This John Prine song will help you understand what My Darling Boy by John Dufresne is all about.

Summer's End

 Book launch Saturday January 25 at Books&Books Coral Gables  5PM

Books&Books Click here for info

My review sent to WW Norton:

My Darling Boy by John Dufresne

 

John Dufresne’s latest novel tells a story of love and loss, a father trying to find and rehabilitate his opioid-addicted son when the son does not want to be found or rehabilitated. Olney, the father, has been straight his whole life, never addicted or incarcerated or homeless. His son Cully becomes addicted to pain medications young and soon becomes all those things and begins lying to his parents and stealing from their home to support his habit. He morphs into a stranger his parents can’t understand or reach out to in their desperation to bring back the darling boy they raised. Reminiscent of American Pastoral by Phillip Roth, My Darling Boy deals with the terrible estrangement that shocks so many families around the world: the good life sometimes is not good enough. Junky love is not the same as family love, Olney learns the hard way. His wife leaves him, not able to handle the stress of Cully’s metamorphosis into a strange young man without feelings for those who care the most for his well-being. He finds his son and loses him time after time. Olney’s search leads him to extraordinary and decent people pushed to the edge of our white bread world, each with their own story of loss and survival.

Told through Olney’s point of view, we learn through the fascinating characters he encounters that love is indeed hard to find and hard to keep for most good-hearted people. The happy past Olney remembers with Cully is denied by the young man as an illusion. The addicted Cully can remember his supply chain but not his own childhood. Olney’s heartbreak is the reader’s heartbreak. Having love turned away is an undercurrent in the lives of every single character in the story, just as it is in real life. That is what makes Olney’s hope and courage stand out to the reader: there is hope. There is love. There is the chance of a better future despite all the despair, but only if he continues his quest and does not give up. Olney is a hero for our times.

 

Neil Crabtree

Author of Smuggler’s Return

 

 

 If you are interested in the craft of writing, Steve Almond's book is a must-have. Written with sincerity and verve and a sense of humor, Truth Is The Arrow is also a memoir of Steve's writing career including time spent at Florida International University and in John Dufresne's Friday Night Writers. Steve Almond is the author of a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, including All The Secrets of the World and Candyfreak. This current book is a masterpiece of shared insights from thirty years of writing, teaching and workshop mentoring. Buy it    HERE at Amazon or here at Books&Books. Clicking either link takes you to the site. The chapter on rendering the inner life stands out:

From page 183: "To focus on the inner life today--to read books, to imaging with no ulterior agenda, to reflect on painful or confusing experiences--is to defy the clamoring edicts of our age, the buy messages, the endless pleas for followers and likes.

Writers have to find a different way of being in the world. The making of literature is the manner by which we come to understand our inner lives, by which we travel in difficult truth toward elusive mercy, and thereby reaffirm the bonds of human kindness.

I am speaking here of something that goes beyond the fate of our work, or the brief span of our lives. I am speaking of the man, or the woman, who stands in silence at the top of the stairs, just a few seconds longer, feeling the ghost of his beloved mother in his arms, rocking her back and forth, back and forth."

 Relief update:

Now that we're moving into the Winter of our Discontent, I find that what will be needed in the coming months is not hurricane relief,  though that is a major concern for me and all my friends and family. The various agencies helping are getting support and help from millions around the country. But what I see is the danger of an anti-Woke government encouraging prejudice against Art and Artists. You know the new Administration is going to be trying to defund the arts, public broadcasting, libraries, subversive literature as they will define it, and the teaching of classic liberal values. Banning books has already demonstrated that Freedom of Expression is now under fire. Why keep kids from reading the world's greatest literature?

I'm such a sucker for good causes. I do want to Save the World. I want to feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, clothe the naked, rebuild all the broken homes and businesses. I still buy Biggie Bags from Wendy's for the bums on US 1.  That's a personal thing.

Dedicating a website is a different story. I'm a writer, not a millionaire. I'm a reader, not a politician. What I've learned over these last years is that there is a community of writers and readers who sincerely want to help. Now I see that community is about to be attacked. There will be closings of Liberal Arts programs in every university in America. There will be dedicated teachers and professors fired for teaching the vision of America they grew up with. The networks will be loaded with MAGA propaganda as anyone who opposes that dark vision is prosecuted and harassed. Free elections will cease as we know them, replaced by restricted voting for friends of the Man Who Would Be King. Public health will be at risk for millions of Americans as Anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists take charge of agencies once meant to help. The rich will get richer. By the time the middle class figure out their 401Ks are about to collapse, it will be too late. The people who brought our grandparents the first Great Depression will bring the next. War will be seen as a financial decision, good for the Economy. But will we have any allies?

Of course, I could be wrong. We might be heading into the next Golden Era. America will be great again. 

We'll see. Meanwhile, I will build a website for writers to share with readers, students, teachers and all the artists, all the musicians, all the people who care. Writers4Relief just WOKE up.

 The 40th Miami Book Fair ended Sunday evening, after thousands of visitors from around the world came and enjoyed beautiful weather, great music, exhibits of every cool thing on this planet, and readings by authors we all know and love. I worked our booth, the South Florida Writers Association, with displays of over 50 books written by our members, including Sea of Tranquility: A Literary Anthology compiled from contributions of poetry and short pieces members contributed for a trip to the Moon as part of the Lunar Codex. It was fun working with Don Daniels setting up the booth, and sharing space with Gladys Barrios, C.V. Shaw, Regine Fisher, Anita Mitchell, Ramesh Nyberg, and others to promote their books and encourage new membership.

And you know what? There was no Protest Against Books organized by those who prefer Banning Books to reading them. They would have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support for literacy over ignorance. You don't see Ugly People standing outside Beauty Pageants complaining. Same here.

 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.