‘New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

With that insight from English essayist and poet Charles Lamb, let’s consider ten more quotes befitting a new year.

  1. “You know how I always dread the whole year? Well, this time I’m only going to dread one day at a time” — Charlie Brown, Peanuts
  2. “We should celebrate every year that we made it through” — Ellen DeGeneres
  3. “Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life” — Robin Sharma
  4. “An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves” — William E. Vaughan
  5. “Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each year find you a better man” — Benjamin Franklin
  6. “It wouldn’t be New Year’s if I didn’t have regrets” — William Thomas
  7. “Many years ago, I resolved never to bother with New Year’s resolutions, and I’ve stuck with it ever since” — Dave Beard
  8. “I’d rather regret the risks that didn’t work out than the chances I didn’t take at all” —Simone Biles
  9. “Celebrate endings, for they precede new beginnings” — Jonathan Lockwood Huie
  10. “8 p.m. is the new midnight” — unknown wit of a certain age who just could have been living where I do

Last chance!

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to get back in shape – or even simply to get more physically fit, period – the characters in my novel Yoga Bootcamp will stand by you as inspiration. Or, as I’ve been confessing of late, as a reminder of what 50 years of neglect can do to you. (Some of the easiest hatha yoga moves are beyond my ability these days, and that’s before getting to my sense of balance. I don’t think I’ll get around to writing that story, though.)

Yoga Bootcamp tells of a back-to-the-earth funky farm not far from the Big Apple and covers a day in the life of its founder and followers as they seek to ride a natural high without tripping over themselves. As they discover, yoga is about much more than just standing on your head.

The humorous and insightful ebook is one of five I’m offering to you FREE as part of Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale, which ends tomorrow.

As they say, Act soon!

Get your copy now, in the platform of your choice, and then celebrate.

For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.

Come on in to Big Pumpkin’s ashram

Another day, another year

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Here we go again. As if we need an excuse to party and pop bubbly.

  1. First, let’s be clear. What we’re celebrating is the Gregorian new year, set as January 1 back in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII.
  2. New Year’s Eve has always been December 31 going back as far as calendars have existed. But the Romans celebrated the New Year on March 1. Because January and February were late additions, the Roman year oringinally ran between March and December.
  3. Here in the U.S., New Year’s Eve is the most drunken night of the year. The average BAC (blood alcohol content) is reported at .095 percent.
  4. About 48,700 people are injured in car crashes.
  5. It’s not the most dangerous holiday for driving. Memorial Day, with 448 fatal accidents, is the worst, followed by Labor Day, the Fourth of July, Columbus Day, Father’s Day, and Cinco de Mayo. Still, with an estimated 408 fatalities, the New Year holiday can be bloody. Christmas, by the way, is the safest.
  6. Americans hold to their resolutions for 36 days, on average, but 16 percent admit they don’t stick to any of their goals. Some of us don’t make ’em at all.
  7. “Old Long Syne” is an old Scottish tune that got new words from Robert Burns in 1788. It means “times long past.”
  8. Canadian bandleader Guy Lombardo is responsible for making it a New Year’s staple. He performed the piece at midnight at a New Year’s Eve party in New York City in 1929 and eventually broadcast it on radio and TV stations around North America.
  9. Even though it’s become the go-to song every New Year’s Eve, very few people actually know its words. Do you?
  10. January was not named for the two-faced Roman god Janus but rather originates in the Latin word ianua, meaning door, reflecting the opening of a door we’re about to enter.

There’s still a feast awaiting on this plate

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As the calendar year ends, it’s fair to ask What’s Left in your own life as you move on for the next round.

In my novel, the big question is stirred by a personal tragedy, leaving a bereft daughter struggling to make sense of her unconventional household and her close-knit extended Greek family.

In the wider picture, she’s faced with issues that are both universal and personal.

For me, it’s somehow fitting that my most recent work of fiction returns to Indiana, the place where my first novel originated before spinning off into big city subways. The state is also home to more Hodsons than anyplace else in the world, as far as I can see, not that I’ve been back in ages.

What’s Left is one of five novels I’m making available to you for free during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale, which ends January First.

Get yours in the digital platform of your choice, and enter the New Year right.

For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.

 

Who would be on your list of favorites?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

So here you have 51 of my favorite writers. Looking back over them, I recall one girlfriend who, on entering my apartment the first time, burst out with the question, “Have you read all these books?”

I was equally startled by her question, realizing that this romance wouldn’t be going very far. Of course I had read them. Well, most of them. The others were simply biding their time.

Now there’s also the startling question of just how I found the time to read them, considering I was working fulltime and also writing and submitting to journals intensely on the side. On the other hand, it’s been more than 50 years since I graduated from college, so if I devoured just one book a year, it would add up.

Long ago I discovered that if you ask a classical composer for his favorite composers, or a painter for favorite painters, or writers for their favorites, the list will be filled with names totally new to you. I suppose actors and playwrights and photographers and architects will be just as quirky.

I hope this weekly list of writers has turned up some new names for you in that manner.

I can think of some bad influences, like William S. Burroughs, Hunter Thompson, and Cormac McCarthy.

And think of others who didn’t make my list, though I’ve admired and enjoyed them – Rilke, Rumi, Bill Stafford, Wallace Stevens, Hermann Hesse, Saul Bellow. It could go on and on.

And a few more who are coming into focus as a to-be-read pile. Ursula LeGuin, Cynthia Orzick, Philip K. Dick …

It even has me pondering the question, Does a writer ever read for mere pleasure?

Who wrote the copy on all those cereal boxes I read as a kid, anyway?

The doors on this train are about to close

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The clock’s winding down on my offer of a free ride on my novel, Subway Visions. Who knows when, if ever, you’ll have another opportunity on such a deal.

The surrealistic story presents an adventurous ride in its flashes through underground culture. Some of it even erupts into verbal graffiti.

It’s one of five novels I’m making to you for free during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale, which ends just a few hours from now on January First. Remember, the ebook comes in the digital platform of your choice.

Step aboard promptly, then, before the door closes. There are good reasons I see these mass transit rails as an urban amusement park. Check out the ebook and you’ll discover why.

For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.

Along the tubes to nirvana

 

There’s even a Summer of Love

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The places I lived in the settings covered in my novel Pit-a-Pat High Jinks long ago fell to the wrecking ball, yet the memories live on. The fictionalized story covers friends and lovers, along with near-misses and poverty-line entry-level work life in an out-of-the-way town and surrounding countryside while venturing out on one’s own after college. It had its downs and ups, including a Summer of Love that included a remote mountain lake.

Believe me, you can’t make up details like these, though you can amplify or reshape others.

It’s one of five novels I’m making available for FREE during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale, which ends January First. The ebook comes in the digital platform of your choice. Do note that it includes adult content, so you may have to adjust your filters when ordering.

Think of this as part of my after-Christmas sale, except that these items are FREE! Remember, you risk nothing in acting now.

For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.

Of housemates, lovers, and friends