A Little Shameless Self-Promotion, in Honor of Black Friday

"Winding along the first interstate
built through a city, in my
windshield, the urban sprawl
and the suburban slump,
with Goodyear emblazoned
in gold, and smoke stacks
belching black into the
sherbet-swirled sky.
The last holdouts from yesterday
are hiding within these crumbling
ruins of the working class
-- that are fading in my
rear-view mirror. I nod
and give thanks. Firestone
dances in red for just an instant
as I dart in the opposite direction,
towards my exit."
--Akron, Ohio, from my upcoming poetry collection.

Akron, Ohio by Sleepydre on Wikipedia.

When I finally realized that all of the stories from Dispatches from the Information Age were either published by who was given first publishing rights, or rejected, I decided on a January 2017 release date. Then I had a conversion with someone about a fun idea as a way to promote the collection and realized I would have to publish it more towards the end of the February or the first of March 2017 for it to work effectively.

At first I was depressed, because I have been wanting to put out more fiction more often, then I thought about my options and realized that I was sitting on a poetry chapbook, and it was thematically suited for what is happening in the world right now.

That is not to say by any means that I consider myself a poet, I mostly just dabble. I am not even the type of person who, quite frankly, reads all that much poetry. I did go see W.S. Merwin at Kent State a few years ago, though, and that was cool. It's maybe where I started putting my songwriting after I stopped writing songs--stopped writing them as often, anyhow.

So that means I will be publishing my first ever, and probably only, poetry collection on January 7, 2017. I am still tossing around a title. I might just stick with Live Organ Transplants, but I need to come up with an anatomical textbook that no one needs, get out my X-ACTO knife and get to work, all Terry Gilliam-style.

If that doesn't tell you, quite frankly, about the poetry that will be contained in it, you will just have to go to my poetry page and read "A Cosmic Joke."

Lol, that was shameless, even for me.