Lately I've added a "Rarities" page to my blog, a place to put older, out of print stories and poems for a new generation of readers to peruse and (hopefully) enjoy.

This has entailed no small amount of effort on my part--I had to reformat violins in the void (a collection of poems and short prose bits from 1996) and retype two older chapbooks, That First, Wound Bearing Layer (1992) and Genuinely Inspired Primitive (1994), because I couldn't find the original files.

The process of loading these works onto my blog has led to a kind of rediscovery, a trip down memory lane that was, at times, pleasant but, more frequently, not.  These works were in many cases written during very bleak times in my life and it shows in the dark, despairing tone of the material. Some are the product of experiments in "automatic writing", a method made famous by Andre Breton and the surrealists.  No pre-planning, just write; put the editorial/critical part of the brain on hold and try to tap directly into the un/subconscious.  What these efforts produced was some scary and unnerving prose and poetry that provide revealing insights into my state of mind.  Definitely not writing for the timid or those who like "safe" reads. Stuff that, candidly, frightens the piss out of me.

I now have at least a quarter million words of prose on my blog and that includes two novels, a batch of short stories and now these latest additions. All of it available for free downloading and reading (under the terms of Creative Commons). This material covers over 20 years of my writing career, providing an excellent cross-section of the various phases and places of the heart my work has taken me to. The range and diversity of the material astonishes me--Christ, I came up with all this?--and I'm pleased to be able to present it to readers, the most definitive compilation of my work available anywhere.

All yours...with my respect and compliments.

Welcome to my mind...