Readers and writers blog

Well then, after emailing a bunch of literary agents, introducing a new author friend and chit-chatting about my personal triumphs, it’s time to get back to our business here at R&W Blog — putting up more works for you to read.

Oh, and also an announcement about new offerings by one of our blogroll colleagues.

But our latest news is that we will have a new e-book-in-progress in our fiction section: Jeri Cafesin, a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay Area, will be contributing chapters of her new work, Disconnected, which we begin serializing today.

It’s an unusual work about a young woman in conflict that begins not with a prologue but an epilogue and has a narrative style that brings to mind images of unusual vividness, perhaps cinematically so. On Sunday, we’ll move on to Chapter One, and Cafesin will be sending more chapters as they become available.*

It will be our second e-book-in- progress. The first, of course, is Sniper in the Mist by Joseph Cigan, and he’s hard at work on Chapter 7. We’ve seen a preliminary version of the chapter, which shifts from his Chicago neighborhood of the 1960s to the war in Vietnam and a powerful description of a company of soldiers there. It’ll be ready soon, Joseph tells us.

We also have another new work in the fiction section today — a short story by James L. Fox called “Lucky Dawg” that involves a retiree-turned-prospector and his lop-eared hound, a work that in the old days we would’ve described as “a good yarn.” There may be a bit of autobiography here since Fox lives in the Mojave Desert area of southern California near the San Gabriel Mountains. He promises more short stories to come.

Also today, we offer the latest chapter in The Unearthing by Steve Karmazenuk, who has been a good friend to us. He was the first author to let us serialize his book — a finished work already on the paperback market at a price — free of charge. Our latest installment is Chapter Nine: Discoveries.

And while we’re on the subject of freebies, what can we say about Gerard Jones, another new contributing author, who not only lets us serialize his book, Ginny Good, but gives away copies of both the paperback and audio versions to anyone who asks.

In Sunday’s initial installment of Ginny Good, an autobiographical work he describes as a ‘nonfiction novel,’ Jones begins his circuitous route back into the 1960s, giving us a hint of the trail of broken icons he will leave along the way. In today’s installment, Chapter Two: Del Mar, he continues his introduction of the love of his life, Virginia Dixon Good.

To get to any of these offerings, either click on the links provided in this blog entry or go to the appropriate section under Works at the upper right of this page — nonfiction for Jones, fiction for Cafesin, Cigan, Fox or Karmazenuk — and follow the trail there.

And now our announcement of new offerings on the website of our friend Ted Knerr at Art-spirit, the only artist’s site on our blogroll. So here they are:

In his gallery — walls: the art of my friends — there are three new members, photographer-painter Orlando Richards, painter Anne Bucher Tilghman and photographer Aline Tisato. And five of the gallery’s now-28 members have updated their works — new photographs by Bob Drouin and Allan Michael, new sculpture by Ernie Gerzabek, new ceramic sculpture by Ralph Holker and new paintings by Miriam Hirschhorn.

And Ted has posted a new painting of his on the home page as well as a new essay on authentic art on his quotes page.

I saw the new painting on one of my rounds through our blogroll, but I missed the essay before Ted announced his new offerings. I apologize for my oversight, Ted, and thanks for the announcement.

In fact, I apologize to all of our blogroll buddies listed over there to the right. What once was my daily rounds through our blogroll has now become less frequent as we get more contributions from writers for our Works section.

I can’t complain. It’s a welcome problem.

– Sid Leavitt

NOTE:

*Cafesin also is author of Reverb, a novel about a man who is consumed by his music until he undergoes a bizarre journey that awakens him to the world outside himself.