Author Archive
For all who have been kind enough to ask about Pale Criminal, the first phase of my book re-release — via Kindle Direct Publishing (i.e. KDP Select) — is over, and I’m happy to report that it was more successful than I’d imagined it would be. I tallied a total of 6,322 downloads. I was […]
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Have you ever heard of May Swenson? Most people haven’t. Yet she’s undoubtedly one of America’s greatest poets — a poet and playwright, I should say, though it’s for her poetry that I write this post, because it’s for her poetry that I love her most. She was born May 28th, 1913, in Logan, Utah, […]
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Four tequila cocktails, the latter three of which — Tequila Sangria, Tequila Sazerac, and El Chupacabra — are original recipes. Thanks for watching.
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The most amazing thing happened to me today. I read the following from my friend Jacinda, who posted it on her website: I finished reading Ray Harvey’s More and More unto the Perfect Day more than a year ago – for the third time. I had intended to write a review of the book immediately […]
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At the bar where I work (and work), when after an interview the drunken reporter asked me “Are you a tit man or an ass man?” I replied: “High cheekbones” (improvising a little on my favorite poet, whose name is Karl Shapiro): Verlaine compares the buttocks and the breasts: Buttocks the holy throne of the indecencies. […]
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There’s a common misconception — unfortunately growing — popular among so-called commercial-fiction coaches predominantly, though not exclusively, that stories and novels have one and only one real purpose: storytelling. Which is to say, plot. Which is to say, conflict. Anything, therefore, that slows the pace of the plot — or anything that disrupts the plot […]
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Lyrics without music are like a clam without a shell. Songs lyrics are known as melic — a word that means lyrics intended to be sung. The word melic comes from the Greek word melos, meaning “song.” It’s no surprise, therefore, that no matter how much one might enjoy a song, the overwhelming majority of […]
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Just recently, I came across the following Q & A, which, whether you agree with it or not — and her name, I know, is either toxic or life-affirming (I’m not an objectivist, for the record, but I liked The Fountainhead) — you will almost certainly find as provocative and thought-provoking as I did. It’s […]
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It’s no secret that I’m a sucker for pulp and good packaging, so when I came across the following redesigns, you can only imagine my delight. The Tess of the D’Ubervilles gave me a particularly big boner.
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In an interview Truman Capote once gave, he said the following about becoming a writer: “The last thing in the world I would do was waste my time going to college, because I knew what I wanted to do. The only reason to go to college is if you want to be a doctor, a […]
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Do you remember Tiananmen Square? It’s difficult to believe that it was over two decades ago, but today, June 4th, indeed marks the twenty-four year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, China. This was when the communist dictatorship of that country quashed a political reform movement, which was begun by Beijing students who […]
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Have you heard of this novel? It was published in the summer of 1969 and ostensibly written by Penelope Ashe. By October 13th of that same year, Naked Came the Stranger had already sold 90,000 copies, becoming an official bestseller. By November of that same year, when sales of the book only continued to increase, […]
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He was one strange cat. I don’t always love his literature, but I love his individuality, his originality, his inexhaustible imagination, his arrant hatred of authoritarianism, his mad genius: Philip Kindred Dick (nom-de-guerres Richard Phillipps and Jack Dowland), philosophical novelist who bridged the science-fictional and the historical, drug-user, drug-abuser, paranoiac, self-described “acosmic panentheist,” twin brother […]
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Actually, there are many reasons — many more than five — that I’ll keep reading your story, but there are also at least as many reasons I won’t. Like this seemingly infinite and jesting snore in the next room, which is most annoying to the insomniac that I am: (For example: He had nothing in […]
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Best first sentence for a novel about a lovely librarian who secretly burns the books she loves because she wants no one else to read them. And the winner is — but before I announce the winner, let me say something about the selection process: Invariably when I choose a winner for the Best First […]
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(c)Ray Harvey 2011