Fridays 5 with Robert Knox

I am a husband, father, rabid backyard gardener, Boston Globe freelance writer, and blogger (prosegarden.blogspot.com) on nature, books, films and other subjects. My short stories, poems and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous literary publications. I was named a Finalist in the Massachusetts Artist Grant Program in fiction for a story about my father (“Lost”).

My story "Marriage" placed in a fiction competition held by Words With Jam and was published recently in the anthology "An Earthless Melting Pot." Another story, "Love in the Other Place," was published in the latest issue of The Tishman Review. "Commitment" recently appeared in the debut issue of 3288 Review. My nonfiction story "Preparing A Place" was published last month in Lunch Ticket, and my short story "House Mates" is currently up this month (January 2016) on Scarlet Leaf Review.

My novel on the origins of the Sacco-Vanzetti case, "Suosso's Lane," was published in October 2015 by Web-e- Books.com.

As a contributing writer for Verse-Virtual.com, my poems appear there every month. Poems have also appeared recently in Guide to Kulchur Creative Journal, The Poetry Superhighway, Bombay Review, Earl of Plaid, Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, Semaphore Journal, Metaphor, and Scarlet Leaf Review. Some poems were also accepted for the upcoming anthology "Peace: Give it a Chance," and a collection of poems ("Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty") will be published in 2016 by Coda Crab Books.

1.) When did you first get serious about writing?

A.) In my twenties. I had just been fired from my teaching job (four different jobs in four years). I had no idea what I was going to do for a living, but I had been writing poetry for a few years and keeping one of those running self-consciously serious writer's journals, from which (I hoped) I would material for "stories" once I got around to writing them. I moved to Boston, then Cambridge, and became part of a self-publishing poets co-op. We published a tabloid newsprint poetry quarterly with our own work in it, gradually opening up to outside writers, and gave group readings in the Boston area. It was great to have something in print, but I was still not making a living.

2.) What is the hardest part for you about writing?

A.) Getting published. I was determined to write novels. I pushed poetry to the side when I went to graduate school in English literature to improve my employability. I would finish a novel but couldn't find an agent or a traditional publisher, and self-publishing was looked down on then. I worked as adjunct faculty teaching English composition at various colleges and writing on the side, as we say, but resenting the time teaching and correcting papers took away from 'my own' work. Eventually, I switched to working for newspapers. Same deal. Except newspapers were way more fun than teaching, but they did not open doors for my creative projects.

https://www.web-e-books.com/suosso/default.php

Synopsis:
Historical fiction, Suosso’s Lane dials back the clock to revisit the flawed trial of Italian immigrant Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a believer in "the beautiful idea" of a classless society in which all would work for the common good.

A sober-minded laborer, Vanzetti suffers from the exploitation of industrial workers in the early decades of the twentieth century. Outraged by the greed and injustice that mar his idealistic hopes for the "New World," he joins other anarchists in promoting strikes and preaching revolution.

In 1920, Vanzetti and his comrade Nicola Sacco are nabbed by police looking for radicals and subsequently convicted of committing a spectacular daylight robbery and murder. After seven years in prison, even as millions of workers and intellectuals around the world rally to their cause, the two men are executed.

Seventy years later, when a young history teacher moves into Vanzetti’s old house in Plymouth, Massachusetts, he learns of a letter that might prove Vanzetti’s innocence. But his search for the truth faces obstacles posed by a local conspiracy theorist, the daughter of Vanzetti’s lover, a shady developer, and a fatal fire set during his search of an old Plymouth factory.
3.) How did you feel upon publication of your first completed project?

A.)  It's hard to say what my 'first' was. My recent first was the accomplishment of that long-ago goal of publishing a novel. My novel "Suosso's Lane," published last October by Web-e-Books.com, takes off from the famous (and infamous) Sacco and Vanzetti case, which exposed American prejudice against southern and eastern European immigrants in the 1920s, especially Italians. Conventional wisdom said "ignorant, backward" Italians could never fit into American society. What does history say about that prediction? When that book finally saw daylight last fall I was ecstatic. I had pushed for years to find a publisher and rewritten it about a dozen times along the way. An earlier would-be publisher had collapsed before getting to my book. Writing and publishing that book was the water tower on my bucket list. I have a half-dozen other projects backed up behind it. Whether they'll see light remains to be seen. But one thing I know: I'm in print. And I feel like I earned it.

4.) What is more important to you, story, or character? Why?

A.) What's important to me is voice. Somebody has to be telling something -- let's say 'story' -- in a compelling way. Somebody has to have something to say, and has to know how to say it. The writer, through whatever artifice -- first-person narrator or third-person omniscient or anywhere in between -- has to speak with authority, invite, seduce, or demand the reader's attention. And hold it by delivering the goods. You probably need both story and deep, complex, credible characters to do that job, but you don't get in the door, at least my door, without a tongue in your head.

5.) What is a typical day like in your world?

A.)  Sleep late. Sort through email for the free-lance job I still do for the Boston Globe. Decide what I'm going to do that day to promote "Suosso's Lane." Write emails to possible sources of interest? Mail out promotional copies? See what social media forums such as Goodreads has for me? Then I write a poem or work on my current novel. I'm a contributing writer for an online poetry journal called Verse-Virtual.com, so I produce publishable work each month for that journal. I spend my days mostly in solitude, but they're not carbon copies. I grow flowers and vegetables in the growing season. Take walks in autumn. Go to the gym some days. Eat dinner and spend the evening with my wife. Go back to doing stuff like this after she goes to bed. I am mostly free, often quite happy, and still rather driven.

Fridys 5 with L.G. Corey

L.G. Corey lives and writes in a small mountain community, seven thousand feet above sea level in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California. His is the author of four books of poetry, all published or about to be published by Platypus Press, Ltd. (England). The Kalidas Verses, Sausalito Poems, Rats’ Alley Poems, and Shards of Glass, an anthology of his collected works compiled by the editors of Platypus Press.

His individual poems regularly appear in print and online literary magazines here and abroad such as Unlost: A Found Poetry Review, Dead Snakes, Corvus Review, The Literary Commune, Danse Macabre (France), Kalyna Review (the Ukraine), Hot Tub Astronaut (Scotland), California Journal of Poetics, Red Savina Review, Chaffey Review, Poetry Pacific, Empty Sink, Snapping Twig, FUG.UES, Rogue Poetry Review, Miller’s Pond, Screech Owl, Pif: A Journal of Art & Technology, Beloit Poetry Journal, Evergreen Review, Midstream, Choice, the Critic, and Zeek, among others both here and abroad.

In addition, his work has been selected for inclusion in three annual poetry anthologies: RoguePoetry Review (2015); FUG.UES: An Anthology of Minimalist Poetry, Haiku, and Asemic Writing; and the Snapping Twig Year-End Anthology.

1.) When did you first get serious about writing?

A.) I first realized that someone actually writes a poem, and it doesn’t just appear by itself in a book, when I was ten years old. Our teacher had pinned a little handwritten poem by one of my classmates to the bulletin board in our classroom. I stopped and stared at it for a long time. It was the first time I had ever seen such a thing, and it seemed to me magical. “I can do that,” I finally said to myself, and did.

Four years later, in a high-school English class, someone passed around a paper with a passage from Lewis Carol’s The Jabberwocky on one side of the page and a quote from T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland on the other. Until that point, I had no idea who Eliot was or what he had written, but that short mocking quote dazzled me and I realized that that was the kind of poetry I wanted to write someday.

At the end of that virtual apprenticeship, when I was 18 years old and a freshman in college, I began submitting my poems to prominent literary journals. Of course, they were all returned with the standard printed rejection slip. One of them, however, from the great Poetry magazine, had a handwritten note in pencil at the bottom.  It read, “Keep trying.” I did. But to this day, with all my other publications, I’ve never been accepted by Poetry magazine. No matter. I cherish the memory of that handwritten note.  

2.) What is the hardest part for you about writing?

A.) For the first 60 or 70 years of my career as a poet (I started in earnest when I was 20, and I’m now 81) my greatest fear was always that I would never write another poem as good as my last one – if at all. No matter how many poems I subsequently wrote that proved me wrong, the fear never went away. Finally, though, when I was 60 or 70, it did. I now sit down to write each poem with the assurance from my Muse that she, not I, will surely write another.

These poems grew out of the years spent on the streets, in the bars, squatting in derelict houseboats, and getting high with friends and lovers in Sausalito.
 

Sausalito Poems

3.) How did you feel upon publication of your first completed project?

A.) Major literary journals finally began publishing my work in the 1960s, beginning with the esteemed Beloit Poetry Journal publishing my poem, Shema!, in their winter 1966-1967 issue, followed a year later by my poem, Baal Shem, In their spring, 1969 issue. My reaction, of course, was joy. I had finally started becoming the kind of serious, literary poet I had determined to be when I first read T.S. Eliot, fifteen years earlier. Publication of my work in other important literary magazines, such as Evergreen Review and Midstream, followed.

4.) What is more important to you, story, or character? Why?

A.) As a poet, the most important thing to me is the architecture of the poetic space – even more important than the “meaning,” “message,” or “affect” of a poem. I compare this to the beauty of a spider web: It conveys no inherent meaning or message, but only the architecture of its created space. The same is true of a sunrise or sunset. Neither has any intrinsic meaning other than that itself. The poem, too, is much like that – for me, at least. My goal each time is to let the poem write itself, not for my sake or the reader’s sake, but for its sake.

5.) What is a typical day like in your world?

A.) For as long as I can remember my day begins at 3:30 a.m. First I tend to my two pit bulls, black lab, and three elderly cats. Then, fortified with a cup of strong coffee and a croissant, I sit at my computer either working on a new poem or reworking an old one. Then, as I’ve been doing every morning for over the past 25 years, I teach my online classes on spirituality and creativity. At noon I take a lunch of ramen noodles and fresh fruit, and lay down for about an hour. When I rise I manage my correspondence, communicate with my publisher, Platypus Press, Ltd. (England), about whatever book of mine they’re preparing for publication, and even watch an hour or two of classic animated cartoons on television. My day ends around 5 p.m. when I, my three dogs and three cats, all get into bed together where I eat a light dinner (usually a sandwich, fresh fruit and canned soda) and watch the local news until we fall asleep at 7 p.m., only to wake up again to a new day, 8 ½ hours later.

Website: https://poetcorey.wordpress.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/poetcorey

Book: http://getbook.at/sausalitopoems

Fridays 5 with Casey Bottono

Casey Bottono is an author of poetry and essays on the topic of personal growth after loss. She has a wealth of experience in this area, which led to her starting Navigating Cyberloss, an initiative for people who are grieving the loss of online friends to gain support and understanding from one another. Most recently, an essay of hers on the subject of 'Dealing With The Loss Of An Online Friendship' appeared in Alice's Law: Honoring Lost Loved Ones and Finding Deeper Meaning by Lauren Muscarella (Trauma to Art Publishing, 2015) When she is not writing, Casey is most often found with a guitar in hand singing original songs.

1.) When did you first get serious about writing?

A.) I found my writing voice in 2007, following the death of a dear friend. Poetry was a way for me to understand what had just happened, and take stock of my feelings. Much as I sometimes wanted to run, I found that I couldn't stop pouring heart and soul into this creative work.

2.) What is the hardest part for you about writing?

A.) The most difficult part for me at the moment is getting so far into a project and finding something else I have to research. I am writing a novel at the moment about a sister and her brother, who has Angelman Syndrome. This is similar to epilepsy, with cognitive and physical impairment thrown in. Every five sentences, there is something new that I have to find out about. It's a wonderful and terrible journey of discovery.

3.) How did you feel upon publication of your first completed project?

A.) The publication of Stones in the Road: Poems of Grief and Growth helped me to close two separate but interrelated chapters in my life. I'd struggled to raise my head following the 2011 death of my friend Kim as a result of complications from anorexia. I worked with a very good therapist and finally found my way out in August 2014. The place I ended up in was as good as any to begin to compile what would become Stones.

Click here for more info or to order

4.) What is more important to you, story, or character? Why?

A.) Because I find it difficult to visualise my characters, I am often concerned that the reader does not get enough of a sense of them. Therefore, I have to say that story is far more important. If I can communicate a story effectively, then I have the reader emotionally invested in the piece of writing. The original short story version of my novel was very well received on the basis of the story that I had constructed.

5.) What is a typical day like in your world?

A.)  Right now, I am working very hard on completing my final project for my MA in Professional Writing from Falmouth University, in Cornwall, England. It's a great ride, because I actually get to work on the novel I love at the same time.

So, I'll start the day with getting the compulsive Internet browsing out of the way, and then begin some research. Once I have researched enough, I will either begin a new scene or continue where I left off. I'm so deep into the process at the moment that I don't even have set chapters. I'd anticipate that the final version of Wheels will run in the region of 75-80,000 words, suitable for a YA audience.

Then lunch, and if I'm on a roll, more writing. I don't like to set working hours, because I would feel as though I was locked into a schedule.

Author links:

More information as well as social media links can be found on Casey's website: www.caseybottono.com

Goodreads author page: www.goodreads.com/caseybottono