, not without them telling me they did, anyway. Not like I'll ever run across a couple browsing a newsstand someplace, that's for sure. Still, despite it all, something in me wants it still, desires it so. Publication. Capital P or otherwi

You gotta love you some online classes, every once in a while. I banged this out over the weekend for one of mine, destined for a professor who specifically asked that we creative types showcase some our talents. Well, he asked for it: [In response to suffering through Between the Acts by English author and early feminist Virginia Woolf, a book written within a single day's timespan of a family and their home, just days before the outbreak of World War II.]  F irst off, I gotta apologize for my ramble. I’ve always been on the long-winded side to begin with, but this writing business with my thesis project is definitely bringing it to an all-new level of annoying, I’m sure. I’m trying to get down every detail possible right now in creation mode, sort it all out later. It’s hard to shut that switch off once you let it loose, so sorry if this gets even longer and windier than my usual. To those of you already familiar with my work, welcome back. The those of you not: I'm

Been busy as a springtime hive of honeybees the last few, trying to get as many words on paper as I possibly can, as well as updating devices and files lost in the last computer debacles of late, getting ready for the new school year, and dealing with my lone student I gave an incomplete to last semester because he wound up having emergency surgery on his appendix in the final week of school. (No worries: He's fine now, but they sure kept him a spell at the hospital. He didn't get out until the final week of December. That was nearly a month as best I can tell, and I actually went to see him not long after his surgery in the first week of December.) But I'm staying plenty busy, anyhow. Kinda irritating at times how others don't seem to want to leave me alone when I'm working, but it's what I get, I guess, for setting up shop out here in the living room in front of God and everyone. Much as Stephen King told us to do in On Writing (which is a fine

James HETFIELD - Full Show at Acoustic 4 a Cure - 15 May 2014 - Fillmore...

I just wanted to update and say that the Geek Squad did me well. I got my laptop back a day early, and everything I thought I might've lost was right there waiting on me when I signed back on. What. A. Relief. In fact, it hasn't run this well since I first got it, and for all the pages it holds, that's quite astounding... I truly couldn't think of a better picure to go with that header. If that doesn't scream dorky geekdom right out loud, I'm pretty sure nothing will. From those stylin' Old Fart wingtips to the distressed university fleece that only nine people on the planet could possibly identity to that perfectly obnoxious Plumb Crazy Purple Willie Wonka Top Hat, it simply doesn't get any better. Of couse, to really sell that shit you've gotta throw in that smart little Hidey-Ho strut, the White Boy Shuffle, the schottische, something. This particular pose sort of reminds me of the Monopoly Man. you know, the fellow on the