Among Our Titles

Available in print & digital for every reader….

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Front cover of my second novel, "Family Ties"

Family Ties: a Novel

Finders, Losers A lakeside cabin in the Sierra foothills, a canyon village divided between old coots and laid-back hippies, and…

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Front cover of my first novel, "The Dust Will Answer"

The Dust Will Answer: a Novel

No Lofts, No Lattes. No Law. 1978: The wave of gentrification has yet to break over downtown Los Angeles, and…

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Front cover of my collected essays, "Our Own Day Here"

Our Own Day Here: Essays on Urbanity

Urbanist, cyclist, and lifelong flaneur Richard Risemberg explores the chaos, contradictions, and conviviality of life among the humans in and…

Recursions, Part 1: Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”

18 Jul 201718 Jul 2017

This is the first in a series of short critical looks at books of literary criticism. Yes, a writer writing about writers who write about writers! I composed these for…

True and False Test

16 Jul 201717 Jul 2017

Marianne Moore once wrote that poetry consisted in "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," which is perhaps as good a definition as any. I'd say it applies to fiction…

Cruel Graces

11 Jul 201712 Jul 2017

The grace of a cat is rooted in cruelty. Not just the cruelty of the kill itself, which, if you abstract it from the pain it imposes, is beautiful as…

Stranger than Fiction

6 Jul 20176 Jul 2017

Sometimes, truth really is stranger than fiction, and you have to leave some of it out to make the generous lie of writing at all believable. A good example is…

Distance Learning

2 Jul 201714 Jul 2017

Gina and I recently received a letter from my friend and colleague Kent Peterson, who lives in Eugene, Oregon. I mean mechanically received a letter, on paper, generated by a…

Say What You Mean

28 Jun 201730 Jun 2017

Since I grew up with an engineer, I am practiced in the dark art of taking things literally. This held me back in the early days of my writing; since…

Performance Anxiety: The Power of Words…and the Words of Power

25 Jun 20174 Jul 2017

I read an article this morning, a marvelously foul-mouthed rant on Southern sociopolitical hypocrisy, part of which I read aloud to my wife. The interesting point to me was that,…

When Good Writing Goes Bad

23 Jun 201724 Jun 2017

Writing is one of the worst things you can do as a novelist, if you love it too much. This is especially so, I suspect, for those of us--and that…

Official First Post

21 Jun 201724 Jun 2017

I suppose that it's now incumbent upon me to scribe the obligatory First Post, introducing myself to the alleged visitors of this website. I have been blogging pretty much since…