Pre Order Mantids and Chapter 5 link

Both Mantids (hardcover) and the new paperback of Hammers are available for preorder on both the Target and Amazon sites, among others.

I've posted a PDF of Chapter 5 of my upcoming novel Mantids at www.rondakron.com. The specific URL is http://blackheron.mav.net/dakron/c5.pdf.

Great Spokane Reading

Laurie, Jerry, Judith and I read at the GetLit! Spokane festival. It's probably now the biggest literary festival in Washington State--hear that Seattle? What happened to Bumbershoot?

Spokane itself is a strange city, a mix of nice folks, bumpkin boosterism and spare change artists. They have some amazing architecture, including the biggest Masonic Temple I've ever seen, complete with pharaoh busts and carved hieroglyphics. We read at the Spokane Club, a hodgepodge of health club, opera singers (for real!) and dowdy couches. But more people showed up to listen than to read, which is always a great sign. Later Saturday there was a lit get-together with chilled asparagus and pricey liquor. We drank and didn't talk to anyone.

Spokane Reading Update

Laurie Blauner, Ron Dakron, Jerome Gold and Judith Roche will read at the GetLit! Spokane Festival on Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 1-2:30 p.m. at the Spokane Club, 1002 W Riverside Ave., Rm TBA

Rhyme and Surprise

Any language is formed in the heat of experience--myriad minds churning into being. A language finds grip in experience through its usefulness, and if we take Sartre's dictum of experience preceding essence, then one mark of a useful language is how it not only expresses already-formed sense, but how it tricks sense out of forming essence. Which brings me to creative drinking. Originally the phrase I mused about in a reverie yesterday were something about creative "thinking," and then that "drinking" rhyme just slipped in like a scalper in a Hannah Montana ticket line. Which naturally brought on comic thoughts about writers dissolved in bourbon, etc. I've had similar rhyme experience when writing poetry--the original thought being dislodged by the appearance of a close rhyme with different meaning. English is chocked with pitfalls like this--puns, rhyme, homonyms--that trick the mind into caves it's never peeked or peaked in before.

Mantids publication date and Spokane reading

Two updates:

1) My new novel Mantids--about Viagra overdosing, female praying mantids and male paranoia--should be out in August 2008. I'll be using this blog as a (hopefully) weekly update on publication details, readings, and the whole newbie book shebang.

2) Me and some other Black Heron Press writers--Jerome Gold, Judith Roche and Laurie Blauner--will be reading at the GetLit! festival in Spokane. Washington on April 19, 2008. Stay tuned for exact time and other details.

Here's a new poem

sunlight like gravy
slides from her hips
a mutual entropy
squirms in her hand
she talks with voices
and says with lips
I’ll be the tragedy
you be the man

A few notes on satire

Satire's tricky--the readers must feel superior to the narrator, yet the narrator must reveal his own flaws. If the narrator seems more intelligent, then it's irony. The usual satirical device is some form of "fatal blindness" to an obvious character flaw. I'd say by these standards that Huck Finn is ironical and the Bible is satirical.