The former Roanoke Times building is now the administration offices for Roanoke City Public Schools.
It feels so weird to me — maybe because the building was one of the first landmarks I remember seeing when I first came to Roanoke.
Tag Archives: Eric Robert Nolan
Intersection of Church Avenue and Market Street, December 2023
A very short review of “The Exorcist: Believer” (2023)
I’m sorry to report here that “The Exorcist: Believer” (2023) is indeed a bit lackluster. (The buzz online was pretty critical of the this latest entry in the franchise.)
It starts off strongly enough. The story’s setup is methodical and well paced, that characters feel real, and the movie does a good job building tension. It’s in the latter half that the movie falls short — it slides into a chaotic jumble of characters and story elements. There is one major story development that arrives as a welcome reference to the classic 1973 original film … but it’s written off in an unsatisfying way that has little effect on the plot as a whole. (I am being intentionally vague here to avoid spoilers.)
There are a few things to like here … it is definitely a little scary in a couple of places. And the two girls playing the afflicted teenagers (Lidyah Jewett and Olivia O’Neill) are superb.
“The Exorcist: Believer” isn’t a bad horror movie, exactly. It’s really just average — and it has the misfortune of being compared to the original.
The Piker Press publishes “Three Dreamers”
I am so pleased to see a trio of my poems appear today over in the pages of The Piker Press. The set of three is entitled “Three Dreamers,” and the poems are as follows: “The Writer,” “The Secretary” and “The Bureaucrat.”
I wrote “Three Dreamers” very early in my career as a poet, and they were meant as a sort of creative experiment. I wanted to see whether I could characterize three different fictional characters who have relationships with one another. (The people portrayed here were imagined as office co-workers.)
Thanks once again to Managing Editor Sand Pilarski for allowing me to share my voice at The Piker Press!
Adele Evershed named Spillwords Press Author of the Month.
I hope you will all join me in congratulating Adele Evershed as Spillwords Press Author of the Month for November 2023.
(Thanks also to those of you who voted for me, as I was a nominee as well. I am flattered if you did so.) 🙂
That awesome day when your Twin Sister sends you “writer fuel.”
Nobody tell her that I am just sitting here stuffing my face and watching “The Zombie Diaries” (2006). (It’s been a long day, people.)
Three of my poems are featured in Impspired Issue 26.
I am absolutely honored today to see three of my poems published in Issue 26 of Impspired in the United Kingdom. The three poems are “At the Coffee Shop,” “Autumn Girl” and “A Poet’s Short Note to His Muse.”
You can find all three poems right here. The print edition will be released at the end of January.
Thanks once again to Editor Steve Cawte for allowing me to see my work appear in such an outstanding independent literature magazine!
The (Renovated) Arena Stage.
So this is the Arena Stage in Washington D.C., these days. I saw a play there as a college student in 1994 or so. (There was a major renovation and expansion project since my days at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia.)
I don’t even remember which production we saw, to be honest with you. (I’m pretty sure it was Shakespeare.) But I remember that the trip seemed exciting. Fredericksburg really was just a mid-sized town back in the 1990’s. Going into Washington D.C. at night with about 100 other theater students to see a live production felt like a pretty big deal.
And the trip and the show were a blast.
Photo credit: Ron Cogswell, 2011
Photo credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlTAobYSR5k&list=FLEjGv3WZw134CN_yJVg3_Hg&index=1143
You need to watch “The Fall of the House of Usher” (2023).
“The Fall of the House of Usher” (2023) is goddam terrific. I have never thanked a college buddy as enthusiastically for inviting me to watch his Netflix with him.
It’s unflinching and unfailingly loving of its Edgar Allan Poe source material. (The eight-episode miniseries actually draws from a number of Poe’s works — not just the eponymous 1839 short story.) The acting is top-notch — particularly from leads Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood and
Mary McDonnell. The dialogue is priceless. And it is genuinely scary! (Yes, a lot of us really love Poe, but you must admit that it is challenging to make his works fresh and truly frightening to a modern audience.)
I almost said that I loved it more than “The Haunting of Hill House” (2018), another superb horror miniseries by director Mike Flanagan that employs much of the same cast. “The Fall of the House of Usher” can be considered an unofficial sequel to both the 2018 miniseries and 2020’s “The Haunting of Bly Manor.”
My heart still belongs to Hill House, though — although “The Fall of the House of Usher” is Flanagan’s best, in some ways, I think “Hill House” tells more a human story, with redeeming, realistic characters that we genuinely worry over.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” is a close second, though.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 