I’ve gotten a lot of queries from readers lately about progress on the next book in “The Wolf War” series.
Rest assured — I am working on it. I promise devastated lands under harsh moonlight, disciplined soldiers moving quietly in the night, and our heroes keeping company with the dead.
I will apprise everyone of the journey as it proceeds.
Head on over to the Book Marketing Network for another edition of “What I Am Reading.” 4-LAN the Friendly Robot is reviewing E.G. Manetti’s “The Cartel.”
http://thebookmarketingnetwork.com/profiles/blogs/what-i-am-reading-12
This was passed along to me by Carrie (Harbach) Schor, a Longwood High School Alum. She’s a sweet-natured and extremely intelligent girl who has always been wonderfully supportive of my writing.
Thanks, Carrie. 🙂
Celebrate National Poetry Month — here is one of the greatest poems of all time, W.H. Auden’s “Lullaby.”
by W. H. Auden
Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful. Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit's carnal ecstasy. Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost. Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find the mortal world enough; Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
– See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15542#sthash.5TV828Ab.dpuf
Thanks, Academy of American Poets
“Under the Bed” is an outstanding horror magazine that pleasantly reminds me of the ones I grew up snatching off the newstands and begging my parents to buy me. It’s a great source of horror reviews, interviews, news, opinion pieces, and much more. For good old fashioned, creepy fun, check it out and peruse it just before bedtime. Monthly subscriptions are just $1.99 an issue:
https://www.fictionmagazines.com/shop/subs/under-the-bed-monthly-subscription/
I was honored recently to have my supernatural horror story, “The Song of the Wheat,” selected for publication. It will appear in Under the Bed’s next issue, which will be released on May 5. Managing Editor Wednesday Lee Friday, who has a keen eye for story revision and who is a pleasure to work with, shared the issue’s cover image with contributing writers today. (If you’re a zombiephile like me, you’ll love it.)
I’d like to thank Ms. Friday and her colleagues for allowing me to be among the fun group of readers and writers of Under the Bed!
My big brother and Mary Washington College Alum, Russel Morgan, visited campus recently and took some terrific photos — MWC has changed a LOT since 1994, but there are still many places I recognize.
The first picture is of the dining hall where I worked as a student employee — horsing around with the other kids, constantly drinking coffee and that sweet red “bug juice” punch, and adopting cookies, cheeseburgers and tater tots as staple foods. It is also where I worked countless hours on “Dishline,” the assembly-line-like workspace where I and the other kids cleaned all the dishes that were returned. Wow. That was a lot of wet work. I believe that I still smell of ketchup to this day. I indeed capitalize “Dishline,” as it is both famous and infamous, and figured largely in the formative years of many past students. If you attended Mary Wash and you know what being “on carts” was, then you are a “Seacobeck Alum.”
Also pictured, in the second photo, are New Hall and Alvey Hall. (I’m certain new Hall must have been dubbed with a donor’s name in the intervening years since I graduated.) The men and women I lived among here are among the finest I’ve ever met. To quote the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, “I Accuse My Parents,” “I threw some kickass parties here.”
In the third photo are Mason and Randolph Halls. My college girlfriend (and possibly the sweetest person I’ve ever met), Kim Haun, lived in Mason. That low-lying structure linking the two was a literal tunnel, where dorm rooms existed at the time. (We quite creatively nicknamed it “The Tunnel.”) Here is where I partied as a Freshman with Steve Miller. (No, not the musician, Steve Miller — but the irony here is that my pal Steve was a huge fan of the eponymous star and played all of his albums while we sipped rum and cokes on the weekends.) My college experience would never have been the same if Steve and his upperclassmen friends hadn’t taken me under their wing.
[EDIT — It was actually MWC Janet Walbroehl Winston who took these photos!! Russ, you scene-stealer!!!]
Seacobeck Dining Hall.
New Hall and Alvey Hall.
Mason and Randolph Halls, with”The Tunnel” in the middle.
Ball Hall.
Celebrate National Poetry Month — here is another favorite poem of mine from my college days, Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.”
Thanks to The Victorian Web for the text.
Dover Beach
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold/writings/doverbeach.html
“The funk, the whole funk, and nothing but the funk.”
This song was recently shared with me by my editor in Britain.
If people abroad derive their image of Americans based entirely on this song, I am more or less on board with that.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 