Expansive.., and eloquent.., at once grave and majestic. In the final volume of the 'Home' trilogy, it is 1974 and we are in the windswept territories of the southwest USA.
Written with terse lyricism, and cinematic detail, and wry humor, Dirt and Snakes is a tale of the American West like no other in contemporary literature. This searing, extraordinarily evocative narrative opens with Gus Alamo, a wayfarer; a Cowboy; a seeker of all that is the open road, traveling to the borderlands of northwest Texas in order to release his prized Mustang mare back into the wild so that she may find a worthy stallion to sire her young.
And so begins an odyssey worthy of the western frontier, stimulated by motion, and by connection, and by tragedy. Along the way, we will encounter a Race Car Driver that is embroiled in an interminable search for victory, and an Indian Chief that has pledged his soul to the isolation of the rugged wilderness, and a stray Dog with a peculiar and tenacious desire to achieve celestial greatness.
Beautifully constructed and fully-realized, Dirt and Snakes speaks to the conflict alive in all of us; a scary illumination soothed and nurtured by a restless baby soul endlessly seeking the warmth of a place called, Home.
ervin shane
AND THE
SUNSHINE MOTEL
“The miracle of loneliness is that sooner or later it makes you act otherwise.”
Illuminated by extraordinary tenderness, Ervin Shane and The Sunshine Motel is a poignant tale about origins and endings told in the plain speak of a man tired of living a hand-to-mouth existence in the racist, post-WWII south.
In 1951, Ervin Shane boarded a Greyhound headed to wherever the winter sun was warmer. A thousand miles later, a layover in a West Texas bus station and a chance browsing of the want-ads led him to curtail his journey and take up as the custodian of The Sunshine Motel - a neon-bathed oasis situated halfway between somewhere and somewhere else, offering wayfarers, “…clean sheets, a warm blanket and a soft pillow for those lost souls bound for nowhere in particular.”
And so begins the chronicle and construction of a humble life; a beautiful and haunting story of classic simplicity; a story of indefinite echoes.
SPACEMAN SPIRITUS
Spaceman Spiritus is a prisoner, found guilty of the enduring crime of solitude, sentenced to labor far underground somewhere in a distant galaxy; Peel is a rancher, a man tracing a lifetime of memories for those he loved and for the natural world around him. He’s about to plummet back to Earth with an angel by his side; and as for Martha and Pup, well.., they’re the dogs charged with saving us all.
Listen to an excerpt at Audible
From the Author:
These days, writing a story for all ages is somewhat of a futile affair.
Any product targeted at the largest demographic possible (i.e. everyone) has, ironically, the narrowest appeal. This would be the left turn that is right up my street - a place to live for just shy of a year; a place where readers/listeners accustomed to swallowing any amount of self-indulgent, pseudo-militaristic, gun-tottin’ bravado as easily as a scoop of vanilla ice cream will find the air a little too thin.
About this book:
Melancholy can be a particularly cruel and magnetic force when considering the enticement or resistance to returning to one’s home.
Even for those that never truly left.
It’s an emotional state that reigns supreme whether you are of the free, or of the incarcerated, or of the enslaved, or the estranged, or the disavowed. You are powerless to repel such a force.
You might as well scream your dissatisfaction with the universe into the mouth of a raging hurricane. If you dwell, even momentarily, on the subject of from whence you came, melancholy will come for you with teeth bared. In this, I know I am not wrong.
So, here it is, a book that is the literary equivalent of listening to a song that laments heartbreak as only you can understand it. In short, this is a book you should buy for someone that yearns. MW
“Time is relative; time-Travel, not so much.”.
A pause-resisting novel in the tradition of Ray Bradbury, Paulo Coelho, Gabriel García Márquez, and the street-smarts of Roddy Doyle, Supermassive Superstar is a rock ’n roll allegory fueled by an emotive mystery that culminates as a deeply humane testament to the importance of listening to our hearts.
out now in Print and Audiobook:
The year is 1978; the setting is London. Twenty-four-year-old Beecher Stowe is set to enjoy his hard-earned accession into the rarified atmosphere of the cut-throat music business: TV appearances, chart-topping record sales, fame, fortune, all wrapped up in a long, happy life.
What he gets is a tap on the shoulder from a ghost rendered as an angel; an ageless muse, with her sun-bleached hair and her sun-shaded eyes and her Bardot lips. She journeys in the service of a man for whom the ravages of time hold no regard; a man that has wandered the earth, stranded in a parallel dimension for centuries. Only the act of a singularly-pure and unified thought undertaken by all of humanity can align the apertures of memory so that he might find a way back to his home; to his family.
And it all rests on the performance of one song. What could possibly go wrong?
