Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 97
May 19, 2017
Golden Gate
Never to worry. I've had a few issues with getting the final picks for the short story collection. Essentially the cutoff will have to be sooner and though some of the newer ideas will be included, I will save the fully functional fractal story for another set, fully fractional mystery for yet another book, and the fake photo essays or stories will also go elsewhere. So you'll have a lot to look forward to! Note that some of these things, like the fractal tale, will not be in paperback since, well, it's not feasible for paper. Sad!
Meanwhile, I'll be back with the finalized version of the first short collection soon.
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins 
Meanwhile, I'll be back with the finalized version of the first short collection soon.
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins
May 7, 2017
Great books
And here we have a few more great books I've been reading.
One is an odd "novel"
by Teju Cole which is almost a fictional travel book and which I found very original and observant. Highly recommended. And the other is
The Shipping New by Annie Proulx
. Two very different writers. Proulx's voice in this book is nothing short of amazing and epic. Love it. Check them out if you can.
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins 
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins
April 28, 2017
Poets in Seattle
Hard to find good things to read these days. Especially in the realm of poetry. Now, I've picked up a few poetry chapbooks at stores around the country, but nothing really stuck in my mind. Some were certainly enjoyable, but all washed over me. Admittedly, I even bought a few based on their covers alone. I'm not why, but there you have it.
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins [image error]
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins [image error]
Poets n Seattle
Hard to find good things to read these days. Especially in the realm of poetry. Now, I've picked up a few poetry chapbooks at stores around the country, but nothing really stuck in my mind. Some were certainly enjoyable, but all washed over me. Admittedly, I even bought a few based on their covers alone. I'm not why, but there you have it.
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins [image error]
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins [image error]
April 24, 2017
Some shorts out.
I have a couple shorts pieces out, fiction and non-fiction as it were.
One is over at Dead Mule
, a short story that's worth a few thoughts. The other is a non-fiction piece that is an essay on moral courage. Never a complete thought,
it's worth a look
.
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins 
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins
April 20, 2017
Graphic Adaptations and the Like
My radio silence has become a little bit of a habit, hasn't it? Well to update those who are waiting on the story collection, it will happen, and soon, but there have been a few issues. First off, as always I'm stoked that
Satan's Plea, the Audiobook
, is still doing well and still finding listeners who both love it and get a few chuckles out of it. That it's the best selling piece of work I've created (check it out, it's short and only an hour long as a narration) tells me that I need more humor in my writing. I'll try, dear reader, I really will.
I've also been reading some great book. Torture report Graphic adaptation is a brilliant way of using non-fiction and graphic visuals to tell a story. As you may or may not know, I've been thinking of many ways to tell a story, and sometimes I sense that text only, especially in our world today doesn't really tell everything. Blasphemy perhaps, but I'm also working on video (see below, a couple shorts via video [1]).
I hope to get something like a video pseudo-essay out, as I've been highly influenced by F for Fake by Orson Welles and think it downright brilliant. As for other methods of telling stories, unfortunately you need the Medium app on your phone, but if you have that, you can access these forms of storytelling (essentially photo pseudo-essays). Here are a couple of mine . Of these, there's a flarf like photo poem , whatever that entails, and there's a mystery in the making . Though it's al experimentation, I hope to make something worthwhile from it soon enough. Check them out and give some feedback, if you can.
And so for the short story collection, the paperback will necessarily be different from the ebook which I'll try to maximize in terms of using other mediums in it. I will include the fractal story, but that doesn't mean that I can have everything, so there will be another only ebook coming out dealing with everything post 2017, if that makes sense.
definitely want to hear your thoughts, so go ahead and fire them off.
[1]
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins 
I've also been reading some great book. Torture report Graphic adaptation is a brilliant way of using non-fiction and graphic visuals to tell a story. As you may or may not know, I've been thinking of many ways to tell a story, and sometimes I sense that text only, especially in our world today doesn't really tell everything. Blasphemy perhaps, but I'm also working on video (see below, a couple shorts via video [1]).
I hope to get something like a video pseudo-essay out, as I've been highly influenced by F for Fake by Orson Welles and think it downright brilliant. As for other methods of telling stories, unfortunately you need the Medium app on your phone, but if you have that, you can access these forms of storytelling (essentially photo pseudo-essays). Here are a couple of mine . Of these, there's a flarf like photo poem , whatever that entails, and there's a mystery in the making . Though it's al experimentation, I hope to make something worthwhile from it soon enough. Check them out and give some feedback, if you can.
And so for the short story collection, the paperback will necessarily be different from the ebook which I'll try to maximize in terms of using other mediums in it. I will include the fractal story, but that doesn't mean that I can have everything, so there will be another only ebook coming out dealing with everything post 2017, if that makes sense.
definitely want to hear your thoughts, so go ahead and fire them off.
[1]
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins
March 29, 2017
On Art as Life and Mark Bradford
If you've been reading this blog, you'll know that
I have a few pieces on art, abstract art, and art that evokes something in my heart
. As I've said before, this has been something of a change as I've grown older and learned to like art, and especially self-flagellating activist art or abstract art. [1] That being said, one of the best artists doing art that makes me think, that manages to encompass an entire city in a single frame is
Mark Bradford
.
[1] Of course, whether this is simply a function of my own middle class upbringing and how us people at the middle like looking at trophy cases of the powerful (in this case their art).
[2] Not that I will lay claim to knowing what exactly Bradford is trying to emulate.
[3] Whether it's the muse or something else entirely.
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.Donate Bitcoins 
[1] Of course, whether this is simply a function of my own middle class upbringing and how us people at the middle like looking at trophy cases of the powerful (in this case their art).
[2] Not that I will lay claim to knowing what exactly Bradford is trying to emulate.
[3] Whether it's the muse or something else entirely.
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins
March 27, 2017
The New Essayists: an Incomplete List.
It's never easy to admit it, but I've found that essays these days really speak to the soul. What I mean is that essays speak to my soul, these days. I didn't always think this, but it was reading
James Baldwin
that changed my mind and made me fall in love with the essay, and especially the personal essay. Interestingly enough, his sharp eye in the non-fiction essay was mixed with
Borges' pseudo-essays
[1] to create my current path of trying to add some insight to today's world while also stretching the imagination. That I missed the
Fake News money boat
probably says something about my own lack of imagination, but let's not get into that.
Mind, that I will include blogs, if they meet the standard, as this seems to be a new way of communication and may very well be more important than what writers of mainly books are putting out. That being said, though I like what Brad Delong and Krugman and even Corey Robin put out, none of what they have written seem to rise to the level of Baldwin in terms of insight.
This might not be fair. The first two mainly deal with wonkish economic analysis (and somehow seem to always avoid stickier subjects, IMO), and the latter one is really just trying to stay afloat of current events, and all seem to help with a more immediate analysis, but they don't seem to have what it takes.
Even some who write books, like Chomsky , and who indeed shine lights on the darkest parts of our society aren't included in this list (though you should read him), as they seem to lack something I can't quite put words to when they right. Sure, they are accurate and succinct, but does that mean one should be considered a great essayist?
It certainly has little to do with the literati . The less said about Oznick , and my views on her writing, the better. Having read the essays of Franzen , I wonder why there is such a lack of imagination out there. Franzen's passion only comes out when he describes an unknown book he likes. Sells me on it, at least. Outside of that I see suburban ideologies tainting his viewpoints. The essays of DFW come closer, but they too lack any insight into life or the current mss we find ourselves in. I mean, they are well crafted, signal the writer's intelligence. But that's about it.
The same goes for the essays of Saunders . They aren't bad. They are some of the best-crafted pieces I've read. But in the end, like the endless outdoor city malls of our age, they lack character, to say nothing of being crafted for the upper middle classes and so lack any real prophetic vision or even an attempt at that vision. Even in the face of Trump, the antithesis of their cultured view of the world, little worthwhile has come out. Perhaps Zadie Smith's essays come closer, but again, something is lacking. [2]
And the less said about what goes on for essay writing in our favorite newspapers , the better. Again,—as is the case with the LRB —many write some of the best analysis around, but they seem to lack for a certain insight to say nothing of "heart" or a fearlessness that we still require of our writers, if they are to be of any use to us. [3]
Well, without further ado, here's the list:
Coates . Though it seems like Coates has given up on writing for his blog at the same level as he started, the archive alone is still worth it. I do hope that he comes back to the same level of output as he once had. Or perhaps he'll switch to the book form. We'll see. Definitely worthy of checking out.
Arundhati Roy is another great one. This might be a matter of reading someone who agrees with my world view, but I find some of her essays to be entirely worthwhile.
Teju Cole might be the new master, as he moves so well between sharp observations of the world and manages to show his seemingly complete knowledge of the history of that world.
That's it. Really. I know my knowledge of this field is incomplete, but who am I missing? Please let me know who should be added to this. Meanwhile, I have a list of others to look out for:
Adiche . Read one of hers and was impressed. However, I have not read so until I do I cannot make that call. I hope to add her to the list soon.
[1] It's funny that I find many of his non-fiction essays to not have anywhere near the same value.
[2] The list of close but no cigar goes on. Rushdie also has some good points, great craft, but many of his essays have not aged well .
[3] Don't worry, as a writer I understand that this applies to me as well. I still hesitate when sending certain essays out. Let's see what happens to my own craft and improvement as a human/writer
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins 
Mind, that I will include blogs, if they meet the standard, as this seems to be a new way of communication and may very well be more important than what writers of mainly books are putting out. That being said, though I like what Brad Delong and Krugman and even Corey Robin put out, none of what they have written seem to rise to the level of Baldwin in terms of insight.
This might not be fair. The first two mainly deal with wonkish economic analysis (and somehow seem to always avoid stickier subjects, IMO), and the latter one is really just trying to stay afloat of current events, and all seem to help with a more immediate analysis, but they don't seem to have what it takes.
Even some who write books, like Chomsky , and who indeed shine lights on the darkest parts of our society aren't included in this list (though you should read him), as they seem to lack something I can't quite put words to when they right. Sure, they are accurate and succinct, but does that mean one should be considered a great essayist?
It certainly has little to do with the literati . The less said about Oznick , and my views on her writing, the better. Having read the essays of Franzen , I wonder why there is such a lack of imagination out there. Franzen's passion only comes out when he describes an unknown book he likes. Sells me on it, at least. Outside of that I see suburban ideologies tainting his viewpoints. The essays of DFW come closer, but they too lack any insight into life or the current mss we find ourselves in. I mean, they are well crafted, signal the writer's intelligence. But that's about it.
The same goes for the essays of Saunders . They aren't bad. They are some of the best-crafted pieces I've read. But in the end, like the endless outdoor city malls of our age, they lack character, to say nothing of being crafted for the upper middle classes and so lack any real prophetic vision or even an attempt at that vision. Even in the face of Trump, the antithesis of their cultured view of the world, little worthwhile has come out. Perhaps Zadie Smith's essays come closer, but again, something is lacking. [2]
And the less said about what goes on for essay writing in our favorite newspapers , the better. Again,—as is the case with the LRB —many write some of the best analysis around, but they seem to lack for a certain insight to say nothing of "heart" or a fearlessness that we still require of our writers, if they are to be of any use to us. [3]
Well, without further ado, here's the list:
Coates . Though it seems like Coates has given up on writing for his blog at the same level as he started, the archive alone is still worth it. I do hope that he comes back to the same level of output as he once had. Or perhaps he'll switch to the book form. We'll see. Definitely worthy of checking out.
Arundhati Roy is another great one. This might be a matter of reading someone who agrees with my world view, but I find some of her essays to be entirely worthwhile.
Teju Cole might be the new master, as he moves so well between sharp observations of the world and manages to show his seemingly complete knowledge of the history of that world.
That's it. Really. I know my knowledge of this field is incomplete, but who am I missing? Please let me know who should be added to this. Meanwhile, I have a list of others to look out for:
Adiche . Read one of hers and was impressed. However, I have not read so until I do I cannot make that call. I hope to add her to the list soon.
[1] It's funny that I find many of his non-fiction essays to not have anywhere near the same value.
[2] The list of close but no cigar goes on. Rushdie also has some good points, great craft, but many of his essays have not aged well .
[3] Don't worry, as a writer I understand that this applies to me as well. I still hesitate when sending certain essays out. Let's see what happens to my own craft and improvement as a human/writer
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins
March 15, 2017
Satan's Plea
It's the little victories that keep my head above water.
Satan's Plea
is an oldshort story of mine (written 5 years ago, I believe) and it has the honor of being the best selling story of the lot. Now the audiobook has been doing well for some time and just now punched above its weight into #14 in the subcategory of Short Stories. Real happy about that and if you haven't read or heard this letter from the devil to the world, I highly recommend you check it out.
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins 
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins
March 10, 2017
New Way to Tell Stories? I'm in!
Yes, I'm sure the radio silence has grown deafening, and for that I apologize. I must say that life's certainly taken turns I did not expect. I will also say that I've heard of a new format on medium called series.
I love it, think it's perfect for story telling and so I'm going to be using it much more. Here's the first one. So check it out and let me know what you think. BTW, it's MOBILE-ONLY. Sorry, but those are the breaks.
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.Donate Bitcoins 
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.
Donate Bitcoins
Nelson Lowhim's Blog
- Nelson Lowhim's profile
- 14 followers
Nelson Lowhim isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
