The David T. "Blog" Experience!

Sammy's Carol Book Trailer

2012-01-29T09:04:00.000-08:00

Attached is the book trailer for my forthcoming release: Sammy's Carol.

Click this link to view the trailer.

Enjoy,
Dave

"Five-Point-Five!"

2011-12-18T08:47:00.000-08:00

'Five-point-five' has become my favorite number. Prior to that, it was 'two', signifying the position I was given by the Dean of my pledge line shortly before becoming a full member of Beta Phi Pi Fraternity, Incorporated over twenty years ago. But as I mentioned, that has all changed, and as much as I love my Fraternity, this new 'favorite' holds a deeper significance in my life; one that goes beyond my t-shirt/jacket wearing days as an undergraduate on the campus of the University of Illinois.

'Five-point-five' represents the number of years it took to go from being a transfer student at SUNY Empire State College to completing my MFA studies at CCNY. While some might say that's a relatively short period of time, I would counter that besides obtaining two degrees and growing as an artist, I also put to rest a number of old ghosts that had followed me since my teenage years. While getting a college degree was always a personal goal, the 'how' and 'what' part of this odyssey was always in question. A situation from my past led me to having to pay out of pocket for my education. That same situation also altered my course of study. I've long known I liked writing stories, but certain "influences" once selfishly advised that "black people don't make money as writers." Whether that was true or not was irrelevant to me at the time, and some today would question whether that advice was sound or was given to purposely sway my attention into another direction. Regardless, I ignored my interests because of these influences. I was a decent student, but could have been better had I made my own choices. And since I was fitting the bill, I should have negated those influences and gone my own way. Unfortunately I didn't follow my heart and ended up dropping out of college.

My odyssey took me away from my beloved hometown, to three different cities in two different states where I eventually landed in New York. A job loss is what brought me to a major crossroad in my life and caused me to ask some difficult questions: do I continue along the same road of working in an industry that didn't fulfill my spiritual and emotional needs or should I venture down a new path - one of uncertainty and challenge, but the opportunity to realize some long-deferred dreams? With the encouragement of two very special people in my life, as well as a timely (and unexpected) bit of assistance from a former love, the year 2006 became a year of change. I went from being an outsider of my own true self to a participator in the fulfillment of it.

From the day all of this began I was a catalyst in my own personal renaissance, watching myself being rebuilt piece-by-piece. The 'skeleton' of my new self was complete in June of 2008 at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan when I walked across the stage as a college graduate. The 'flesh' began to attached itself a few months later and has gradually been added until five and a half years later the total embodiment of the 'new me' became ready to take on new challenges, successes and defeats, all in the name of my artistry. Next to the Grand City of Chicago, writing is what allows me to spread all the love my heart desires and represents the missing part of my life that has finally been realized. Because I have been blessed to find my passion, I will strive to not only become a better writer, but a better friend and companion to anyone who needs/wants me in their life. The influences who dominated my former aseptic life are gone. The dawn of a new day started four days ago when I completed my last class and brought an end to five-point-five years of restructuring, of the shedding of old skin, of relieving worn-out suitcases filled with rocks, so the load I carry along my personal Emmaus Road becomes lighter.

I needed a new life and it was time. Confucius once said: "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." I have chosen wisely. And because I have, the life I lead today has become something special. Something new.

Everybody needs a new life once in a while.

"Balloons" by David T. Boyd on Zombie Coffee Press

2011-12-04T09:12:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the day! The author introductions are currently live on the Zombie Coffee Press website.

Enjoy,
Dave

"Lux" is finally done!

2011-11-29T05:21:00.000-08:00

Last night, after three years and eight months of hard work that began on Block Island, RI, I finished the third and final draft of my novel "Lux ex Tenebris." I can't believe how far I've come with this book and never in my wildest dreams did I think it would develop into a 350 page, 90,000 body of work. During the course of my entire graduate school experience I have slaved over it, month after month, taking it through four fiction/novel workshops at City College, slaving over re-writes and agonizing sessions where I wondered what book were other people reading during critiques. I'm glad I stuck with it. Perhaps it's a part of my "Taurus" nature - stubborn, determined and thick-skinned. Wanting to see a project through and make it into something special. Not only do I believe I've done just that, I also have left the door wide open for it become a series.

So what is "Lux ex Tenebris" about? It chronicles the lives of two men: "Cupid" - an African-American man born on Chicago's south side, who has suffered tremendous heartache at the early loss of his parents and is raised by his grandmother and grandfather, and Antonio "Tony Cupp" Cuppicciotti, Jr - an Italian-American man born in "Little Sicily" on Chicago's north side, who has long lived under the shadow of his celebrated father - Antonio Cuppicciotti, Sr. "Tony Senior" became a superstar in the Chicago Police Department due to his legendary take down of the Ferruccio Crime Family. "Cupid" (a nickname given to him by his mother after giving birth to him on Valentine's Day) and Tony Junior both do seemingly evil things, but Cupid serves as an anti-hero who struggles to find meaning in his life while Tony Junior was affected by a single moment from his childhood that puts him on a path of rancor and vitriol. Their lives parallel for most of the book until a chance occurrence brings them together. Can they put out the fire that burns within them and make a return to love? I guess you'll have to read the book and find out!

This became my masters thesis somewhere around a year and a half ago. I had another project in mind, but this book took up so much of my time that I thought it would make a great thesis. It really feels great being done with it, and my intention is to locate an agent who will hopefully land it with a traditional publisher. Why this, you ask? I believe not only could this book fare well in a larger marketplace, but I can also see a film project come out of this as well, in addition to a three or four book series. I will consider later projects for Another Shore Press, LLC, but this could be the one that gives me the exposure I'm looking for.

We'll see.

Dave's Top Five Horror Films!

2011-10-30T23:25:00.000-07:00

Since today is Halloween, I thought I'd have some fun and give you my top five favorite horror films of all time. First - some noticeable absences. THE EXORCIST? Love this film, but the idea of Satan inhabiting the body of a human being is more supernatural to me and less "organic horror". I prefer the classic match up between one good guy and one bad guy, both within the constraints of this world. THE SHINING? Classic! Masterpiece! Wonderful! One of my favorite films of all time! BUT this movie is a cinematic "all-you-can-eat" and to merely define it as horror would be a shame. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET? The original is good, but by now the idea of a bad guy chasing teenagers was becoming old hat. FRIDAY THE 13TH? A clear Halloween rip off! And I've never been a Jason Voorhees fan. CANDYMAN? Hmmmm...interesting (especially since I was a UIC student when this was being filmed in Chicago). Maybe top 10 or 15, but definitely NOT top five! NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD? Like CANDYMAN, it narrowly missed this list.

So now that we've got that out of the way, I'm sure you'll disagree with a few of my choices, but take a look anyway. You might be surprised!

5. DIABOLIQUE

Scary 1955 French film with English subtitles. Black and white, which only adds to the creepiness. Great use of shadows and build-up of suspense.

4. PHANTASM

A cult classic directed by Don Coscarelli. Mike, Jody and Reggie go to battle against "The Tall Man", who steals corpses, puts "yellow blood" in them, crushes them down to dwarf-size and ships them to a hot, red planet and uses them as slaves. Make sense? No, but it's still a great film! And don't forget the "flying ball" that bores into people's heads!

3. PSYCHO

I am a Alfred Hitchcock nut! Psycho is just beautiful film making and story telling and served as a trendsetter for a score of horror films that came later. Perhaps what I love most about this movie is how the "spider" has set up a web to catch the "fly", but instead of waiting with the spider we instead follow the fly into the web. It was a very different way to tell a story. To this day I keep an eye out whenever I take a shower!

2. HALLOWEEN (1978)

It was VERY hard for me to put John Carpenter's cinematic masterpiece in second place. VERY hard. Michael Myers is the smoothest on-screen serial killer of all, with exception to one other person! (which I will reveal momentarily). Forget Jason, Freddy, Chucky and the rest. Mike is a bad boy! He always knows what angle to stand at to keep out of sight, when to turn up the speed and when the precise moment has arrived to step out the shadows and attack. There is no one better, except...

MY BOY DR. HANNIBAL LECTER!!!

1. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

I've read the books. I've seen the movies. Sorry Mike! Love you, buddy - but even YOU have to take a back seat to Hannibal. Dashing, debonaire, worldly, has a flair for the finer things in life, brilliant and absolutely (as Martin Lawrence would say) CRAAAAAAAAZY! DERANGED! My favorite lines from this movie come when Lector is challenging Clarice Starling to think about what Buffalo Bill is after when he kills.

HANNIBAL LECTER: First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?

CLARICE STARLING: He kills women...

HANNIBAL LECTER: No. That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing he does? What needs does he serve by killing?

CLARICE STARLING: Anger, um, social acceptance, and, huh, sexual frustrations, sir...

HANNIBAL LECTER: No! He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer now.

CLARICE STARLING: No. We just...

HANNIBAL LECTER: No. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? And don't your eyes seek out the things you want?

SEE THIS SCENE!!!

-----------------------------

And there you have it! My top five of all time. Do you agree? Disagree? Let me hear from you!

"Balloons" by David T. Boyd on Zombie Coffee Press

2011-10-30T10:25:00.000-07:00

Greetings to one and all. I'm proud to announce that my short story, titled "Balloons," has been selected for publication by Zombie Coffee Press, an online magazine, in their December 5th edition. Their website is www.zombiecoffeepress.com.

I will send a reminder notice as the date nears. Needless to say, I'm very excited and grateful for this opportunity.

Sincerely,
Dave

"The Thing" copies well, but still is an imitation.

2011-10-17T04:39:00.000-07:00

As a fan of John Carpenter's films (I've seen all of them) the one thing that has always drawn me to them is his unique ability to manipulate our senses. Whether it's Snake Plissken (in "Escape from New York") looking for a fictitious president somewhere beneath the rat-infested Beacon Theater on Broadway or John Nada (in "They Live") wearing over-sized black glasses, walking among skinless martians from outer space or Laurie Strode (in "Halloween", still his best work) hiding from psychopaths in narrow closets, Carpenter's brilliance has always been his ability to place a thin, invisible overlay of dread and claustrophobia in a scene, then gradually thicken that dread with mounting tension that forces us to look even when we don't want to. I don't want to look, but I don't have a choice because I've figuratively been strapped to my seat, my eyes taped open as I'm being force-fed a healthy dose of terror. To me, his films are cinematic "castor-oil" where you're forced to take every spoonful, but feel better once it's over and are glad you were made to take it.

Hence we have "The Thing" 2011, a well-meant "imitation" of it's original that does some really cool things but falls short in the area that counted the most: Carpenter's spiraling sense of dread and fear that hits us from all sides. First of all, to the credit of the filmmakers, they truly did their homework - especially in the area of continuity. Given the fact that this is a prequel, not a remake or a sequel, everything that happens here must link directly to Carpenter's film. Therefore, from the design of the original space ship to the block of ice that contained the Thing itself to the Norwegian who shoots at the dog and even the frozen man who took his own life and is discovered later by Kurt Russell, this film pays attention to every detail and gives us clues along the way. It also provides an insight as to how the ship was originally discovered, who the people were in the videos and photos discovered by Kurt Russell and tells a believable, stand-alone story that is one-half of a total piece. After seeing the prequel in the theaters I came home and immediately watched the 1982 film and was shocked at how well these pieces fit. For that, I give director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and writers Eric Heisserer and Ronald D. Moore a LOT of credit. I also give them credit for discovering something that Carpenter never picked up on - the inability of the Thing to recreate inanimate objects. In other words, if I break my arm and have screws put in to hold the bone in place, then get devoured by the Thing, it cannot copy the screws. This concept becomes the lone source of tension that resonates through the film.

Beyond that, this movie is good, but not great. The special effects are cool, but there's something about seeing CGI versus Rob Bottin's organic prosthetics that took away from its intended result. Don't get me wrong - the various contortions of the Thing were every bit as disturbing as they were in Carpenter's film, but - not that I've ever seen a "thing" up close - it didn't appear as realistic, if that makes any sense. Carpenter is an expert on how to use space and it appeared the compound in the 1982 version had a lot more places for the Thing to hide. The original also had more scenes of isolation where someone wanders off alone, completely out of ear-shot, so when they returned to the larger group you were left wondering if they've been infected. That's missing from here. The transformation scenes come too soon and too fast to build any real suspense. A more slowed-down approach by the filmmakers would have made a world of difference here; but then again, that was what made John Carpenter such a genius. He understood the longer we didn't know what was going on, the greater the payoff when something eventually happened. Ironically, the filmmakers of this chapter failed to "copy" that aspect of Carpenter's vision, and in all honesty, the Master of Horror should have made this himself.

If you're a fan of Carpenter, I think you'll appreciate - as I did - the amount of thought that went into making this film. But also, if you're a fan of Carpenter, you'll understand exactly where I'm coming from in terms of my critique.

I give this movie 2.8 stars out of 4. See it, but save the money and get it on Blu-Ray.

Last Semester!

2011-09-16T03:32:00.000-07:00

Well, this is it! I'm busy working my behind off at getting this semester done so I can graduate. Only one class this term, plus I'm doing a thesis tutorial with a former professor of mine. I took her class a few years ago and loved it - gothic literature. Definitely right up my alley, plus she's just published an original fiction piece herself and is having a book signing in October, so definitely someone I want to have mentor me.

Before I mentioned there were changes coming. Some of them have already started. So much more to come. Lux Ex Tenebris (my thesis project and soon to be published novel) is going to be the key to a lot of that change, but personally I'm ready to take some bold steps into directions never before explored. Finishing school will be the start of it. Trust me!

More later.

Mission Accomplished (Partly)

2011-08-24T03:35:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe it's actually happened, but I have completed the re-release of Falling Down and Mystery, Malevolence & Murder: Volume One. Both books have now successfully been released through my own press, as of yesterday. For some reason it continues to defy belief that I started this process a few years ago with a simple thought, a simple spark of inspiration. Now it's grown into this huge thing that I've been blessed to witness firsthand. God has really been very good to me on a number of levels and I'm glad that I was wise enough to slow down and accept his blessing.

This was one of a few things on my short list that I'm marking down. The next challenge will be to complete my thesis and graduate from CCNY this coming December. I'm so busy getting Lux ex Tenebris ready for evaluation and will be meeting with a faculty advisor, who will serve as a mentor to me through this process. It's not over by a long shot; there will be a lot of long nights ahead of me, but I can do it. If I can get my publishing company off the ground, and do so where it doesn't break the bank, I can do just about anything.

In the upcoming months I have a few other projects I'm working on. I have another short story collection that I'm putting together. Lux will be released through Another Shore Press, LLC sometime late next year or early 2013. MM&M Volume Two was completed a year ago and will enter the copy editing stage shortly. The Falling Down film project is moving forward. Lots of great things coming, so I'm looking forward to posting them here.

Stick with me. There's a lot more to come.

Special Thanks: Rolf Wolff, David P. Schafer.

Changes

2011-07-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

This has been an interesting couple of months for me. My business has officially launched its first publications, I'm in the process of completing my master's degree and am making plans on my future. I have to admit, I'm both excited and nervous because I'm actually on the verge of really living my dream. I've always wanted to write while also being in full control of my destiny, which is really not an easy task. Every step I've taken over the last five and a half years has been carefully thought out, and to see it come so close to fruition is such a blessing. While I'm glad to be finishing at The City College of New York in December, I'm really going to miss it. A good portion of what I'm doing now originated from being in the MFA program and I really owe a lot to CCNY as well as my professors and classmates, some of whom I'm going to be working with professionally.

In terms of what happens after I graduate, I plan on hustling - getting out there and telling as many people as I can about me and the press and what I'm trying to accomplish with all of this. I also have this dream of making my hometown of Chicago proud by representing the city through my art. My inspiration, drive and determination all come from that "Windy City by the Lake", and so often Chicago is overlooked for being a hotbed of culture, art and music (which it has been for many years). I think with the innovations in technology and a growing movement of new and fresh independent artistry, the ability of writers to get their work published and in front of the reader is changing the entire publishing industry. Chicago has long had a thriving literary scene and the list of talented authors from the city is long, but now there's going to be an upswing because more people are able to more things on their own. That's going to be a wonderful thing to witness and I plan on being a part of it.

There are more changes coming, but I'll hold onto those for now. I don't want to give away too much too fast! :-)

Dave

EBooks outsell Print!

2011-05-14T13:28:00.000-07:00

January 27, 2011 3:06 PM PST
Amazon: Kindle books outselling paperbacks
by David Carnoy

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20029839-1.html#ixzz1MMPzoeBy

Yes, it's finally happened. The digital book has overtaken the paper book on Amazon.com. And this time that isn't only true about hardcover books. Now we're talking paperbacks.

In reporting its latest earnings, Amazon said that it was selling more Kindle books than paperback books, though the score is still close. Since January 1, for every 100 paperback books Amazon sold, 115 Kindle books were sold. To top it off, the company says that since the beginning of the year it's sold three times as many Kindle books as hardcover books. Amazon noted that this data was from "across Amazon.com's entire U.S. book business and includes sales of books where there is no Kindle edition." It added that free Kindle books were excluded from the tally.

Yes, indeed, the sands are shifting.

While Amazon has said previously that Kindle e-book sales were outpacing hardcover sales, this is the first time it's said that Kindle books were outselling paperbacks, which typically cost significantly less than hardcovers. As usual, Amazon didn't report exact sales and would only say that it had sold "millions of third-generation Kindle devices."

Some reports suggest Amazon sold more than 8 million Kindles in 2010. Combine that with all the people buying the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, as well as millions of Android-powered devices, and you can see how Amazon's digital book sales got a huge boost. (Amazon, like Barnes & Noble, offers its e-reading Kindle app across multiple platforms).

As for total numbers, all Amazon would say was that it currently has 810,000 books in the Kindle Store and that doesn't include the millions of free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books that are also available as e-books.

What's this mean? Well, it's not good news for brick-and-mortar bookstores. At the recently held Digital Book World conference, James McQuivey of Forrester Research presented some research findings before a CEO panel on Tuesday. He included the estimate that consumers spent about $1 billion on e-books in 2010 and that sales should reach at least $1.3 billion in 2011. McQuivey said that the consensus among those surveyed was that e-books would constitute half of all trade book units by 2014, and 53 percent said they expected print sales to decrease this year.

At least one guy, Mike Shatzkin, a conference organizer and head of the Idea Logical Company, said that within 10 to 12 years brick-and-mortar bookstores would "more or less disappear." However, some believe that the "downsizing" of brick-and-mortar superstores might actually bode well for independent bookstores, which in some ways are better equipped to tackle what may indeed become more of a niche business in the years to come.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20029839-1.html#ixzz1MMPsC8fb

May 19th

2011-05-14T13:18:00.000-07:00

The re-release of Falling Down and Mystery, Malevolence & Murder Volume One is on May 19th. I'm very excited, especially since this is the first pair of releases from my literary press. The books will come out on eBook first. The paperback releases are TBA!

Good times are ahead, so stay tuned!

Dave

What's going on?

2011-03-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

Hey there! Sorry I've been off the radar for a while, but I've been so busy with school and working on my projects. Fear not! I'm still on the horizon, doing what I do best - hustle! I'm really excited about the possibilities that I see coming down the pike and I'm working toward a long future as a full time writer.

Very recently I attended a book signing event and discussion of Walter Mosley's new book, titled "When the Thrill is Gone." The book is the third installment by Mosley of the Leonid McGill series, and judging by the reviews and the reading he gave, it appears to be quite good. Mosley's ability to get inside the mind of his characters as they process what they see and feel makes reading his work such a delight. I've bought a lot of his books, most of which are still waiting for me to read (and I will, once I get through with this semester) so I look forward to learning all about McGill and what he's up to in this post-Obama society that we live in.

Another writer I love to read is Sara Paretsky. I love her V.I Warshawski books coupled with her rich descriptions of my hometown Chicago. In fact, Paretsky is SO good with her books that I've actually forgiven her for living on the South Side (White Sox Country) while being an unabashed Cubs fan. Sara! If you're reading this blog, I love your work, despite rooting for the North Side team!

I also attended the AWP Conference in Washington, DC this past February. I had a GREAT time and next year's event will be in Chicago. I will definitely be there hawking my books and talking to people, trying to get the word out.

It's my intention, as my new work gets ready for print, to push myself to become the very best I can be. I feel like my years here at The City College of New York have been so beneficial and have helped refine my work to the point where I've become a far better writer because of it. I think I can do anything I set my mind to, and I'm intent on making it on my own. I've chosen two incredible writers as mentors and have learned so much from their work and listening to them speak, but I'm well on my way to making a name and a style all my own. Someday I hope to be able to influence someone to do the same thing.

Who knows?

Time is On My Side! (Yes it is)

2010-12-12T07:43:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been away for a while, but I've managed to complete my fifth semester at City College in grand style. Now that I've got more time I can return my focus to working on a few projects. As of today, the second edition of Falling Down is now complete. My copy editor has given the thumbs up on my last submission, with some edits here and there on his own. My graphic artist has completed a strikingly beautiful cover. As for Mystery, Malevolence & Murder - Vol One, I've nearly completed my edits and will send that to the copy editor once they're done. The cover should be done soon as well.

As for school, 2011 will be the year I finish my Master's degree. I'm starting this year with a bit of sadness. I've really enjoyed my time at City College. For someone who didn't have a bachelor's degree back in 2006 to be looking at an MFA by the end of 2011 is really something. I've had a lot of hustle in me for the last four, going on five, years and my MFA will be the crown jewel of all my hard work. If you would've told me years ago that I would be in this position I probably wouldn't have believed you. But through the support of so many wonderful people who believed I could do it, I doubt if any of this would be possible. City College is such an underrated place. It's recognized as a great school, but I don't think it quite gets the respect it does. I subscribe to Poets and Writers Magazine and for the last two years they've done a ranking on the top MFA schools. In last year's edition CCNY finished 94th or 95th in the top 100. The latest P&W only did the top 50 and we didn't place. These rankings have been criticized heavily by magazines like The Writer's Chronicle and members of writing faculties across the country because it appears biased and incomplete. That's why I feel City is underrated. Every class has been chock full of talented writers who bring real live perspectives to their work. Many of us have careers that we tend to everyday and we bring that gift into our school and breathe life into it with each stroke of the keys. I've seen a lot of good people in my classes, all of whom could be very successful, and I feel blessed to be in their presence - learning and listening to them share such wonderful works of art. My last class in particular had several talented writers and I hope and wish the absolute best for all of them. While I'm looking forward to graduating next year, I will miss seeing them, as well as the beautiful campus of CCNY, which has become almost a home away from home for me.

I'll make sure I enjoy the remaining time I have. Meanwhile, it's back to work - writing, designing and managing my time so I can make my own way. One day at a time.

db

The Guide: AWP's 2011 Ranking of MFA Programs

2010-12-12T07:38:00.000-08:00

The Guide: AWP's 2011 Ranking of MFA Programs

I mentioned AWP Writer's Chronicle Magazine in a recent post. If you're interested in MA/MFA Writing Programs I think it bears your consideration.

Dave

Cuckoo's Ghost! The Short Film

2010-10-29T06:37:00.000-07:00

Special thanks to Christopher Harris on his fine directorial and editing skills. Thanks Chris! Happy Halloween everybody!

Progress

2010-10-24T07:36:00.000-07:00

I'm working on several new projects for the upcoming year. I've recently completed Mystery, Malevolence & Murder - Volume Two, which will be released under Another Shore Press sometime late 2011 or early 2012. I'm also working on "The Merchant Chronicles", a short series about an old man who owns a Curio Shop in Chicago and sells strange "knickknacks" that seem to have a life of their own. At the moment "Lux Ex Tenebris" is entering its third re-write, and since I'm in graduate school it will end up being my thesis project. I'm expected to graduate on time (December 2011). I love City College very much and the experience has been wonderful, but I'm ready to get out there and hustle, make my own way. My time will come, I just need to be a little more patient. I was once told that you should be careful about wishing away your life. I agree wholeheartedly, and since I'm now a year away from my goal at CCNY I need to absorb every moment. I certainly plan on it.

Stay tuned, folks. I've got a lot more in store in the near future.

Dave

Dedication!

2010-09-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I went on a 600 mile journey from New York to Baltimore to Washington, DC and back, walking around until my feet ached in 95+ degree weather. The blistering sun loomed overhead, making me feel like a rotisserie chicken. I wasn't feeling well that week, having called off work two days prior so I could get some rest. I slept on a friend's hard couch (thank you Dave) and surprisingly felt well enough to meet dear friends for dinner where I shared my busy day. All of this done because I feel the passion, the love, the desire to make my longtime dream of being a successful writer and business owner a reality.

Every day I wonder if this was meant to be. I wonder am I on a path that will allow me to fully become the person that God meant for me to be. Through prayer, self-discovery and sheer will (not to mention help from caring people) I'm slowly beginning to realize how lucky I am, how I believe I'm mean to do great things. I may not become the greatest writer or the smartest or most successful businessman, but if there's one thing I hope to gain from all of this, it's the ability to inspire others to do big things. With my business, besides printing and selling my work (and eventually the work of others), writing contests and other typical "literary stuff" my hope is to set up scholarships and conduct seminars for young minorities who are interested and love to read and write. Success without service is hollow, and I plan on really doing something special that's well-rounded and worthwhile.

But it all starts here, right now, with me hustling around in 95 degree weather, sometimes in shaky health, sleeping on hard surfaces and logging heavy miles. And I'll do it gladly out of love for the written word.

Stay tuned, readers. Good times are on the way.

The "Devil" made me do it: A Review of M. Night Shyamalan's latest work.

2010-09-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago I watched Trilogy of Terror, a 1974 collection of three short suspense/horror tales all starring Karen Black, whose virtuoso performance introduced us to Julie, Millicent, Therese and Amelia - all very different but compelling characters. The film was directed by the legendary Dan Curtis of Dark Shadows and The Night Stalker fame. The stories were penned by Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, What Dreams May Come, Stir of Echoes, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet). While watching this movie I remember thinking how the genre seemingly has lost its way into the twenty-first century and wondered if this kind of "Poe-ish" style of writing would ever make a comeback. The days of watching fun TV shows like The Outer Limits, One Step Beyond, Night Gallery and The Twilight Zone (which Matheson wrote numerous scripts) would forever be lost or the stories themselves uninteresting.

Evidently someone has heard my prayers.

This afternoon I went to see Devil, the first of three short tales in the The Night Chronicles series based on ideas by Writer/Director M. Night Shyamalan. Given his track record of late, I was hesitant about spending my hard earned money on anything related to Night, but after reading an interview with Bokeem Woodbine, who starred in the movie, and watching the trailers I decided to give it a shot. The performances were great and the action kept my eyes glued to the screen until the end.

The main plot of Devil surrounds five seemingly random people who become trapped in an elevator of a large office building in Philadelphia. Being stuck in a crowded space by itself can be nerve-wracking, but there's another problem: one of them is The Devil. Yes, THAT Devil. Outside the elevator there are additional issues: no one knows the identity of those trapped inside, the building staff and the fire department have found themselves unable to rescue the passengers with any degree of simplicity, one of the security guards is a devout Catholic whose passed-down tale about how the Devil "works" is unfolding before his eyes, the lead detective has a past that haunts him to this day. And, oh yeah - every time the lights go out in the elevator something really bad happens. You can't see it, but the presence of evil is clearly there. I know all of that seems like a lot to digest at once, but that's actually the point. These people seem to not be related to one another, but as time passes the truth, and the Devil, both come forth. I won't give anything away, but as a fan of old school horror, I thought the timing and the implied "frights" that were all over this movie worked well, even down to little details like everyone wearing "red." Night did the right thing in trusting someone else to expound upon his ideas and I hope it's something he does from now on.

The second film of The Night Chronicles is called Twelve Strangers. There is no release date as of yet, but it appears to be well on its way. I look forward to seeing it, and based on what I've seen today, this series could be a throwback to the great horror flicks of the past.

Hopefully this is a sign of good things to come!

David T. Boyd gives Devil: *** and 1/2 Stars.

New Website!

2010-08-30T13:10:00.000-07:00

After several months of work, I've finally completed my new website. This is one of many things I've been up to this summer. Go to www.davidtboyd.com and take a look. Be sure to send me comments.

Official Announcement

2010-06-19T10:21:00.000-07:00

June 19, 2010

Dear Friends:

As of August 1, 2010, Falling Down and Mystery, Malevolence & Murder will no longer be for sale through iUniverse. Instead, I have decided to take my career into my own hands and create an independent literary press, Another Shore Press, LLC.

Why now? Simple, because the time is right. With our economy being what it is, publishers and booksellers are not taking on new talent as they used to, and for those few who are being picked up, much of the advertising is left up to the writer. If I am going to spend my time getting the word out about who I am and what I'm all about, I might as go all the way and create something of my own. Besides, I would prefer to have full creative license to my work without compromise. To quote William Earnest Henley: "I am the master of my fate, I am the commander of my soul." True words to live by!

At present, I am working on updated editions to both books and will put them back on the market under Another Shore Press, LLC by Fall of 2010. I also have three additional projects I've been working on for the past few years that I anticipate will be released in either 2011 or 2012. Be sure to check www.davidtboyd.com or www.anothershorepress.com for more information.

Thank you for your continued support, and I'll see you soon!

Dave

Summer's here and there's lots of work to do!

2010-05-22T04:22:00.000-07:00

Well, I've completed my second year of graduate studies on a high note. Now that the summer is here and things have settled down at my "day job" I'm able to focus more of my time and energy on various projects that I've been preparing for these last few months. By August I will have discontinued my contracts with iUniverse for Falling Down and Mystery, Malevolence & Murder - Volume One. I'm doing re-writes on both books and will re-release them through Another Shore Press, LLC. I've turned in all the legal paperwork to the state and have submitted notices of LLC formation (a requirement for New York State) to local newspapers. The IRS sent me information regarding taxes, which I've already completed. My fax and phone lines are done. I've got a working PO Box, business cards, etc. Things are moving along.

I have already completed Mystery, Malevolence & Murder - Volume Two. This will be the first original release of Another Shore Press, LLC sometime next year. I haven't determined the date yet, but will post it as soon as it's available. Based on the comments from people in my class, I will also be doing re-writes of Lux ex Tenebris as well. Thus far I'm quite satisfied with my progress on this novel and think it will do well.

I cannot say how blessed I feel right now for all the good things that have been happening lately. I've really worked hard at making all of this happen. I'm actually exhausted from work, school and writing non-stop since I went back to get my degree in 2006. I don't sleep as well as I did before this whirlwind started, but on the flip side I'm within a year and a half of having my MFA and am embarking on an interesting chapter of my life - writing and publishing my own work. Once all this is done, I'll make a little more time for sleep. :-)

Until next time....

"Lux" and LLC's!

2010-04-03T03:58:00.000-07:00

Well, my fourth semester is drawing to a close, and though it's been a fairly hectic few months I've been quite happy with what I've accomplished. I've screened my latest novel, Lux ex Tenebris, to my novel workshop class and the response has been wonderful. In upcoming weeks I will be doing extensive re-writes of the book, with the hope that I will have everything completed (to my satisfaction) by the end of the year. I'm also in the middle of a new project titled The Merchant Chronicles, which is a four-part piece about a strange old man who owns a "curio shop from hell." Fun stuff! I will tell more at a later time.

I also have made a decision, one that I feel is leading me in the right direction. For a long time I've considered the possibility of running my own independent press. Given the economy and the change in how people read books (Kindle, eBooks), publishers are selecting fewer new writers, and for those they DO choose, funding for book tours and literary events is next to nothing. These days the writers have to, as Hercule Poirot would say, "exercise the little grey cells" in order to gain a following. Because of the sophistication of computers, the internet, social networking sites and a little will power, I think it's possible for writers to create a market of their own. I've spent the last year carefully putting together a business plan for an independent press - one that I think, if done correctly, will enable me to have the freedom of expression I've been searching for, as well as the ability to blaze a trail of my own. Therefore, after sharing ideas with a dear friend from Ohio, I've selected "Another Shore Press" as the name of my press for two reasons: first, it reminds me of The Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine - one of the most serene places I've ever visited. Second, it denotes an arrival at a new destination where there is opportunity in a place not originally seen before. This is the shore where I will search for the meaning of life through the written word. In this land is where my destiny resides.

A general site is now available. There will be further updates to the site as the official launch date nears.

www.anothershorepress.com

Good luck with "Lux?"

2010-02-13T05:14:00.000-08:00

Okay - here goes! I have completed a third draft of my new novel, "Lux Ex Tenebris," and have submitted it to my novel workshop class to review. To say I'm nervous is a bit of an understatement, but I think I have a good group of writers who will offer constructive criticism. The biggest thing is I'm confident in the abilities of the professor, who also happens to be the CW program director at CCNY, to lead the class and draw the very best from each student. It will be an exciting, and scary, time for me; however, I think my book turned out far better than I could have imagined and look forward to seeing what my other classmates think.

More on that later! Next week I turn in the copies for everyone to read.

Dave

A New Year!

2010-01-16T04:02:00.000-08:00

As 2009 left me behind and the New Year made its way forward, I have to say I've really made some sincere progress in my work and educational pursuits. This past semester was my best yet, and as the year came to a close I managed to complete both a short story compilation and a first draft of a new novel. Mystery, Malevolence & Murder Vol. 2 is complete with seven new tales of suspense and intrigue; Lux Ex Tenebris went from being a simple short story (that originally was supposed to be the eighth story of MM&M) and developed into a 50,000+ novel that also has the potential to be an epic piece.

That's the magic of doing what I love to do so much. Through the coursework I'm taking at The City College of New York I'm finding the new concepts I'm working through grow and expand into areas I never would have deemed possible. During the fall term I took a Gothic Literature class where we read Bram Stoker's "Dracula," Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat," plus Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber." Personally I like those kinds of stories because the gothic works of these talented writers are incredibly versatile. I never considered this before, and I'm sure many would disagree with me, but their works can be seen both as literary and cinematic. These are fantastic tales that very discreetly reflect the social issues of their day in symbolic fashion while clearly being rooted in the basic fallacies of mankind. In my opinion, that's what has given these stories their staying power, for material goods may change over time, but the needs of human beings will always remain the same. There's an aspect of magical realism that makes these tales so intriguing even today, but they clearly reflect the basic story-telling structure, scene description and good use of dialogue that classic writers like Oscar Wilde, Jane Austin, George Eliot and Charles Dickens have implemented.

The MFA experience is giving me so much thus far, and the depth and texture of my work has deepened because of it. It has been a wise choice on my part to attend graduate school and I am taking full advantage of it!

More to come!
DB

Preparing for the Future!

2009-10-25T06:49:00.000-07:00

When I begin my first class of the spring semester at The City College of New York I will officially be at the half-way mark of my MFA experience. The time has really flown by!

While it's always a great thing that you are enjoying life in the "present," at some point it all must end. Those of my classmates who are near the end of their MFA experience are scrambling to find something to do once they receive their degrees. Others are unsure of what they will do next. This is one of the downfalls of being in the arts. Regardless of whether you are a writer, painter, sculptor, musician or whatever - you have to always think ahead, because before you know it, change will commence and you'll be left completely unprepared. Start NOW thinking about where you want to go with your MFA (or whatever degree you are pursuing). If there are things in place as the transition begins, you could seamlessly move from one area to the next and hit the ground running. The last thing anyone wants is to be stuck in neutral while those around you are moving forward.

Right now I'm making plans on life "Post-MFA." I've been lucky with City College. It's a vibrant community with great writers and instructors. There is a deep sense of community here, and there's also a true concern among the students for the "what next?" I'm attending a series of panel discussions titled "Life After the MFA," where writers, teachers and industry professionals are speaking to us about possible career choices to consider. The last one I attended had a former City College alumnus doing a reading and discussion, along with talking about the life of teaching creative writing students balanced with pursuing his own literary interests. Great discussion! If your school offers these kinds of events I highly suggest you attend them. They can be very helpful.

As far as myself, I've come to an understanding of what I want from this MFA experience that I'm privileged to be a part of. First - I want to continue to find my voice and develop beyond my main genre of interest, meaning in addition to writing mystery novels and short stories, I'd like to segue into literary fiction, script writing for plays and film. Second - I want to make long-lasting contacts with other writers and perhaps work on joint projects after my MFA days are over. Third, I want to write and publish, hopefully on a full-time basis. Not all of us are able to do that. Sometimes we might have to work for a while until our work gets noticed. Having the MFA will allow me to teach at any university or work at a magazine or newspaper as an editor.

Perhaps the most exciting venture that I'm up to is I'm in the process of starting my own small literary press! This is exciting and I'm busy collecting data for the press. I've found ways of doing it that are both affordable and professional. Very soon I will announce on my website what I'm up to once I've completed my research. If this works out, not only will I be an accomplished author, but a businessman as well. More on that later!

I'm so enjoying being in school. The City College of New York is a vibrant community. The campus is beautiful, the program is one of the best in the country. It sits high on a hill next to St. Nicholas Park in Harlem - home of the Renaissance. So much history and tradition at CCNY, but at some point it all must end. And when it does, I promise I will be ready!

"Cuckoo's" Ghost! by David T. Boyd

2009-10-25T06:43:00.001-07:00

Read this and see if you can tell me who it's about!

Peace,
Dave
---------------------------

“Cuckoo’s” Ghost!
By David T. Boyd

Once upon a stormy night,
At home alone I shook with fright!
A nightmare plagued my weary head,
Whilst’ I had turned throughout my bed!
This Hallow’s Eve, my family gone,
To Fifty-Fifth and Avalon!
Grim thoughts abound that made me cringe,
The Cuckoo-Man might take revenge!

He knew the art of pay-to-play,
The haters called him “disengaged!”
Yet it is he, with haughty laugh,
Who’ll burn them all within his wrath!
The howling wind blew forth my door,
And spindly shadows crossed the floor!
All that’s sane has neared the fringe,
As Cuckoo-Man takes his revenge!

I shan’t forget the breaking news,
His home chock full of TV crews!
Hearts dropped deeper than a well,
Our lives are now a living hell!
And he smiled wide, his hair intact,
Said “told you all I smelled a rat!”
Yet it was clear through eyes that singe,
This Cuckoo-Man would have revenge!

I rose from bed, I could not sleep,
Despite warm milk and counting sheep!
Lightning flashed and thunder clapped,
A subtle chill crawled down my back!
To you, I say this much is clear,
‘tis not the darkness that I fear!
For what creates the slightest tinge,
Is Cuckoo-Man bent on revenge!

Monsters of the Midway ran,
‘Hyde’ went Jekyll near ’The Dan’!
Shockwaves bolted through the Loop,
‘Canary-ville’ had flown its coop!
Yes, he’s BACK, and might I add,
Chi-town’s gone stark raving mad!
All mankind shall soon unhinge,
If Cuckoo-Man enacts revenge!

Hark! I heard a sound nearby,
A ghostly thing flew ‘cross my eye!
I had sensed it coming close,
Time to leave before I’m toast!
Sickly fingers grabbed my hand,
“I’m no crook!” it said again!
Its grip was tight, it caused a twinge,
And so began Cuckoo’s revenge!

“Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” the Ghost just clucked,
And since I’m not a sitting duck!
I dashed in haste toward the yard,
But Cuckoo’s Ghost, it was not far!
I made a beeline down the block,
But I forgot my Ford was locked!
It was his name he must avenge,
The Cuckoo-Man wants his revenge!

It snatched me high up by my leg,
“LET ME GO!” I cried and begged!
I looked into its piercing eyes,
And knew I was about to die!
Without a word it took its due,
It made me wear the Cubby-Blue!
Lights out folks, this was the end,
The Cuckoo-Man had his revenge!

“NOT THE CUBS!” I shrieked and screamed,
Waking from this nasty dream!
The morning sun replaced the gray,
And I had lived to see the day!
But I shall wait for June the Third,
For that’s when Cuckoo’s voice is heard!
Will we be free or will we binge?
Will Cuckoo-Man… commence revenge?

My Big Fat MFA Life!

2009-10-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

As my profile says - I am a Creative Writing student at The City College of New York. This is my second year, and already I've had the opportunity to take classes and study works from the Victorian and Modernist eras. I've had my own writing critiqued, praised and ransacked. I've had so little rest from the nagging desire to write "just one more page," and have met fellow sleep-deprived students from all walks of life who suffer from the same neurotic tendencies as I do. I want to get better, and thankfully I desired to push myself to the limit by seeking such torture that is the MFA.

While I think everyone who aspires to write should seek an MFA, I'm also smart enough to know that it's not for everyone. There are those of us who feed off of their own energy so much they can sit in front of a computer and crank out a best seller in no time flat. In my case, I wanted the complete package. I wanted the ability to write, listen to others read their work and develop a kinship with like-minded people who all strive to discover their inner-voice and let it shine brightly in front of them for the world to see. Just in the year I've been at City College, I've seen my abilities take me to places in my own mind that I never realized possible. Every day I feel myself getting stronger, my technique crisper. I believe in what I'm doing, because for the first time in my life, I have found something to be passionate about - something worth fighting and sacrificing for! The written word is the source of my greatest love and pain. It challenges me to supersede my personal shortcomings and take that next brave step forward into glory. The structure of my MFA makes it possible for me to want, to desire, to toil, to give my all to my craft. I know success will not fall into my lap, but I'm also smart enough to know that with hard work comes the fruits of labor. One day it will all come to me. I have no doubt.

Getting an MFA is a huge sacrifice. Days when you'd rather sleep or watch TV or go hang out are practically non-existent. You forget the ball game more than you'd care to; you find days where you'll pick your head up and see a million R's on your computer screen because you passed out on your keyboard. Believe me, I've done it all. But I will tell you this - there's nothing like seeing the finished product of something you've worked on for months, if not years. It's even better when someone you don't know tells you how much they appreciated your work - after all, it's a part of you that you've bravely shown to the world. And you know what? It doesn't get any better than that!

That is what I call "my big fat MFA life!" You are welcome to it however you see fit!

Much love,
Dave

Book Review by The New York Times - How Did They End Up That Way?

2009-09-06T06:54:00.000-07:00

Having seen this kind of thing for myself first hand, I later came to understand the compulsive "collecting" of trash as "Collyer Syndrome." This book fictionalizes the lives of Homer and Langley Collyer, two men who lived in a mansion in Harlem that were found dead in their own trash in 1947. Interesting!

Dave

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Books of The Times
How Did They End Up That Way?

Article Tools Sponsored By
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: August 31, 2009

The last name of the title characters of E. L. Doctorow’s new novel, “Homer & Langley,” is Collyer, and the book’s brothers do, in fact, turn out to be versions of those infamous New York pack rats, whose overstuffed Harlem brownstone — crammed floor to ceiling with towering piles of newspapers, suitcases and boxes, as well as 14 pianos, half a dozen toy train sets, chandeliers, a car chassis and more than 100 tons of garbage — made their name synonymous with obsessive-compulsive collecting.
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The New York Times

In 1947 a police inspector looked at the clutter-filled brownstone where the brothers Homer and Langley Collyer were found dead amid their possessions.

HOMER & LANGLEY

By E. L. Doctorow

208 pages. Random House. $26.
Related
An Excerpt From "Homer & Langley"
Marion Ettlinger

E. L. Doctorow
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The New York Times

The day in March 1947 when the Collyers’ brownstone at Fifth Avenue and 128th Street was raided by the police.

The corpses of the two men would be found in their Fifth Avenue home by police in 1947: one buried under an avalanche of rat-infested trash; the other, dead of starvation and assorted ailments.

How did the well-to-do scions of one of New York’s oldest families come to such a sad and ludicrous end? The story is a kind of male, New York City version of “Grey Gardens,” and it has fascinated writers for years. It reportedly inspired Marcia Davenport’s 1954 novel, “My Brother’s Keeper,” and Richard Greenberg’s 2002 play, “The Dazzle,” and now Mr. Doctorow, using his patented blend of fact and fiction, has tackled it here, producing a slight, unsatisfying, Poe-like story that turns out to be a study in morbid psychology.

Mr. Doctorow (the E. stands for Edgar) has said he was named for Poe, and he’s ventured into his namesake’s Gothic territory before with his 1994 novel “The Waterworks,” a story about science and detection and families. That novel, like the author’s best-known works, “Ragtime,” “World’s Fair” and “Billy Bathgate,” showcased the author’s magical ability to conjure a vanished New York from the dust and smoke of history.

Clearly Mr. Doctorow wants to do something similar here, going so far as to extend his heroes’ lives through the Watergate era, but the reader unfortunately gets little visceral sense of the city or the country in these pages. After all, Homer and Langley spent much of their lives as recluses and came to inhabit a suffocating realm bounded by the walls of their town house. As a result, there are few excursions into the New York City Mr. Doctorow knows so well, and lots of time — far more than the reader might wish — spent inside the Collyer brothers’ musty, dusty, junk-filled home.

In Mr. Doctorow’s fictionalized telling of the Collyers’ story, Langley suffered from a mustard gas attack during World War I and returned home, damaged and possibly mad. His brother, Homer, who narrates the story, went blind as a teenager but became a skilled pianist and enjoyed the attention of lots of women, who apparently found his helplessness alluring.

As recounted in these pages, the Collyers’ parents died during the great flu epidemic of 1918, and after Langley’s return from the war, the brothers set up housekeeping together. For a while the pair maintained an engagement with the world. Homer has an affair with a house servant; Langley has a short-lived marriage to a tempestuous woman. Both of them develop unconsummated crushes on the beautiful and virginal Mary Elizabeth Riordan, who works as Homer’s assistant. There are visits to speakeasies and nightclubs, and encounters with a gangster who may remind readers of Dutch Schultz in “Billy Bathgate.”

Langley becomes increasingly eccentric, however, holding forth tediously on his Theory of Replacements, a cynical hypothesis that holds that “everything in life gets replaced”: that children are replacements of their parents, and that new generations of geniuses, baseball players and kings are replacements of earlier generations of geniuses, baseball players and kings. Langley sets about collecting and saving newspapers so he can create Collyer’s One Edition for All Time, a quixotic, all-purpose newspaper that will sum up all the varieties of human experience in one set of stories.

Speaking directly to us in a slightly wistful voice, Homer is an engaging enough narrator, and his account of his and Langley’s earlier years can be poignant, as he draws portraits of the people who enter and exit their lives like a passing parade: the charming Mary Elizabeth, who leaves to attend a Roman Catholic junior college; Harold Robileaux, their cook’s grandson and a talented cornet player, who goes off to war and never returns; and Mr. and Mrs. Hoshiyama, a quiet, industrious Japanese couple who take care of the Collyer house until they are arrested by the F.B.I. and sent off to an internment camp in the wake of Pearl Harbor.

But as the Collyers isolate themselves from the world and retreat to their monstrously overcluttered house, the narrative stutters and stalls. Mr. Doctorow never succeeds in making the brothers’ transition from mild eccentricity to out-and-out madness understandable to the reader.

And even though the two men come to constitute each other’s entire world, their relationship, too, remains oddly opaque: because Homer’s blindness never hobbled his life as a young man, his growing dependence on Langley feels hokey and contrived, as does his deference to Langley’s more and more antisocial behavior.

Langley stops paying bills and is soon at war with the city and Con Ed; the electricity and water are turned off; and neighborhood children take to pelting the dilapidated house with rocks. Newspapers start doing articles about the brothers, writing of “the decline of a House, the Fall of a reputable family.”

Meanwhile, the stuff in their house seems to multiply. There are “corridors of newspaper bales,” and piles of equipment, collectibles and junk: “the guts of pianos, motors wrapped in their power cords, boxes of tools, paintings, car body parts, tires, stacked chairs, tables on tables, headboards, barrels, collapsed stacks of books, antique lamps,” piles of clothing and rolled-up carpets.

Like characters in a Poe story, Homer and Langley have entombed themselves within their once-elegant mansion — and become the center of “a circle of animosity rippling outward from our neighbors to creditors, to the press, to the municipality, and, finally to the future.”

As reimagined by Mr. Doctorow, however, their story has no Poe-like moral resonance. It’s simply a depressing tale of two shut-ins who withdrew from life to preside over their own “kingdom of rubble.”

Creative Writing Poll - The New Yorker

2009-09-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

As I read the following article in the New Yorker I was struck by how the author missed the point of creative writing programs in general. The purpose of these underrated and undervalued modes of learning is not to teach writers HOW to write, but to help develop their voice, purpose and better understand the necessity of honing their skills toward their selected readership. It also enables us to focus, learn from contemporary and classic authors and form a bond where we can associate with those in search of the same depth and sense of challenge and clarity that all writers strive for. These are not MBA producing factories (sorry, not to offend). Instead these are programs designed to report the human condition through the eyes of people who live everyday lives.

Read the article, take a look at the poll and see if you agree or disagree. I welcome all comments.

Dave

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In the latest issue of the magazine, Louis Menand tackles a fiercely debated question: Can writing be taught? Menand comes to his own conclusions, which, you know, are worth the read, but we here at the Book Bench decided it was time for something more direct—we wanted to hit the cyber-pavement and talk to the people. Yes, that means you, dear reader with an M.F.A.! How useful was that creative-writing program? Take our anonymous and highly un-scientific poll. Results are calibrated in real time, but check in with us at the end of the week to see how things settle.

What do you think of your M.F.A. in creative writing? (Poll Closed)
I enjoyed it. 65%
I didn't. 14%
It was fine. 20%

Was it worth it? (Poll Closed)
Yes. 58%
No. 18%
Is anything worth it? 24%

Have you pursued a career in writing (freelance counts)? (Poll Closed)
Yes! I make my living as a writer. I love myself. 32%
No. What I do for a living is not related to creative writing. It's not creative period. 13%

If so, is it the same genre of writing you got your degree in? (Poll Closed)
Yes. (Fiction.) 38%
Yes. (Non-fiction.) 21%
No. Now I write non-fiction, my degree was in fiction. 36%
No. Now I write fiction, my degree was in non-fiction. 5%

The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly - Mystery Reader.com

2009-09-04T14:39:00.000-07:00

Great review on this book! A must for the mystery enthusiast.

Dave

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The Scarecrow
by Michael Connelly

(Little, Brown, $27.99, V) ISBN 978-0-316-16630-0

When veteran "cop shop" reporter Jack McEvoy receives his RIF (Reduction in Force) notice from the Los Angeles Times, he is given the rather humiliating option of staying on for two weeks to train his young replacement Angela Cook. During that time, Jack receives a call from a woman who states her son is not guilty of the murder charge to which he allegedly confessed and which was reported by Jack.

Curious, Jack goes to her home in South LA to discuss the case and later meets with the court appointed public defender who provides Jack with a flash drive which reveals that while Alonzo confesses to have stolen the car, he did not admit to the murder of the woman found in the trunk.

Angela upstages Jack and writes the story first. As part of her research, she surfs the internet for similar cases and discovers a husband convicted of murdering his wife and placing her in the trunk of his car in exactly the same fashion. Could this be a serial killer?

Jack travels to Las Vegas to meet with this man's attorney only to discover that his credit cards are cancelled, his bank account is empty and his cell phone is disconnected. Jack drives to the middle of nowhere Nevada to meet with the prisoner but is advised that he will need to wait till the following day. Jack had called Special Agent Rachel Walling for help but after refusing him initially, she appears in his hotel room in Nevada to advise that someone is tracking Jack on the Internet.

Indeed, Wesley Carver, aka "The Scarecrow" who is the chief technology officer at The Farm which is a large data storage service, is the brilliant but deranged mastermind behind these bizarre cases and although the serial killer is revealed early on, this does not lessen the reader's interest.

The Scarecrow could be called the sequel to The Poet which brings back Jack and Rachel some thirteen years later. Now the newspaper business is struggling and in fact the Rocky Mountain News where Jack previously worked has closed down in real life. Reality suggests that people now turn to the internet more and more for news and The Scarecrow shows us the dark side of technology with cyber villain Wesley Carver. Well-written, current and a fitting homage to the newspaper business, The Scarecrow is a must read not only for Connelly fans, but for any fan of crime fiction.

The Atlantic.com - Writers in Training

2009-08-16T14:25:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article that discusses the "ins and outs" of MFA life. While I believe the key to a successful Creative Writing experience involves both a combination of ensconcing one's self in the program and planning for a future away from it, there are several important aspects that this article succinctly mentions in detail. There is a good balance of Q&A here and it's well worth reading.

Dave

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Writers in Training

Why don’t “genre” writers tend to get faculty positions in prestigious writing programs? Is it snobbery? And will that maybe start to change?

There is definitely an orientation at most of the better programs to teach a certain type of “serious” fiction. A couple of people I asked about that seemed to feel that if you learn to write serious fiction, you’ll learn the basics of good writing and that you can always then apply that to genres later because genre writing is more formula based.

What advice would you give to a young writer who’s about to go into one of these programs?

There were some people in those workshops who clearly thought they already knew what good writing was. So they tended to criticize from a particular position they had already taken. That seems a shame. Because there are an assortment of people in a program—both faculty and peers—who can really help you shake up all your perceptions about writing. And that would seem to me to be the best part about being there. If you’re really looking to be a better writer, why not be open to every suggestion and see what happens?

There also seems to be a growing perception that the work you do while you’re in the program should be the work that you get published rather than as the stuff you work on in order to learn how to write. The result is that many people are getting too narrowed down too soon. Students who bring work they’ve already been working on for years find it especially difficult to free themselves from what they’ve been doing. Several of the faculty members I spoke to said that what we need to help the students understand is that your best writing isn’t going to happen for years, so loosen up, be open to suggestions and really try to something different for the sake of trying something different. That competes with that natural desire to prove as soon as possible that it was worth going away to school for this. Someone who simply graduates with an MFA may feel they have a less defensible position than someone who graduates with a book contract.

If you were to give advice to a graduate of one of these programs what would it be?

I guess I’d have to quote Chang Rae Lee [the Korean-American novelist who teaches writing at Princeton] who I talked to and who basically said that you have to recognize that the degree in and of itself only does so much. If someone goes to Harvard for an MBA, one can presume that that becomes their calling card. But even with the top programs, this may be how you get rolling, but there’s a whole lot more to do from here.

I went to the AWP convention, which had a huge number of attendees who were either currently in programs or had recently graduated. It was interesting to talk to groups of people from various programs who had been out maybe two or three years. They were using the convention as something of a reunion opportunity. And they were definitely comparing notes on who had published, how many stories or poems in what publication, and so on. Certain people were like racehorses—way out in front. And there was an inordinate amount of attention focused on who had accomplished what. Because people were trying to figure out, to some extent, whether it had been worth going to a program like this.

That can be really tough, that kind of competitiveness.

Right. If Student A, or recent graduate A gets published in a top magazine or quarterly, and the other writer’s struggling away and hasn’t really published anywhere yet, does that mean anything? It may well not.

Some of these programs are extraordinarily selective. Your piece points out, for example, that last year Johns Hopkins only admitted two fiction writers.

That’s right.

That’s really tough odds for the applicant. In terms of the application, would you say that the writing sample is the most important part?

That’s what I kept hearing. It can be frustrating that you can’t send them 500 pages of your work so they can really get a sense of it. Instead, you send them somewhere from 10 to 50 pages on average and from that some sort of determination gets made. A couple of the people I spoke to in some of the better programs talked about how they had agonized over whether to send this short story or that one, or a little of this and a piece of that, because they understood how crucial the samples are.

A number of the top programs told me, “We had 12 slots,” let’s say, for fiction writers. “We offered our first twelve, and all twelve accepted and came here.” I heard that from a number of the top programs, and I know that a lot of students apply to all of these programs. So it suggests to me that each of these programs, either consciously or unconsciously, is choosing certain types of writers. That then shapes what their programs are like. For example, if Michigan gets all the writers that they offer places to on the first round and Iowa gets all theirs and Irvine gets all theirs, and yet all these people applied to all three programs, then that suggests that there is no absolute as to who are the best. It’s a matter of something about each of their writing appealing to someone in a particular program, which indicates a good match.

That’s encouraging, I think. It sounds like they’re really reading and choosing very carefully.

It seems they are. They say they are. They made a lot of the fact that January is usually crunch month, where you’re just sitting and reading and reading and reading because, ultimately—especially with the programs that only accept 5 or 6—these are really crucial decisions that can’t be taken lightly.

You write that “at some programs, famous writers seem guilty of propagating the notion that writing can’t be taught at all.” You probably can’t say who these people are, but my first reaction was: Who are these people? And why do they say this? Aren’t certain elements of craft teachable? And why is writing such a strange art in this way? An artist teaching someone about visual art or a musician teaching someone about music probably wouldn’t be doubting whether they really have anything to teach.

Well, there are a certain number of people teaching in the programs who just feel like there are no absolutes. They may well be right. But for students, for whom knowing a few absolutes is at least one way of feeling like they’re getting something out of their education, it can be frustrating. What you tend to find is that there are some teachers who would say, “Never say never,” and then there are those who would say “No, always be sure to follow such-and-such rule.” One thing that people tend to disagree over, for example, is whether you should always know where your story is headed as you’re writing it, or whether you should just let it unfold and see what happens. There are teachers who don’t want to get pinned down saying one or the other. But a lot of the students I talked to seemed to react better to hearing something specific, even if they disagreed with it.

Some of the teachers that I talked to said they would prefer not to even give grades if they had their way. They’d rather set things up like the Stegner fellowships at Stanford where people are supported in their writing and given some feedback, but nothing gets assigned value; you just try to help people move from one step to the next. But some students, particularly at Ivy League schools, said that people in departments other than creative writing don’t take them very seriously, because there isn’t that heavy attrition that goes on in a law program or a medical program. People view it as unserious because once you’re in, pretty much everybody passes.

You have a section at the end of your article about the PhD. There are a number of people writing about this. A recent Poets & Writers article raised the same question that you did about whether the creative writing PhD will be the new MFA. Do you think it’s the new degree people will need to get in order to get teaching jobs? What, in your view, are the ramifications of this potential move into the creative writing PhD?

The US News College Rankings puts a fair amount of weight on the percentage of your faculty who have PhDs. But let’s say you have a business school. Would you rather have someone who’s worked in finance or advertising and has an MBA from Harvard, or someone who has a PhD in business but has never actually worked in business? The students I talked to about PhD programs weren’t that enthusiastic about the idea. They feel their writing is an art, and they didn’t want to intellectualize it too much.

Do you think the creative writing PhD could have an interesting effect on the traditional PhD in literature? Could it bring fresh eyes to literary theory?

I did note at a lot of programs that there seemed to be a real sense that the people over in the English department had kind of lost touch with what’s really going on in writing and had become much too theoretical and abstract. So maybe the people getting their PhDs in creative writing now are the ones who used to get their PhDs in English years ago – the ones who really want to talk about good stories and have a knowledge base that can illuminate that.

You note that the number of creative writing programs has gone from 50 to about 350 in the last 30 years. What do you think this proliferation means for literature in America?

One thing I found interesting is that as publishers are publishing less and less serious fiction, there are more programs in which the focus of the writing is exactly that. Other than the low-residency programs, which have gone more into genre work, most of the standard programs don’t pay a lot of attention to anything other than what you might call literary fiction. It becomes a very difficult market for all those new writers. So I think there will be good work being done on all kinds of levels, but probably not a tremendous profit motive.

The New York Times: Detective Novel Reviews

2009-08-03T09:09:00.000-07:00

Each of these books appear quite interesting. If I have time, I'll try to read them.

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Crime

The War at Home

Reviews by MARILYN STASIO

Published: July 29, 2009

Rennie Airth ignores all the popular wisdom about how to maintain a detective series. His meticulously detailed procedural mysteries are beautifully written but few in number and published five to six years apart. And his all-too-mortal characters not only age but lose their edge. Yet this South African-born writer has produced three novels that are well worth reading, and rereading, whenever we’re engaged in war.

The story Airth has to tell doesn’t deal with combat itself — the only battle scenes are the ones relived in the minds of his haunted characters — but with the disorienting social and psychic illnesses that emerge in its aftermath. Beginning in 1999 with “River of Darkness,” he examined the impact on a tranquil village in Surrey when a deranged World War I veteran breached the peace by invading homes and slaughtering entire families. Since serial killers were almost unheard of in 1921, Inspector John Madden and his colleagues at Scotland Yard were forced to educate themselves in new and baffling fields of forensic science. Jumping to 1932, “The Blood-Dimmed Tide” found England caught in a crippling postwar Depression that cost people their homes, their livelihood and their dignity. So, along with absorbing the shocking phenomenon of serial sex killers, the detectives also sought to find a humane way of dealing with the armies of dispirited homeless men, many of them war veterans, wandering the countryside.

Without entirely leaving the series’s Surrey setting behind, THE DEAD OF WINTER (Viking, $25.95) shifts the scene to London, which in 1944 is still under German attack. Although long retired from the police force and now living a rural life, Madden comes up from the country to investigate the murder of the Polish “land girl” who worked on his farm and had been visiting her aunt in the city. The world he finds in these last days of the war is harder and colder than the one he once knew. It’s not just the prostitutes and thieves working the bombed-out streets; international criminals have also made sophisticated advances in smuggling. And, unlike the murderers in the previous books, the man killing refugees who have found sanctuary as agricultural workers is a new kind of villain — a professional assassin — so the police hardly know what to make of such an anomaly.

Reading these three novels in sequence, it’s impossible to miss Airth’s cautionary message: wars never end; they just bring the violence back home to poison the ground we all walk on.

A man who calls himself David Loogan settles down in Ann Arbor, Mich., takes an editing job at a literary mystery magazine called Gray Streets, forms a friendship with the publisher, has an affair with the publisher’s wife and helps his employer dig a grave for a man he has just killed. All this happens in the opening chapters of Harry Dolan’s first novel, BAD THINGS HAPPEN (Amy Einhorn/Putnam, $24.95), so you better believe he has a gift for storytelling. Although the plot is fairly outlandish, the narrative comes with startling developments and nicely tricky reversals. There’s also something appealingly offbeat about the wry, dry tone of its academic humor, which has much to do with the self-important authors who figure in the hectic plot, either as murder suspects or as the victims of a killer who seems to be culling the Gray Streets contributors list. Aside from the interestingly enigmatic hero, the publisher of the crime mag is the only character with a fully developed mind and conscience, and when he’s murdered we cheer Loogan’s loyal efforts to find his killer. But the lying literati are more fun to watch as they fluff their professional feathers in an attempt to justify their illicit, illegal or just plain nasty behavior.

Two late-19th-century cowboy brothers who become so caught up in “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” that they turn themselves into Wild West “deducifiers” in the manner of Holmes and Watson — how cute is that? Not only cute but clever, as Steve Hockensmith demonstrates in THE CRACK IN THE LENS (Minotaur, $24.99) and the three previous books in his idiosyncratic series featuring Old Red Amlingmeyer (the gloomy, thoughtful brother) and his irrepressible younger sibling, Big Red (the one who knows how to read and write). The “deducifying” is pretty primitive, but so is the society the boys find themselves in when they set out for the Texas hill country and the whorehouse where Old Red’s one true love was murdered a few years earlier. Before Old Red puzzles out the mystery of her death, Hockensmith makes sure that readers get a lightly comic taste of Old West manners and morals, so be prepared for some lively lynchings and saloon brawls — and a whole lot of spitting.

Sloane Pearson, the Chicago cop who was introduced in Theresa Schwegel’s “Probable Cause” and who returns in LAST KNOWN ADDRESS (Minotaur, $24.99), is a fighter, which is genre code for a woman constantly goaded by men into unladylike eruptions of temper. (The guys at the station house are always flicking her ponytail.) Pearson’s pugnacious temperament happens to suit the situation here, which has the scrappy officer standing up for the traumatized victims of a serial rapist. Schwegel doesn’t advance her staid but serviceable style by pointlessly shifting the narrative voice, but she’s consistently firm on her theme: the vulnerability of young women forced to become “social pioneers” by making their homes in the only neighborhoods they can afford — the dangerous ones.

Essence.com: E. Lynn Harris Dead at 54

2009-07-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

A very sad day! E. Lynn Harris left us way too soon, but his legacy will be felt by those whom he inspired. RIP brother!

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E. Lynn Harris, whose self-published 1991 debut novel "Invisible Life" novel endeared him to millions of readers, died on July 24, 2009. He was 54 years old. According to the Arkansas Times, Harris suffered a "serious health setback" while on a West Coast book tour for his recent novel "Basketball Jones." In subsequent novels such as "Just As I Am," "If This World Were Mine" and "Any Way The Wind Blows," featuring the glamorous and gritty lives of Black strivers, closeted and openly gay men, the former IBM executive became one of the country's most popular writers, whose book signings were often standing-room only events.

In a glossy style that combined elements of posh 1950s melodramas, daytime soap operas and homespun morality tales, Harris detailed the fictitious lives of young and stunningly attractive African-Americans, navigating their way through the NFL and NBA; Hollywood and Broadway; magazines and the music industry. Readers eagerly anticipated the return of Harris fictitious fixtures such as closeted attorney Raymond Tyler, Jr., Johns ‘Basil' Henderson, and Yancey Harrinngton, and propelled nearly all of his novels onto the New York Times Best-Sellers List. Harris, who had more than 2 million copies of his novels in print, ranks as one of the most popular African-American novelists of all time.

Everette Lynn Harris, who often spoke in a soft, Southern drawl courtesy of his Little Rock, Arkansas upbringing, always dreamed of becoming an author. His road to his true calling wouldn't come easy, yet would inspire countless writers to tell their stories. Born in Flint, Michigan, Harris grew up in Little Rock. What Becomes of the Broken Hearted, his 2003 memoir, documented his painful childhood, including abuse by his stepfather and a 1990 attempted suicide. For nearly a decade before he tried to end his life, Harris lived a double life: He was a closeted, successful IBM executive by day. After hours, he slept with men on the "down low" and fell into a depression. A close friend asked Harris to write his story. In 1991, Harris wrote "Invisible Life," which received countless rejection letters from mainstream publishers.

In a now legendary story, Harris, who had relocated to Atlanta, sold the novel out of the trunk of his car at local beauty parlors. The novel soon landed in the hands of Martha Levin at Doubleday, Harris' long-time publisher. Harris' story inspired dozens of authors to self-publish their novels. ESSENCE Magazine was one of the first publications to feature Harris' work and he began a long affiliation with the publication.

He visited our officies last year, met with interns and signed copies of Basketball Jones, and gave us a sneak peek of his latest novel featuring Yancey, including the first working lines of the novel: "How did this b---- get my life?"

Harris single-handedly carved out a space for contemporary African-American male novelists such as Eric Jerome Dickey, Colin Channer, RM Johnson, Carl Weber, Van Whitfield, and Omar Tyree. He was a tireless champion for the Hurston/Wright Foundation and had his own foundation. Harris was known in the literary community for his generosity to his fans (often remembering birthdays and holidays); his love of the Arkansas Razorbacks (he was the first Black male cheerleader for the school), and his support for burgeoning writers. He combined his passion for both of the latter by returning to his alma mater as an adjunct professor, where he taught as recently as last fall. He divided his time between Atlanta and Arkansas, but ultimately, always made the time for his readers, who he credited with saving and changing his life.

SF Chronicle: "The Long Fall" by Walter Mosley

2009-07-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

I can't wait to read this book! Mosley is one of my favorite writers, and I'm proud to say he's a distinguished alumnus of my MFA program - The City College of New York!

Here's a review by the San Francisco Chronicle!
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The Long Fall

By Walter Mosley

(Riverhead Books; 306 pages; $25.95)

In his first novel set in contemporary New York City, Walter Mosley, author of "Blonde Faith" and "The Right Mistake," introduces readers to a new series character - the middle-aged, literally low-rent private detective Leonid McGill. McGill is an African American, like Easy Rawlins, the protagonist of Mosley's period Los Angeles mysteries, but he's a very different kind of investigator, and "The Long Fall" is a different kind of Mosley book.

Married to a woman he doesn't love, raising kids not his own, yearning for the sexy building manager charged with breaking his way-below-marketvalue office lease, McGill needs the cash that will come once he unravels the new identity of a troubled kid formerly known as B-Brain. A more upscale detective with a mysterious client wants that information, but McGill isn't at all sure he can trust his colleague not to make life difficult for a guy who seems to have done well for himself since leaving his trouble-making buddies behind.

Once a tool of the local mob, McGill carries a large enough load of guilt as it is, and he can't afford any additional karmic burden. In addition to worrying about the erstwhile B-Brain, McGill has to contend with a mobster who wants a potentially deadly favor, plus his own teenage son's apparent plan to kill the father of a female friend. No wonder McGill has recurring nightmares of being trapped in a burning building.

There's a lot of plot to keep track of in "The Long Fall," but the pleasures of the novel come not mainly from its narrative mechanics but from McGill's first-person perspective on race and class in an America on the verge of electing its first black president. People around McGill tend to underestimate him because of his age, his short stature and the color of his skin. Again and again, he proves that, despite being pushed down, he's a contender. It's hard not to like a detective who sums up a case thusly: "The scenario was simple, it just didn't make sense, like a live cat sealed in a glass globe, or the United States declaring peace."

Starting with Leonid McGill, who bears an obvious legacy as a red diaper baby, Mosley has a lot of fun with characters' names in "The Long Fall." Which is good, because the cast of this slender novel expands almost to the point of unwieldiness. It's particularly amusing that McGill's unfaithful Nordic wife, a storm of destruction in human form, is called Katrina. But then there's a character called Norman Fell, who evokes distracting visions of Mr. Roper on "Three's Company" every time he's mentioned. Inscrutable joke or simply a stray note?

"The Long Fall" accomplishes most of what an inaugural installment of a mystery series should. The three major plot strands are solidly developed and neatly resolved. McGill's quest for redemption, however, is far from over, but it will be interesting to watch it play out across a number of subsequent volumes.

If "The Long Fall" is overstuffed with incidental characters whose importance may not be obvious until later installments, that's a minor flaw. Having retired Easy Rawlins, Mosley has devised a worthy successor in Leonid McGill.

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Writers in Training

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SF Chronicle: "The Long Fall" by Walter Mosley

The Long Fall

By Walter Mosley

(Riverhead Books; 306 pages; $25.95)