Portrait of an Artist as a Single Dad – Easter

Fake grass in baskets. A rainbow’s assortment of colored eggs. Chocolate bunnies and chocolate eggs and chocolate kisses. Lots of chocolate latent with fertility. Peeps in their crusted sugary goodness, but keep in mind as Maddie found out that roasting a peep over a fire can be hazardous, yet pretty as the sugar ignites and …

Excerpting Books for an Essay or Short Story

I took a couple of chapters from a novel in progress, formed them into a short story and sent it in to the Narrative Prize. I placed in the top ten and Tom Jenks at Narrative Magazine sent me back a copy with his editorial suggestions. Red Flag Warning had like six pages cut from …

A Symphony in Essay Form

Here is the title essay from my essay collection, Fever and Guts: A Symphony as it appeared in the wonderful Dos Passos Review.  For the book I broke the essay into its four movements and spaced them throughout the book.  Section I begins the book and IV ends as one would expect in doing this. …