Tag: Literature

Hello, readers!

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’m excited to announce that five of my books are being offered for FREE at Smashwords during the site’s 18th annual Summer/Winter Sale. Add to that another 13 volumes by me that can be purchased at a 25% discount. The sale, which begins today and lasts the entire month of July, is a great time to obtain my works as well as many others by talented indie authors at bargain prices.

You can find all my free and on-sale books at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jnanahodson.

I must confess that back in a period when I was a newspaper syndicate field rep, I was baffled by retail sales (we didn’t offer them, by the way). A product should be worth the given price, right? But I’ve come to appreciate that many of us often need a prod to get us to pick up a product we want. Beyond that, nothing beats word of mouth for spurring purchases, so you can’t beat the opportunity to discover some fine original work and then giving it a boost.

Thank you for your help and support!

Happy reading!

Right under our feet or the hill

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As my journals record, my return to southern Indiana took me well beyond the college campus. I’ve already mentioned my explorations of the wooded Leonard Springs and its cave system just beyond our house at what was then the fringe of the college town. Let me remind you that my Thistle Finch editions blog has free PDF downloads of the related chapbook of my resulting poems as well as a photo album I put together from online gleanings to refresh my memory.

Related photo lookbooks slash storyboards are Ghost Towns, Iconic Farmers, Mills by the Springs, and Wonders Under the Ground, assembled to assist in my revisions for what is now “Miller at the Springs” in my novel Secret Side of Jaya.

Poetry chapbooks originating in this period include Cornflower Eye, Blurring Into Smoke, and Green Wonder, all available as free PDF downloads,

I did encounter a lot in a short year-and-a-half, even beyond my paying employment. I do would how my writing would have evolved if I had been able to remain in place.

Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.

 

Back to a personal refuge

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

A recent post here told you of my early encounters with the Leonard Springs. The then largely unknown wooded ravine soon served as a kind of personal refuge for me just beyond our house. It became a microcosm of something much larger in my emerging awareness.

For the chapbook of poems originating in those explorations as well as a supporting photo album, go to my Thistle Finch editions free digital bookstore. Do take a look.

Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.

Plowing and planting what I could

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While much of my Great Black Swamp residency has been distilled into my novels Nearly Canaan and Secret Side of Jaya, it also infused an outpouring of poetry. By the time I arrived, the land had long been drained and turned into some incredibly rich farmland. Something, apparently, had been drained from the people as well.

Among the free PDF poetry broadsides available at my Thistle Finch blog are Toward Tiffin, Farmer Disking His Fields, and Prairie Wind. Once again, I must confess to being quite fond of micropoems as well as “found” poems. Poetry can be a state of mind as well as craft, wherever you are.

In addition, you’ll also find a free poetry chapbook, Furrow, and two photo albums, Prairie Depot and Vast Plains. It is hard to envision such a landscape if you haven’t traveled across the American Midwest of Great Plains.

Do take a look.

Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.

 

For more on yoga back in the day, when it came with its own natural inebriation

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In my early journals review, I set apart two sequences from my ashram entries for presentation as Chronicle PDF downloads at my Thistle Finch editions blog. Remember, they’re free. One is Early Yoga, drawing on my initial experiences with the mysterious woman swami who came up to our town to teach classes. The other is Dark-Haired Beauty, a captivating fellow yogi, also from that introduction. In addition, the poetry broadsides Ahamsukhi and Ashram are available, as well as a photo album Ashram Memories. My, how young and green we were.

Do take a look.

Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.

Perhaps Peter Max captured the visual reality

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My Binghamton sojourn reflections at my Thistle Finch editions free digital bookstore also include a Chronicles set of notes, Escapes to Cornell, and the photo lookbooks/storyboards Somewhere North of the Big Apple, reflecting my novel Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, and Dark Transit, for Subway Visions. In my life, these could have been the rings of Saturn.

Do take a look.

Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.

 

And here I thought it was a dark stretch

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My time in Upstate New York did generate a prolific amount of poetry, which you can now find as free PDF chapbooks at my Thistle Finch editions blog. Among them are Susquehanna, Splitting the Rent, Halle Street, Riverside Neighbors, and Still Tender. There’s also a prose piece, Escapes to Cornell. So much of note was happening in my life when it seemed nothing of importance was. On top of that, I do wish I had been journaling back in the summer of ’68 when I lived in a boardinghouse across the river from the office and had only a bicycle and my feet for everyday transportation. Whatever scribblings I had from then, alas, have been lost in letters to a long-vanished lover.

Do take a look.

Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet. Maybe you’ll even sit beside the river with me. I won’t say anything about the bed.

Dixie fiction friction

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the Southern literary tradition was a linkage with Scotland, a love of Walter Scott and, unsaid, its Presbyterian literal Bible, clans becoming klans, some of the same intonations and expressions, a shared rebellious nature, plus the repulsion of Quakers in general.

Yet many of its young writers in the ‘50s devoured Jewish influences (Mailer, Malamud, Bellow) and then the Calvinist Congregationalists of New England (Updike, in particular) and then their own Thomas Wolfe and Faulkner. So I’ve read.

Their own writers had been presenting the Dixie heritage as all happy and macho, which did not fit what they observed. The Jews and Congregationalists, on the other hand, were presenting something hard and ugly about themselves.

From that, I’ve wondered: where and how my Midwestern heritage was being addressed or examined. I saw escape but no reality being addressed. Things that ought to be said but weren’t, at least in the mainstream view.

The best I’ve come up with is Jeffrey Eugenides, Greek-American of Detroit. And, my, how he delivers.

Advice from writers for writers goes way beyond the page

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Just consider:

  1. “A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.” ― Sidney Sheldon
  2. “One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing – writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.” ― Lawrence Block
  3. “Be willing to write really badly.” ― Jennifer Egan
  4. “You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.” ― Octavia E. Butler
  5. “Never use an adverb to modify the verb ‘said.’ … To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange.” ― Elmore Leonard
  6. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” ― Ernest Hemingway
  7. “I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.” ― Tom Clancy
  8. “Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.” ― Ray Bradbury
  9. “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.” ― James Baldwin
  10. “When your story is ready for a rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” ― Stephen King