I have slowed down a little on the blog and magazine as I am opening a new office for my law practice. A little less fun, but not much, than blogging and magazine publishing but such is life. I am now trying to balance:
Blog Magazine Novel
Law Practice
Family
Me
This will either keep me forever young or kill me. I’ll keep you posted. Love life by living it.
I said to my twenty two year old son it takes a sick society to make a TV series that is smart and funny about a man who makes and sells drugs, murders the competition with mustard gas and is a dedicated family man. My son said, “He’s the type of guy you would like him no matter what crimes he was involved in.”
I thought about that, it’s true, what does that say about me, what about you?.
Walt, the protagonist, is a 50 year old father to be and parent of a disabled teenager. Despite being smart and dedicated he is discounted by everyone. He finally gets inoperable lung cancer, and strangely, or maybe not, a real set of balls. This allows him to understand that as life is changeable, he can change his life. And he does.
He has a likable and human wife, with quirky sister, and the wife is having a baby at forty, seems to love her family and is willing to put up with a little weirdness. The disabled son is an ardent smart ass, but his disability is portrayed as very real not just a prop. The family is an organic whole that you rarely encounter in fiction and almost never on TV.
The problems that Walt faces, no money, middle age, a new baby on the way, a job he could love if it wasn’t for the students, make him real, make him likable, despite the way he is adapting to a hostile world. The scary thing here is that when Walt is faced with his mortality, he becomes driven, reckless, fun and even admirable. Makes me think of real beings, that are coming to the same realizations. My question: will they be fun and admirable?
I think the story is a cleverly crafted reflection of so many people caught up in the modern life. It should be a hit and it should be on no earlier than ten pm. Hopefully both of those things will happen.
I mean it. O’Brien’s Literary Speculator is rocking. We have no sales to speak of, but lots of input from those who would be published. I have been reading and some of what we are getting is really good, maybe even great but I need other eyes. If you would like to become one of O’Brien’s Speculating Acquisitioners, drop us a line with a biography and why you think we deserve help. While I can offer no more than the opportunity to help writers become published and a free copy of our journal here on earth, in the other realms I can offer you… even less, but help us out and who knows it may the good act on which the Universe depends.
Speaking of sales, wouldn’t you love to be the first person in your town to discover us, so that when you are at the next poetry slam you can dominate the conversation with inside comments about what is really happening in American, dare I say World Letters. Be cool. Subscribe at www.obriensliteraryspeculator.org. All profits in the event that we ever generate any will go for scholarships to writers conferences.
Give us a digg.
http://digg.com/arts_culture/
You know what I mean ghost stories, wierd stories, stories about your neighbor the cannibal, interviews channeled through you by ancient spirits. Poetry about your vacation in the remote reaches of Queens, and the giant worms there that desicate small dogs and young children, stories about angels, demons and women who love them, Stories about the necromancer’s daughter, about conversations between the planets that make up our solar system.
If you write stories that are 7,000 words or less, poetry that is twenty lines or longer, interviews about writers, readers and interesting subjects, send them in to our acquisitions team, via Jerry@obriensliteraryspeculator.org. If we can use your work we will provide you with a twenty five dollar honorarium which will be adjusted to the cost-of-starving-to-death index. We seek only the rights to 1.) publish in one volume of the magazine, 2.) one year of exclusivity 3.) the right to publish your story a second time and for a second honorarium if O’Brien’s Literary Speculator, publishes an anthology.
You can get the rules for submitting your writing at http://obrienzspeculator.wordpress.com/2007/10/22/ guidelines-for-submitting-work-to-obriens-literary-speculator/
You can buy individual copies of O’Brien’s Literary Speculator at http://www.obriensliteraryspeculator.org/products.php?cat=12
A subscription is $21.00 and a single issue is $7.95 The magazine is delivered as a PDF file in full color. This is part of our be kind to trees program.
On the web site of O’Brien’s Literary Speculator You can read a short Story that is included in the current issue www.obriensliteraryspeculator.org/
Reading this magazine will make you a chick magnet, or even a stud finder, increase your scores on all standardized tests and prevent several rare, minor and not particularly annoying skin conditions. Taxi’s with honest drivers will stop only for you and you will develop cop face which will give you both civil and criminal immunity.
Be brave, be contrary by the Speculator and be the go to guy for all matters cultural. Peace unto all mammals from the vole to the blue whale and on each of our brothers and sisters Lets make earth Paradise so that paradise can be earyoutrh.
I have sat in a drought plagued literary terroir for a long time sending out messages which I in my thirst thought were falling on sealed ears, ears which turned my cries away. I was a cast away and the ships that past my barren and bereft prison saw my fire but did not bend their course to rescue me or so I thought.
The truth washes all my disillusionment away. The heavens opened and not rain but the fruit of fertile minds rained down upon me. From Sweden, England, Nigeria, Texas, Brooklyn, beautiful Brooklyn home of poets, singers and saints, horror stories, travel and adventure tales, poems, art, I am awash, I am humbled and shamed by my lack of faith.
The beauty which is shared with me on the condition that I share it with you astounds me. I have a bounty now too great for one magazine but still send me your works we will in the due course of time send them forth to change the world.
Peace to all artists and recognition for making the world a place where all can walk in beauty.
Go to the O’Brien’s Literary Speculator Web Site and you can purchase your very own copy of the first journal, “Bright Beginnings.” It’s a good investment and quite affordable. Please buy it and recommend it to your writer friends so that they will know about this great opportunity to be published.
