Lockdown Blues

Author: Published: 04/25/2020

Lockdown Blues

My weekly column went into regular production in 1995, and prior was a monthly for a few years, with my first one etched out in a cold-water bedsit in Tempe AZ while I was still a student.

See the bio.

So as a writer, first, the enforced solitude isn’t that much of a bother. Slightly inconvenient, and I’m missing about four shifts in a month, at the various venues.

Two points. One? I recently added the local public library’s digital version to my own collection of reading sources. I think I have a new charity to hustle — public libraries. The digital access saved my soul. I was already enamored of the county’s “book-less library,” and between the two, I’ve been happily reading.

The other point? With theatre closed, here — and aboard? The RSC, Shakespeare’s Globe, and others have put versions of plays online. I wanted to watch a great number of those. So far? Nothing.

Been meaning to get around to it, but I’ve been locked down for three weeks or more, and so far? Not a thing. Haven’t watched one play. One favorite podcaster was doing a staged reading of The Comedy of Errors, although reputedly an early play, quite good in its verbal swordsmanship and word play.

My “garden” is clean. I have a single box of books to sell back to the used bookstore. A couple of bags of clothes for recycling. Fishing gear is cleaned — and ready.

Still haven’t managed to watch, or even listen to, any of those plays.

Hamlet’s too heavy, and we know how Romeo and Juliette end. There’s almost a guilt that I feel, is that what this is? Here, time enough to accomplish a simple goal, and yet?

I’m reading this one book, and this character gets killed…

Two-Meat Tuesday

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Two-Meat Tuesday – Kramer Wetzel

Two-Meat Tuesday: Astrofish.Net/Xenon

San Pedro Creek (temporarily free e-book)

#tuesday

Sign up for the free show

Author: Published: 04/25/2020

Sign up for the free show

One day only:

Details and free sign up here.

Think I’m scheduled to present for 20 minutes near the end, like after 2 PM. Still lot of interesting stuff, and no two alike.

First gig by a new promoter, and “We like her.”

Details and free sign up here.

Masked Prey, &c.

Author: Published: 04/24/2020

Masked Prey, &c.

Granted, I read most of the author’s canon in the last 6 months, having missed one or two, maybe, but I think I got most of them. Either way, that gives me a definite feeling for the novels and the way the guy writes.

Enjoyable, a little more style than I tend to like in my potboiler-romance-detective-thriller (something something) genre of work. But good stuff, and I highly recommend all of the novels, starting at the beginning.

May the odd gods bless libraries.

Mercury? Maybe Thoth? Some saint? Virgo?

“St. Jerome?”

I started Masked Prey the night my internet died, and then, reading on the tablet, and slipping between the opening chapters, and the online news, it felt very surreal, which narrative belonged where. Quickly lost in the tale’s sense of timing and currency. Current events or the book? Both.

“The media doesn’t seem to have reporters anymore, they just have commentators.” Page 111.

I would blame Comedy Central and the commentators who started this.

“For instance, the writer always puts two spaces after a period, which means he probably learned to type on a typewriter, rather than a keyboard.” Page 315.

OK, weird and unrelated fact? I can only work on a keyboard, not a manual typewriter. Oddly enough, for years, even buried in the archive, and finishing that last book manuscript, I was still erasing places where I double-spaced after a period at the end of a sentence.

The digital version was, in my mind, classic and good to the “last page.”

Masked Prey buy here

Naked Prey buy here

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