Louts, Predators and Daughters
I am a hard case for the homilists of Holy Wisdom, the Benedictine Monastery, Madison, Wisconsin, where I attend mass. I tend to zone out. However, the first reading during last week’s mass, Numbers 27:1-11. caught my attention. Here, before Moses, the daughters...First Impressions and bad judgement
I work on my next novel “Resurrection” every day. My first objective is to tell a good story. My second it to get the spelling, punctuation and grammar right. Somewhere along the way, I would hope to illuminate how good-intentioned (at least in their own minds) men...The Redneck Howards
And Michelle married Nigel Howard, formerly British Army, Royal Engineers (Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD)). Think the movie Hurt Locker, the difference being the British Army does not provide metal full body armor (makes the lads pay attention, eh?). During the...A Wedding In France
On 10 August 2017, in Bergerac, France my daughter, Michelle Elisabeth Townsend, married. Michelle gave me 45 seconds to summarize before the assembled my impressions, recollections, hopes and fears. I wanted five days. Patrice made me sit down, write what I wanted to...Resurrection
Jon Einarsson Jon Einarsson crossed the parking lot to the The VFW Post in Iron Mountain, Michigan, a single-story building sided with local material––varnished and rounded remnant ends of sawn white pine logs––and in the local style––an asphalt-shingled single-story...Golden Rain, Fake New, and Dezinformatsiya
‘Fake news’ in the US 2016 Presidential election. I have Facebook friends and relatives who repost without respite their unfiltered political or doomer or climate or religious mania. Used to be one encountered Uncle Frank once a year on Thanksgiving or at the 4th of...Perfume River – The storyteller and truth
The Storyteller and Truth Robert Olen Butler and Perfume River The novel is a pack of lies hounding the truth. Carlos Fuentes Robert Olen Butler is in my estimation the finest living American author and his just released book, Perfume River, his finest novel. It is...On Bullshit: Liars and Storytellers
On Bullshit and On Truth I had long visualized the lexicon landscape between The Truth and The Lie as a continuum along which lay a rich and varied vocabulary––deception, denial, camouflage, working truth, baloney, etc––with full equivalents in every language on the...Lying: Sissela Bok
Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (Sissela Bok) deeply informs Liars and Storytellers. I have carried a copy in backpack and briefcase for decades, reading it cursorily now and then, edition after edition disintegrating from disuse, always children,...Featured Books
The Executioner’s Son
In the spring, 1953, Danton Larionov, son of NKVD officer, Captain Volk Larionov, spies Ekaterina Soroka, the Ukrainian, herding sheep in the shadow of the Suzdal's medieval fortress. He intends to rape her, but she pauses him with a fairy tale beginning his time of troubles. Suzdal is now a GULAG. As Stalin's death convulses the Soviet Union, she holds him a bay with Russian tales. In the fall, she disappears, as if Koschei, the Deathless, has taken her. He vows to find her, and begins his journey through distant and strange lands to battle an implacable and cunning enemy armed with the most improbable and powerful weapons, the American soldier, Richard Belisle, hero of the first and second novels of The Long War Series.
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Follow "Liars and Storytellers," a non-fiction book, as I write it. Your critique as it unfolds is welcome.