The Miami Book Fair is open at the Miami Dade College Wolfson campus. Thursday I will be helping Don Daniels set up the South Florida Writers Association booth. We will have books from members on display and a Featured Writer table going Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Stop by and visit. I'll be there as much as I can. There are several writers I will be looking for and will attend readings whenever I can.

The Street Fair should enjoy wonderful weather, cool and sunny and comfortable for walking around.

See you there!

 Writers4Relief update:

Writers4relief

I owe everyone an update on my project. Right now, the website has 3 pages up and by the end of the day I expect to have integrated my Shopify store into the website, with a current list of my books and prices showing. I have enabled PayPal Business for merchant services. As it grows, the website will feature authors who have provided support by sending stories, poems and essays to use to raise funds for the relief agencies. 

Which is another to-do: I must prepare a letter to send to interested writers outlining why we're doing this and how it will work. Basically, in exchange for something that we can publish or something published that we can sell, writers will receive marketing support that might otherwise cost quite a bit of money, including Biographies, web-links, blog backstories, excerpts from upcoming works, and Buy Now links to their existing books and publisher pages. And of course, they will be provided an accounting of sales and donations, and be publicly thanked for doing something to help ease the suffering of disaster victims. A heroes list, kind of. 

In addition, I am having made T-shirts and coffee mugs and stickers for all purposes. While learning how to synch a Shopify card reader, for onsite sales at book fairs and charity events, I am doing things I wished I had learned 15 years ago. 

I will be applying for a Kickstarter grant once the business plan and resources are completed. If you think you would like to support this Kickstarter project, let me know at ncrab4you@gmail.com. It will be necessary to fund the project and its marketing campaign for several months to get it to support itself. People can't help if they don't know what you're doing. And at a certain point, I need the project to be self-sufficient so I can get back to writing. I need it to be something that can be run at a very high standard by people younger than me with the same driving interest: Let's Do Something.

 

I enjoyed working with the team at South Florida Writers Association to create this literary anthology. What sets this book apart is its ultimate destination: THE MOON. 

"Would you like to send a poem or a short story to the moon? That was the question delivered to over one hundred South Florida Writers Association creatives-and the race was on to craft and deliver.

The result is this anthology, on which pages you find thoughtful poetry and prose written with a love for what connects us to our moon. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed compiling this collection that will journey to the moon as part of the Lunar Codex Project.

This project began on July 30th of 2024 when Dr. Samuel Peralta, founder of the Lunar Codex, a stunning collection of the works of contemporary writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers from all over the world, contacted poet Howard Camner and asked him to put together an anthology for the Polaris Collection of the Codex that would be launched to the moon and remain there in perpetuity. Camner contacted Mort Laitner, President of the SFWA to come aboard as co-editor. The best of the best was compiled, and the rest, quite literally, is history. As Dr. Peralta has stated: "The Sea of Tranquility Anthology brings together the voices of scores of poets and authors in tribute to humanity and its yearnings, to look upward, outward, to imagine, to dream."

This is a terrific collection of poetry and short pieces from SFWA creators. I'm proud to have my poem

"The Moon And I Walk The Dog" included, and to have worked with the team to compile the over 100

 works---all with the moon as theme---into a vibrant and exciting collection. 

The man in the moon is going to be very happy.

Buy at Amazon

Helping Others

You can click the above link to see what I'm working on. I'd like to finish the website this week.

My idea is simple: We're all writers, we're all readers. Books, poems, Facebook posts, song lyrics, emails, postcards, news reports, menus, street signs, graffiti. We buy paperbacks, hard covers and eBooks at our favorite places. We look for good deals, writers we like, stories that interest us, inform us, help us decide what we must do to get on with our lives. 

Suppose in addition to that, suppose every time we bought what we'd like to read, part of the money we spent went to Feeding America, or Doctors Without Borders, or the American Red Cross?

And suppose the writers and musicians and artists we love supplied their short works to make it all work, a functioning partnership between writers and readers to DO SOMETHING to help victims of disasters get food and clothes and medicine. Not just Facebook posts, but writers and readers sharing their time and experiences to let those unfortunate ones know, we care. Here, take what we can give. Tell us how we can do more. 

I think this can work. I'm risking money I don't have and time that is getting short to create a mechanism that receives and delivers help. Everyone I have talked to about this wants in. My faith in humanity has grown quite a bit just hearing good things we can do. I'll keep you posted.

Scary Halloween Treat Now At Amazon. 

Get Halloween Horror for $1.99 at Amazon starting 10/28. Click

and get an eBook (Kindle) you can send to trick-or treaters or

just get a kick yourself. 

 

Jonathan Escoffery Reads at FIU Writers on the Bay OCTOBER 24 2024

 This is an event to mark on your calendar. Jonathan Escoffery at FIU-North is a kind of homecoming. The young man actually slept in his car while taking MFA classes there, and went on to have his first book, If I Survive You, nominated for one of Literature's highest honors, the Booker Prize. I'll see you there!

From Bookshop.org    If I Survive You

                         

New eBook      Click to buy

My latest is a short bio eBook now available at Amazon. It is part of a series, Part 1 in fact, that will let me reach out beyond what fiction offers. So many of us are dealing with disasters and disease and the downward trend life takes as we move on. But don't despair. If we weren't all crazy we would go insane.