Fourth Book in the Southern Swallow Series finds the Academician Li K'ai-men in exile on Hai-nan Island. China has a new invasion threat. A showdown between ingenuity and technology explodes as the Sung Dynasty tries to preserve itself.
I've been a writer all my life. In eighth grade I wrote a short story that was dutifully fawned on by my English teacher, Mrs. Richards, who mailed it off to the New Yorker magazine for immediate publication. Fifty years later, and still no New Yorker credits, I'm still at it. Four novels, two memoirs, and untold magazine articles later, it's still a helluva lotta fun being a wordsmith.
Background
Information
Steinbeck was a biggie. His simple, elegiac prose talked to me early on, as well as William Saroyan, James Thurber, Mark Twain, John Updike, Truman Capote, Jimmy Breslin, Norman Mailer, although today I read mainly non-fiction, which I guess makes sense, because my novelistic urges have given way to honest, well-researched portrayals of real life truths. In short, my writing has morphed from journalistic poetry to poetic journalism.
Birth Place
Hartford, CT USA
Accomplishments
A self-taught autodidact, also a shitty test-taker, hence the absence of an MFA in curriculum vitae. But somehow, over the years, in between raising a family, working as a carpenter, and waging many political wars against the machine, I've found time to publish three novels, (On Bethel Ridge, Naugahide Days, The Twelfth Strand, Talking Leaf), a book of interconnected short stories, write theater reviews, travel reviews, a small town newspaper column about, of all things, wooden boats, and lately, a narrative non-fiction book about cancer called My Cancer Winter: A travelogue. My latest work-in-progress is about a fatal house fire in a small New England town with the working title: Leena's Fire.
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