March 17, 2021

“Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life,” A Book Review by Lorraine Martindale

Posted by Mike Rochester in Book Reviews

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life is a biography of horror fiction writer Shirley Jackson by Ruth Franklin. My first encounter with Shirley Jackson was reading “The Lottery” in junior high. It was the first story that truly disturbed me; the stoning of an innocent woman was a shock. The culprits were not villains. They were regular people, going about their regular lives in their bucolic village. Jackson was confronting conformity at a time when the individual wasn’t valued. I could have been one of them. I wasn’t the only one implicated. After it was published in The New Yorker in 1948, the magazine received letters calling “The Lottery” “outrageous, “gruesome,” and “utterly pointless.” The New Yorker had never received so much mail in response to a work of fiction. Jackson received letters as well,…

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March 15, 2021

“In the Hotel Room with Arles,” by Jeffrey Boldt

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

1. I first met Arlene Henson in law school. She’d been a teacher for twenty years and was in her early forties—which made her nearly twenty years older than me, and most of the rest of our class. But Arlene was still youthful and fun, and I never thought of her age as a significant factor in our friendship. Her face had the gentle and patient look which you’d want to see on your favorite teacher, but it was also quick to flash into an ironic smile and even a dismissive, almost-cynical laugh. Arlene was recently divorced from a Geography professor and she was attending law school on her share of the sale of their house in Milwaukee. She’d been a collegiate swimmer, and still did triathlons; she often came to class in tight fitting athletic outfits which hugged her trim figure and still drew plenty of attention from young men half her…

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March 11, 2021

“Thirty Years in a White Haze,” A Memoir Excerpt

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Dan Egan, with Eric Wilbur, has written a memoir which is true to its title: Dan’s three decades as an athlete in general and specifically one of the founders of the sport of extreme skiing. Thirty Years in a White Haze is his story as told to Eric. It is also the story of growing up in the Egan family and in particular becoming a world-class extreme skier alongside his brother John. We learn how they came to develop skiing abilities far beyond those of the average skier and to become extreme skiing stars in many of the legendary Warren Miller’s ski movies, ultimately arriving at the podium of the US Skiing & Snowboarding Hall of Fame in 2016. This excerpt is the book’s Prologue, and describes what is perhaps his most challenging and life-threatening…

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March 8, 2021

“She Is Going to Do Something Nutty,” by Raymond Abbott

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

He told the police sergeant, as he knew he would, that he would leave right away and help however he might. The address he wrote down was familiar to him. It was in the Flats, an old Holyoke neighborhood or section of the city once inhabited by many different ethnic groups, although now almost exclusively Puerto Rican. He shoved the paper with the address in his coat pocket and found his little black bag with the oils and other implements for giving what once was called the last rites of the church, but were now termed the sacrament of the sick, and headed off in the direction of the Flats. Sixty-six Center Street. He’d been there before, he was sure. Only the week before, the adjoining block had burned up. It was another of those…

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March 3, 2021

Bhuwan Thapaliya – Seven Poems from Kathmandu

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

I’m sick of not seeing you He poured himself a glass of her thoughts two years after she won a scholarship to heaven to pursue her PhD in life after death and sat down beside her antique gramophone with his senses straining in the dark. “I’m sick of not seeing you, I’m seeing only the back of an African Wild Elephant and the wide open jaws of the vultures. Helpless days of confinement, a stultifying inertia and no knowledge of what comes next. “Where are your eyes in the sky, Grand Ma?” he sighed. Where are the bald eagles? Where are the rhododendrons? Where? Where? Where? He stammered and cried. What type of poem am I? “What type of poem am I?” I am as formless as the clouds, and as elegiac as the silence, in the itinerary of the noise. I am not a classic written by the author,…

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March 1, 2021

Alex Nodopaka – “Computer Aided Design” Art

Posted by Mike Rochester in Fine Art

Artist’s Statement: I am a multifaceted artist who practiced traditional painting, drawing, photography & sculpture until the advent of the PC. Subsequently, my art evolved into pure computer graphics. I have quite a bit of experience from graphics through watercolors and oils and etching and sculptures in many mediums such as ceramics, bronzes, wood and assemblages. All my artistic life and beyond has been totally dedicated to art to the point of fixation, if not light obsession. I work serially. That is, periodically, I come up with a certain manner and style in my artwork, then conclude that series after 50 or so examples/variations in each category in that fashion, then I move on. Operating in such fashion created a problem with artwork storage and that is when I decided to strictly create CAD art….

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February 26, 2021

“Rising” – New Poetry Collection by Yong Takahashi

Posted by Mike Rochester in News

RISING: Poems In this debut collection of poetry, flashes of life’s most intimate moments are filled with love, hope, remorse, longing, and anguish. We root for the one who reaches for happiness but is not yet able to grasp it. We wince for the one who picks at festering wounds that never quite heal. We are breathless as we run alongside those who chase after a thirst that can never be quenched. Yong Takahashi is the author of The Escape to Candyland. She was a finalist in The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Southern Fried Karma Novel Contest, Gemini Magazine Short Story Contest, and Georgia Writers Association Flash Fiction Contest. She was awarded Best Pitch at the Atlanta Writers Club Conference. Her second short story collection will be published in 2021.To learn…

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February 25, 2021

February Edition of “The Break from HOKAIC”

Posted by Mike Rochester in News

JASON BRICK’S NOTES FROM THE LAB As a freelance writer deep in the trenches, I’m here to present your five facts and five favorites from the month of February, 2021. Just the facts…. Fiverr.com is a good place to get low-cost cover design services, and a bad place to find competent copy editing. The pandemic has shifted a lot of genre sales figures, but by now you shouldn’t change any decisions based on that. On social media, there is an inverse relationship between how successful a writer is and how mean they act. If you “don’t have time to write” you actually just prioritize other activities Martha Wells’s The Murderbot Diaries is really, really fun to read. Five Favorites… Social Change in the Publishing Industry I don’t know if it’s going to be awesome or a train wreck, but…

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February 22, 2021

“To Your Inner Slavery,” Poetry by Selma Haitembu

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

To Your Inner Slavery You try really hard not to show it I will not relent to evade my notions, Nor my ideas, hence the color of my skin Spoke before I could raise my head To your foot, beneath the very grounds I lay scythed by your scorn I will not relent in shame My mother, I wore as pride Ride me into the dangers of your color Your ignorance and frivolous abuse Your amusement related to mine Rooted from two different aspects I worry not where you are from Your stench has no beginning I worry only what you would do next To know, to finally see my color My mind in this brown skin bag Has gears twisted in complex turns I deserve to be here as well, it will show And below me you will fall soon Your hate of me will beg to exist,…

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February 16, 2021

“Soliloquy in Blue,” A Short Story by Johan Alexander

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Did she say something? Did I say something? Her brow illuminates under the streetlights and pulses with the beat of the windshield wipers. She won’t look at me: her eyes flash sequins at the sidewalk. Droplets floating, floating: translucent globes hanging in space. Then they burst apart. She shakes her hair and I can no longer see her eyes. Rain: I yawn through the misty rhythm. My eyes close continuously. Headlights and streetlights mix in the distance and through the murk I wonder when things started to go off course. We had danced together, squeezing particles of music from our sweatshirts. Then we ate at the Greasy Spoon, where she said it. The air between us is a stale sponge unable to soak up all these discarded feelings. Damp inside the car and heavy on my eyelids. I try to blink. The tires below us slime their way through the night. She sits in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. What`s the point? She glances over, a quick reflex of her neck, surprised. I realize I have mumbled my thoughts aloud. Beads of sweat wander across my hairline. I keep my face forward. She turns away. Again. I roll down my window an inch. I open my mouth. A few raindrops land on my tongue. …

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465 posts by Mike Rochester