Writing 4 comments

Finding Your Compass: A Writer’s GPS

By Dan Cafaro on August 6th, 2010

Preface
Writers who are blocked need a way to chip through the ice. Writers who are distracted need a way to find their center and level out. Writers who are lost need a compass to guide them.

Direction comes from many places; inspiration from one: some find it through a higher power; others locate it from a place deep within; and still others discover their writing voice from an unexpected source, outside their comfort zone.

I found my compass one night while reading the Mary Pipher book, Writing to Change the World. I wrote the following statements in a stream-of-consciousness wave of words spilling forth to follow Mary’s advice and dive into the experience of writing. These answers are my own personal immersion into the knotted fabric and crooked anchor of my soul. Reciting these lines helps me when the waters are murky, visibility is poor, and layers of gunk hold me back from practicing my craft.

I swim best at night when the tide is high and the fish are calm. I swim best at night when the lifeguard chair is empty and the moonlight becomes my compass. I swim best at night when waves lap against the base of a  mountain and coral reef whispers my name. When do you swim best? What or who is your compass?

The absurdity of life, as seen in a Mel Brooks movie, makes me laugh.
Feeling unappreciated makes me cry.
Seeing my daughter excited to go to her first karate class opens my heart.

I repeatedly tell my wife that we have to have faith—where there’s a will, there’s a way, it’s all part of God’s plan.

Imagining life without my parents keeps me up at night, picturing what it will be like to grow old and seeing loved ones die, these thoughts occasionally haunt me.
Dreaming of a carefree life in the Caribbean helps me sleep. Hearing the ocean lap against the shore and knowing that man is but a small wonder of all God’s creation helps me sleep.

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Bookselling, Dan Cafaro, Literary Interest, Literary Musings No comments yet

These Boots Were Made for Kicking…Bookstore Giants

By Dan Cafaro on August 4th, 2010

KENSINGTON, MD — Should I feel guilty that I don’t much mind seeing Barnes & Noble hunched over in pain? In fact, there’s a large part of me that doesn’t much care if the entire C suite of B&N executives is shaking in its imperialistic boots, fretting about the respective value of their restricted stock units. They each own plenty of oceanfront real estate, or they must at least own outright a home on a golf course somewhere, and/or undoubtedly they have been dutifully advised to protect their tax-sheltered reserve funds in case of disastrous times such as these, don’t you think? Instead of rainy day funds, do economists now call these plans “financial tsunami funds,” just for kicks?

Boy, maybe I really should take a deep breath and exhale while oxygen remains unfettered by Wall Street expectations and government regulations. Or should I question my humanity and professionalism (and perhaps even patriotism) if I have such little compassion for this hobbled industry giant. After all, their hangover symptoms (queasiness, palpitations, sweats, general irritability – and that’s just the CEO’s executive assistant’s assistant) surely are the result of a semi-literate, chronically distracted, over-caffeinated, underemployed, fickle buying public (who should be collectively spanked by their third-grade librarians for not reading nearly enough), much more so than the brutal consequences of B&N’s own business mismanagement, unrestrained growth, and horrendous miscalculations of white collar expenses. Right? OK, I know I’m on thin as The Iceman Cometh ice here as I toss about unsubstantiated allegations of corporate spending abuse, but you might say B&N’s ailing condition is much like the nausea experienced by a suffering fool of a gambler who reaches into his pocket at the end of an exorbitant evening at the racetrack and knows that no matter how far he reaches down, he’s still going to be in hock up to his eyeballs, with nothing but lint to show for it.

I don’t know, Nellie. Perhaps I’m just aggravated this evening as I impatiently await EPUB files that need to comply with various e-readers including B&N’s celebrated Nook. And if I’m guilty of anything, I guess I’m guilty of that terrible train-wreck trait of Americans who seem to derive visceral pleasure from kicking corporate stallions while they’re down. Maybe I’m just bitter about an experience I had last year when I was hot on pursuit of opening a bookstore in Bethesda, Md., before sadly realizing that Barnes & Noble had a stranglehold on downtown, and the commercial real estate agent plainly told me that I should look elsewhere for a location. There was nothing legally binding about their non-compete loyalty to B&N; it just wouldn’t be looked upon (ahem) favorably for another bookstore to open in the nearby vicinity. In retrospect, I’m glad to have focused on the publishing side of the business, but the idea of a hybrid book operation (one-half traditional retail, one-half publishing house) with an espresso book machine (EBM) on site is still very much an exciting piece of my long-term vision for Atticus Books.

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Book Reviews, Interviews, Literary Interest, New Book Releases, Press Releases 1 comment

Interview with Alex Kudera, Part 2 of 2

By Atticus Press on August 2nd, 2010

KENSINGTON, MD — Alex Kudera assures us that he does not communicate with any dead scribes when he puts pen to paper, and the veteran college instructor also makes it clear that he does not desire to be associated with any stable whatsoever, even if it’s among writers he admires like Charles Bukowksi who indeed may have smelled like a horse during his beastliest of hangovers.

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Book Reviews, Interviews, Literary Interest, New Book Releases, Press Releases 2 comments

Interview with the Author of ‘Fight for Your Long Day’

By Atticus Press on July 22nd, 2010

Humble, quick-witted novelists make for good dinner guests, particularly when they aren’t delusional enough to think that their narrative voice speaks for millions. Once in a great while, however, there comes an author whose story actually does speak to and for the masses, and it’s your job as a gracious host to point out this very fact.

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Janet Taliaferro, Short Fiction No comments yet

By the Time I Get to Phoenix

By Janet Taliaferro on July 20th, 2010

WANTED TO BUY: Mercedes
300SL-Gullwing. For further
information, call 516-5…

Carmine DeSilva’s coffee cup covered the rest of the phone number, but the Long
Island area code caught his attention. He stared at the newspaper.

Reading the want ads had become a habit with him. It prolonged the morning ritual
of silence, the only time, he thought, Angela ever was silent. At least she let him read his
newspaper in peace.

He glanced at her furtively, hoping to avoid her attention. She continued to gaze
catatonically at the kitchen window. He knew she could not see out. Two tiers of frilled
curtains, faded and limp with age, covered the windows. Beyond the dingy glass was only
the gloom of 36th Street.

Angela was smoking her third cigarette and drinking her second cup of coffee.
Breakfast would consist of two more of each. The blue smoke from the end of the Marlboro
dangling from her lip twined with the muddy clouds exhaled from her nose. Her face was
fleshy below the pouty mouth. Carmine remembered with an inner sigh what the slender girl
had looked like. He had thought the blonde hair was natural.

Carmine looked again at the want ad, and moved his coffee cup to hide everything
but the words WANTED TO. His mind was on the tarpaulin-covered shape that occupied
the garage of the house. Their own 1979 Chevy always sat in the driveway between the
closed garage door and the chain-link fence that surrounded the front yard.

The garage was opened four times a year. On good days in the spring and the fall,
Carmine busied himself with seeing to the maintenance of the treasure that he drove only
once every three months, just as his father had done.

Treasure. That was what his father had called the Mercedes. “My treasure chest, boy,
and don’t you sell it!”

His father, Geno DeSilva, had lived with them for seventeen years. Angela and the
old man had fought over everything. She blamed their childlessness on him, claiming that if
she had not had to worry with Geno she would not be nervous and would be able to
conceive. She never stayed with one doctor long enough to find out what the real problem
was. Carmine wondered if it wasn’t his fault. Perhaps he was sterile. But then, he told
himself, he never had checked to find the truth, either.

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