Ken Wohlrob's Blog

Shrinebuilder: To hell with Them Crooked Vultures. This is the supergroup I've been waiting for. Wino (Obsessed, Saint Vitus, Spirit Caravan), Dale Crover (The Melvins), Scott Kelly (Neurosis), and Al Cisneros (Sleep, OM). Very heavy, very groovy, moody, trippy, atmospheric, and just damn stellar.

Saviours — Accelerated Living: One of the best American heavy bands I've heard in a long while. I was lucky enough to see them open for Saint Vitus in Brooklyn and they stormed the place. Amazing...

View full post on Ken Wohlrob's website »

Courtesy of the state government of South Carolina. Thankfully, common sense prevailed.

</a>

View full post on Ken Wohlrob's website »

It is a sad commentary on the state of the short story when a collection such as this is allowed to go out of print. After all, Dusk and Other Stories did win the PEN/Faulkner award when it was first released in 1989. And this collection did become a textbook for dedicated short story writers — maybe not as popular with the general reading public as Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, but more of an insider's pick, like the films of Sam Fuller. The sad fact is that I had to r...

View full post on Ken Wohlrob's website »

331 pages, 60,643 words. Now comes the hard part: selling the blasted thing.

</a>

View full post on Ken Wohlrob's website »

I've reached 55% of my goal to raise $1,000 for Doctors Without Borders "Be There 1st" fundraising campaign. I have always been in awe of the work DWB (or Medecins Sans Frontieres) does — going into very hostile and dangerous situations to provide healthcare where none exists (or is inadequate). When they announced the "Be There 1st" campaign, I felt required to do my part.

Many thanks to all those who have already contributed. And if you haven't donated yet, please do, even if its a small...

View full post on Ken Wohlrob's website »

I first discovered the concept of a "Graveyard of the Innocent" while living in Medina, Ohio. A local Catholic church, St. Francis Xavier, used to put up the display every Halloween (see the photo to the left). The crosses were supposed to represent the total number of fetuses killed in abortions in one week in the city of Akron. Needless to say, I'm glad I don't live in frickin' Medina, Ohio anymore.

That image of the mini-tombstones, so like the cover of Metallica's Master of Puppets...

View full post on Ken Wohlrob's website »

Thanks to the good folks at Smashwords, all of my stories — The Love Book collection, "The Metronome Winds Down," and "Job in Williamsburg" — are all now available as ebooks through Barnes & Noble. If you've never read an ebook on your iPhone or computer, B&N actually has a reader for both.

And of course, if you're not a B&N person, you can still get all the stories in print or as ebooks through Amazon, Powells, Scribd, Smashwords, Lulu, and just about any other bookstore.

</a>

View full post on Ken Wohlrob's website »

Having lived in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn for eight years or so, I used to hear (and see) Anthony Delia driving up and down the side streets at least once a weekend. He was one of those neighborhood characters. You never know where they come from. They just exist and make the place more interesting. We could never figure out why he did it. In the end, I just assumed it was that wonderful sort of madness that one finds in New York City. And to be perfectly honest, I always enjoyed ...

View full post on Ken Wohlrob's website »

Courtesy of the UK's Channel B.

</a>

View full post on Ken Wohlrob's website »

I'm still reading through Anthony Flint's excellent book on the battle between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses over the fate of New York City's neighborhoods in the 1960s . Last night, I reached the chapter where Jacobs is struggling to write her definitive work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The biggest problem Jacobs faced in writing the book was that she had more than enough examples of what destroyed city neighborhoods, but no way to make a clear argument for what makes a...

View full post on Ken Wohlrob's website »