Boxcars on Walnut

Now available on Amazon $5.38 + shipping
Coming on Kindle $.99 (soon) as well

I should say a few words about this one. The first Boxcars on Walnut came out on paper, in 2012, when I moved to Texas. I simply took every haiku I'd written about southern Illinois and put it in a single paper volume, 73 haiku in all. My distribution system was: if someone wanted one, I gave it to them. Any kind of "you write me I send one" is a kind of illusion. I've been trying to get things on Amazon so that people can see everything I've done that's worthwhile. So it occurred to me, this should be online too, and in fact there is a little more about southern Illinois I still had yet to say, so I just wrote about forty more, put them together, and put them on Amazon.

There are other reasons to print it. In fact there is a possibility of making small books about places I've lived (Tex-ku, for example, or New-Mexi-ku) and have each one develop a kind of character, and possibly tell a specific story. The story of my eighteen years in southern Illinois is not that special; my marriage split up almost as soon as I got there, and I would have remained, stranded and suspended, and working interminably hard, had I not met a sociology professor who whisked me off to warmer climes. But I could easily use this book to tell a few other stories. You set it in southern Illinois, you have Cedar Lake, the strip, all the places that are so familiar, and yet you lead the reader through a set of relationships that may or may not be connected. The idea holds fascination to me.

I did not, however, pull that off in this one. This is the second edition: it has many images from southern Illinois (117, to be exact), is a very thorough and colorful view of a beautiful place, and tells no particular united story, from start to finish. It is what it is - a collection of southern Illinois haiku. Some of the original 73 have been altered. It has its own website. It is my tribute to southern Illinois.

A Dozen Crime Stories

Now available on audiobook!

Short Stories

for the ages!

A Dozen Crime Stories
from a well-known, big-box, discount, retail chain
(guess which one)
this one is kind of a cult classic - when I put it on store shelves, it walks away....
but here's the big news...it's coming out in audiobook....stay posted!

Quaker Plays for First Days

Introducing a new book of plays:

$7.28 + shipping at Amazon
All profits go to Quaker organizations.

Includes the following plays:
Down in Our Hearts (2016)
Silly Poor Gospel (2016)
Mor I Xon (2013)
Bartram's Flower (2009)
Second First Day at the Interfaith (2008)
The Monster of Kanifloria (2007)
Good Tidings of Yule (2006)
Thou Heardest My Voice (2005)
The Turning Point (2004)
Quakers Rock the 17th Century (2004)
The Life and Times of Lucretia Mott (2001)
The Life and Times of John Woolman (1999)
The Story of Benjamin West, Quaker Artist(1998)
The White Feather (1997)


I can't say I'm a master at this; I am at least prolific, though. These plays have been out there for almost twenty years, published in various paper forms, not easily accessible. When I compiled them I was faced with the choice of using the skills I'd gathered over twenty years to redo each of the older ones, or just publish them as they were written and performed, back in the day, in the Interfaith Center (for the most part), Carbondale Illinois USA. I chose the latter, and, as a tribute, put the meetinghouse itself on the cover (it is, in fact, endangered, as one of the plays will attest). For the children (now adults, or at least young adults) of Southern Illinois Quaker Meeting, this book will be a walk through the past, and I can't say that all of them will be overwhelmed with joy and sweet memories. But all of them learned a lot about Quakerism (my intent), and I promise each of them one of these books, if I should ever find them.

I could tell you more about each one: each has a history, is different from the rest, works on different themes. Instead I think I'll refer you to my quaker website where I'll try to be very complete about this.

I am proud to announce that the second audiobook is now available; The Five-Second Rule is now available on Amazon, or through ACX, Amazon's audiobook distributer. Try it!

I am really proud of all the hard work that went into making it an audiobook, mostly on the part of my colleague, Greta Gorsuch, who painstakingly read each story into an audiobook file, got it up to the specs of ACX, and has even done my other book, Do Unto, which was published earlier. I think it's fair to say she's spent a career listening very carefully to spoken English and the meanings it conveys; she cares about audio quality, and she will be successful in this new sideline career of reading audiobooks, among which my two were first. No sooner had she done them, than she got a number of offers from other authors, who know how valuable a good bookreader is. I consider myself lucky and don't want her to stray into other publications.

The latest news is that I got this blog post to appear on my Amazon Author's page. Being new to this game, it took me a while just to find my own Amazon author's page. I have one though - soon I will link to all my sites, and do a better all-around job of self promotion. One has to!

Audiobook production

I am proud to announce that the first audiobook is available; Do Unto: A short story and twenty others is now available on Amazon, or through ACX, Amazon's audiobook distributer. Try it!

I am really proud of all the hard work that went into making it an audiobook, mostly on the part of my colleague, Greta Gorsuch Griffee, who painstakingly read each story into an audiobook file, got it up to the specs of ACX, and has even done my other book, The Five Second Rule, which will be published shortly. I think it's fair to say she's spent a career listening very carefully to spoken English and the meanings it conveys; she cares about audio quality, and she will be successful in this new sideline career of reading audiobooks, among which my two were first. No sooner had she done them, than she got a number of offers from other authors, who know how valuable a good bookreader is. I consider myself lucky and don't want her to stray into other publications.

The fact is, she read them because she liked them. These two are actually my fourth and fifth sets; number two was the WalMart stories, which are quite famous as cult items but which were really among my first. She says, though, that she likes crime stories and very well might do them for me. I hope so!

Stay tuned....more coming.

Do Unto: A short story and twenty others

Now available on audiobook
Try it!

e pluribus haiku redo

on Amazon
and on Kindle

I got my first copies, and the cover was unclear - I'd taken a chance with the color, trying to make it brighter, and more like the blue/red color matchup, and I lost. Also, I'd left the gutter too small, and some of the poetry, half to be exact, ended up too close to the gutter. Gotta get my mind out of the gutter. So, I redid it, and it now is ready.

You'll see that it's the road to Cloudcroft. These days, it's my favorite road.

e pluribus haiku 2016

my pride & joy; in time for international haiku day. About 500 of the haiku are new, and there is enough modification that each state is very different from last year. Available at Amazon by clicking the picture, or at the createspace store, which has the author's biography.

It is not easy to write 500 haiku in a year; I am not sure I can keep it up. It is especially not easy to write them in different ways, such that they will coordinate with each other, and give me enough so that I have every season, every state, something new and fresh. Remember that I was not in all states at all seasons; for example, in Alaska, for winter, I must go entirely on what I've read. But, since I love reading about Alaska in winter, this gives me an excuse to get all this information that was basically at my fingertips anyway.

I would like to remind readers that this is really the second in the series. I started printing them, on plain paper, in 2011, but it took me four years to even get my first thousand (this happened in 2015) - so, much of what came before 2015 is included in 2015. Thus one should consider 2015 the first, the basic. All others will spring from that.

As a result, I may make 2012, 2013, and 2014 collector's items, by removing them from the sales whirlwind. Scarcity may make them more valuable, when in fact the poetry in them may not, since it isn't unique. Such are my plans, but I am not acting on them at the moment.