I'm not a fighter, I'm an ostrich.

My publisher Whisk(e)y Tit has published an interview with me about my novella, The Ice Mine.  Jon Frankel sent me the questions by email and I tried my best to explain the origins of the book and my poetic endeavors.  If you have a moment, please check it out.  You can order the book via the Tit website or on Amazon. 

Jon's work is also available on these platforms.  His "lo-tech noir" novels are vivid and finely-honed visions of a dystopian future both incredibly strange and sadly familiar.  He's a voracious reader and his works are a mix of pulp fiction and true erudition.  I don't know anyone with such a deep and wide knowledge of English literature, and though he doesn't whack you over the head with it, his books are filled with sly references to "the English canon".  Harold Bloom would approve! 

Jon's "blogh" is also worth a gander:  The Last Bender.

I'm not a fighter, I'm an ostrich.

".... the abyss between the ludicrous and the terrifying."

Hey ho!  Got a new review of The Ice Mine on Amazon by J  Frankel.   5 lucky stars:

Steven M. Adkins’ ‘The Ice Mine, “The Relation” of Ricardo Etienne Bream’ is a hallucinatory novella of a madman’s quest for a mythical place, in this case an Ice Mine. The narrator has lost his wife, children, home, and job through addiction to narcotics. He manages to kick his addiction and hopes to recover at least some semblance of a life, in the course of which he discovers among his books ‘Relations’ of other travellers who have gone in search of the Ice Mine, which may lie to the north, or the east, or the south. Most who light out to find it never return. The narrative has the feel of Browning’s strange Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, a poem he dreamed. 

Adkins’ prose is sonically rich, full of words like ‘blorp’, evoking comics as much as classic sci fi. The heart of his writing is surrealism and the great strength is his fine rendering of a marginal consciousness riven by guilt and self-hatred. He compares self-pity to the honey of bees, something he defecates at night and consumes in the morning. The story alternates between his adventures into terra incognito, encounters with mythical beasts and dangerous defiles, rocky wastes, storms and dust, and reflections on his life and the history of his people. It is a novel of alienation and nightmare, enlivened by the knowing prose, which straddles the abyss between the ludicrous and the terrifying.

A gilet jaune does not a Gilet Jaune make

I wrote this on Facebook a few days ago and reproduce it here because it seems to have been well-received....

For my friends in the US (and elsewhere), this is a weird time in France. For the last three [now four] weeks we've been in the grips of popular protest movement that has gotten increasingly violent. Toll booths have been set on fire or otherwise damaged, a prefecture was torched, a tax office bricked up. Hundreds have been hurt, including hundreds of police. Three [make that 4] people have been killed. Friends, and my own son, have inadvertently gotten tear-gassed.

It was initially sparked by an increase in taxes on diesel and other energies, but has morphed into a general anger over the cost of living, a government removed from the people, the suppression of services in the country such as post offices and schools, while politicians in Paris live like aristocrats of old, and mega-corporations like Total pay no tax. (And yet the poor like the rich pay a 20% VAT). It's neither left nor right, and not led by unions. It's hard to meet the protestors' demands because they are many and varied. They don't have and don't want self-appointed leaders. The government has announced a moratorium on the tax increase, but most suspect it's just a ploy to calm things down and they'll just put it into effect later than planned.  [The government has since announced it will drop the plan to increase these taxes altogether].

This is about city versus country, Paris versus Provence, the rich versus the poor; one demand is the re-institution of a suppressed tax on large fortunes.

[City versus country:  People in the city don't have to drive, so the concerns of the gilets jaunes are alien to them.  A student of mine pointed out that this all really began when the government reduced the speed limit on country roads from 90 to 80 kph.  In the city, you can barely drive faster than 30, so again, no problem for a city-dweller.  The move was widely seen not as a way to improve safety but a way to impose more fines and collect revenue.  An example:  I have gotten three speeding tickets in the last year, compared to one in the preceding 15!

City people also don't need to drive for basic services such as post offices and doctors.  Country people do.

Rich versus poor:  Obviously, rich folks don't give damn about the price of basics; a man driving a Maserati doesn't care if a baguette is a euro or a euro-fifty.  For people living on the minimum wage, even twenty cents is a big deal.  There are families with two salaries who still finish the month with a serious overdraft.  People "get by", but do not prosper, cannot save money, cannot take nice vacations or buy new clothes and sometimes have to get by on pasta at the end of the month.  After bills, rent and fuel for the car, a lot of people don't have anything left; indeed, they finish in the negative.  An example: I lived this way for years, and thanks to "reforms" due to kick in come January, will have to live that way again.  Note that my examples are from my own experience; take my word for it, it applies to just about everyone I know.]

This week the high-school students joined in to protest "reforms" to the Baccalaureate, and it started to affect me personally. A blocked metro meant almost an hour to walk home on Monday, almost missing work on Tuesday, a half an hour wait on Wednesday for a tram that should come every 8 minutes. Today [last Thursday] I couldn't get to work as the metro was again shut down and buses stayed away from my workplace.

Two days ago a protest at a HS in Blagnac resulted in the entryway being torched and apparently other schools suffered the same. My son didn't go to school because classes were cancelled for fear of the same thing happening there.

Now the unions are calling for strikes, including within the police (not the officers, but the canteens, admin personnel etc.) The farmers might get in on it because they suffer quite a bit.

Wild rumors are flying. I heard some groups threatened to come into Paris armed. For days the papers have not been talking of a "movement" or "protests" but "insurrection". It's a wild and tense time, with no small amount of fear of what will happen come Saturday, which have been the most violent days so far.

We shall see. Walking thru town to get home, one could hear people talking only of this and irritated at the inconvenience, yet not angry. People are in general quite supportive from what I've seen. Not all, but a lot. There's a palpable tension and I've heard sirens all day.

Anyway, despite it all, I feel safe, though I worry for my family and have advised my son to be alert once school starts back up. I've said he can go on strike if he feels aggrieved, but to stay away from anyone trying to start fires or otherwise act in a violent manner. Maybe that's wrong, but to be honest, I generally support the protest. I abhor the violence, but it has caught the government's attention. For better or for worse remains to be seen....

So, if you've seen something on TV or in the papers, this is one view of what's been going on.

[Final thoughts.  Saturday (12/8) was not as bad as expected, but from what I saw, the violence which did occur was not perpetrated by the gilets jaunes proper, who are mostly normal working-class men, and a lot of women, but young hooligans with their own agenda.  They may wear a yellow vest, but a gilet jaune does not a Gilet Jaune make.  The movement is largely trying to calm the violence and we have strong denunciations of arson and vandalism from among the protesters.

I predicted this protest would continue and so far have been proven correct.  I think next Saturday will see a significantly cooler situation.  X-mas is around the corner and it's getting colder, and the government won't tolerate another day of violence.  BTW, don't let Trump 's tweets fool you.  A March for the Climate this weekend drew more people than the gilets jaunes protests and among the marchers were several gilets jaunes.  People are not fools, they know something must be done about climate change, they just don't want the cost placed entirely on their shoulders.

Coming to Toulouse today, I passed a pretty well-entrenched gilet jaune blockade.  They had a cabin, a campfire, a friendly attitude, and seemed to be pretty chummy with the Gendarmes present on the scene.  That was very interesting to see indeed.]

My Name is Toni

My friend Waithira Francis has published a book entitled My Name is Toni, which I intend to review on LoS when time permits.

I was supposed to read and review it before publishing for a back cover quote, but alas, I was just too busy to finish the book before she published.  I regret that!

What I can say is that it's an semi-autobiographical account of an African woman who emigrates to France and her ensuing adventures.  What strikes me is how she manages to both shed light on what it's like to be a woman, an African and an émigrée, yet touch on universally-recognizable experiences and emotions. 

Or maybe it's just me.  I'm a white, American man but like Francis, an émigré.  That shared experience makes our differences much less important.  But one need not be an expat to understand and be struck by this book.

You can send a message at this Facebook page to inquire about ordering.