Nath Jones's Blog
June 15, 2022
The Novella Series is Out!
It's finally time! THE MERCY OF HIS ECONOMY, VENTRILOQUISM IS SURRENDER, PROTECT WITH PLEASURE, THE WAKE OF ILLUSION, & THE WAY THINGS WHIR are out!
I've looked at the theory of Deflationary Realism and don't know what to do with Truth that's unreal. From Michael Devitt's "The Metaphysics of Deflationary Truth" he says, "We might say, very roughly, that according to deflationism, there is no reality to truth." It's time to move on to real fiction. Autofiction is only so readable. Enjoy these treatments though if you read philosophy!
I've looked at the theory of Deflationary Realism and don't know what to do with Truth that's unreal. From Michael Devitt's "The Metaphysics of Deflationary Truth" he says, "We might say, very roughly, that according to deflationism, there is no reality to truth." It's time to move on to real fiction. Autofiction is only so readable. Enjoy these treatments though if you read philosophy!
May 1, 2021
Another Series Is Coming: Five Novellas!
Do you love autofiction? What about Deflationary Realism? When the next five books are released you will love the trajectory. These are quick, weekend reads of about eighty pages each. Do you need to have something with you at the coffee shop? Grab an almond croissant and one of these titles coming soon: THE MERCY OF HIS ECONOMY, VENTRILOQUISM IS SURRENDER, PROTECT WITH PLEASURE, THE WAKE OF ILLUSION, & THE WAY THINGS WHIR!
NATH JONES, COVER ARTIST: START UP
You won't see awards on this collection as much. It's an experimental post-post-modern virtual fun run. My mother and sister didn't know what a cover charge was in 2020 when COVID was first about to hit the U.S. Do you know what a cover charge is at a bar or club? Everyone does! (They never go out. But they read!) Writers have public speaking platforms, don't they? But they really don't take cover charges. It's pretty interesting. I don't believe I've ever paid a cover charge at a library or bookstore for a book talk. Still, authors do get paid for their speaking engagements. How was I to get paid for my spoken word work to The COVID-19 Response?! I did my best! The Kindle edition may need to be edited. Right now it's just a bill for cover art. But the paperback is a collection of notes from trying to have a public platform in COVID. I happened to scale from 1,800 to 5,000 Facebook fans in October and November of 2019, right as COVID was hitting Asia so hard. What happened to my platform? It got locked down in a pandemic!
A New Collection of Notes Is Out!
Hello!
Remember LOVE & DARTS going to be the number one bestseller on Kindle? That was the most fun hour of my life. It's been an amazing journey to work on this collection. The On Impulse series of short story collections really looks at storytelling overall: why do we have that impulse to share with one another? For whatever reason, we do! LOVE & DARTS is that good middle if you're looking for a place to start the series. The pieces are about five to ten pages long, easy to read when you get into bed at night and keep the collection handy on your bedside table. Love & Darts: Stories
Remember LOVE & DARTS going to be the number one bestseller on Kindle? That was the most fun hour of my life. It's been an amazing journey to work on this collection. The On Impulse series of short story collections really looks at storytelling overall: why do we have that impulse to share with one another? For whatever reason, we do! LOVE & DARTS is that good middle if you're looking for a place to start the series. The pieces are about five to ten pages long, easy to read when you get into bed at night and keep the collection handy on your bedside table. Love & Darts: Stories
August 10, 2016
Leaves of Hostas in August
I was sitting outside just now, avoiding coming upstairs to study for the CGPE, instead sending a pointed email to Foreign Affairs about why on earth they would need to put my name at the top of an article I'm reading on my own phone.
Mainly I was enjoying the morning after buying two tomatoes. Well, so I finally drag myself up, knowing I really do need to look over these geriatric pharmacy modules, and a young man says to me, "Was this bothering you?"
I hadn't noticed a kid sitting there with his laptop and a cigarette. There was music. I said, "No, I just need to go upstairs and study. Was putting it off."
Now, it's true that this kid was wearing very Muslim attire. I don't know the terms, you'll have to forgive me. But the knit hat, the gray dress.
Still, he wasn't bothering me at all. And he never should have had to defend himself just sitting there enjoying the morning same as me. The music wasn't loud. The cigarette smoke wasn't going anywhere in the humidity.
It seems so silly to have to constantly remember that in this country we have inalienable rights, and that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble."
What that means is that if this kid and I both want to sit outside and enjoy the morning as neighbors, we're allowed to do just that. He can wear whatever he wants and so can I.
He was facing East, which I noticed but did not comment upon.
I just came upstairs. If he's praying, let him pray. If he's plotting, he'll probably grow out of it, as most of us do.
Mainly I was enjoying the morning after buying two tomatoes. Well, so I finally drag myself up, knowing I really do need to look over these geriatric pharmacy modules, and a young man says to me, "Was this bothering you?"
I hadn't noticed a kid sitting there with his laptop and a cigarette. There was music. I said, "No, I just need to go upstairs and study. Was putting it off."
Now, it's true that this kid was wearing very Muslim attire. I don't know the terms, you'll have to forgive me. But the knit hat, the gray dress.
Still, he wasn't bothering me at all. And he never should have had to defend himself just sitting there enjoying the morning same as me. The music wasn't loud. The cigarette smoke wasn't going anywhere in the humidity.
It seems so silly to have to constantly remember that in this country we have inalienable rights, and that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble."
What that means is that if this kid and I both want to sit outside and enjoy the morning as neighbors, we're allowed to do just that. He can wear whatever he wants and so can I.
He was facing East, which I noticed but did not comment upon.
I just came upstairs. If he's praying, let him pray. If he's plotting, he'll probably grow out of it, as most of us do.
October 26, 2015
Follow through
In 2011 I rented a house on the Oregon coast so I could work on a book in peace. There were walks to take, agates to look for, and driving the winding road to Astoria, of course, too. And there were neighbors.
The neighbors had timber all over their yard. Logs, huge logs, everywhere. I didn't know if it would be polite to ask why on earth they had so much, but by the end of the week the whole story had come out. There was some power line going up somewhere, some kind of right of way that needed to be cleared. This neighbor had made his case and gotten all the wood felled along that way being made.
I don't know how much wood any one person can split. I have no idea. But their whole yard was piled high with huge trees and this man, one man, fully intended to split all the wood so he could divvy it up for the neighborhood.
I hope he did. Just now I ran across a little notecard with his wife's email address on it, thought I'd better send her a message to say hello.
The neighbors had timber all over their yard. Logs, huge logs, everywhere. I didn't know if it would be polite to ask why on earth they had so much, but by the end of the week the whole story had come out. There was some power line going up somewhere, some kind of right of way that needed to be cleared. This neighbor had made his case and gotten all the wood felled along that way being made.
I don't know how much wood any one person can split. I have no idea. But their whole yard was piled high with huge trees and this man, one man, fully intended to split all the wood so he could divvy it up for the neighborhood.
I hope he did. Just now I ran across a little notecard with his wife's email address on it, thought I'd better send her a message to say hello.
October 21, 2015
Pumpkin Spice Latte & Two Slices of Pie
Jim said, "We have a sour apple cherry." I said, "Yes."
I'm picking at his choice and working my way through a piece of pumpkin pie as well. I'm petting a Boston Terrier named Alan, who's come to say hello in his end-of-season blue starred harness. The wind's swirling through the morning. I don't know. Things are good. I read something somewhere, something about writers. And I read Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar".
I think you just get out beyond the bullshit. All these pointers and tips. All these tools. All these good ideas and suggestions. The books have to get written. The passwords have to get to the website designer, which is what I'm supposed to be doing right now. Of course I have no idea where to change the settings. Seek and ye shall find, I guess.
I'm picking at his choice and working my way through a piece of pumpkin pie as well. I'm petting a Boston Terrier named Alan, who's come to say hello in his end-of-season blue starred harness. The wind's swirling through the morning. I don't know. Things are good. I read something somewhere, something about writers. And I read Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar".
I think you just get out beyond the bullshit. All these pointers and tips. All these tools. All these good ideas and suggestions. The books have to get written. The passwords have to get to the website designer, which is what I'm supposed to be doing right now. Of course I have no idea where to change the settings. Seek and ye shall find, I guess.
September 21, 2015
Someday versus Today
This evening the girded loins of youth have subsided to the point that I'm staring out the window of my apartment, watching the sunset light reflect off some window unit air conditioners across the street. There is blue sky over bright, warm brick.
I'm tired. I don't want to seize the day. I need to take a few things to Goodwill and get batteries for my key fobs.
What I have at this point is an opportunity. That's what they say. This country, this mind, this freedom, this sense of duty to the art, to the talent, to the moment. This is it. Right now. Run down, exhausted, confused, surrounded by chaos, shifting priorities, dates, people, checks, ideas, and now the sun hits the glass of another building across the street and my whole home floods with light.
The print edition of the On Impulse series has been 8.5x11, 8.5x5.5, and 6x9. Why? How? I don't know. I am not a publisher. Did not ever anticipate that I would need to become one in order to move forward with these gifts.
This week it's just a few simple things: finalize the 6x9 interior files. Meet with someone on Wednesday about how best to maintain a mobile-optimized website over time.
Guess what? I don't care. And I don't want to get up and rush over to the coffee shop to get busily down to the grindstone on my novel.
I want to sit here snoozing in this light. I want Someday to go away. But it won't. And neither will Today.
They are both with us, as an American yin-yang. But as much as I might like to comment on such a thing, my eyes are closing while I skim some black and white Wikipedia page.
I'm tired. I don't want to seize the day. I need to take a few things to Goodwill and get batteries for my key fobs.
What I have at this point is an opportunity. That's what they say. This country, this mind, this freedom, this sense of duty to the art, to the talent, to the moment. This is it. Right now. Run down, exhausted, confused, surrounded by chaos, shifting priorities, dates, people, checks, ideas, and now the sun hits the glass of another building across the street and my whole home floods with light.
The print edition of the On Impulse series has been 8.5x11, 8.5x5.5, and 6x9. Why? How? I don't know. I am not a publisher. Did not ever anticipate that I would need to become one in order to move forward with these gifts.
This week it's just a few simple things: finalize the 6x9 interior files. Meet with someone on Wednesday about how best to maintain a mobile-optimized website over time.
Guess what? I don't care. And I don't want to get up and rush over to the coffee shop to get busily down to the grindstone on my novel.
I want to sit here snoozing in this light. I want Someday to go away. But it won't. And neither will Today.
They are both with us, as an American yin-yang. But as much as I might like to comment on such a thing, my eyes are closing while I skim some black and white Wikipedia page.
August 9, 2015
This Life of Letters
I love how technology has forced us into the moment, has insisted nearly upon connectivity and transience.
I've adapted. Let almost everything I've written go.
But what happens when every once in a while something still should be preserved?
My friend Steve Despain wrote a fun little thing for me today.
I feel like I’ve now passed through some kind of Writer’s Rite of Passage. Thanks Nath. Did you consider I might have pen fright? I came across Nath when doing a search on Kerouac’s BIG SUR. I had lived near Big Sur for a couple of years. She read a few pages from Kerouac’s book where he was getting out to the cabin in the woods. I lived up by Cannery row, and visited where Henry Miller rested for some years by the ocean’s rhythms (to wash away his days in Paris, I assume). On Friday nights, I’d get together with a dozen others to go through dream symbols. Everyone kept a detailed log of their dreams, and old man Joe, a retired Marketing Executive from Madison Avenue (and good friends of Marshall McLuhan), would lead the group. You haven’t understood dream symbols until you’ve spent a year playing spin-the-bottle around a large coffee table and being prompted to read from your diary when it lands on you. Joe was in his 80s and got a woman in her 40s pregnant. By the time I met him, his new wife had one or two more. He and Marshall would exchange letters sharing conquest stories. I’ll never forget the woman who talked about a dream where her tongue was furry. What did that mean? So we went around the table. Afterwards, I went with a friend to Clint Eastwood’s Saloon in Carmel. We were having a drink by a fire and a sleek Middle Eastern woman in a trench coat approached and talked to us from a distance. After a while, she flashed her coat wide open and she had nothing on except the straps on her boots. I thought of Joe, Henry Miller, and Kerouac. The last summer I was there, I volunteered to work at a Marathon that passed through Big Sur and finished at Point Lobos. I was assigned the task of being the “special fluids guy.” When the top three (ranked) women runners passed through the station I was at, I was coached on how to run alongside of them to hand them their special fluids and keep up with them until they had finished the bottles. Fortunately, they didn’t all come through all at once. It was nice to have some part of that – my slice of the Jericho Mile. I left the Pebble Beach evening fires behind and moved up to Seattle. I then moved further east to the Cascades where Lynch filmed TWIN PEAKS. When I first moved here, that’s when I came across Nath’s video on Big Sur, because I was reminiscing about my past through Jack Kerouac. And I discovered she was a writer, and blogging her trials of self-publishing. I have several things I have intended to write since leaving Chicago for California. One of them having to do with the theme in Stephen Wolfram’s A NEW KIND OF SCIENCE and the other to do with a stone that depicts the foundations of ancient Egypt (Narmer Palette). Nath’s blog gives the hope that it can be done. An interviewer once asked her, “Who do you write for?” She simply replied, “I write for you.”
No more paper. No more special places to preserve the best of what matters. Throw what's glorious on Facebook. Copy and paste some kind of stop motion hope onto Goodreads, knowing the sands will shift.
Writing is different. Love is the same.
I've adapted. Let almost everything I've written go.
But what happens when every once in a while something still should be preserved?
My friend Steve Despain wrote a fun little thing for me today.
I feel like I’ve now passed through some kind of Writer’s Rite of Passage. Thanks Nath. Did you consider I might have pen fright? I came across Nath when doing a search on Kerouac’s BIG SUR. I had lived near Big Sur for a couple of years. She read a few pages from Kerouac’s book where he was getting out to the cabin in the woods. I lived up by Cannery row, and visited where Henry Miller rested for some years by the ocean’s rhythms (to wash away his days in Paris, I assume). On Friday nights, I’d get together with a dozen others to go through dream symbols. Everyone kept a detailed log of their dreams, and old man Joe, a retired Marketing Executive from Madison Avenue (and good friends of Marshall McLuhan), would lead the group. You haven’t understood dream symbols until you’ve spent a year playing spin-the-bottle around a large coffee table and being prompted to read from your diary when it lands on you. Joe was in his 80s and got a woman in her 40s pregnant. By the time I met him, his new wife had one or two more. He and Marshall would exchange letters sharing conquest stories. I’ll never forget the woman who talked about a dream where her tongue was furry. What did that mean? So we went around the table. Afterwards, I went with a friend to Clint Eastwood’s Saloon in Carmel. We were having a drink by a fire and a sleek Middle Eastern woman in a trench coat approached and talked to us from a distance. After a while, she flashed her coat wide open and she had nothing on except the straps on her boots. I thought of Joe, Henry Miller, and Kerouac. The last summer I was there, I volunteered to work at a Marathon that passed through Big Sur and finished at Point Lobos. I was assigned the task of being the “special fluids guy.” When the top three (ranked) women runners passed through the station I was at, I was coached on how to run alongside of them to hand them their special fluids and keep up with them until they had finished the bottles. Fortunately, they didn’t all come through all at once. It was nice to have some part of that – my slice of the Jericho Mile. I left the Pebble Beach evening fires behind and moved up to Seattle. I then moved further east to the Cascades where Lynch filmed TWIN PEAKS. When I first moved here, that’s when I came across Nath’s video on Big Sur, because I was reminiscing about my past through Jack Kerouac. And I discovered she was a writer, and blogging her trials of self-publishing. I have several things I have intended to write since leaving Chicago for California. One of them having to do with the theme in Stephen Wolfram’s A NEW KIND OF SCIENCE and the other to do with a stone that depicts the foundations of ancient Egypt (Narmer Palette). Nath’s blog gives the hope that it can be done. An interviewer once asked her, “Who do you write for?” She simply replied, “I write for you.”
No more paper. No more special places to preserve the best of what matters. Throw what's glorious on Facebook. Copy and paste some kind of stop motion hope onto Goodreads, knowing the sands will shift.
Writing is different. Love is the same.
August 6, 2015
4 Hours of Sleep
It's funny how things seem possible.
Right now I'm working nights, seven on/seven off. Sounds great, seems like there's plenty of time for the writing career.
But here we are in this organic growth of the thing. We're looking at events in Indy, St. Louis, Louisville, Dayton. It's great. Except I have to get there without driving into a ditch.
Entropy. Erosion. Art and Order.
The truth? I don't want to deal with any of it. All this follow through. Sending another email. Making another call. Fixing the website again. Looking at the production quality of the print edition.
The chaos is kind of over. I can just be about the business of writing books, having events, chatting with readers. It's everything I've always wanted.
But, I don't know. Just. The exhaustion. Finding a day to have the Genius Bar guys look at the laptop. Giving up on ever finding a current driver for the printer. Getting ready to pull the trigger on dropping thousands of dollars to have a streamlined home office. Adjusting the PDF size of the print edition. Working toward consistency across platforms. Keeping the dates, times, places, and contacts straight. Just handling all this little stuff that's required for the books to come into their being.
Is it worth it?
No. It's not worth it. Yet here we are. I can send one email about one event. I can send another. I can ask one question. I can reply to a few grateful readers. I can remember to thank people myself. Just little stuff, almost nothing.
Is it enough?
Yes. It's plenty. I'm looking at a hanging basket of pink petunias. Someone bothered. Someone hung a wrought iron basket from a streetlamp. Someone lined it with peat moss. Someone planted the flowers. Someone waters them. Daily.
So here they are, gorgeous.
Right now I'm working nights, seven on/seven off. Sounds great, seems like there's plenty of time for the writing career.
But here we are in this organic growth of the thing. We're looking at events in Indy, St. Louis, Louisville, Dayton. It's great. Except I have to get there without driving into a ditch.
Entropy. Erosion. Art and Order.
The truth? I don't want to deal with any of it. All this follow through. Sending another email. Making another call. Fixing the website again. Looking at the production quality of the print edition.
The chaos is kind of over. I can just be about the business of writing books, having events, chatting with readers. It's everything I've always wanted.
But, I don't know. Just. The exhaustion. Finding a day to have the Genius Bar guys look at the laptop. Giving up on ever finding a current driver for the printer. Getting ready to pull the trigger on dropping thousands of dollars to have a streamlined home office. Adjusting the PDF size of the print edition. Working toward consistency across platforms. Keeping the dates, times, places, and contacts straight. Just handling all this little stuff that's required for the books to come into their being.
Is it worth it?
No. It's not worth it. Yet here we are. I can send one email about one event. I can send another. I can ask one question. I can reply to a few grateful readers. I can remember to thank people myself. Just little stuff, almost nothing.
Is it enough?
Yes. It's plenty. I'm looking at a hanging basket of pink petunias. Someone bothered. Someone hung a wrought iron basket from a streetlamp. Someone lined it with peat moss. Someone planted the flowers. Someone waters them. Daily.
So here they are, gorgeous.
