A Random & Tragic Expanded 3rd Edition...

In October of 2000 I got a rejection letter from Matthew Ward for a magazine he was editing called HEIST! The magazine had changed its focus to short fiction, and was no longer looking at poetry. However, Matt liked the work I’d sent, and believed enough in what I was doing at that early stage, that he wanted to publish a chapbook. And so was born Something Random & Tragic To Set The Guts Aflame...

I tell you, I can still remember the feeling: standing there in the little dining room, raising my fist to the sky for a full minute while reading those words for the first time. I’d been publishing for just under a year (my first book a self-published venture), and the idea that someone I didn’t know and had never met believed enough in my work to put up their own blood, sweat, and scratch to put it out both astonished and delighted me. Truth is, it still does. And at that early stage in my writing career, it was the boost I needed to really sit down and do serious work. It was victory...a pure, unadulterated , delicious victory.

Thirteen years later, and here we are. Tremendous things like I could hardly imagine then have come to pass, and I have amazing relationships and opportunities to publish with some of the very best the small press has to offer. Books, stories, letters, and someday soon, perhaps even novellas...all of it owing a little something to Matthew Ward, and his Mary Celeste Press (formerly Mockfrog Design Press) without which, who knows where I’d be. And so, when Matt suggested we put out an expanded 3rd edition of the long out-of-print manuscript, I damn near stuck my fist in the air for another full minute!

The book is due out in May -- one of three books slated for release this year. The original 19 poems are, this time, accompanied by 22 uncollected poems of the same era. And those who have a first or 2nd edition know the book came with a CD of the first six readings I ever did. I’m releasing not only those original readings, but additional ones via this free PODCAST.

So save up a few ugly pennies everyone! After over two years of relative publishing silence, this promises to be a big year full of exciting new stuff!