Ernesto on September 30th, 2008

A New Hampshire-published dark literary fiction magazine, Shroud, just signed a four-year distribution agreement with Ingram Periodicals.  Great news for Shroud — exciting to see new fiction publications succeeding.  And no, I'm not just happy for these guys because they published one of my stories. But that made me happy, too.  Press release within. Shroud Publishing [...]

Continue reading about Shroud Magazine scores a distribution deal

Ernesto on August 17th, 2008

Just finished Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami is a Japanese novelist and distance runner who weaves the two interests together in this plainspoken book on how these two activities feed each other, compliment each other, and seem to appeal to a certain personality type.  Feeling much in common [...]

Continue reading about A book for writers and runners

… containing a blood curdling story from yours truly.

Continue reading about Keep an Eye Out For The Next Issue of Shroud Magazine…

Ernesto on July 13th, 2008

There’s a beautiful, sad story called “Stand by Me” by Wendell Berry in The Atlantic summer 2008 fiction issue.  The voice is first person rural poetry, simple and pragmatic, and tells a story about brothers and sons and death and living through it.  It’s the kind of story that is either beautiful or cheaply awful, [...]

Continue reading about Wendell Berry on Brothers, Sons, Perseverance

Ernesto on June 10th, 2008

Is the way we use search engines and databases changing the way we think? Deep concentration, rich memory being replaced by culling fragments of on-demand data? I think Carr's got a good point. The real danger is the fact that data on demand instead of committed to memory is less available for synthesis… making connections [...]

Continue reading about Nicholas Carr Asks: Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Ernesto on March 4th, 2008

Gary Gygax, the man who co-created Dungeons and Dragons, died today. Another piece of my happily misspent preadolescence and early teen years gone… I'm going to have to dig my copy of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide out of whatever box of books it ended up in a have a toast to Gary while I [...]

Continue reading about Farewell, Gary Gygax

An interesting post from the Creativity and Innovation blog: Theater, Jazz and Business Success.  The post examines a New York City based group called Creativity Connection.  The group uses collaborative music and arts projects to help businesses train employees.  For example… “Lucent’s world headquarters has brought in a five-man jazz ensemble, to demonstrate to managers [...]

Continue reading about Where Work and Art Meet: “Theater, Jazz and Business Success”

Ernesto on December 21st, 2007

Great essay by Leigh Price in the New York Times on reading — old attitudes toward it (too much reading was once considered a danger to morals and physical health by social reformers) and new ones (the NEA in 2007 "identifies who reads as the best predictor of who exercises, plays sports, volunteers, votes and [...]

Continue reading about Too Much Reading: Responsible For My Good Character Or Bad?

Ernesto on November 11th, 2007

To quote Bruce Campbell… 

Continue reading about Hmmm, hail to the king…

Ernesto on November 11th, 2007

Sad to hear Norman Mailer has died.  While it may be a bit contradictory to say so, I never managed to get around to reading everything Mailer wrote, nor did I like everything of his did read, yet he was one of my all-time favorite writers, and certainly one of the most influential (along with [...]

Continue reading about Norman Mailer: January 31, 1923