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For the second year in a row I have won this award, once for The i Tetralogy. of course, I am elated and surprised. I had no idea that this small book of stories had such strength to it. It is a collection that spans 33 years. I learned how to write with short stories, to get to the point, to shag the fly, to say much less than much more. I found it not bitter, but ironically sweet that I am receiving awards at this autumnal stage of my life. Duff Brenna, novelist, reviewed the book at perigee-art.com so favorably that we struck up a correspondence. I forwarded “i” to him and he exploded with rave reviews, labeling me a “genius.” What meant more to me was this: “I’m edgy, but you’re over the edge and plunging. I hang on with my fingernails, but you let go and say,’Come what may!’ Fuck, I admire that….” And on.

Here I am with kudos and laurel wreaths in my lap and I muse about four decades of writing. I am trying to take the measure of these experiences, to comprehend this crazed mobius strip I’ve been on. Duff asked me what would I do next. Curiously, or maybe not so curiously, I sing my song again — all my writing has been about meaning, intent, and purpose, about grasping self. What I have before me are the bones of an allegorical fantasy written more than two decades ago. It is a fantasy of a damaged world with a creature that begins to become awakened by intelligence. It is bathed in Freudian sauce – I was in a psychoanalytic program at the time — and reflects issues of abandonment, loss, lust, instinct, repression and that whole box of Forrest Gump chocolates of the therapist’s quiver. However, again, it is all about me, as I transmute my anguish into a viable cloth. Since it is so old, I am picking about this corpse, pruning it, revitalizing it — “It’s alive! It’s alive! What i am proudest of is the range — Holocaust fiction, short stories, sci-fi fantasies. What is common to all of them is a seriousness I have always had, a philosophical cast to the way I think — to know myself at whatever cost before I plunge into the world of quarks and neutrinos.

I want to respond to the comment that one –me — might be exasperated by all the hassles involved in marketing one’s own book, that there is so much dreck out there that makes money, that knowing this may make one siimply capitulate to the capitalists. To answer this is for me to explain why I continued to write for 40 years, replete with rejections that were supportive as well as cutting and cruel as I set out to make myself a writer. I was moved to explain me to me, to deal with my depression, to understand my life, to seek personal clarity — see “Young Man” in Down to a Sunless Sea. I wanted to play an instrument — no go, no encouragement; I wanted to act — no go, no support; I wanted to direct — no go, no support. I wanted meaning — no go, no support. What I did have going for me, as I look back in awe and amazement, as I look back as a psychotherapist upon my life, was an unusual capacity to endure, to persevere. I was a bright child who did not know that, and my parents should have known that but they were not bright, undereducated, issue-ridden, la-la-la (see “Herbie” in the above book). In short, I had to parent myself. Ah, the agonies of benign neglect. In short, I taught myself how to write. With all this going on I feel that I cannot conceive of not writing as an expression of artistic self, and marketing is just a pain that I keep in perspective. Adversity way beyond this has grated my self. When I am in significant conflict, I recall my wife’s  dead body on a gurney as I said my last goodbye. This memory keeps me steady…By the way, please sign your name when you comment. If i share who I am in my response, give me your name.

I’ll post my query for Down to a Sunless Sea shortly ; apparently it has done the trick. It is a mixture of quotations from reviews of the book, my past credits or dumb luck in how it is phrased. Probably it is my citing that my first short story ever published was listed with Mailer, Oates and Singer. Couldn’t hurt? Perhaps Sondheim may write one of his sophisticated songs called, “Who do you know?”

Some observations as I go about marketing in my own way. It seems that one has to probe magazines more than once; in fact, after a month passes I forward the same email again, and often I do get a response. The mags most be unbelievably inundated by all the books generated for review and publicity. So be anal and obsessive — hit them more than once, but at least allow a month to pass. I also observe that some editors or blogggers are menschen and some are real pricks. One dilettante wrote me in a coy and smartly shrewdish way that he simply can’t acclimate himself to reading short stories as he feels the real worth of literature is in novels. Hemingway, Conrad, Kafka are not his metier, I concluded. I almost asked him to provide his address as I was prepared to send him a tin of snuff and a handkerchief signed by The Scarlet Pimpernel.

I have gone to the Poets and Writers website because they list contests in a systematic fashion. I think it is a good idea to do that and I prepare by trying to send out my entry for each of the months. I know full well that some are scams and some charge inordinate amounts for entry fees — not all, mind you, but if you are a winner there is the publicity. I did that with Allbooks reviews, Shirley Roe, editor and CEO, and I won for best historical fiction. It is also wise to go to a stationery store and order round stickers to put on the book cover — “Allbooks Reviews Editor’s Choice Award,” to wit. So, fellow writer, try contests. Google that word or a variant of “literary contests for fiction” and see what comes up.

At times we must push ourselves, cross into areas with trepidations. I use Shirley Roe and Norm Goldman (Bookpleasures.com) to kick off my books. It is now a tradition with me. These are reviewers who will provide a review for a fee, but they also advertise your work across the web and with Roe ( see her review of “Sea” on this site) and especially Goldman, we are beginning to share personal data, which is nice. Both Roe and Goldman have done interviews with me as well, no fee for that. See the interview with Goldman at Bookpleasures.com as an example of what a good interaction provides. The interview then becomes part of your publicity mailing. Whenever I send out a book for review I include a bookmark and in some instances, I supply interviews and salient reviews. On that bookmark use both sides; on the back cite an selection from your book and on the front your ISBN and Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

All this is endless; i view my book as a year’s effort. If I can generate, on my own, sufficient  publicity that is just fine; but I do not drive myself crazy, which all of the above can do to you. I must focus on the fun of it, the rewards when they do come in. I try to give myself breaks, particularly the week-end. I view the book as an hour’s work each day. After all, I will be remembered by family and not by you dear reader. And there is no guarantee that family will remember you. As I age I remember individuals in my life and pay them a mental homage — my deceased and dearly loved wife and eldest daughter; my loyal and kind dog, Oedipus, and the hounded Jews who endured throughout the ages. About six or seven months ago I was in that morally dead society of Spain which now finds it fashionable to have Jews in their family. I recall in one town whose name eludes me I came upon the Jewish quarter replete with a statue of Maimonides. I observed the winding, spiraling streets in that place and I teared up, for I could easily imagine how the Jews were driven through the streets like the bulls of Pamplona. Memory. The gift of the Jewish people to civilization. 

Life has grabbed me intensely since the last blog. I am deeply involved in “marketing” Down to a Sunless Sea. I am concentrating, for those out there who are writers or want to live the writer’s life, whatever that is, on the “blogosphere.” Diligently, working with blog directories (see “litblog,” to wit)), I am discovering websites all over the world and apparently for those of us who want to market their self-published books, this is one significant way to explore. I have had almost 80 (!) requests for review copies. See the review of my new book by Kevin Eagen on Blogcritics.com as an example.

if you Google litblog directories, you get a plethora of sites, so mind-numbing is it, that I must scan, must wise-up, as there is just so much time, and life has to be lived.Combining blogs with ezines ( the bloglink on this site for “New-Pages,” is one of the best to get started), I go about my “merry” way. The traditional approaches are annoying to me, rigid, too scheduled, and all the rest, and my perverse characterological “insets” prevent me from doing so. I live my own life, as the world buzzes and mentates about me. I try to fight off the shoulds and musts, the mind-numbing conditioning of this decadent society — all societies are decadent, just by definition.

Back to writing. I recently met with a psychologist and his wife. He has worked on dreams all his life, and has been influenced by Jung. Of course, this was the dude who called psychoanalysis the Jew science. How sweet! My response is that it is such, for it is talmudic in nature. So I have read some Jung but stay away from this little Black Forest alchemist and his gnomic brews. I do not separate out the artist from his art, and my feelings about T.S. Eliot, Dickens, Shakespeare, Wagner, Orwell, the Western Canon, if you will, make me leery. As a secular Jew it is an endless source of self-learning to examine the projections made on Jewry. The species unconsciously knows full well that intelligence must be sacrificed in order to live safely in the crowd. In any case he is writing a book about dreams and he asked me questions about what to do as a beginner in this field. I have answered some of that here, but a little more.

The query is essential — later on I will put up mine to share with you. You have to write a query that in essence says in the very first line — “Call me Ishmael.” It can be done. I write in hyperbole, so adjust accordingly. In The i Tetralogy the opening line is: “I am rectum.” So lean your shoulder to the Sisyphean boulder and compose one. You can do only your best, but do you really know what is your best? Kazantzakis asks us to choose between two injunctions: “Reach what you can,” and “Reach what you cannot.” His favorite line for me is — “Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!” It is all in the exclamation mark.

Excellence in all things. This explains my discomfiture in this culture. My standards are harder than the ones you might impose on me and I have not broken as yet. So, writer friend, go for platinum, gold is not enough, in your writing; shove your balls against the wall — and world; think Mailer. In you is the world.

Many new and old writers are consumed by fear and this reflects in their lives and in their writings. In another month or so I will give a talk about acts of empathy and imagination, my own personal haunts, in a writer’s workshop. My task is to expend my passion, my wit, my sensibilities on individuals who may or may not get it (see “Juan Peron’s Hands” as a sample on this site). Do not write — passion-ate. I am running dry now, so I’ll stop and get more out to you all in a day or so.

I must say that I am very grateful that I can write, it is my lyre, my oil, my balletic step, my aria, and I feel blessed, for I hewed it out of granite. I made me.