We Fictional Café Baristas are not only editors but writers, too. Just as we introduce you to Member Writing and our forthcoming Anthology, from time to time we’ll invite you to learn more of what we’re doing as creative individuals – as I’m doing now.
For the past decade I’ve been writing novels about a young man and his coming of age in the 1960s and ‘70s. His name is Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers, a bookish 20th-century Candide who has been sent off to the Air Force in the midst of the Vietnam War. He will discover friendship, Chinese philosophy, hippie counterculture, and the meaning of romance as he tries to make sense of what’s happening in America. Nate’s fervent wish is to live by Bob Dylan’s refrain: how to avoid making the same mistakes twice.
The first book is Wild Blue Yonder, the second Madrone, and the third is Anarchy which will be published May 28, 2019. These three novels are about, and for, people who never supported the Vietnam War, who are sick and tired of rapacious capitalism, terrorism and mindless militarism. People who just wish to be free to create and live lives of fulfillment and purpose. And, perhaps, people who are nostalgic for the great rock ‘n’ roll borne out of the 1960s.
If that sounds like you, or if you’re a curious reader, or simply a lover of literature with compelling characters and what-happens-next plots, stay “tuned in,” as Timothy Leary once suggested. Over the next few weeks I’ll share a little about these novels and myself. If you like what you read, at the end I’ll ask your permission to send you an occasional email to keep you abreast of news, views and some excerpts from these first three books – and sneak peeks from the fourth work of this tetralogy.
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Jack is the founding barista of Fictional Café. He wrote over a dozen nonfiction books before returning to his first love, fiction. Wild Blue Yonder was the first volume in the Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers trilogy and was followed by Madrone and Anarchy, all published by Wheatmark. A fourth novel is in progress. All these novels are available in ebook, Amazon paperback, and Audible formats.
