Fiction
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Small Press Shout-Out: Valancourt Books!
Here’s what I love about small presses: they’re quirky, they look for (and fill) niches that the big guys have missed, and they often appear to be as governed by personal passions as market research. Today’s shout-out, Valancourt Books, is no exception. Their catalog sports many overlooked and forgotten gothic books. Because they’ve identified a missed… Continue reading
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A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #7 – The Keyboard
Every kid in school was afraid of the music teacher. The grownups didn’t understand this. Miss Steiner had been teaching forever – she had taught the grandparents of some of my classmates – and when she had been young she had apparently been kind and patient and not yet disillusioned. To us, though, she was impossibly old. And worse than… Continue reading
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Review of The Race: “Warm and Full of Life…”
“[A] delightful novella about politics, scandal, reputation and above all, the importance of love…” – mylittlebookblog Readers, it’s a very good day here on the Jacke Blog. My novella The Race has been reviewed by mylittlebookblog, and the results have had me smiling all day. I’m not sure which is my favorite snippet. Maybe the… Continue reading
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Stephen King, Great Guy
First things first: I’ve never finished a Stephen King novel. I’ve started a few, but in the end I’ve never really enjoyed the genre enough to submerge myself for hundreds of pages. I’m not trying to be hoity-toity about it (I’ll leave that to Harold Bloom), I”m just letting you know: I’m more or less… Continue reading
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A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #4: The Sweater
My first few months at the University of Chicago were bliss. College! Great books! Stimulating conversations in the dorm cafeteria! At first it did not bother me that everyone around me was miserable. This, after all, was a place that welcomed misery. We thrived on it. And if you were feeling down, you could open the… Continue reading
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Into the Wormhole with Goodnight Moon
What do parents think about when they’re reading Goodnight Moon for the millionth time? If you’re awake enough to be alert, you might consider Freudian implications of the story (as a professor I once TA’d for used to do to a packed lecture hall). Or if you’re a data-driven sleuth, like the proprietor of the… Continue reading
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Borges on Fiction and Philosophy
Borges on fiction and philosophy? You could devote an entire blog just to this subject, of course. But for today, I’ll focus on this interview from 1976, which is full of gems. Interviewer: Can a narrative, especially a short narrative, be rigorous in a philosophical sense? Borges: I suppose it could be. Of course, in… Continue reading
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Small Press Shout-Out: Luath Press!
Our globetrotting search for good people putting out good books continues! Last week we journeyed to Australia for a visit to the kindhearted and energetic Pantera Press. Up this week: the land of mountains high-cover’d with snow, straths and green vallies, forests and wild-hanging woods, torrents and loud-pouring floods…that’s right! We’re going to visit the Land… Continue reading
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Awaking to Find You’re a Monstrous Vermin (The Promotion Excerpt #6)
In Which the Narrator Tiptoes into the World of the Mysterious Mina Meinl Even now it gives me chills to think of that moment when I heard the name for the first time. The way the words sounded, coming through those teeth. It was a name at the heart of the strangest experience of my… Continue reading
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Formatting a CreateSpace Book in 2014: One Quick Tip
I’ve gotten some good feedback from the post touting the still-timely advice of Guido Henkel and his e-book formatting guide. But what about formatting for print-on-demand? That’s no less confusing – and I never found a Guido Henkel to serve as my Virgil. So it’s Googling, and more Googling, and a lot of trial and… Continue reading
Jacke Wilson 