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Fear is Watchword

9/29/2015

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A WRITER'S WIT
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
Miguel de Cervantes
Born September 29, 1547

My Book World

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Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015.

In some passages of this book, my impulse is to underline nearly every sentence I am reading; the text seems that important. Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a book that everyone, and I mean everyone, should read, regardless of who you are or where you live in the world. He, in the tradition of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver, articulates what it is to be an African-American male in the twenty-first century, an image that illuminates the agony his ancestors have experienced for hundreds of years. Indeed, the entire text is an address Mr. Coates is making to his son, informing him where he has come from, what he must watch for now, and how he can prepare for a future reflecting the fact that sixty percent of black men who drop out of high school wind up in prison.

Mr. Coates’s most important motif may be that of “fear.” He expresses in a multitude of ways the fear that African-Americans experience each day of their lives.

“I heard the fear in the first music I ever knew, the music that pumped from boom boxes full of grand boast and bluster. The boys who stood out on Garrison and Liberty up on Park Heights loved this music because it told them, against all evidence and odds, that they were masters of their own lives, their own streets, and their own bodies. I saw it in the girls, in their loud laughter, in their gilded bamboo earrings that announced their names thrice over. And I saw it in their brutal language and hard gaze, how they would cut you with their eyes and destroy you with their words for the sin of playing too much” (15).
But fear is nothing new to African-Americans. It is something that may be conducted through their DNA from one generation to the next: “The nakedness is the correct and intended result of policy, the predictable upshot of people forced for centuries to live under fear” (17). And such fear he experiences first hand, realizing that men have disappeared from his life, uncles and others.

This compact book covers so much: Coates’s upbringing by parents who eschew religion, his education at Howard University, the loss of a great friend he makes there, Prince Jones, the afternoon-long conversation he has with Jones’s mother, a woman with a PhD, who lives in a gated community after having escaped poverty in Louisiana. Each sentence is a plea for his son to pay attention to what I am saying!

And we must pay attention, as well. I say this as an old white man, who has witnessed several manifestations of black power, and this tome is, as Toni Morrison proclaims on the book's dust jacket, "required reading."

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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!


"Jespers has skillfully created a literary album of sorts, full of melodies that pop and hiss with real life. And because a variety of relationships—gay, straight, and paternal—are represented, Jespers is able to dig underneath the muddy web of identity to reveal the shared roots of all relationships; namely, vulnerability and trust." Foreword Clarion Review

Date of Original Post
:
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/01/15 — "A Gambler's Debt"
01/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
01/15/15 — "Men at Sea"
01/22/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
01/29/15 — "Engineer"
02/05/15 — "Snarked"
02/12/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
02/19/15 — "The Age I Am Now"
02/26/15 — "Bathed in Pink"

Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
04/16/15 — "Men at Sea"
04/23/15 — "My Long-Playing Records"
04/30/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
05/07/15 — "Snarked"
05/21/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
05/28/15 — "Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes. Watch for more podcasts!

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New Yorker Fiction 2015

9/26/2015

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A WRITER'S WIT
Nobody’s going to save you. No one’s going to cut you down, cut the thorns thick around you. No one’s going to storm the castle walls nor kiss awake your birth, climb down your hair, nor mount you onto the white steed. There is no one who will feed the yearning. Face it. You will have to do, do it yourself.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Born September 26, 1942

Driven to It

PictureChristopher Silas Neal
September 28, 2015, Thomas McGuane, “The Driver”: McGuane is a master at compressing the implications of a lifetime into 2,400 words. When nine-year-old Spencer Quantrill, in the presence of his local Brahmin mother, is informed by the school principal that he must enroll in “special education,” Mrs. Quantrill refuses to allow it. On her drive home, she accidentally leaves Spencer behind, and the point of view shifts. ¶ Unsure of what to do, Spencer wanders in the cool of dusk until a strange driver stops and offers him a ride. Because of Spencer's inability to communicate, a series of events occurs including the fact that the car is stopped and the driver is arrested for kidnapping. All this in 2,400 words! But wait, there is more, and the outcome really isn’t clear, left purposely ambiguous, for the reader to ponder, I suspect—like many yarns of this nature, portrayed by way of the muddled mind of a man who never received his special education:

On the radio, in the papers, but mostly in people’s mouths, news of the kidnapper ballooned. In town, the driver’s relatives were dismayed to learn of this side of his character and anxious to put some distance between them and him. The interrogator from Helena was delayed by a passing hailstorm, and by the time he got to the town jail the driver had done away with himself, an expression that Spencer failed to understand and which his mother explained by using her hands to illustrate a bird flying off. Even so, he suspected that he was being misled. Now the newscasters were full of questions as to whether it had been mothball- or golf-ball-size hail. A widow up at Ten Mile went on TV with a hailstone the size of a grapefruit, but subsequent investigation revealed it to be something from her freezer.
McGuane’s Crow Fair: Stories was out in March.
Illustrator, Christopher Silas Neal.

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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!

Date of Original Post:
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/01/15 — "A Gambler's Debt"
01/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
01/15/15 — "Men at Sea"
01/22/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
01/29/15 — "Engineer"
02/05/15 — "Snarked"
02/12/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
02/19/15 — "The Age I Am Now"
02/26/15 — "Bathed in Pink"

Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
04/16/15 — "Men at Sea"
04/23/15 — "My Long-Playing Records"
04/30/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
05/07/15 — "Snarked"
05/21/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
05/28/15 — "Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes. Watch for more podcasts!

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New Yorker Fiction 2015

9/19/2015

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A WRITER'S WIT
When you’re in your early twenties your love life seems to explode every twenty minutes or so. By the time you’ve reached your thirties, it is every five or ten years.
Patrick Marber
Born September 19, 1964

PictureRuth Marten
September 21, 2015, Amos Oz, “My Curls Have Blown All the Way to China”: One morning over breakfast Moshe informs his wife of more than thirty years, Bracha, that he’s leaving her for a younger woman, someone he’s met while working up the coast in Netanya. ¶ At first one has some sympathy for Bracha for being dumped. She’s been faithful in every possible way to Moshe: raised two sons, kept his home, shopped, cooked, cleaned, performed the Chalice, a suggestive sexual favor, on any number of occasions when she doesn’t feel like it. Come to think of it, Moshe isn’t such a prize. In fact, he smells of body odor, especially orally, the reason why, Bracha explains, she prefers doggy style, so she doesn’t have to bear being near his mouth. As Bracha contemplates her future, she thinks of an old friend whom she might visit in Geneva, someone now known as Blanche, not her Hebrew name. And one realizes, perhaps, why Bracha’s been abandoned; she has to go back thirty-five years to recall one friend. Not such a pleasant person is Bracha, nor very empathetic. She seems to blame the failure of her marriage on some rather superficial factors. And for her lost man she seems not to shed a single tear. A Tale of Love and Darkness is one of Oz’s most popular books.
Illustrator, Ruth Marten.


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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!

Date of Original Post:
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/01/15 — "A Gambler's Debt"
01/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
01/15/15 — "Men at Sea"
01/22/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
01/29/15 — "Engineer"
02/05/15 — "Snarked"
02/12/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
02/19/15 — "The Age I Am Now"
02/26/15 — "Bathed in Pink"

Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
04/16/15 — "Men at Sea"
04/23/15 — "My Long-Playing Records"
04/30/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
05/07/15 — "Snarked"
05/21/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
05/28/15 — "Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes. Watch for more podcasts!


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Do You Play Scared?

9/16/2015

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A WRITER'S WIT
Looking back, I think we were all quite mature, surprisingly responsible. In earlier wars, boys of our age had just gone off to raise hell or enlist or both, but we stayed dutifully at our desks doing tomorrow's homework.
John Knowles, A Separate Peace
Born September 16, 1926

My Book World

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Solovitch, Sara. Playing Scared: A History and Memoir of Stage Fright. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.

I’m not sure why I was drawn to this book, except that the chords it struck by way of a recent New Yorker article (August 3, 2015, “I Can’t Go On!” by Joan Acocella) told me I must read it. I began studying piano when I was ten, and then at age thirteen I set about the study of classical organ, which continued throughout my successful completion of a bachelor’s degree in music. I’d suffered certain moments of stage fright not only while playing organ (I, like the author, gave up the instrument) but also when I taught Advanced Placement English classes (Pre-AP to be exact) each weekday for ten years, always wondering if I would say something wrong, or worse, something stupid. The most difficult situation for me was speaking before a group of adults, reading from my own writing! By sharing with us her life-long battle with stage fright, Solovitch has created a fine primer on how to approach the affliction that affects millions of people: musicians, actors, athletes, and others less public:

“A 2014 survey by the online research and consulting firm YouGov reported that 56 percent of Americans were ‘very’ or ‘a little’ afraid of public speaking. But it wasn’t their top-ranking fear; snakes and heights ranked higher. Among the British, YouGov found the same prevalence of public-speaking anxiety, but that figure exceeded a fear of heights and snakes” (177). Whoo!
Or, allow this to soak in:
“By 1987, a survey by the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, which represents instru- mentalists in dozens of major orchestras, revealed that 27 percent of its members used beta-blockers. Of those, 70 percent got the drug from colleagues”(108).
Solovitch’s journey is a long one. She begins studying piano as a young child and continues throughout college. As an adult, she gives up performance and actually becomes a journalist, creating a successful career. However, she reaches a point where she feels she not only wishes to play again but to conquer her extreme stage fright (sweaty palms, limbs that quake/my most dreadful symptom seemed to be the emission of rather acrid farts). Over a number of years Solovitch must consult scores of experts: musicians, therapists, both physical and psychological, sports coaches and many more. In the end she sets a goal for herself: to play at age sixty a challenging piano recital in the presence of an audience of family, friends, and other musicians. Her journey is a remarkable one, one that’s instructive for all of us, whether we’re musicians, performers, speakers, or even audience members. Important to remember are those who appear before us, that they may be suffering from performance anxiety, the preferred term, and we can by our very understanding help them by being attentive and understanding and most of all, forgiving, something performers often cannot be themselves.

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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!

Date of Original Post:
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/01/15 — "A Gambler's Debt"
01/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
01/15/15 — "Men at Sea"
01/22/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
01/29/15 — "Engineer"
02/05/15 — "Snarked"
02/12/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
02/19/15 — "The Age I Am Now"
02/26/15 — "Bathed in Pink"

Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
04/16/15 — "Men at Sea"
04/23/15 — "My Long-Playing Records"
04/30/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
05/07/15 — "Snarked"
05/21/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
05/28/15 — "Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes. Watch for more podcasts!


0 Comments

New Yorker Fiction 2015

9/12/2015

0 Comments

 
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A WRITER'S WIT
Democracy—or any improvement on it—will rest on the layman’s [sic] right to criticize. His criticism will be often— very often—damn silly, but if, like Plato and the Fascists, we take away his right to criticize, we take away his right to appreciate.
Louis MacNeice
Born September 12, 1907                                                                 

Final Trip Down Chicken Hill

PictureTischler | Wilson
September 14, 2015, Joy Williams, “Chicken Hill”: Ruth, an old woman living alone, becomes acquainted with a young girl who lives next door in a “house painted a prominent aubergine.” ¶ The second-grader may exist nowhere except in the old woman’s thoughts, for the child’s vocabulary and world view otherwise seem far too sophisticated. For example, she asks Ruth if she may draw her “in plein air.” Yet Ruth’s mind, though it may be fading, is still sharp in other ways, her heart sensitive to world problems like the over harvesting of tuna. Moreover, the story opens with a scene in which Ruth attends a fundraiser for a little boy who runs into the street and is hit by a policeman. Something tells the reader that the event is a sham, but Ruth doesn’t seem to get it. ¶ When she decides to meet the magnanimous doctor next door who has “adopted” the young girl, Ruth gets no farther than his front porch, and then she turns around and rushes home. The clues are all here: Ruth simply does not have complete control of her faculties any longer. Are her dogs gone, one asks, because they’ve been confiscated or because they disappeared long ago? The following passage seems to sum up the story, a line Ruth feeds to herself: “You can’t live a life that’s no longer your own.” Yes her entire life has become the ultimate “Chicken Hill,” a childhood scene, in which a daring Ruth slides down a dirt hill on a piece of cardboard and schemes to stop just short of tumbling into the street. One of Williams’s most popular books may be The Quick and the Dead.
Photograph by Matthew Tischler
Type by Gabriele Wilson


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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!

Date of Original Post:
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/01/15 — "A Gambler's Debt"
01/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
01/15/15 — "Men at Sea"
01/22/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
01/29/15 — "Engineer"
02/05/15 — "Snarked"
02/12/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
02/19/15 — "The Age I Am Now"
02/26/15 — "Bathed in Pink"


Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
04/16/15 — "Men at Sea"
04/23/15 — "My Long-Playing Records"
04/30/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
05/07/15 — "Snarked"
05/21/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
05/28/15 — "Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes. Watch for more podcasts!

0 Comments

O'Brien's Magic Lantern

9/8/2015

0 Comments

 
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A WRITER'S WIT
I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
Ann Beattie
Born September 8, 1947

My Book World

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O’Brien, Edna. Lantern Slides: Stories by Edna O’Brien. New York: Farrar, 1990.

At first I thought “lantern slides” were a different way of talking about the contemporary (yet obsolete) film slide, but no, they hark back to hundreds of years ago when photographic or other images were applied to a glass slide that then was placed in a “magic lantern,” to project images, say, on a white wall—a precursor to the motion picture. [I hate to defer to Wikipedia, but sometimes there seems to be no other source.] Edna O’Brien’s stories, each one in this collection, might just serve as one of these lantern slides, many times seeming “distant,” yet always making readers feel that they, too, might be present in such a yarn. At any rate, I once again find myself enchanted by Ms. O’Brien’s stories, even if I’m twenty-five years late in reading this volume. [See my profiles of her Saints and Sinners, as well as her Heart.] She has such a way with developing character, point of view, and other elements that allow her to engage readers quickly and not release them until she’s finished with them. For example, in some stories she may employ the second person to draw readers in as intimates, as she does in “The Widow”:

“You may ask, as the postmistress had asked—the postmistress her sworn enemy—‘Why have venetian blinds drawn at all times, winter and summer, daylight and dark? What is Bridget trying to hide?’” (36). Indeed you want to find out.

O’Brien possesses an impeccable vocabulary, challenging readers of the English language to season their reading in the same manner a chef might challenge diners with a rare but effective spice, for example “viaticum” meaning “prayer,” something an Irish Catholic would know but might be a bit arcane for an American Protestant.

And yet the meaning of some words may make themselves apparent by way of context of this opening sentence: “Bridget was her name. She played cards like a trooper, and her tipple was gin-and-lime” (35). Or this: “she kept toiling and moiling” (64), the latter meaning about the same as the former, a common phrase in the Emerald Isle.

Anyone who enjoys the short story as a form analogous to the poem will love these twelve stories by O’Brien, most of them having appeared either in The New Yorker or The Paris Review. I bought this copy in 2013 for $2.50 from a used bookstore. Though its original price has diminished, its value has only increased.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2015


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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!


Date of Original Post:
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/01/15 — "A Gambler's Debt"
01/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
01/15/15 — "Men at Sea"
01/22/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
01/29/15 — "Engineer"
02/05/15 — "Snarked"
02/12/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
02/19/15 — "The Age I Am Now"
02/26/15 — "Bathed in Pink"


Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
04/16/15 — "Men at Sea"
04/23/15 — "My Long-Playing Records"
04/30/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
05/07/15 — "Snarked"
05/21/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
05/28/15 — "Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes. Watch for more podcasts!

0 Comments

New Yorker Fiction 2015

9/4/2015

 
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A WRITER'S WIT
The impulse to dream was slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing.
Richard Wright
Born September 4, 1908

A Falling Out

PictureDrummond | Proehl Getty
September 7 2015, Danielle McLaughlin, “In the Act of Falling”: An Irish woman is concerned when her husband, who is jobless, allows their nine-year-old son to remain out of school after his suspension for striking a boy is over. ¶ Finn is a curious child, intelligent, but his father indulges his fondness for dead animals, particularly birds. The wife, intelligent herself, tries not to pressure either Bill to find a new job or for her son to return to school. Yet a certain balance has been lost, and she wishes to restore it. One day she comes home to find her child entirely too comfortable in the company of a female minister, who has also exerted influence over husband, while the wife has been at work. The ending, unlike some of the birds in this story, is left up in the air. Will the wife finally express her discontent with the situation? Will her husband be offered a job? Will the child return to school? Will he lose his obsession with dead flesh? It really is better that we not know, and yet we do, don’t we? McLaughlin’s first collection Dinosaurs on Other Planets is out October 1 in Ireland.
Design: David Drummond
Source Proehl/Proehl Getty (bird image).


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READ MY ‘BEHIND THE BOOK’ BLOG SERIES for My Long-Playing Records & Other Stories. In these posts I speak of the creative process I use to write each story. Buy a copy here!

Date of Original Post:
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/01/15 — "A Gambler's Debt"
01/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
01/15/15 — "Men at Sea"
01/22/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
01/29/15 — "Engineer"
02/05/15 — "Snarked"
02/12/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
02/19/15 — "The Age I Am Now"
02/26/15 — "Bathed in Pink"


Listen to My Long-Playing Records Podcasts:
03/12/15 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
03/26/15 — "The Best Mud"
04/02/15 — "Handy to Some"
04/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
04/16/15 — "Men at Sea"
04/23/15 — "My Long-Playing Records"
04/30/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"
05/07/15 — "Snarked"
05/21/15 — "Killing Lorenzo"
05/28/15 — "Bathed in Pink"
Also available on iTunes. Watch for more podcasts!

    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

    See my profile at Author Central:
    http://amazon.com/author/rjespers


    Richard Jespers's books on Goodreads
    My Long-Playing Records My Long-Playing Records
    ratings: 1 (avg rating 5.00)


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