New Fiction
Update on Literary Events
I am now reviewing for the New York Journal of Books. Upcoming is a review of Don’t Hide The Madness a Burroughs/Ginsberg conversation which is slated to publish in October 2018.
Eleanor Parker Sapia, author of A Decent Woman, reviewed Citadel here. Very happy to have this succinct and insightful review. The final words: “The character Trisha says it best: when you finish this novel, you won’t be the same person who started it. And that’s a good thing. Let the discussions begin.”
Citadel is available at Couth Buzzard Books, 8310 Greenwood Avenue, Seattle. Thanks to Theo Dzielak owner, poet, friend of the printed word.
Cassandra Flatt Disney worked up an outré apocalyptic-looking-sounding video trailer for Citadel. Posted on Youtube.
The feature on Citadel is now in eYs magazine. This is a new, Sydney, Australia print/emag publication under the guidance of the talented and dynamic Jasmina Siderovski.
Final Scene from Citadel– Bru Discovers C-1
BRU
From the crest of the fossilized sand dune, Bru looked out on the wide desert plain. Wind whispered a gritty rattle as it shushed in her hair. She scanned the desert through binoculars— a tower, a wall circling the tower, vehicles, dozens of them. She stowed the binoculars, set the recorder, opened the scanner then worked her way down the dune. The slope was steep, the rock hot and gritty. Several times, she slid, but righted herself. The only sound the scraping of her boots.
Heading across the plain, she stopped to scan the rusting, rotting vehicles, not surprised to find bones in them, bones in ragged black or sun-bleached uniforms, cracked sun-eaten boots. As she walked, the scanner chimed as it catalogued the bones, dated the age and size of the remains, and counted the equipment. Pushing on into the sun, she came to a stack of skulls. She knelt. She found a hole in the forehead of each skull. Legend said that at C-1, there was a daughter who had six hundred kills, all of them shots to the head. But Bru saw no horse bones. Kaavi had written that there were bones of horses at Foundation, but she saw none. Perhaps Kaavi had made a mistake. Bru closed on the wall that loomed up like a rusted red shield.
A structure of welded metal. Leading up to the wall there were killing channels, machines of all kinds strapped together with rusting steel bands. The channels narrowed into kill boxes as they approached the wall where firing slots ranged. And in the kill boxes, the carnage had been catastrophic. She remembered the text written four hundred years before – The Solerian stands in the center of the Citadel like a spindle in the nucleus of a cell. The Founder had written it down and from the writing came the structure of all Citadels.
The walk was slow and hot as she circled the walls. She counted as she paced—one hundred, two hundred, three hundred units. To her left, the sun now behind her, she saw the gate and at the gate thick piles of machines rusting. Entering the kill box, she threaded her way through matériel and skeletons to the gate where she stopped. The gate, a massive barrier of steel plating, still pocked with the black residue of explosions, was shielded by sharp-pointed spiles driven into the ground and anchored in concrete to create a hedgehog. She entered the gate. Inside she saw the tower tilting to one side. The steel latticework had not yet decayed. Around the footings of the tower there were stacks of bones and weapons. She examined the skulls. From the angle of the holes in the skulls, she judged that gunfire had slanted down on the attackers.
She left the tower and approached the buildings—thick concrete blocks—no doors, all blown open, hinges ripped like paper, and she held up. A half-destroyed sign over the entrance, in faded black lettering, read Dese R se Mote . Her heart beat faster. Was she the first daughter to see the mythical C-1. Was this the beginning of time? Her hands were clammy, sweat soaked her jerkin and rolled down her sides. And she then entered the ruin.
It was primitive—wood chairs, a long wide bar, a broken mirror. In the mirror, she saw herself in her transformed body—heavy shoulders, thin waist, long hair the color of rusted steel. Her arms were thick and muscular. Her beard trained down her chest. She was shocked. The transformation had taken two months. The genetic knock-ins had made her sick, the facial hair turned her into an animal. She had not looked at herself in a year and a half. She turned away from the mirror. Her scanner chimed. Body count—ten thousand Exos. She scrolled through the inventory—a thousand daughters. At Foundation, in C-1, one thousand daughters stood off ten thousand Exos for a year. This was C-1. She squatted and ran her fingers through the dust on the floor. If the Founders died there, there would be DNA.
She reset the scanner. She drew the device from her pocket and clicked talk. The first words she had spoken since she left the team in the dry lake bed came as a rough croak in a dry throat.
“It’s here.”
The Ending of Citadel Reading
The Opening of “Citadel”
As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a sense of dread. I dream, and when I wake, I am sure it will be the day the world ends. Rose, my therapist, tells me more of her clients have apocalyptic dreams like mine. She doesn’t know what it means.Yesterday at the beach as I watched the beach meat in their combat ritual, I had one of my visions of annihilation. There were four of them. Their sandy bodies glistened. Muscle and sweaty flesh silhouetted in an exploding sunset ripe with blood. Their overhand smashes and digs were laced with grunts and howls and the wail of loss. I imagined them still grinding one another to dust in the chaos of extinction. The shaven-headed one, the tall, muscular and vicious one spiked a set-up and the volleyball blasted his opponent in the face and he went down—on his back, on the sand. Bleeding. The fallen enemy crawled off the pitch, his shamed partner beside him.
Gabriela and The Widow–Montaigne Medal Finalist
I received this today from the Eric Hoffer Award panel:
Dear Author/Publisher:
Congratulations. As part of the Eric Hoffer Award, your book (Gabriela and The Widow, my emphasis) was nominated for the Montaigne Medal. Your book is still on track for a category prize, including the Hoffer Grand Prize. The Montaigne Medal is an additional distinction, awarded to the most thought-provoking books. (See past winners on-line.) Approximately two to three books receive this award each year. A partial list of Montaigne finalists is below. Regardless of the judges’ determination, your book at the very least will carry the distinction of “Montaigne Medal Finalist.” The Montaigne Medal short list will be announced prior to the winners’ announcement. You will be notified via this e-mail of all events concerning the award.
Sincerely,
Dawn Shows,
EHA Coordinator for
Christopher Klim
Chair, Eric Hoffer Award
Partial list of Montaigne Medal finalists (in alphabetical order):
Gabriela and the Widow
Gandy Dancing
I Am Another You
Lit from Inside
Loving Andrew
Making Advances
My Life With Wings
Press Release for The Book of Changes
CONTACT:
Catherine Treadgold
Publisher
Coffeetown Press
PO Box 70515
Seattle, WA 98127
206-414-7673
Catherine@CoffeetownPress.ComCoffeetownPress.com
The Book of Changes is Book Three of The California Quartet, a series of standalone novels about young men coming of age in California during the 60s and 70s. The final volume, Trio of Lost Souls, will be released by Coffeetown Press in 2014. The series began with The Deification and Valley Boy.
“I’m tempted to say Valley Boy is Remick’s best work,” says Frank Araujo, author of The Secrets of Don Pedro Miguel. “The writing never lets up from the first line to the last. Ricky is the prototype Okie kid who haunted the Wasteland we know as the San Joaquin. The story is witty, tense and true.” Of The Deification, mystery writer Robert J. Ray writes: “The language, the timing, the humor, the strong verbs, the concrete nouns, the world beneath the world–all wrapped up in one novel …You gotta read this book!” Of Remick’s novel, Blood (Camel Press, 2011), Wayne Gunn wrote on LambdaLiterary.org: “For an author to choose as his explicit models Camus, Genet, and de Sade … and to earn the right to be mentioned in their company is [a goal] that perhaps Jack Remick has indeed achieved.” |
The Book of Changes:“A great read. Jack Remick has the amazing ability to transport readers to another era and not allow them to return until the end of the final chapter.” Marie Romero Cash, author of the Jemima Hodge Mysteries “Beast” is a pure innocent with one simple goal–to become an expert on the Middle Ages. He comes to Berkeley, the Cathedral of Learning, in 1971, a time of political upheaval, hallucinogenic drugs, group sex, and electric, acid, psychedelic, mind-bending rock and roll. On his quest for meaning he hangs out with a Harley-riding dwarf, a raven-haired Gothic artists’ model, a sorority girl turned nymphomaniac, and the heir to a family of French aristocrats with a bloody history dating back to before Joan of Arc. Beast soon discovers that he can’t live in the past but has to embrace the present, with its traps and land mines and the horrors of contemporary society—death by motorcycle and bad acid trips. The world is exploding, but students still go to classes, fall in love, get laid, study in libraries, win awards, even graduate. The country is on fire, and Berkeley supplies the fuel. Says Remick: “When I went to Cal, there was no tuition. Education was free. You paid a $76.50 student fee, and you paid for your books, your room and board. Anything that was left you spent on booze and motorcycles. Then Ronald Reagan was elected governor and the good times ended. The Free Speech Movement (FSM) came along and the rebellion that started in Sproul Hall grew into a firestorm of protests and death and destruction. Education took a hit, tuition blasted off, leaving only the rich and well-heeled in the classrooms. After Ronald Reagan, California was never at peace again. This novel, The Book of Changes doesn’t purport to be either a sociological thesis or a history of anything. It is a fictional record of a sort filtered through time and the consciousness of young women and men who were looking for a new definition of America, of California, of the world. We didn’t succeed.” Jack Remick is a poet, short story writer, and novelist. Blood, A Novel was published by Camel Press in 2011. The Deification, Valley Boy, and Gabriela and the Widow are all available from Coffeetown Press. Coming in 2014: a collection of poems, Satori. You can find Jack online at www.jackremick.com. The Book of Changes can currently be preordered on Amazon.com. After October 15th, it will be available in eBook and 6×9 trade paperback editions on BN.com, the European Amazons and Amazon Japan. Wholesale orders can be placed through info@coffeetownpress.com or Ingram. Libraries can also purchase books through Follett Library Resources or Midwest Library Service. ABOUT Coffeetown Press—Based in Seattle, Washington, Coffeetown Press has been publishing the finest fiction and nonfiction since 2005. |
The Book of Changes coming from Coffeetown Press
The Book of Changes, the third volume of The California Quartet, is in the chute and should arrive sometime in October, 2013. Here’s what you’ll get:
The Book of Changes: (coming in October 2013 from Coffeetown Press.)
“Beast” is a pure innocent with one simple goal–to become an expert on the Middle Ages. He comes to Berkeley, the Cathedral of Learning, in 1971, a time of political upheaval, hallucinogenic drugs, group sex, and electric, acid, psychedelic, mind-bending rock and roll. On his quest for meaning he hangs out with a Harley-riding dwarf, a raven-haired Gothic artists’ model, a sorority girl turned nymphomaniac, and the heir to a family of French aristocrats with a bloody history dating back to before Joan of Arc.Beast soon discovers that he can’t live in the past but has to embrace the present, with its traps and land mines and the horrors of bad acid trips and death by napalm and motorcycle.In the Cathedral, students still go to class, fall in love, get laid, study in libraries, win awards, even graduate, but the world is burning and Berkeley supplies the fuel.
Updated Virtual Tour Schedule for Gabriela and The Widow
Gabriela and The Widow just blew into blogcritics.org for a fun-filled Q and A loaded with writing insights and personal revelations about the author. Thanks to Virginia Grenier. Check Gabriela out here:
Article first published as Spotlight Interview with Author Jack Remick on Blogcritics.
Also–Now Gabriela is in the PI.
Gabriela and The Widow is now available in paperback and kindle. The url is to the amazon page.
Gabriela’s Blog Tour, like all expeditionary excursions, undergoes itinerary changes according to the terrain, weather, and geo-political upheavals. Here is the url with the latest additions, deletions, changes, hopes, fears etc.:http://storiesforchildren.tripod.com/worldofinknetwork/jack-remick-jan-feb-13.html
American Chronicle and Andi’s Realm came off without a hitch. Thanks to all for visiting those stops.
Jack
Press Release–Gabriela and The Widow
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Coffeetown Announces the January Release of Gabriela and The Widow, a Story of Memory, Immortality and Redemption
Contact: Catherine Treadgold
Publisher Coffeetown Press
PO Box 70515
Seattle, WA 98127
206-414-7673
Catherine@coffeetownpress.Com
CoffeetownPress.com
Seattle, WA.—On January 15, 2013, Coffeetown Press will release Gabriela and The Widow ($14.95, 280 pp, 6×9 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60381-147-7), a work of literary fiction by Jack Remick. Gabriela and The Widow tells the story of a dying aristocrat and the Mixteca caregiver who helps her assemble the jumbled pieces of her past, a process that gives them both love, closure, and the courage to move on.
Remick’s books have received impressive critical praise. A sampling:
Writes Jodi Lea Stewart, author of Summer of the Ancient, “Raw, exquisite writing talent splashed onto the page with such audacity and nerve that it gives you a heartache that burns a hole right through your spirit … that’s what I experienced reading Jack Remick’s Valley Boy.”
“If American literature produces one On the Road per century,” says poet and writer Priscilla Long, “then The Deification is it for the twenty-first. This road trip saga of would-be poet Eddie Iturbi from Sanger to San Francisco, from innocence to art, is fast, hot, thick, mythic, erudite, erotic, and intense.”
Of Remick’s novel Blood, the San Francisco Book Review writes, “The narrative is rhythmic, almost hypnotic, with a cadence like a relentless drum beat or at times a turbulent raging river. All of this combines to result in one of the best books I’ve ever read.”
The Widow (La Viuda) is ninety-two years old. She lives in a house filled with photos and coins, jewels and a sable coat. Aware that her memory is failing but burning with desire to record the story of her life on paper, she hires Gabriela, a nineteen-year-old Mixteca from Mexico. Gabriela is one of the few survivors of a massacre and treacherous journey to El Norte.
Gabriela and the Widow is a story of chaos, revenge, and change: death and love, love and sex, and sex and death. Gabriela seeks revenge for the destruction of her village. The Widow craves balance for the betrayals in her life. In the end, the Widow gives Gabriela the secret of immortality.
Remick says, “With Gabriela and The Widow I set out to write a novel about two women. One an immigrant, Gabriela, on a journey to the North, the other a dying old woman, a Widow who lives in the desert. I was drawn to the subject of the collision of cultures that is ripping America apart right now, but I also wished to examine how women relate without men. The men in Gabriela and The Widow are marginal—they are punishing, they are brutal, they are cheats and liars—but this is not a misanthropic book. It is the story of how The Widow makes Gabriela in her own image and sets her free from her bloody past. It is a book about mothers and daughters, it is a novel about women for women, but it is also a mythic recasting of the story of women before men.”
Jack Remick is a poet, short story writer, and novelist. In 2012 Coffeetown Press published the first two volumes of Jack’s California Quartet series, The Deification and Valley Boy. The final two volumes will be released in 2013: The Book of Changes and Trio of Lost Souls. Blood, A Novel was published by Camel Press, an imprint of Coffeetown Press, in 2011. You can find Jack online at Blood.camelpress.com.
Gabriela and The Widow is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com. After January 15, 2013, it will also be available in multiple eBook and 6×9 trade paperback editions on BN.com, the European Amazons and Amazon Japan. Wholesale orders can be placed through info@coffeetownpress.com, Baker & Taylor or Ingram. Libraries can also purchase books through Follett Library Resources or Midwest Library Service.
ABOUT Coffeetown Press—Based in Seattle, Washington, Coffeetown Press has been publishing the finest fiction and nonfiction since 2005.
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